Nurse Brookes

By Kate Norway
(pseud. Olive Norton), ©1957
Also published as Sister Brookes of Byng’s 

Helen  Brookes had left Byng’s Hospital to get married … and come back again, her engagement broken. She had made one distressing, almost disastrous mistake; now she would be more careful, she told herself, more clear-headed about her own emotions. All of which did not prevent her from falling in love with a surgeon who, it seemed, was not free to marry.

GRADE: B-

BEST QUOTES:
“The way she used her lashes was cheap.” 

“Doctors are annoying creatures, and students are worse.”

“Sorry? The most incompetent word in the language.”

REVIEW:
Nurse Helen Brookes is a sister—which means she’s in the nurse in charge—of the men’s surgical ward at Byng’s Hospital in England. She’s a highly capable and kind nurse, always sticking up for the underdog, setting to rights the young probationers who seem like they can never do anything at all when they start their training and turning them into first-rate nurses, even match-making for her ex-fiancé, a nice man whom she never really loved and who never really loved her, with the woman he actually pines for. 

She meets Dr. Hugh Burton-Hall, the resident surgical officer, who is a blunt, brusque man slow to warm, but warm he does indeed, as we know he will. The big hitch is that he has a son, and presumably a wife. Of course, we know there’s more to the story than that, but Helen Brookes, who otherwise can overcome hospital gossip in a single bound, bend recalcitrant patients to her will, and even cure cancer patients is strangely unable to see the obvious. So most of the book involves a lot of stories about the more than 60 other named characters in the book—I tell you, it is a serious chore trying to keep everyone straight—while we wait for the star-crossed lovers to sort things out. And that’s about all I have to say about this book.

I am a fan of Olive Norton, who topped the Best Authors list in 2021 with an almost-B+ average across seven books, but this story is not her finest. It’s not unpleasant, just maybe a little boring, without much plot to be had. You can certainly do worse, but unless you’re desperate, there’s really not much of a reason to read this book.