A Nurse Called Happy

By Peggy Gaddis, ©1963

“We have a date to fall in love,” Dr. Norman Hewatt said softly.
“I haven’t forgotten,” Nurse Happy answered, but she couldn’t meet his eyes.
“I’ve been thinking about you and that Rustin fellow.” Dr. Norm’s voice was suddenly bitter. “Don’t you know better than to fall for that line of his?” Before Happy could answer, Dr. Norm caught her in his arms and kissed her—hard and thoroughly. “That’s what love is all about,” he said huskily and walked away.
Happy stood there, her face over her hot face, trembling from the force of his kiss. And shaken to the depths of her being …

GRADE: B-

BEST QUOTES:
“I would stop being a nurse, Norm, if I didn’t think of my patients as people and worry about them.” 

“Some day soon, she promised herself, she’d have a much larger office and her own secretary and she would work at her desk wearing a hat—the status mark for women executives.”

“Women are funny critters, son.”

“There are strait-jackets waiting for men who try to understand women!”

REVIEW:
Nurse Hallie Gibson is known by the nickname Happy, but she’s having a crying jag on the Florida pier because yet again she has interfered overmuch in her patients’ lives, in this case bringing one newborn baby that is to be put up for adoption (because his show-biz parents are too busy to raise a baby) to a woman who has lost her third child and all hopes of having another, and suggesting that the woman adopt the baby herself. Happy’s “good friend” Dr. Norman Hewatt, hearing of this incident, only says, “Your intentions are always of the very best, but you are impulsive.” The fact that she manages to keep her job at all is frankly shocking, but apparently they’re hard up for nurses at Gulfside Memorial. 

The plot hinges on an accident that is brought in: Elderly Ethel Kingsley tripped when stepping off the curb and fell in front of a car driven by Vernon Rustin, who does not appear to have actually struck the woman, but she’s going to need two weeks in the hospital to recover from those scraped knees. Vernon is sincerely devastated by his nonexistent part in the accident and pays for all Ethel’s hospital and visits with her and her husband Josiah daily—and keeps old Josiah company outside of visiting hours. Soon he’s smitten with the folksy and kind Kingsleys, and wants to “adopt them as the parents I never had,” he declares. Soon he’s calling them Mom and Dad and deciding that in that old folks’ home where they live, “they have nothing to do and nothing to hope for,” which he plans to remedy.

But the problem is the Kingsleys selfish, driven daughter Jennie-Sue, now going by Janine (and who could blame her?), who persuaded her parents to sell the farm and move into that old folks’ home, where they’re not allowed to chat when the TV is on, so she could buy a junior partnership in the advertising agency where she works. She’s a beautiful but cold young woman whose only concern is that the hospital bills are paid by someone else, and the poor emotionally crippled lass can’t bring herself to be cordial even when she discovers that they will be. (One does wonder, if the Kingsleys are so great, how they managed to raise such a horrible child.) But when Vernon finds a new home for the Kingsleys, an island hunting lodge in need of caretakers, where he proposes to set them up and live there with them himself forever and ever, Happy’s friend Dr. Norm is, not unreasonably, suspicious. “I would like to know why a man his age should be wiling to bury himself here on this lonely, isolated island just to provide a home for two old people who are nothing to him,” he says to her. “Hadn’t you realized what a perfect spot it might be for a man who wished to cut himself off from unpleasant, maybe even criminal activities?”

Janine shows up on the island intent on marrying Vernon, though she can’t bring herself to even smile or offer one pleasant sentence, so it’s hard to believe she is going to pull that off, though she threatens her parents that she won’t “allow” them to live on the island, and the fact that Ethel and Josiah are competent adults who don’t need her permission to do anything is utterly ignored.

It turns out Norm is wrong about Vernon—you see the truth coming a mile away—who is actually fairly wealthy, but Norm is justifiably jealous because Vernon takes no more time to fall in love with Happy than he did with the Kingsleys. Norm has decided that when he has a little more time and money he will become involved with Happy. “Some day you and I have a date to fall in love—remember?—the first chance we get when we have a few hours off,” he says.

But Happy calls out Norm on his hypocrisy, saying, “I don’t think I care very much about that kind of love; the kind that wants to tuck me into a corner of a mind that will be busy with other things and just has a minute to fling at me once in a while. Doctors aren’t supposed to be human enough to fall in love without setting certain times and places and being sure that romance won’t interfere with their practice?” But when she finally receives a proposal of marriage, she is only furious that it occurred in the hospital cafeteria. “How dare you say that here in a room filled with people? Where’s your sense of romance? Where’s your instinct for building memories that will last all our lives?” Several stupid pages of absurd bickering ensue, and then everything is wrapped up.

That’s about all there is to this book, and it’s not often you find a book with so little plot, but then author Peggy Gaddis is known in these electronic pages for work that is generally mediocre at best and alarming at worst. Here she is not equal to her best books—that would be Nora Was a Nurse, Hurricane Nurse, and The Doctor’s Wife—but we also escape her penchant for racism and hypocrisy. A win for us! But overall not really enough of a reason to bother with A Nurse Called Happy.

Hope Wears White

By Florence Stuart
(pseud. Florence Stonebraker), ©1961
Cover illustration by Martin Koenig

Nurse Barbara Ritter looked up into Dr. Wade Fulton’s eyes. “Say you love me, darling. Say it once, please,” he pleaded. She turned her head away. “Oh, let me alone. Don’t talk any more about it. What does it matter how I feel about you? You’re going to be married to another girl.” She had lost her heart to a man who belonged to somebody else. Would time heal the hurt? Barbara found the answer to her question in this moving novel of love, friendship and dedication to a notable profession. 

GRADE: A-

BEST QUOTES:
“If I had my teeth in, I’d bite you, honey.” 

“Later they drove down to the village to look at the bright lights, all five or six of them.”

REVIEW:
I’ve been feeling a little burned by Florence Stonebraker in recent years. She has written some amazing books, no question about it—five of her books have earned A-grade reviews—but she has also gotten seven C’s, so you never know if you’ve got a gem in your hands or a dud. The result is that now, as I read her books—and Hope Wears White is my 19th—if it starts out well, I am nervously waiting for the point where the story tanks. Fortunately, this book sparkled from beginning to end—but apprehension marred my enjoyment somewhat; these are the bitter side effects of this job, but I hope my work here can spare you the stinkers and deliver you only the best. 

Barbara Ritter is a nurse from the very tiny town of Springdale, Arkansas, population 2,734, where she was adopted by the local doctor and his wife. Unfortunately, she played the Cinderella to her younger sister Fern, the pair’s biological daughter: “Fern had always gotten the best of everything, while Barbara did the work of two or three servants.” Barbara has turned out all right in the end, though; after her father died, Mrs. Harriet Hope, a wealthy local widow, loaned Barbara tuition money for nursing school. Now, after four years away from home, Barbara is returning to show everyone her success. (It’s a flimsy excuse, but there it is, and we have to live with it.) Fern has not fared so well: “She acts very strange of late. She is moody: up in the clouds one minute; down in the dumps the next,” explains Mom, while others are less kind, stating simply that “Fern has some deep-seated neurosis and is seriously in need of psychiatric help.” Fortunately, there is a new psychiatric hospital in town, endowed by Harriet and run by Dr. Wade Fulton, who is quite the hunk.

Harriet has insisted that Dr. Wade hire Barbara to work at the hospital, and her first interview with Wade starts off very well, despite the fact that “I hadn’t counted on anyone quite so ornamental,” as he says, since everyone tells Barbara that she looks like Elizabeth Taylor. Barbara displays a fair amount of sass: “Do you suppose I’ll be safe, working day in and day out with this irresistible male?” she asks fellow Nurse Kitty Standish. When Wade tells Barbara he is engaged to a woman back in New York, she slyly asks him how often he writes her, saying, “I’ll bet the poor gal is all aquiver with excitement, waiting for those cards to arrive.” But the interview quickly sours, and later Kitty declares that Wade is “afraid that he’ll fall in love.” In short order Wade all but admits this to be true: Apologizing that they got off on the wrong foot, he touches her arm, and the sparks fly.

Meanwhile Fern has developed a huge crush on Wade, and is sending him love letters and turning up in his office to bat her eyes at him. One evening Barbara goes to the family house to discuss Fern’s behavior, telling her that its less than rational. She suggests that Fern seek professional help, and Fern completely wigs out. Screaming that she will kill Barbara or herself, she slams out the door and hops in the car. Barbara, for some equally insane reason, climbs in with her, and before too long Fern has driven them off a cliff. Miraculously they both survive—and Wade confesses his love, while simultaneously declaring that he cannot marry her because he is engaged to this New Yorker.

Unfortunately, there can be no easy happiness for the Barbara and Wade, because Wade is one of those annoying martyr types “whose inner strength was also his great weakness. It was unthinkable for him to let down someone who depended on him.” And so, rashly engaged years ago to a woman who has turned out to be not at all suitable for him, “it was his duty—Wade’s absolute duty” to stick with Helene Robbins, even though she has refused to marry him until he gives up his job in Arkansas and returns to New York to take up a posh practice, which he has refused to do.

Sadly, Barbara accepts the situation with little of the spine she has demonstrated to date, but she does have two feisty friends in Kitty and Harriet, both of whom exhort her to fight for her man. “No man makes up his own mind when it comes to affairs of the heart,” declares Harriet. “The girl has to make it up for him. You have to.” Barbara doesn’t, though, because she has a sister who truly hates her. Realizing where Wade’s affection lies, the scorned Fern writes a letter to Helene in New York, telling her that Wade is being seduced by the tramp he works with and is about to wriggle off the hook. Instantly jetting to Arkansas, Helene declares she will go through with the wretched wedding even though she does not love Wade, because “like every girl with good sense, I want to be married to a man worth marrying,” she frankly tells Barbara. “Wade is a successful doctor, he’ll make a name for himself, he’ll make good money—once I get him back to New York where he belongs.”

It’s not hard to imagine how this scenario is going to wrap up, though the specific details were a surprise and even funny. The writing is smart, crisp, entertaining, and often amusing, if not of the sort of humor that translates well for the Best Quotes section. I’ll acknowledge that the plot is not completely logical, and it was disappointing that Barbara, who started out with so much starch and fire, completely wilted. But the supporting cast is built of admirable characters who are very enjoyable to watch as they chew the furniture and toss off fabulous lines, such as the time Kitty scolds Barbara for working so hard in her new job: “What are you trying to prove? That you’re ten women? Or simply that the rest of us nurses are lazy slobs who should get vitamin shots to jazz up our metabolism?” We do get a good handful of Florence Stonebraker’s go-to tricks: the unloved adopted daughter, the psychotic woman, the murder attempts, the Ozark setting, the names Fern and Kitty. Here, luckily for us, she serves them up with panache and freshness, giving us a book worthy of the hope any reader has when she picks one up.

A Strange Case for Dr. Rolland

By Jeanne Judson, ©1962
Cover illustration by Lou Marinelli 

It seemed like a routine call when young and attractive Dr. Teresa Rolland was summoned to see a patient in the slums of Manhattan’s West Side. But later she was glad she asked for a police escort—especially since he turned out to be a handsome and attentive plain-clothes man named Bill Fraser. For when she arrived, Teresa found no patient. Instead she found herself caught up in a case which demanded not only her skill as a doctor, but all the wisdom of her woman’s heart …

GRADE: C+

BEST QUOTES:
“If I’d wanted a really easy life I’d have studied dermatology. That’s the best racket of all. People with skin diseases seldom get well and never die, at least not from their disease.” 

“Who would want to marry a doctor, anyway? Always smelling of iodoform and things.”

“If only one could take them away from their parents and give them to people who need children, people of wealth and culture. We could soon change the world. Believe me, Doctor Rolland, environment is everything. Heredity means very little.”

“When men talked about women leading normal lives, she knew they were referring specifically to having babies.”

“He had confused liberality with generosity. He had given his niece and nephew everything they asked for, but they had never asked him for companionship or understanding or love because people, especially young people, never do ask for those things. They only hope for them.”

REVIEW:
I am a fan of author Jeanne Judson, who has given us three A-grade novels out of five reviews, so it was with enthusiasm that I picked up this book, spurred on by the Lou Marchetti cover illustration. And if this book is slightly outside the VNRN norm, what with a female doctor and a “mystery” for a plot, neither of these aspects contributed much beyond an initial flash of interest that rapidly faded as it became clear that neither would offer much to think about. 

Dr. Teresa Rolland is a “pediatrist,” old by VNRN standards at 26, and just starting her first year in practice in New York City, on one of the 10th Streets near Fifth Avenue. Jenny Dorian is a “beatnik” who is married to a musician and has a five-month-old son, Jerry, who is a patient of Dr. Rolland’s. Jenny’s uncle, John Flemming, calls up Dr. Rolland to ask about Jenny and, in a huge breach of ethics, the doctor tells what she knows of the Dorian family.

And then we drop that story line and move into another prong—the “mystery,” if you squint hard enough at it—which involves a 3:00 am call to Dr. Rolland from a shady address on West 43rd St. requesting her immediate attention. Concerned about the “anything but reassuring” neighborhood, she calls the police and asks for an officer to meet her there and act as bodyguard, apparently not an unusual request. Sergeant Bill Fraser shows up and escorts her into the building, where she meets a gypsy family that is apparently unaware of why the doctor has been summoned—the mother produces a healthy but tired two-year-old, and after she agrees the boy is perfectly normal, Dr. Rolland heads for home. Days later, though, the mother Isobel Flame shows up on the doctor’s doorstep saying that her family has sold her son into an illegal adoption, and the purpose of the early-morning call was to have a witness of the boy’s existence, should the family deny he had ever been born, and—if he ever turns up again—another person who can identify him.

Numerous hints already having been dropped by John Flemming, along with a completely random lunchroom encounter with a talkative stranger who suggests that “if only one could take children coming from bad backgrounds away from their parents and give them to people who need children, people of wealth and culture,” it doesn’t take long to spot the metaphoric red neon arrow lighting the way to John’s friend Lila Vale, who is in the market for a child identical to little Johnnie Flame, or to figure out that Johnnie is the son of John’s estranged son Jerome Flemming (Flame was the pseudonym he used to publish his poetry), who had died of pneumonia shortly before Johnnie was born.

Now we can turn our attention to Dr. Rolland’s ringless fourth finger. The police sergeant makes a valiant and reasonable effort, while John Flemming and Dr. Rolland’s gadabout officemate offer more lackluster options, if they themselves seem far less plodding than poor always-stern Sergeant Bill. But since Isobel is a gypsy, she can read Dr. Rolland’s cards and let her know that when a fourth man, who kisses her after a page and a half of conversation, is her real love, and we learn that “Isobel had told true.”

The only aspect approaching interesting in this book is the discussion of adoption. Isobel is pressed on several occasions to give up her son to the shallow, foolish Lila Vale, who admittedly has a habit of losing interest in everything after a week. Predictably, Lila loses interest when it becomes increasingly clear that Isobel is not going to give up her son and says, “You know, I’m rather glad I can’t have the baby. He wasn’t much fun.” Though she quickly comes around to the humane point of view, even Dr. Rolland “thought for one minute that all the wealth in the world could take the place of Isobel, no matter how poor she was.” The story could have been more interesting if Lila had been a valid potential mother, and we could have had some discussion about parenting and wealth and class, but unfortunately author Judson ducked this deeper subject, just skimming the surface with comments like, “He would go to the best schools, have the best food and clothing that money could buy.” Designer clothing obviously doesn’t equal good parenting, but we never hear that from Judson. Even Man Number Four—“though his heart wasn’t in it,” a lousy cop-out—makes an attempt to persuade Isobel to give up her child; he is actually Lila’s lawyer, and we could talk about whether a person’s lawyer should attempt to accomplish their client’s bad decisions, but we don’t. Only honest Sergeant Bill never doubts Isobel as a parent, and his good heartedness earns him no credit with Dr. Rolland. The fact that Isobel is a gypsy also lends a tinge of racism to the entire incident—no one is asking the dumped Jenny to give up her boy, and it isn’t until Isobel has rejected all exorbitant offers that they tell her that as Jerome’s widow she is now quite wealthy, and can give her son all the same luxuries that Lila Vale can.

Perfunctory, obvious, and dull, this book is far from Jeanne Judson’s best. It’s only the sixth one we’ve read of a dozen nurse novels she seems to have written, though, so maybe we’ll do better next time. It’s just especially sad to see buried here the bones of a good book that we were never given.

Charge Nurse

By Hilary Neal 
(pseud. Olive Norton), ©1965

Nurse Kit Jessop took an immediate dislike to the male charge nurse who replaced her beloved Sister Carlin on Orthopedic Ward—but she had much to learn from Mr. Briscoe, and not least an understanding of her own heart’s desire.

GRADE: B+ 

BEST QUOTES:
“When we’re old and grey, and nobody loves us, we must live in adjoining almshouses. Very companionable. You could darn my socks and I would chop your kindling.” 

REVIEW:
Kit Jessop, just shy of her 21^st birthday and in her final year of nursing training, is an effective and capable nurse rotating through the orthopedics ward with gumption and humor when she is thrown off her game by the arrival of Tom Briscoe, who is the new charge nurse—and a man!!!!—replacing Sister Carlin, who’d had an easy-going and approachable manner. Not like this new guy at all! Who changes all the usual protocols just because he feels like it and is snippy to Kit—but the real shock is that every time she complains to someone about him, they all seem to take his side. Which makes you think that Kit just has an unnatural prejudice, and since he is always speaking to her in a manner that comes across as complete disinterest, we know he shares that same unnatural prejudice.

She does have the hots for Dr. Charles Gillan, a tall, suave fellow with a reputation of being something of a cad, but she pants for him nonetheless—and finally, he asks her to dinner. On their way there, though, they are involved in a car crash in which Kit is paralyzed. But in a curious turn, it turns out her paralysis is psychosomatic, having to do with her impression of the driver of the car that hit them, though she fights the psychiatrist mightily about what it is about that driver, and it isn’t until much later we learn what that’s all about. But Kit eventually sorts it out and gets better, and in her recovery she dates her longtime friend Dr. Ian Madison. “I usually did enjoy myself with Ian. It was a very pleasant arrangement. There were no strings, and we both knew it. Ian had survived one disastrous affair and he was in what he called a resting phase. I too was lying fallow. He was quite content with what he termed our beautiful friendship, and the odd kiss cost neither of us very much. It was pleasant, and it meant nothing, except that we were both a little lost.”

There’s a big dance shortly after she goes back on duty, but the rumor is that Charles is taking someone else. She agrees to go with Tom Briscoe, who asks her only because he might as well go with someone, and there she is in the hall, so why not? But then Charles calls up with the old didn’t-you-get-my-note routine so she dumps Tom to go with Charles—and learns that the OR nurse whom he’d invited first had just sprained her ankle that afternoon. Kit’s not unaware of what’s going on, so when later it turns out that Charles has proposed to the OR nurse, she isn’t completely heartbroken, and she has Ian to cheer her up. Unfortunately, that’s not so simple, either: She finally figures out that Ian is in love with her after all. She feels really badly about it, but says she just doesn’t love him. “He rested his free hand on my shoulder for a moment, and then walked away, and I stood there thinking of all the things we had never said. It was the saddest little end to something that had never had a chance.” I was truly sad to see Ian go, because he was the most interesting of all her men.

The next declarations of love we hear emanate from the long-expected Tom Briscoe, who finally tells Kit that she looks exactly like his dead wife. “I was so afraid that it was simply because you were like Ina,” he says. “And then I found that you were nothing like her at all. You were a different person, and it was you, not a likeness, that I loved.” So it’s OK!

After some tender kisses, Kit admits that she, too, found him very much like someone from her past—her father, if you can stand it. The driver of the car that crashed into her and Charles looked like the two of them, and somehow this muddle made her paralyzed for a couple of weeks, because “as long as you can lie in the hospital you don’t have to make any decisions, and that simplifies everything,” as her uncanny shrink divined. “It was as though the you-cum-Father thing was all wrong. Unnatural. You know?” Yes, we do, and we’re still not entirely clear why she’s gone for Tom, or why she was so shocked by seeing this driver caused her to become paralyzed for weeks. But now she and Tom are engaged, and he’s planning to take back custody of his two-year-old daughter Tina, who’s been raised from birth by her mother’s sister, Anna.

Anna comes to offer Kit her congratulations and bursts into tears, believing it to be the end of her custody of Tina, but Kit is firm that the girl will remain with Anna. “If he wanted to do that to you he wouldn’t be the man I think he is,” she tells him, saying she won’t marry him if he wants to take Tina back. It’s a surprising but welcome perspective, that a child can be better off with the adopted family that raised her than with the biological parent—but at the same time, we feel if it were the mother who wanted the child back, we would not be eager to leave her where she is. “Anna’s been her mother, ever since she was born. She loves her!” she tells Tom. “You can’t do this thing to Anna, or to Tina. It’s too late. If you love her you surely want what’s best for her? You want her to be happy, don’t you, and secure? Well, she is.” Also undiscussed is how Kit feels about suddenly becoming the mother of a two-year-old, because I did have to wonder if that played a part in her attitude.

Tom has to think things over, and eventually agrees to allow Anna to adopt Tina—but it’s too late, the fact that he didn’t come up with that answer immediately dooms their relationship. “The fact that you could even imagine taking Tina away from Anna. It—it spoiled everything,” she tells him. “You were going to do a thing my father would never have contemplated.” It’s very perplexing, and when Tom tells her, “I shall never see why you did this to me,” I think most readers are on his side, especially when she drags her father into it. Weird!

Never fear, Kit ends up betrothed in the end, and if I wasn’t disappointed, I was surprised. In Charge Nurse—interestingly named for Tom Briscoe—we get the usual low-grade humor typical of author Olive Norton, here writing as Hilary Neal, that doesn’t always translate well to the Best Quotes section, such as when Kit fumes that sending Sister Carlin to work in administration “was a little like squandering a ten-shilling dose of erythromycin on one of the orderly’s pimples.” We get plenty of medical action on the orthopedics ward and in Kit’s brief stint in the ED, which is always a plus. If the paralysis bit was another peculiar aspect of the story that was never really satisfactorily explained, it’s certainly different! Ms. Norton has given us a good story here, perhaps not quite as fine as the three of her other books I’ve read (Paper Halo, Junior Pro, Factory Nurse), but Charge Nurse is definitely an interesting addition.

Everglades Nurse

By Peggy Gaddis ©1964

Celia Chalmers was used to conquering men. And Jennie saw the look in her eyes when she met Johnnie Ottwell. It made her wonder if she had been foolish to postpone her marriage to Johnnie. He was a struggling schoolteacher. And she had vowed to help him save for their future. But Celia Chalmers knew how to use her beauty as a weapon to get what she wanted. And now she wanted the man who belonged to Nurse Jennie.

GRADE: C-

BEST QUOTES:
“Who was she, Jennie Cosgrove, with her cherished cap and pin still a beautiful novelty, to object to any orders given her by one of those lordly beings, a doctor?”

“I’m a heel to wish that you were as rich as you are beautiful. I’d do the caveman bit—throw you over my shoulder and lug you off screaming!”

“I’d rather be an irritant to a girl than somebody she just looks at and forgets.”

“I do declare, I cannot get over the fool things city folks will do when they are in the Glades, knowing as they must that the place swarms with poisonous snakes and alligators and mean-natured beasts. They just go blundering around as if they were mowing the lawn in their own back yard.”

“When you are in love you will know that one man, and one man alone, spells the fulfillment of all your dreams, hopes and aspirations.”

“Scruples? I don’t burden myself with anything so silly.”

REVIEW:
Author Peggy Gaddis must have been in a crabby mood in the four hours it took her to churn out this throwaway novel: Characters have the inexplicable habit of flying off the handle at the slightest provocation. Even Gaddis’ usually saintly mother character here gets all peevish when she is offered money for some jam she presents to a guest, snapping sharply at the hapless young woman and making her “flushed and uncomfortable.” The next second Mom “suddenly smiled a warm, friendly smile that wiped out any hint of the momentary resentment she had felt. ‘And I certainly hope you’re going to be a friend of mine and that you will come out again.’” No thanks!

Just like her mother, Nurse Jennie Cosgrove is also prone to being cold and snippy, such as to the rich patient’s handsome chauffeur, a seemingly friendly man who offers to take her to dinner, or to the patient’s daughter, who offers to drive her home and innocently remarks that Jennie’s family of eight might be a bit much taken en masse: “Put down that gun, pal!” Celia Chalmers drawls when Jennie comes at her all ablaze. But when Jennie is in the arms of her intended, Johnnie Ottwell, you’ll definitely need a slug of Pepto-Bismol to tame that tummy upset from too much sugar: “He and Jennie were looking at each other as though they would never tire of it,” and then he “drew Jennie close, entirely oblivious to the others, and kissed her, a long, ardent, satisfying kiss ... Jennie was starry-eyed when she got into the car.”

The lovestruck pair are not planning on getting married until after Johnnie finishes his PhD, which appears to be years in the future, since he works full-time as a teacher, and then there’s the little snag of how they will live together: She works in town, and his job, which he has no intention of ever giving up, keeps him in the heartest heart of the Everglades. You do have to wonder why he’s bothering with the PhD at all, actually.

The problem arises when Celia meets Johnnie and is instantly smitten with the heartthrob. Oblivious Jennie suggests that he take Celia on a tour of the Everglades in his “swamp buggy,” and while they are out, Celia’s conversation—apparently intended to win Johnny over—only proves that the two are completely unsuitable for each other. Johnny explains that he teaches English as a second language to the children of migrant Mexican farm workers, and his attitude is actually quite enlightened for the times: “They must be educated so that eventually they can climb above their parents’ present place in the world and be something more than migrant farm workers. Education is the only answer to the problem of the migrant farm worker, not only here in the Glades but all over the country.” “Sounds pretty dull,” cracks vixen Celia. She digs her hole deeper when she adds, “It seems a shame for a man like you to be wasted on a job like this.” Given this triumphant beginning, it is only natural that Celia should think Johnnie is “everything any same girl could possibly hope to find in the man she wants to snag for herself.” It must be his hot bod; I cannot otherwise explain it. But needless to say, Johnnie is not overly impressed.

Back at the ranch, in a remarkable conversation Celia tells Jennie that since she and Johnnie have not yet set a wedding date, “it looks to me very much as though Johnny were available to any girl who really meant to have him!” and tells Jennie that she plans to pursue Johnny. “Then I am afraid if that is what you want, you will probably win,” Jennie answers. “You are a novelty, new, beautiful, and you can probably sweep him off his feet without have to trying!” It’s a novel attitude about your relationship with your fiancé, I’ll say that much.

To put the deal across, Celia, perhaps realizing she’s blown the interview, tells Johnnie that he should break up with Jennie so Jennie can hook up with Dr. Mark Foreman, a handsome young resident who is clearly smitten with her. It seems Jennie is dating Mark regularly, and frankly we do agree that Mark is the better choice—certainly the more typical pick for a VNRN—but in fact we barely see poor Mark again, except one memorable scene in which Jennie tries to set up Mark with Celia and, when he asks her “just why you are shoving me off on Celia Chalmers,” she “stared at him, completely outraged,” and shrieks, “You must be out of your mind. What possible interest could I have in trying to shove you off on Celia?” when, of course, it’s clear that had been her exact intention, to try to divert Celia away from Johnnie and, at the same time, Mark away from herself.

The book takes a bizarre detour through the life of Celia, who has been adopted by a couple at the man’s request, and the “mother” has never cared for Celia at all. The marriage is not a happy one, and the pair snipe and spar through most of their scenes, but in the end, the husband, who has been on the brink of divorce the entire story, decides he’s going to stay with the horrible woman. Furthermore, he agrees to a lopsided and baffling trade: She will give up her current lover, and he will pack Celia off to college, essentially kicking out of the house for good the one person who dearly loves him. Another strange side story is the friendship of two older women who are patients of Jennie’s, one of whom is a pinched, angry woman who does not deserve the kindness of her wealthy and generous hospital roommate.

The story comes to an abrupt end when Jennie is offered a job in the Everglades at a clinic that caters to the local Seminole population—the doctor is in search of a nurse who is known to the Indians so they will learn to trust him—which means she will be living near Johnnie and they can get married. But there’s one hitch: Upon hearing of this turn of events, Johnnie snaps, “I will not be supported by my wife.” This does not mean that Jennie can’t have a job, but rather that her income will be set aside to pay for their children’s college educations.  Once this little hiccup in their plans is smoothed over, “all about them the jungle seemed to stir and whisper as though the very palms themselves and the unseen animals that looked in the undergrowth were joining in the song that was filling both their hearts.” Time for another slug of antacid.

Peggy Gaddis can write some good books, but this is not one; it’s a perfunctory story that lurches around like drunks in a van. The characters are a mercurial, moody, disturbed lot, not one of them worth the ink. The most interesting part of the book is its approach to teaching English as a second language and education for migrant children, and that is sadly brief. It offers a mixed bag toward the Indians; on one hand, Celia—honest to God—greets an Indian shopkeeper by saying “How!” and “lifted her hand in what she had long ago been taught was the proper greeting to an Indian.” But the shopkeeper just snickers and answers, “Haven’t you heard? We all speak English now.” Whenever we meet Indians in the book, they are seen through Celia’s bigoted eyes (“Celia stared at them, and suddenly realized that they were Indians!”), even if the Indian characters do have the last laugh, and “turned away as though he had found her unworthy of his scrutiny.” So it’s another donation for the American Indian College Fund, and another book I can’t recommend, though you might want to check out a Peggy Gaddis novel that might vaguely pass for a sequel, County Nurse—you really can’t beat a monster running loose in the swamp!

Nurse Morgan’s Triumph

Book 2 of 4
By Rubie Saunders, ©1970

Don’t get involved. That was the hospital rule, but how could a beautiful, sensitive nurse keep her distance … when she is nursing a 5-year-old back to life after an accident that has killed the child’s parents? … when she watches a boy’s mother trying to keep her son an invalid? … when a dynamic young artist finds her as absorbing as the hospital mural he’s commissioned to paint? … when the handsome new chief resident comes to dinner and doesn’t want to go away?

GRADE: B+

BEST QUOTES:
“You can’t really get to know a girl until you’ve seen her at the kitchen sink.”

“She was certainly a good-looking girl, and intelligent, too. Maybe too intelligent. Marilyn had often wondered if that scared men off.”

“I never would have slept through the noise of you being chased around the sofa—or maybe him being chased around the sofa.”

“I just got off duty. I need to be revitalized.”

REVIEW:
Marilyn Morgan is a nurse from Harlem who, fed up with her parents, moved out of the family home on 127^th Street and into an apartment near City Hospital with her best friend, fellow nurse Marcia Goldstein, in the first book of the series, Marilyn Morgan, R.N., and now, almost a year later, we pick up with the swinging bachelorettes. One of Marilyn’s boyfriends, Matt, has just moved to Chicago for a residency there, so she’s down to just Dr. Bill Burke—but never fear, Marilyn is quite the dating machine! In no time flat she’s added Dr. Hank Brown and artist James Mitchell to her collection, and is out and about with all three on a regular basis. Hank, though, is a bit problematic—a senior resident, he’s ready to marry, and three weeks after his first date with Marilyn he suggests they tie the knot. “No, she didn’t want this to happen. Hank needed a woman who was ready to be a wife and mother, but it wasn’t Marilyn. ‘I don’t think I’m ready for those things,’” she tells him. They still date, but not with the same ardor—and when Marilyn’s “old maid” sister Liz stands in for Marilyn when Marilyn has to work, well, it’s not hard to see the writing on the wall, especially after it turns out that Liz and Hank both like to go to concerts but Marilyn does not.

In the interim, there are patients to care for—Marilyn works on the pediatrics ward of one of the busiest hospitals in New York City, so there are lots of stories, including a five-year-old girl who is seriously injured in a car crash that kills her parents, a young boy who is trying to regain use of his legs after back surgery but his mother seems determined to keep him an invalid, and lots of tummy aches after ice cream and cake are served on the ward. It’s a hectic life!

But the main interest in the story is Marilyn and Marcia’s admirable social life. Their apartment is quite the swinging pad, and there are many parties to throw and attend, dates to go out on, whisky and wine to drink, and boys to kiss! But the book isn’t all fun and games—there is one subplot involving M&M’s new upstairs neighbors, Lucy Anne Hancock and her husband George. The issue is that Lucy Anne is from Mississippi, and Marilyn decides from day one that “I’m just not in the mood to meet any cute little thing from Mississippi, and I doubt if she’ll ever be in the mood to meet me,” though her fear of Lucy Anne’s racism is not overtly mentioned. She warily avoids Lucy Anne at work—because of course Lucy Anne is a nurse on Marilyn’s same ward—but the pair are thrown together caring for the orphaned little car crash victim. Their relationship is mostly formal, but Lucy Anne does call Marilyn at home one evening to tell her that the little girl has finally regained consciousness, and slowly the pair become, well, not exactly friends, but not enemies. Then Lucy Anne runs into Marilyn in the otherwise empty kitchen at one of the wild parties, George’s lethal champagne punch unlooses their tongues, and they have an honest talk about racism. “Do you know that’s the first time in my life I ever sat down and talked to a colored girl?” Lucy Anne says, recalling their first conversation in the nurse’s lounge. “The only colored people I’ve ever known before were my mother’s cleaning woman, or the next door neighbor’s cook. It’s not the same at all. You see, that morning I talked to you as a person. That’s what made it so important.” Marilyn admits that she had decided Lucy Anne couldn’t be a good nurse because she was from Mississippi, and had been determined not to like her. “That’s just how distorted these things can get,” she ends. “Oh, Marilyn, I hope someday things can get undistorted all over,” Lucy Anne sighs, and even if this conversation was not quite as enlightened as it might have been, it was a step in the right direction, for 1970 and maybe even for today—half a century later—and I sighed, too.

The book ends much as it began, with a new drought of men on the horizon for Marilyn, as Dr. Bill heads off to Chicago to accept a fellowship alongside the departed beau Matt, and Hank gets married—you’ll never guess to whom! But you can scroll on over to the review of Marilyn Morgan, Cruise Nurse and learn that our Marilyn never has to spend her nights alone for long. If this series does not exactly count as a VNRN, since the heroine never ends up engaged at the end, I like its forthright honesty about how Marilyn feels about settling down, and honestly, I am wildly jealous of M&M’s social lives, as they really have a lot of interesting friends, amusing conversations, and endless parties (though I have to say I was a little shocked that Marilyn would roll out of a party at 4:30 am and into the hospital less than three hours later for a full day on the floor, with her and the other hungover nurses joking that they hoped they would be able to give the patients the right medications, ha ha ha!). The humor in this book is quite good and fairly nonstop, especially when the boys are around, and I’m sorry to say there’s only one more book in the series, the last one: Nurse Morgan Sees It Through. If I can't really explain what triumph Nurse Morgan experienced that the book’s title might be referring to, except her victory in not getting married, I can easily state that of the four nurse novel series I’ve read, Marilyn Morgan handily beats all the others by a mile.

Marilyn Morgan books:
1. Marilyn Morgan, R.N.
2. Nurse Morgan’s Triumph
3. Marilyn Morgan, Cruise Nurse
4. Nurse Morgan Sees It Through

Believe in Miracles

By Florence Stuart, 

pseud. Florence Stonebraker, ©1968
Also published as Celebrity Nurse and Television Nurse

Nurse Clare Kincaid was caught in a web of conflict which was tying her in knots. Dr. Hal Grove, the handsome, brainy, rich psychiatrist, was in love with her, but he would not take on the responsibility of the child who had become so much a part of her. How could Clare leave Tracy, the five-year-old daughter of her adoptive brother Larry? The child was hungry for love and clung to her. Yet Larry, though charming, was totally irresponsible, while holding onto his hope of marrying Clare. To complicate matters still more, Jeff Haymes, a TV personality in Clare’s care, was making sensational proposals to her and extravagant promises to Tracy. Clare had to make a choice. How could she be sure she was making the right one?

GRADE: C-

BEST QUOTES:

“‘You should wear that white swim suit around the hospital,’ Jeff Haymes told Clare. ‘The male patients would have no further need of wonder drugs.’”

“Try some hot compresses on your heart. See if you can’t warm it up while I’m gone.”

REVIEW:

I love author Florence Stonebraker (here writing as Florence Stuart) so much that I am reluctant to actually read her books because it means there will be one less for me to enjoy (it took me more than a decade to read the last Jane Austen). I needn’t have held off with this one, because enjoy it I did not.

Here we have nurse Clare Kincaid, at 25 a well-established nurse who has managed to hook desirable Dr Hal Grove, a 38-year-old former confirmed bachelor psychiatrist of the Park Avenue type, with a thickly carpeted office suite and highly bankrolled female clientele—we know the type all too well, and he never turns out well, does he, readers? Particularly since in this case he’s a psychiatrist, as author Florence does love a psycho psychiatrist (see also A Nurse Named Courage). The writing is writ especially large here  because Clare is effectively the guardian of her five-year-old niece, whose mother is dead and whose father, Clare’s adopted brother Larry, has abandoned the girl. Little Tracy is now living with Clare and mother Rose, who has suffered several heart attacks and as a result is a near invalid likely to keel over at any second. Clare is essentially a mother to Tracy, but Dr. Hal has absolutely refused to accept Tracy into his home when he and Clare are married. Clare spends a lot of time worrying about what to do—give up Tracy for adoption? Dump Hal and fast is not high on her list of options, unfortunately, though the reader is completely unable to see why.

At work Tracy is caring for wealthy television show star Jeff Haymes, who hosts a sort of gotcha-type program where “he gets people up to interview them; then all he does is make fools of them. He’s made a big name just by insulting people.” Many nurses are won over by Jeff, but not Clare: “She did not imagine she could ever possibly like Jeff as a person.” This means, of course, that they’ll be engaged at book’s end. If Clare is not impressed, Tracy is: Clare had brought Tracy to work one day to cheer up the patients, and never mind how wildly inappropriate that is, but now Tracy is smitten with—brace yourself—“Unk Jeff,” who wants to take her to Disneyland for her birthday.

Though no one has ordered a psych consult, Hal takes it upon himself to interview Jeff, who is recovering from his second plane crash, and tells Jeff that he has suicidal tendencies. Jeff responds by beaning Hal on the head with a crystal ball, and I am not kidding, which makes me think Hal may have a point. And now Hal is insisting Clare stay away from Jeff—but she goes to his room to tell him to stop making empty promises to her lonely little niece. Instead Jeff turns the tables and asks Clare about her own empty promises to Tracy, whom she is considering abandoning to strangers when she marries Hal. Jeff then suggests that he could get Tracy some work in TV commercials so Clare could afford to hire a nanny to look after Tracy while she’s at work. Despite herself, Clare starts to think this Jeff guy isn’t so bad …

Especially after her next date with Hal, when he says he’s arranged the adoption for Tracy that Care had not even agreed to, that he’s taken a job in the Midwest and Clare can come too, get a job, and undergo psychoanalysis—and when she’s cured of her “neurotic attachment to her little niece,” they can be married. Clare rightly calls Hal “a smug, self-centered, swollen-headed creep”—but it that the end of the engagement? Heck, no! It’s not even the end of the date! She lets Hal drive her home, but “there were not let’s-kiss-and-make-up embraces,” which teaches Hal to be a better person.

Or maybe not, because before long, we are questioning Hal’s sanity—and you knew we would. “He ranted and raved; he paced the floor and pounded his fists on the semi-circular metal desk. His face thinned; his cheeks turned a purplish hue.” And we’re only on page 72. There’s still a lot of plot to get through, such as Larry’s very alarming pass at his sister Clare, his decision to take Tracy back and make a lot of money off her impending TV career, Hal’s idea to kidnap Tracy with Jeff’s help, Clare and Tracy’s several appearances on Jeff’s show, including one in which Jeff proposes to Clare on air. In the end, there’s a big showdown in which Tracy is shot “just a fraction above her heart,” and though the injury is described as “just a flesh wound,” but she really whacked her head when she fell down and has been in a coma and on the critical list for a week, and “almost didn’t make it.” Nevermind about gunshot wounds; it’s those bumps on the head that will really kill you.

So many elements of this story are the usual tricks from author Florence Stonebraker’s repertoire: the psycho (Nurse Under Fire, The Nurse from Alaska, and of course Psychiatric Nurse), the unwanted yet fiercely fought-over child (The Nurse from Alaska, Runaway Nurse), the adopted daughter (Ozark Nurse). There is none of the gorgeous writing that she can be capable of (run, do not walk, to find City Doctor and Doctor by Day), and here she’s developed an annoying habit of dropping the quotation marks halfway through a quote and paraphrasing the remainder of the remarks. The characters are not particularly likeable, as Clare is a pathetic pushover who on one hand claims, “I can take care of myself,” but on the other can’t figure out that Hal is a horrible person. Even Jeff, the supposed love interest, is far too arrogant and pushy, telling Clare within minutes of their first meeting that he looked into the crystal ball and “this girl appeared in the crystal, plain as anything. And she had big, beautiful, golden eyes, exactly like yours. Now what do you make of that, sweetheart?” His on-air proposal to Clare screams of an overly controlling stalker, and his attentions to Tracy are too much to be anything but disturbing. This is actually the worst-rated Stonebraker novel of the 16 of her books I’ve read. If you’ve got others on your shelf, don’t bother pick up this one—not even the cover is worth looking at.

Heartbreak Nurse

By Jane Converse, ©1968

Cover illustrated by Allan Kass

She knew from the moment he called that Dr. Dean Warner was disturbed. Very disturbed. A tragic accident had critically injured a 5-year-old child and Nurse Lillian Bryant was called upon to deliver superhuman services. As the days passed Lillian puzzled at Dean Warner’s passionate involvement with the child’s welfare, a concern which was bringing him to the point of collapse. Then the rumors began. About Dean and the child’s exotic mother. About a forgotten youth. About the man Lillian loved who expected her to give her own life for a beautiful nightmare out of his past.

GRADE: C-

BEST QUOTES:

“Don’t hold your breath, but in a few months Vernon might advance to the chaste-kiss-on-the-forehead stage. I never believe in rushing these mad, impetuous types. He’s probably all wracked up with guilt over that hand-holding bit.”

REVIEW:

Lillian Bryant is the rare VNRN heroine without a boyfriend, and this is not the boys’ fault; she’s rejected men so determinedly that they don’t come knocking on her door any more. Her determined bachelorette status is because she’s hopelessly in love with Dr. Dean Warner, who shows really not one admirable quality that might merit such unswerving devotion. In Chapter One, he’s called Lillian in to the hospital to special five-year-old Patty Ellsworth, who has had some sort of accident with a construction vehicle on her father Howard’s construction site, which has left her near death and with threatened loss of multiple limbs. Dean is out-of-his-mind frantic, and consults pretty much every doctor in the county, then screams at them over their grim conclusions—and he makes mincemeat of all the nurses, including Lillian. And she, naturally, thinks, “She had never loved him as deeply. Even when his nerves had snapped, earlier, and his criticism had become abusive, she had only yearned for the right to put her arms around him.” Because nothing is so alluring as verbal abuse.

After too many days of this intolerable behavior, Dean is ordered from the building, but he’s still out of control for a week, until it seems Patty is on the mend—she wakes, recognizes “Docky Dean,” and strangely makes no request for her parents, which is a good thing, since they rarely bother to show up for a visit. So what’s the deal with one doctor’s fanatical devotion to a child her parents don’t care for? Stay tuned for a shocking turn of events …

Lillian isn’t the only woman here in love with a loser; her roommate Bertha, who is, poor thing, not beautiful, and described as such in relentless and near-mocking terms. As a result of this tragedy, “facing a possible lifetime of living alone, Bertha poured a supercharge of energy into any contact that might end at the altar.” The current target she’s aimed at is Vernon Jessup, a “massive” “colorless administrator,” an “amiable clod” without a sense of humor and a proclivity for “insipid” conversation. Bertha, naturally, falls deeply in love with him.

The bulk of the book follows Patty’s recovery, Dean’s hyper-platonic exchanges with Lillian, and Bertha’s increasing frustration with Vernon’s mooching—and Vernon  eventually breaks a date last-minute with Bertha to propose marriage to Lillian, the swine, his main motivation being that she is “exceptionally beautiful.” Stunned, she can’t muster the strength to slap him across the face.

The crisis comes when Patty’s being discharged. Mom Carmen Ellsworth refuses to be even slightly kind as Patty despairs over leaving the only people who actually care for her, and Dean chastises Lillian for losing her cool with Carmen. In tears in the hallway and furious that Dean defends Carmen’s cruelty to her daughter, Lillian shouts, in full auditory proximity to the nurse’s station, “If you weren’t so calloused that you think … you think I’m just a … just a medical machine … I don’t know how I could have fallen in love with someone so …” Then, realizing too late what she’s said, she dashes off to quit, stopping by Vernon’s office to give notice but forgets that simple chore and instead tells him off himhimas well, saying that Bertha loves him but he doesn’t deserve her. Arriving home, she finds that Bertha has packed Lillian’s bags for her, having heard through the grapevine that Vernon proposed to her, and she refuses to listen to her explanations. Stowing her stuff in her car, Lillian decides to head for LA but, wiped out by the Worst Day Ever, stops at a hotel for the night and runs into Patty’s father, who has left Carmen and is filing for divorce. He reveals to Lillian that Carmen had once been married to Dr. Dean, for about ten minutes, long enough to conceive Patty and obtain a divorce in Reno before Carmen knew she was pregnant. Patty has never known that her close family friend Docky Dean is actually her biological father.

Lillian stumbles to her room and passes out in exhaustion and despair, only to be awoken the next morning by the phone. It’s Bertha, who was tipped to Lillian’s location by Howard Ellsworth, and she reports that after Lillian had ripped Vernon to shreds, he’d hauled his bleeding carcass to Bertha, dropped to one knee and professed undying love. Oh, and Patty’s been readmitted to the hospital, and Dr. Dean is desperate to find her.

Back to the hospital Lillian flies, only to run into Carmen in the waiting room, who tells her that she’s going to give custody of Patty to Dean—and Dean, utterly out of the blue, takes Lillian in his arms and proposes. “I don’t want you just to take care of Patty,” says the romantic fool. “Nurses can resign. And housekeepers have a way of quitting.” Gosh, how sweet.

This book is a fast read that takes you nowhere, really, except maybe a gas station on a desert road.  The plot is nonexistent, the characters are two-dimensional at best, and the writing is half-hearted and uninspired. I can’t believe that either Lillian or Bertha could be happy with these cold, exploitative men, and I can’t believe any reader will enjoy this perfunctory, uninteresting book.

Millionaire Nurse

By Katherine Foreman, ©1965

Cover illustration by Mort Engel

 

$1,160,303.54 is a fortune any way you look at it. And that’s what penniless young Andrea Corbury discovered she’d inherited—just minutes after receiving the R.N. degree she’d struggled so long for. Andrea faced a hard and fateful decision. Would she practice the profession she was dedicated to? Or would she live the life of a gay society heiress—and earn the scorn of the handsome young doctor who loved her?

 

GRADE: B-

 

BEST QUOTES:

“He had been a country doctor of the old school, and it was his astonishing contention that the only two things essential to the performance of a successful operation were a surgeon and a patient. All else sank into comparative unimportance. A surgeon’s task was to get results by any means at hand, and how he got them was of no great concern to the patient. A good surgeon, he maintained, should be able to do a good job whether he did it in the most modern hospital or on a kitchen table in a farmhouse. Kitchen surgery had taught him invaluable facts, chief among them being the lesson that clean and swift operating did more to minimize infection than all the bothersome face masks and white gowns ever made. Yes, in his later years he had worked in some very find hospitals, but some of his best work had been done in farm kitchens, in his shirt sleeves, with a few boiled instruments in a dishpan. He hadn’t much use for assistants. They got in the way.”

 

“It’s against nature for a woman to take no pride in her looks!”

 

REVIEW:

Through great personal hardship and dedicated perseverance, Andrea Corbury has received her nurse’s degree—and no sooner is the papyrus is placed in her hand than she is whisked to a meeting with the attorney of her recently deceased Uncle Jefferson. He had loaned her money for her studies, to be repaid, of course—but now it seems the old geezer was loaded and left it all to her if she actually made it through nursing school. So now the whopping sum of $1,160,303.54 is hers.

 

Naturally, she and her sister, 17-year-old Joan, go completely to pieces. They buy a huge mansion, renovate it to the latest tastes, outfit themselves in sables and satins, and spend their nights partying at the country club. Much to the disappointment of Andrea’s long-time beau, Dr. Fred Falk, who feels she has thrown away her values; this he tells her when she proposes to him shortly after the interior decorators have had their way with her new mansion. So she starts seeing other men. When she meets society playboy Gerald Maitland at the country club, where the likes of Fred Falk cannot afford to go, she finds Gerald “coldly unapproachable,” and she was “a little frightened of him.” A minor incident with a drunk in which Gerald knocks the poor sap out shows her that Gerald is “a dangerous man,” and that “the polished manners cloaked a tiger.” Naturally he becomes her main beau. What is wrong with these women?

 

He proposes, but eventually she wises up and turns him down, instead becoming infatuated with Lee Archer, a painter newly returned from Paris who is being pressured by his father to take up the family business. The question of his talent is at best dubious: His canvases haven’t arrived yet from France, the “atmosphere” of Texas is not conducive to painting, and he protests a bit too loudly that art is his true calling! Like all serious artists, though, he spends a lot of time drinking, but Andrea feels that Lee is so in love with her that he cannot leave Grenville, and it’s the torture of being denied his art that causes him to drink, so “to that extent, she was responsible for his drinking.” To save him, then, she decides to marry him, so they can go anywhere and he can start painting again. And believe it or not, Andrea marries Lee before the book is half over.

 

But at the reception Lee becomes blindingly drunk and scoffs loudly that now he has all the money he needs, and he can go back to Paris and Marie: “All I needed was t’ catch a millionaire sucker,” he sneers. So that’s the end of that marriage—fortunately, we are reminded later, never consummated. And soon he’s been killed in a communist uprising that he has joined somewhere in South America.

 

So now it’s back to Gerald, who has become a meeker, nicer beau. And meanwhile, Andrea is getting worried: Gosh, if Gerald won’t have her, she’ll die a lonely old maid. What would she do to fill her time without him? If only she “could discover in herself an all-absorbing interest,” she thinks. “She could think of nothing that would fulfill her own urge toward worthwhile endeavor.” Nursing never enters her mind, the dumb twit. So when Gerald finally pops the question, she is so relieved! But not three minutes later, the old bossy Gerald resurfaces with a bound; he’d just been holding his breath under the surface all this time. He plans a cocktail party at which they will announce their engagement, where he preens and struts, staring at Andrea “in cold possession. In his regard she became a chattel.” Fortunately, though, if Andrea was a dolt to fall for Lee, she is a wiser widow now, and turns Gerald down flat in front of everyone: “She would not be robbed of her will and become a slave to his.” Gerald responds by knocking out Andrea’s hired man, fleeing the state, and eventually turning himself in to the authorities, where he is found to be psychotic and committed to the state asylum. Let that be a lesson to you, boys: Be nice to your girlfriends.

 

After this last setback, Andrea, instead of rejoicing over her narrow escape, instead lapses into a deep depression. And the only thing that pulls her out of it is when she discovers something that she can devote her life to with selflessness and joy—that’s right, another man. Once she has him in hand, then she can turn her attention to other things—like transforming the house, yet again, this time into a cottage hospital, and maybe working on its staff. It will cost about a million dollars to get the hospital built, but apparently she and Joan only spent $160,303.54 in all their sprees, so it’s all good! Especially with Uncle Jefferson smiling down from heaven on the newly wise heiress: “Knowing that the true worth of money lay in the wise use of it, he had balanced her strength of character against the pitfalls of misusing it; and she had almost failed his trust. If he could see and hear her now, he would know that she had finally won through to glorious rewards far more precious than money.” So if you should happen to inherit a million dollars, heed Andrea Corbury’s advice, and don’t go falling for controlling, money-hungry men; just give it all away—starving nurse novel bloggers would be particularly worthy charities—and you will be so much the happier for it.

Nurses Marry Doctors

By Maud McCurdy Welch, ©1956
Cover illustration by Edrien King

Besides being young and attractive, Julian Paige was a brilliant surgeon. He also believed that no doctor should ever marry. To Nurse Linda Stephens, already in love with him, this was not only an exasperating obstacle. It was a challenge. Though Phil Manley, also on the staff at Bennett Memorial, was ready to slip a ring on Linda’s finger, the pretty nurse could see herself saying “I do” only standing next to the handsome Julian. What made Julian change his mind was a triangle—a most unusual kind of triangle.

GRADE: C+

BEST QUOTES:
“You know, it’s really ridiculous the way I like looking at you.”

“She’d baked some pies that morning before going on duty. Apple, the kind most men prefer.”

“If Madelon King had four or five children, she’d have something to occupy that empty mind of hers. … Lots of women with money try to fill their lives with bridge and canasta and cocktail parties; then they’re always running to analysts or hypnotists to find out why they’re nervous. A little responsibility would work wonders with them.”

“You use so many big words, how do you expect me to follow you? Remember I’m just a little country girl.”

“Sometimes Linda wondered if between the three of them, they weren’t lavishing too much love on Betsy. This could be overdone, she supposed. But how could a child ever have too much love? Statistics gathered by the Recreation Program for Hospitalized and Orphaned children easily proved that the child who was much loved in infancy was normal in every way and grew both in strength and beauty.”

“A doctor doesn’t have much time for love. Even sometimes when he seems to have an obsession about a girl, he tries to write it off as a mere chemical reaction.”

REVIEW:
I have not had great luck recently with VNRNs. The last time I read a book that earned an A was just before Thanksgiving. Nurses Marry Doctors isn’t that great, either. Part of its problem is that from the opening page, you know who the heroine, Linda Stephens, is supposed to end up with—Dr. Julian Page. It’s just a question of how long it takes him to come around. But we know the answer to that, too—126 pages.

Of course, as I explain to everyone when I tell them I read VNRNs, it’s not about the romance, it’s entirely what happens between the beginning and the end that makes or breaks a VNRN. Here we have some of that sort of charming life of the 1950s-era novel: The heroine has a good friend or roommate—the latter, in this case, Karen Winslow—with boy troubles of her own. They hang out in their apartment, do stuff together, and go on dates with men they’re not really interested in, for the most part untroubled by a linear plot. But in this book, Linda and Karen’s lives just aren’t that riveting to make for a great book.

Playing the role of the possible rivals are Evelyn Bryson, a 17-year-old jailbait socialite, and Dr. Phil Manley, who relentlessly pursued Linda and drives too fast. Under Julian’s guiding hand, Evelyn has rounded up her socialite pals to start a program that sends the young debutantes to an orphanage to play with the cuter babies. Though Julian has asked Linda and Karen to get involved in the program, Evelyn continually rebuffs them, even as time passes and Evie’s pals decide they have more important things to do at the country club. But Linda and Karen show up anyway, and Linda bonds with an infant whose widowed mother had been run over by a bus the day before. The baby has been crying non-stop for the last 24 hours, but she smiles and reaches out her thin little arms to Linda—it turns out that Linda is the spitting image of the baby’s dead mother! This story just rips Linda’s heart to shreds, because she herself lost her parents when she was very young. So she and Karen agree to take Baby Betsy home with them.

Between them and a retired nurse who still lives on the hospital grounds, they improve the baby’s health and spirits enormously, not to mention their own: Karen, who had been left at the altar two years ago and is still moping about it, acquires a new zest for life while stitching up tiny rompers and bonnets. But then three women “with severe hairdos, grim expressions and outlandish hats” show up on the doorstep. They’re from the Prairie County Children’s Welfare Board, and they’ve come to take Betsy to her only known relative, a toothless yokel named Sam Davis with six children of his own, who can barely manage to keep his family acquainted with dinner and soap. Karen and Linda go out to Sam’s tumble-down house and find Betsy unkempt and feverish and starving—Sam can’t afford the formula Betsy needs—and the Davis family about to climb into their flivver to head for Californy. Sam would be relieved if Linda took Betsy—and do any of the other young-uns look appealing to her?—but, he tells them, “We ain’t goin’ agin the law,” which feels that blood relatives are more important than love, food, and shelter.

When Linda and Karen get home again, Julian is there. Linda can barely tell him what happened through her sobs, and he asks her why she didn’t tell Sam that the law would allow her to keep Betsy, since she will soon be marrying Dr. Phil Manley, which is what Phil told Julian just this morning. But Linda replies that even if it meant she could keep Betsy, she can’t marry Phil because she doesn’t love him. Julian’s head lifts up, a new gleam comes to his eye, and he tears off like a shot for some reason that he won’t tell Linda.

I couldn’t possibly ruin the ending by telling you what happens next. Suffice to say, everything is wrapped up in a few more pages. The problem is, you don’t really care much about these characters or what happens to them, so the ending falls flat. The book has a light sweetness about it, like a spoonful of whipped cream, but it’s no more substantial—or satisfying—than that. Leave this book on the shelf and treat yourself instead to a slice of apple pie.