Campus Nurse

By Suzanne Roberts, ©1962

Nurse Candy Foster loved her work at the huge medical center of Conrad University. But when Shep Harris, football star, was brought in from the field with his life and his sight threatened, Candy’s contentment burst like a fragile soap bubble. For this boy, once self-confident and assured, was now reduced to a life of fear and dread. Shep reached out to Candy, the one person he felt understood his feelings. And she responded with warmth. How could she know his feelings would turn to love and that love was the one thing she was unable to give her patient?

GRADE: C+

BEST QUOTE:
“I’m so glad I managed to fall in love with a guy who loves to eat as much as I do. It makes things so nice and uncomplicated.”

REVIEW:
Campus Nurse opens when young nurse Candy Foster (was there really a time when people were named Candy?) is strolling across the campus of Conrad University on her way to work at the hospital there and is nearly run down by football star Shep Harris in his roadster. After he apologizes for almost killing her, he says, “I’ll bet without that dopey uniform on, you’d be a knockout.” In response, she thinks, “There was something about this boy that somehow made her feel angry. It was a kind of prolonged adolescence, a kind of little-boy fever which she found unattractive in a man his age.” So you can bet that it won’t be long before they’re engaged.

Sure enough, their paths meet shortly afterward when Shep collapses on the field during the big game that afternoon. When he is brought in, Candy tells young intern Mark Connor that Shep’s eyes had been “unusually dilated” that afternoon (when in fact they had been “terribly contracted, as if the bright sunlight bothered them”—so much for her observational skills). Turns out Shep has a brain tumor, and a couple days after he checks in to the hospital, he goes blind. She goes to visit him, and he becomes instantly obsessed with her, calling her name all night, begging her not to leave him. Candy, for her part, feels some sort of half-love, half maternal instinct, and is drawn to him as well. Before long he’s proposed to her, just before he is wheeled into surgery, and she accepts, even though she “wasn’t sure if she loved him, could love him, or just felt a deep psychological pull that forced her to answer his cry for love and tenderness and understanding.”

After this, Shep takes a decidedly creepy turn. His surgery is a success, and his vision begins to return, but he is convinced he is a cripple, and he becomes increasingly demanding of Candy. He expects her to be with him every minute she is not working, and every time she goes to see him, “the invisible chain seemed to tighten slightly.” One night she forgets that she has told Shep that she would visit him and goes out with Dr. Connor for a hamburger—so Shep pushes his way past his nurse in the hospital and, in an attempt on the stairs, falls down a flight and knocks himself unconscious. “What happened tonight was my fault,” Candy tells her roommate. “I don’t know how I could have been so selfish—going out with Mark, enjoying myself like I did, when Shep was up there waiting for me.”

Candy runs into Shep’s former girlfriend, who he dumped for Candy, and she says, “I know how he is—how demanding he can be … that’s the way he was with me, when he was in love with me. Jealous, dependent on me, calling me at all hours at the sorority house, worrying about whether or not I loved him, that’s the kind of lover Shep is.” He is running true to form with Candy. He keeps insisting that his vision will never improve, and he’s very upset when he is discharged from the hospital. “Look at me!” he tells her. “Look how shaky I am, how—kind of feeble. I feel like and old man … half-sick, half-blind.” He grabs Candy’s hand. “Without you … everything scares me. God, how I need you, Candy.” Before long he’ll be knocking her around, stalking her when she leaves the house, and eventually stabbing her to death despite numerous restraining orders. But not to worry, Candy is saved from this horrific fate when the school decides to have a Shep Harris ceremony at the next football game, and Shep is suited up and sitting on the bench with the team. And I don’t even have to tell you what happens next.

It’s a curious little story, mostly because with a modern eye one can recognize how truly manipulative and dangerous Shep is. Though most of the other characters in the book also see that Shep is out of control, including Candy herself, it’s not enough to put a kibosh on the relationship or Shep into some very intensive therapy. It is somewhat frustrating to watch her continue to be sucked in and used by him when she seems to know it’s not going to turn out well for her, not just personally, but professionally as well—she recognizes that Shep will force her to give up her nursing career, which she values above everything else in her life, if they are married. But the situation ends quickly enough not to become outright irritating, and all things considered, this book is an easy enough read, if not anything special.

Doctor Diane's Decision

By Ruby L. Radford, ©1961
Cover illustration by Len Goldberg

Since her teens, Diane Maxwell’s devouring ambition had been to become a physisicn. Midway in her studies, however, Diane decided to be a surgeon and now, in her third year of residency at Edmunds Hospital, she looked forward to the day when she would work with the famed Dr. Roger Fulton. It was a fine spring day when Hal Fulton, Dr. Roger’s son, came back to town—to upset the well-ordered course Diane had plotted for herself. For Hal, eager to make Diane his bride, was also toying with the idea of forsaking medicine and following a career in the theatre. This pervasive interest of Hal’s was to bring Diane to the attention of a brilliant young playwright—and lead her to two important decisions.

GRADE: C

BEST QUOTE:
“Annette had IT with capital letters.”

REVIEW:
Some vintage nurse romance novels (VNRNs) seem to have just been dashed off, without much care or thought, and Doctor Diane’s Decision is just such a book. Dr. Diane Maxwell is in her third year of residency as an OB/GYN surgeon at a hospital in Georgia. She was seeing Dr. Hal Fulton before he went off to the Army, but now that his two-year stint is over, he’s back in town, and pressing Diane to marry him. He’s not practicing medicine, however, as his father, chief of staff Dr. Roger Fulton, would have it; he’s starring in a play for the local theater group. He has never loved medicine, but only went into it because his father bribed him with a trust fund if he went to medical school. So he is not the only one in this book who has a decision to make.

Diane’s choice is between Hal and the hot young playwright, Larry Ashley, who wrote the vehicle that Hal is starring in. Diane, given a copy to read, ends up staying up past midnight to finish it, even though she had performed a very demanding surgery that morning, removing 15 pounds of tumor from a woman’s abdomen. “Oh, what a thrill I get out of removing a nice big tumor!” she says.

Diane’s aunt, Dr. Sally, is a general practitioner in the country. She was the one who inspired Diane to become a doctor, and when Sally gets into a car accident, Diane takes two weeks off from her residency and subs for Dr. Sally. While she’s there, she diagnoses a severe headache in a 17-year-old girl as a brain tumor, thereby saving the girl’s life. And guess what—this girl turns out to be Larry Ashley’s half-sister! Diane goes on a cruise down the Georgia coast with Hal and some friends to decide whether she should accept Hal’s renewed proposal of marriage, and beyond that, there’s really not much more to say about the plot.

The most interesting part of the book is its take on women in medicine. Aunt Sally tells Diane she never married because “In my younger days I was wedded to my work. I felt a woman doctor couldn’t do justice to her profession and a family.” Diane responds that she is planning to wait to marry until after she has finished her training. “The pressures won’t be any less then, Diane, but really greater,” Sally answers. “I never felt that a husband would be satisfied with the attention I could give him after doing my duty by my patients. But conditions have changed. Homes are run on a different basis. With so many modern gadgets a home can be run with a minimum of help. With a good housekeeper and someone to look after the children, it can be done—is being done—by many women doctors.”

I find it interesting that a book written in 1961 seems to think that a woman doctor is a fairly everyday and accepted creature (there are other, insignificant characters in the book who are also women doctors). This is not the impression I have gotten from other VNRNs, which at times barely even accept women in the role of nurses; certainly most give the idea that a nurse who marries must quit her job. I also find the idea at odds with my idea of what the times were actually like for women professionals at that time. Maybe I’m wrong about this, but I’ve had the belief that women have not been accepted in medicine until fairly recently, and this book is almost 50 years old.

Of course, the book does have to suggest that a woman isn’t complete unless she is married: “I’m convinced any woman misses something very great in life when she doesn’t marry,” Aunt Sally tells Diane. “I’ve often wondered if I wouldn’t be a better doctor if I’d been a wife and mother too.” Interestingly, however, the book also takes the point of view that a male doctor who devotes his entire life to his career is also missing out. Speaking of Dr. Roger Fulton, “one of the South’s finest surgeons,” one character says, “His wife’s settled into the dutiful position of being available when he has a few moments to see her. His preoccupation with work has never left him time to be a pal to his son. … He would be a happier and greater man if he’d taken a little more time out for his family.”

For its actual story line, the book is perfunctory and nothing special. It’s certainly not a chore to get through this book, as the writing does not make one cringe. And it does spark some interesting lines of thought, which might make it worth reading. So if that’s enough for you, then by all means, have at it.