Lovely Alex Blair was not unaware of Douglas Allen’s attraction. He was a young and capable doctor, and friendly with everyone at the Haddon Hospital. Alex had decided to make nursing a career after an unfortunate tragedy. In the daily round of hospital work she found satisfaction and personal contentment until the jealous envy of Night Superintendent Ellen Ridley was directed against her. Alex believed that there was not place in the life of a nurse for such rivalry or resentment, yet at the same time she had to stand up for herself. The whole affair had been brought about by Ellen’s determination to marry young Dr. Allen. Through her attempts to discredit Alex, Ellen not only lost the interest of Dr. Allen but revealed the true and romantic discovery between him and Nurse Blair. A full and absorbing novel of Doctors and Nurses.
GRADE: B+
BEST QUOTES:
“Doctors don’t give a hoot for nurses. They work us to
death, boss us around, take all the credit when a patient recovers and give us
the blame when one dies. Have to ‘Yes, Doctor. No, Doctor’ them when you would
like nothing better than to place the sole of your shoe on their anatomy where
it would do the most good.”
“When people play eavesdropper why on earth don’t they get things straight and complete in detail?”
REVIEW:
Alex Blair is a serious young woman who experienced a
horrible tragedy at the age of 17—her older brother impulsively eloped, then
shot his wife and himself to death on their wedding night. The scandal caused
the death of Alex’s grandfather, who had raised the siblings after they were
(natch) orphaned. The family’s money suddenly depleted at the same time, Alex
was forced to sell the family home and fend for herself, and nursing it was.
Now, as the book opens, she has been working as a nurse under her birth name,
Alex, instead of her old nickname, Lisa, to hide from the shame of her
brother’s crime, which had chased her from her home town. She is quiet and
sincere, never gossips, but has a magical ability to smooth out the roughest
patients. For this she is admired by everyone except Ellen Ridley, the night
nursing supervisor and the granddaughter of the hospital chief of staff.
One young assistant surgeon, Dr. Douglas Allen, would like to admire Alex more personally, but she remains aloof—but not enough to satisfy Ellen, who has decided she wants Dr. Allen for herself. Though he has regularly dated Ellen—she at least never says no—as her jealousy of Alex makes her increasingly hostile and mean, Doug becomes less intrigued with Ellen and more so with Alex, not helping Ellen’s disposition at all, until she is constantly stomping through the hospital swearing to destroy Alex Blair by uncovering her secret past.
This is essentially all there is to Calling Nurse Blair, with numerous patient stories woven in, and if the ending of Ellen’s story is a very small surprise—rather than being chased from town with pitchforks, she is redeemed—nothing else in this book will be. I am a fan of author Lucy Agnes Hancock, who worked as a secretary at International Harvester and lived with three of her sisters, none of whom ever married, and started a career turning out romance novels in 1936, when she was almost 60 years old. Her clean, sweet writing describes a simpler, gentler lifestyle (whether that was ever realistic I cannot say) that I always enjoy escaping to, but this book suffers from a skimpy plot that moves slowly, and Alex’s relentlessly angelic nature—especially against the contrast of Ellen’s demonic one—nearly had me rolling my eyes. A couple of themes that could have proved interesting—the benefits and downsides of rigidly following rules, for one—were quickly dropped before they were developed. But overall this book is a pleasant gift from the secretary-turned-novelist, and with its marvelous cover illustration as an added bonus, there are much worse ways to spend an afternoon.
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