That Nice Nurse Nevin

By Jan Tempest, ©1963

Eight years ago Eunice Nevin had been rich and carefree. Now, her father dead in her money gone, she was a hard-working nurse. Her old home had become the hospital where she was now to work. With the love she had found for her new life be strong enough to overcome her nostalgia for the old?

GRADE: B+

BEST QUOTES:
“To be a successful beauty and heartbreaker, one has to have a certain mentality. One has to care passionately for admiration and for pleasing people. I don’t. I have to say what I think, and that doesn’t endear a girl to men.” 

“If money doesn’t talk, what’s the use of it?”

REVIEW:
Eunice Nevin is the sort of heroine it’s not hard to like. She’d been orphaned at 18 after an upper-class upbringing when her father was financially ruined making some risky investments and dropped dead from the shock. The icing on her tragic cake came when she’d been dumped by her handsome cad of a boyfriend, Eamonn Crail, so she’d moved to London and gone to nursing school. Now at 25 she has returned to her hometown and a hospital that has been established at her former home, so large and expansive were the house and grounds.

Eunice is soon drawn into the upper-crust circle of the Yaxley family, headed by social-climbing, scheming mother Shuna. Martin is the oldest child, and everyone seems to believe that Eunice is going to be the one who drags Martin to the altar, but she finds him to be a wishy-washy milquetoast who can’t stand up to his domineering mother. The younger twin girls, Tilly and Thyme, are fans of Eunice’s, as they had grown up watching her ride horses in competition—and usually win. Thyme has some sort of kidney disease and needs a transplant, while Tilly needs a transplant of her own—a spine, as she wants to pursue a career in music while her mother wants her to pursue wealthy men with royal titles, and mom is winning the battle. But behind mom’s back, Tilly has taken up with Eamonn—though he is actually in love with Thyme, who had turned him down because he is poor.

At the hospital, Eunice spars with 40-year-old urological surgeon Jupiter Janine, and it’s not hard to see where that’s headed. He appreciates her outspokenness, and kids her about the fact that she’s “known as ‘that Nice Nurse Nevin.’ Such a singularly inappropriate adjective for a personality as spicy as yours.” It’s admirable that she is such a feisty gal, but I continue to be perplexed and unsettled by the large number of Harlequin nurse novels that give the heroine away to a man more than ten years her senior—fifteen in this case.

The book is made more unique by its heavy concentration on riding, and we attend quite a few shows, ride frequently through the countryside, and admire numerous horses. As for our lead character, Eunice is also more unusual, a strong, outspoken woman, and only once declares, “it would be a real wrench to give up nursing,” but in the end plans to keep at it until she has children. The book has a good-sized cast of interesting characters (though Eunice’s girlhood best friend turns out to be a nasty, selfish witch, and it’s not at all clear why Eunice continues to interact with her), and overall the book has more than most VNRNs to make it worth reading. The writing isn’t witty or remarkable enough to push it into an A grade, but there is more than enough here to make for a nice read.

Nurse Transplanted

By Teresa Holloway, ©1971

Cover illustration by Martin Koenig

Nurse Karen Carty was upset about her father. Unless the deadly disease he had was overcome, he was doomed. There was hope, of course. Dr. Court Delaney—young, capable, dedicated—had an idea that just might work. Suddenly—out of the blue—Karen and Court realized that there was a sinister plot afoot—one that was more violent, more horrible than any conceived by nature. But then—almost at the last minute—a sacrifice paid off.

GRADE: C+

BEST QUOTES:

“Anybody who can design and sew like you do is wasting her time as a nurse.”

“Oh, come on, Milly. You’re tiny enough to fit into a man’s pocket. Just be sure it’s not Dr Bryson’s.”     
 

“No corner of America is immune from the scrutiny of alien eyes.”

REVIEW:

Nurse Karen Carty lives with her father, who works at the local paint factory—you don’t have to be a close reader to figure out that this guy isn’t just inventing new dining room colors. It’s also pretty easy to tell that the envelope her father gives her to hide is more than just the light bill, particularly when someone tries to snatch her handbag as she leaves the hospital and after her locker is ransacked. Third time’s the charm, though; eventually the house is totally ransacked and the envelope goes missing.  

Also complicating her life, Dad has been admitted to the hospital, and it turns out that he has kidney failure and needs a transplant—hence the book title! Fortunately, Karen’s childhood sweetheart, Court Delaney, is a doctor who specializes in transplants, and coincidentally has just come home to practice medicine, so he’s available to help save Mr. Carty’s life. But his “big brother attitude,” as Karen calls it, is wearing thin. If only nice girls made passes!

Court has a human kidney that’s been transplanted into a chimpanzee, so as to “heal” it from the rigors of the donor process, just waiting for someone to need it, so things are looking up for Mr. Carty. But then Nurse Milly, a good friend of the Cartys, is attacked and badly burned, but she insists that she just “fell” on the wood stove in a clumsy accident and won’t tell who did it. Milly’s biggest concern, actually, seems to be about her beachwear: “Am I going to have such a horrible scar that I won’t ever be able to wear a bikini again?” she pathetically cries to Karen. (Rest assured, readers, that the answer is no.)

Finally the FBI arrives on the scene and the agent spills the beans that Mr. Carty has developed a special paint that is immune to light and heat, which means, apparently, that it has huge benefits to the military. Still Karen hasn’t figured out that the envelope has something to do with this. For a highly intelligent surgical nurse, she can be mighty dumb.

The last twist in the case is that the chimpanzee is found shot dead, so there go Mr. Carty’s chances at a new lease on life. A meeting at the hospital of likely suspects finishes with the guilty party being led away in handcuffs, but there’s still the matter of Mr. Carty’s need for a kidney. The obvious solution finally reached, all that remains is for Karen and Court to arrive at an understanding and smooch us out the back cover.

The ham-handed patriotism is so dated it’s almost cute, but the extensive plot to steal the paint formula is as far-fetched as housing a kidney inside a chimpanzee. The writing is not terrible, but not great either, and in the end I find it hard to come up with any real reason why I should try to persuade you to read this book.

Hong Kong Nurse

By Ellen Elliott, ©1968
Cover illustration by Edrien King

For blonde Betty Anders, the offer to nurse in Hong Kong hospital seemed the answer to her prayers. Far from home, she might forget the shattered romance that had left her heart in tatters. There was little time in her new job for sad memories. Days were spent in the hospital, and evenings with the young and handsome Dr. Rod Corbett. But just as Betty felt almost ready to love again, disaster struck. Inspired by pity, she had become involved with certain confidential problems of Dr. Sun, a brilliant Chinese surgeon. Angered, Rod turned away from her. How could Betty explain the truth without violating Dr. Sun’s secret: Amid danger, international intrigue and pulse-racing excitement, the lovely young nurse found the answer.

GRADE: C

BEST QUOTES:
“He was extremely good-looking without being in any way weak or effeminate; they were the strong good looks of a man very much a man.”

“Betty watched her, graciously diminutive beside the tall, white-smocked doctor, aware of a tiny start of fear and apprehension as she reflected upon how gauche Occidental women must appear beside such gentle, gracious creatures.”

“An American nurse—a beautiful American nurse, that’s an event. Especially when she happens to be a blonde, with a head-turning figure and eyes as blue as Texas skies.”

“Betty, watching him, suddenly felt very sorry for the elderly, plain-faced English matron. People behaved as she had behaved for one reason—because they were unhappy, because society, life, the happiness of a husband, a home and children had been denied them. The old cliché about embittered spinsters being found more in the nursing profession than in any other occupation was a true one.”

“Sister Gwen Robertson, a short, dumpy woman in her mid-thirties, had come out to Hong Kong because she felt that her chances of landing a husband would be better than at home. Once glance at her face, and Betty had known why the sister was still a spinster and likely to remain that way.”

REVIEW:
Nurse Betty Anders has run away to Hong Kong because her previous boyfriend of eight months turned out to have a wife and two kids back in Maine. It seems like a long way to go from Texas, her home, but what the hell, they’re short-staffed in Hong Kong. There she meets a white guy, Dr. Rod Corbett—“Rod was a nice name, a good masculine name, a name that fitted his appearance and personality as tightly as the rubber gloves he wore on his hands.” He gets pissed at her because she asks whether his mentor, Dr. Wade Ching Sun, has a family. Then she hears his story from another patient: He’s married to another doctor, a surgeon who is a Communist, working in Canton. The patient asks if she is American: “You are good people—all the world knows that,” he says. “ ‘Get to the point,’ Betty said irritably,” the irony of her answer escaping her. The patient needs a favor; he would like to meet Dr. Ching Sun.

When Dr. Ching Sun sees the patient, he learns that the patient has a letter from his wife, and the patient will give it to him only if he is granted asylum in Hong Kong. The doctor is so upset by this that he breaks down in tears in surgery and can’t finish. Dr. Rod is furious! He starts seeing the beautiful Jeanne Liu, who runs an orphanage, and barely speaks to Betty. He even asks Jeanne to marry him, but Jeanne’s twin sister is some sort of harlot—she is a nightclub entertainer, and “it certainly wouldn’t help his career to get mixed up with a girl who has a sister like that”—so Jeanne turns him down.

Meanwhile, Dr. Ching Sun asks Betty to help him get the letter back, and when it is in his possession—it was being held by Jeanne’s sister, for some odd reason that is never explained—he learns that his wife is disillusioned with communism and wants to come to Hong Kong. Then Jeanne collapses, and we learn that she has been sick all her life, though appearing to be in perfect health. After many tests at the hospital, it is found that she has kidney disease, which is killing her. If only she could have a new kidney … but wait! She has a twin sister!

After the geneticists run tests—“they compare hair color and texture; iris color and texture; ear and tooth shape; finger and toe prints are compared; blood tests run for the major blood groups as well as the many subgroups”—they’re apparently a long way from DNA testing—the kidney is transplanted by Rod and Dr. Ching Sun in a brilliant surgery. In an odd conclusion to that story line, Jeanne dies anyway, and her sister “would not ever enjoy the same sort of perfect health she had enjoyed before agreeing to sacrifice her kidney in an effort to save her sister.” Rod asks Betty to help him forget Jeanne, and on a date with Dr. Ching Sun and his wife, newly rescued from China, who strongly reminds Betty of Madame Chiang Kai-shek, Dr. Ching Sun tells Rod and Betty that they’ve really been in love with each other “for weeks, only you’re both too silly to know it!”

This is a throwaway book that makes virtually no use of its setting apart from brief descriptions of nightclubs and food, and the characters are not very interesting. It has little plot, and the “intrigue” of the communists using Jeanne’s sister is only hinted at, with the barest of explanations which makes no sense at all. If you want a book that will allow you to do some armchair traveling, try Wilderness Nurse or Aloha Nurse, but leave this one on the shelf.

Nurse Forrester’s Secret

By Jane Converse, ©1965

Love … or loyalty? Such choices had never been a problem for Elaine Forrester. The lovely nurse’s keen sense of integrity had always guided her professional—and her personal—life … But then, she had never been truly in love. Until now. And now was when Jay Lowell, her dearest friend, needed her most. He was gravely ill, a victim of chronic nephritis. He wanted her near him. He needed her—and her love. How could she give up everything she so passionately hungered for, in exchange for a future that promised only despair? How could she deny the insistent urgings of the young doctor whom she loved…and the yearnings of her own heart?

GRADE: B+

BEST QUOTES:
“I gather Iva’s going to be a long while getting her face on, or whatever it is women do to hold up the works when a man’s starving.”

“Whatever he may have thought, the doorway to the linen room was not the place to express it.”

“I like to believe that on my wards the carrying of bedpans has been elevated to a fine art.”

REVIEW:
 Elaine Forrester is a poor parentless waif (mom died of cancer, dad’s a drunk) struggling through nursing school when she meets doctor-in-training Jay Lowell. He’s a nice guy—and incredibly wealthy to boot—and he takes her out to dinner and pays for her tuition. He’s in love with her, but as nice as he is, to Elaine “he could never be more than an adored older brother.” But he doesn’t give up, hanging around “as an Eskimo in the frozen North looks for the first break in the ice,” hoping her frigid heart might melt. 

No such luck. Instead, he comes down with kidney disease, which is slowly killing him. He’s had to drop out of med school, and now he sits around his enormous ranch outside of Reno and snarls at everyone who comes to see him. Which is really only Elaine, who shows up daily to pat his hand soothingly. It’s a miserable relationship built on guilt and bickering, so naturally Elaine tries to convince Jay that she’s in love with him and they ought to be married right away. But now he refuses her, saying she should be getting on with her life instead of hanging around with an invalid. 

Enter Dr. Norm Beatty. He’s dating Elaine’s scandalous roommate, Iva. Sleek, sophisticated, and not the most dedicated nurse you’ll ever find, Iva spends evenings hanging out at the casinos to pick up gentlemen to pay for her dinner and straggling in the next day all strung out and hung over. Norm stops by the apartment to pick up Iva, and Elaine, in her most unflattering housecoat, her hair unbrushed and not a speck of makeup on, is obliged to keep the man company while Iva lets the final coat of varnish dry. They exchange some legitimately amusing banter, and it seems he still likes her even if she isn’t dressed to the nines. The next time he shows up on her doorstep, Iva isn’t home and he’s carrying a mess of dead fish. She invites him in, and it isn’t long before Elaine and Norm get carried away while she’s showing him how to work the garbage disposal. While the bluegill is frying on the stove, he proposes—but she just can’t drop Jay.

The rest of the book is a back-and-forth about what to do, what to do? It’s fairly predictable; you can practically see the bull’s eye on Jay’s back. The writing is interesting in places, especially when Iva comes on the scene or when Elaine and Norm are bantering. But when the couple of interest hooks up, even sort of, one-third through the book, it doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for further interesting developments. So while this book isn’t a complete waste of time, there’s just not a lot to say about it.

Alternative cover

Once a Nurse ... But Always a Woman

By Willo Davis Roberts, ©1966

San Francisco was to be a bridge to a new life for Noel Emery, R.N., when the pretty nurse put a tragic past behind her. As the jet carrying Noel circled San Francisco, her eyes met the blue gaze of a handsome stranger ... a mysterious man she would come to know only as Collie, even though he would call her by the pet name of “Christmas” and open her heart. When the elusively romantic Collie disappeared, Noel tried to ease her heartache by turning to a glamorous fashion career—a career that kept her involved in a dangerous game between ruthless people. But a curious twist of fate was to lead her again back to Collie—and to nursing.

GRADE: B+

BEST QUOTE:
“Are you one of those confounded women who are always right?”

REVIEW:
There’s nothing like being in a near-miss airplane disaster to bond two total strangers. Noel Emery is a 26-year-old nurse in a jet circling San Francisco when the co-pilot actually enters the cabin to tell the passengers that there’s a problem with the landing gear, and they have enough fuel to keep circling for another hour. What happens after that, if they can’t fix the problem, he won’t say. A woman faints, and she and the big man with wide shoulders across the aisle from her dash out of their seats to revive her. Somehow—did they just fiddle all the switches in the cockpit until something worked?—the landing gear fixes itself and they land safely, once everyone has put out their cigarettes.

Collie—that is the only name he gives her—then helps her find a hotel and takes her all over San Francisco, to Fisherman’s Wharf, the Top of the Mark, the hungry i (once a storied nightclub, but when I lived in San Francisco, it was a seedy topless joint). He takes her to his house on Marina Boulevard, but when he vanishes from her life, she can never find it again—all those stucco houses with iron grillwork all look the same.

She, like many a VNRN heroine, is on the run from her past life, in which she fell in love with a patient with end-stage renal disease who, despite a kidney transplant, succumbs to the disease. (For more about kidney disease and transplants, see Nurse in Acapulco, a definitive source on the subject.) She’s giving up her nursing career and takes a job working for Katherine Rossi, an up-and-coming fashion designer, who is by turns overly generous and ruthlessly slapping the help around. Katherine needs money to stage a fashion show in New York (her money is all tied up in a show in Los Angeles), so she drags Noel with her back to the family hacienda in the valley to demand more money from her brother, to whom her dead husband willed his millions instead of her. Well, just take one guess who her brother turns out to be!

It also won’t take you long to figure out what Collie does for a living—he’s running the Rossi Hospital and pioneering new treatments for burn patients, and we get a tour of that facility and a rather unflinching introduction to its patients, adults and children alike, who are recovering (or not) from severe accidents. There’s an accident with an autoclave at the hospital one weekend, when all the staff nurses are out of town, so Noel is pressed into service, and into closer interaction with Collie.

Back at the ranch (really), Katherine is attempting to coerce Collie to cough up the cash by threatening to take her 12-year-old daughter, Martha, away from Collie, who has raised her from the age of three. Collie is standing firm—and then some very suspicious accidents begin to happen. Katherine’s car drives into a tree with the housekeeper behind the wheel, and then a carafe of cocoa on Katherine’s nightstand turns out to have been poisoned with arsenic after another assistant of hers becomes ill after tasting it. “In another hour or so I’d have drunk the rest of it myself. Do you think there was something in the cocoa?” Katherine innocently asks her brother. The question of who is behind these stunts is debated, but mercifully not for long, as it’s pretty clear who’s behind it all.

This book is a good read, with enjoyable locations and picturesque descriptions of everything from Katherine’s elegant fashions to the ranch house to San Francisco itself. Furthermore, it is rare that we see such a realistic picture of what nursing can be. Burns are a particularly horrifying injury, in the amount of pain they cause and their appearance, even after they have healed. That Once a Nurse shows them to us—from weeping open wounds to the black scabs (eschars) that form to the sloughing tissue to the mesh pattern of healing skin grafts—is both surprising and admirable. So this book earns my respect on several fronts. Though there’s not much more to it than decent writing and a realistic look at a difficult subject, it’s easily worth a few hours of your day.

Nurse in Acapulco

By Ruth McCarthy Sears, ©1971

Candy Conners realized her heart’s desire when she came to work at the fabulous Norte Americano Hospital in Acapulco. While America’s richest and most beautiful people were playing on the beaches and in the villas of this world-famous resort, Candy gave herself wholly to the demands of her job. She was determined not to let romance interfere with her chosen mission, until she met Dr. Marsh Anthony, who was everything she admired in a doctor—and everything she mistrusted in a man. Torn by her confused feelings, she was tempted to accept the comforting security offered her by Dr. Blake Warren. Then came a crisis at the hospital. A heart transplant and a famous patient’s desperate fight for life forced Candy to recognize her deepest needs as a nurse ... and as a beautiful young woman.

GRADE: C-

BEST QUOTE:
“You’ve never lived until you’ve danced all night to a fiddler’s tune with the caller’s ditties ringing in your ears.”

REVIEW:
Nurse in Acapulco is a pleasant enough piece of fluff, though not anything to pay more than a couple of quarters for at a yard sale. Unless you’re really interested in kidney transplantation, in which case you should go as high as a buck.

Candy Connors (and I have to stop and shake my head at this unfortunate name) is a nurse from Kansas City, Missouri, now working in—that’s right—Acapulco, Mexico. She’s there because she needs to support her sister Kathy and her sister’s four children back home. Kathy married “sleek, charming Val,” who then “took off unceremoniously,” leaving them destitute. Kathy clings to the idea that “he might have met with an accident, might be a victim of amnesia.” But Candy knows better! Those cute, smooth guys are just bad news!

Enter Marsh Anthony, who is “romance itself!” He is attempting to master kidney transplantation, and he and Candy have long chats about kidneys over coffee in the cafeteria. He is transplanting kidneys between monkeys, and not having much success. This, however, has not stopped him from believing that he should attempt a kidney transplant on an actual human, in this case one of Mexico’s most famous bullfighters, who is dying of Bright’s disease of the kidney. (In real life, successful kidney transplants had begun occurring regularly ten years before this book was written.)

Every time Marsh sees Candy, he says unbelievably cheesy things, which are meant to demonstrate his attraction to her. To wit: “ ‘I’d like to take your pulse, honey,’ he said, winking at Candy, ‘But I think we’d better consider business before pleasure.’ ” “Depends on my mood, and the girl I’m with … the very special girl I’m with.” “I’ve just come from four hours in surgery and I’m beat. I need the calming influence of a pretty girl.” Are you ready to say uncle?

Despite these horrible pick-up lines, Candy “felt herself getting weaker and weaker at the nearness of this attractive man.” Yet somehow she manages to fend him off. Then she meets Dr. Blake Warren, who is everything she feels a man should be: “so calm and assured, so efficient and self-possessed,” the kind of man who, when he invites you out for a walk on the beach, tells you, “Put on some sturdy walking sandals.”

Mexico itself is described lovingly, and indeed these descriptions may be the best part of the book. But there’s the little problem that the country seems to be filled with, well, Mexicans: “The natives [are] unlearned,” “Mexicans are so emotional.” When Candy meets a young girl, “Immediately the child leaned against her with confidence, beaming. ‘I like you,’ she said. … Candy held the small warm body. How trusting and sweet these children of her adopted land—how beautiful! … The soft rich voices, the beautiful manners, the warmth of Mexican affection—anything would seem pallid indeed in comparison. Even the principles of these people were appealing and sincere—quick tears for the unfortunate and quick joy in the simple pleasures of the easy-going life.” Candy appreciates them, yes, but I find more than a bit of condescension in her approval.

The plot turns are just a little obvious: the dying rich patient leaves a nurse all his money, an identical twin is seen kissing another woman and is mistaken for his brother, and Kathy’s husband Val—I just have to tell—really does have amnesia, but finally remembers who he is and comes home!!! There’s a weird section in which Candy goes rushing off to the mountains of Oaxaca to find a relative of the bullfighter to donate a kidney, and brings home an elderly distant cousin—who then turns out to be unsuitable as a donor. For the rest of the book he hangs out at Candy’s house waiting to be called to the surgery that isn’t going to happen, and Candy and her roommate keep asking each other, “What are we going to do with Uncle Jurada?” I found it to be a lazy, hackneyed story without much going for it. But kidney transplantation is described in great detail, so if you’re interested in nephrology, you might get more out of this book than I did.