Lab Nurse

By Rona Randall, ©1958
Also published as Sisters in Nursing

They were three beautiful sisters, triplets in fact, but each girl had her own distinct personality: Faith, the lab assistant, was the serious and intense sister. Her hair was dark and her eyes, a deep blue. Hope, the staff nurse, had flaming copper-colored hair and she was always gay. Charity, the physiotherapist, was blonde, gentle, graceful—and blind … The three girls were entirely devoted to one another, to nursing and to St. Bede’s hospital where they lived and worked. When three young and attractive doctors arrived—a visiting surgeon, a pathologist, and a house physician—each girl found the happiness, excitement and romance that were needed to make her life full and complete …

GRADE: B+

BEST QUOTES:
“In endeavoring to antagonize no one he failed to succeed in pleasing anyone.” 

“Nothing had worked out as she planned. Not a doctor here had fallen in love with her or even shown the slightest willingness to flirt with her. It had been a very dull visit, after all.”

REVIEW:
This book was originally published under the title Sisters in Nursing, and it’s too bad they changed it because the original is much more fitting, as this is the story of three sisters named, I’m sorry to have to tell you, Faith, Hope and Charity Connell. They are triplets, orphaned shortly after birth and raised by the matron of St. Bede’s  hospital. Each one of them—a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead (what are the odds!)—are beautiful and intelligent and charming. And as we open the book, we find its ending is foretold in its first seven words: “The arrival of three new medical men …”

Honestly, I’m not sure what more there is to say about this book. I can tell you that Faith is a junior pathologist, and that one of the new men, Dr. Charles Wilstack, is the new pathologist. Faith was “shy, reserved, sensitive. It might take him quite a time, he thought, to break down those barriers, but he would do it in the end.” Hope is a nurse on the surgical floor, and on page 19, “just like that, it happened. With no clash of cymbals, no roll of drums. Right at that moment, she fell in love” with Dr. Phillip Trent, the new surgeon, who is intimidating and stiff with nurses, but Hope immediately sees that his actual problem is that “he has never learned to laugh!” and so it not cowed by him. He’s originally from this town and has moved back in with his older unmarried sister Agatha, and is immediately taken up by his old flame, the wealthy and divinely evil Felicity Drake (even she has a noun for a first name), who had spurned Phillip in their youth but is now divorced from the man she’d chosen instead. Felicity is “an elegant young woman. She wore a beautifully cut suit of moss green, with a lavish mink stole and a chic little moss green hat trimmed with mink tails.” I, for one, swooned—nothing makes me tumble harder than a gorgeous, well-tailored suit ornamented with fur, a weakness that dates back to the excellent Graduate Nurse, reviewed in 2011, in which the vixen had a similar outfit but, even better, was stepping from a smart blue “roadster” when we met her. But I digress: Last of the trio is Charity, who is a physical therapist, and who is blind—although so adept that when the new internist Dr. Michael Shearling meets her and holds out his hand to her, he is insulted that she does not shake it, only later learning that it wasn’t rudeness that caused her to miss his gesture. Michael is “tall and dark, with a strong face and a bitter mouth,” which Charity of course cannot see, but oh yes, she can: “At some time in his life something has happened to Dr. Shearing that hurt him,” she tells her sisters. “And he is still hitting out against it.”

And so we have the dramatis personae of this book, but it is nicely padded with some lovely extra characters: Dr. Phillip’s sister Agatha Trent is a joy, as are Matron and Dr. Shearling’s mother. There’s even a happy little dog, Charity’s pseudo seeing eye companion, and a silver gown to wear to the ball. Not much really happens—with a  triple-threaded braid of a plot, each of the strands is fairly thin—but it’s smooth and pleasant and sweet, not at all challenging but mildly comforting, like chamomile tea when you have a slight cold. It’s a story worth reading, maybe best after you’ve had a lousy day and you need a light soothing stroke on your hair. As long as you are not expecting more than mild pleasantries, Lab Nurse will take perfectly good care of you.