Hurricane Nurse

By Joan Sargent
(pseud. Sara Jenkins Cunningham), ©1962 

A hurricane in Miami draws a cautiously mixed assemblage to the Flamingo Elementary School for shelter. Among them are: Donna Ledbury, red-haired school nurse, the current girlfriend of the school principal. Hank Fincher, who, according to the school grapevine, had a new girl each year, and who had just jilted Mary Hendley, first-grade teacher, who still carried a torch for Hank; Cliff Warrender, a “gangster” lawyer in Donna’s opinion, but whose worse fault was in defending the oppressed whether they were in the right or not; Melissa and Jack Hartson, whose first baby was destined to be born in the cafeteria of the school, with the aid of Donna and Baby LaRue, an ex-strip-teaser, now in her seventies, who welcomed the hurricane season as a relief from the humdrum of life; Old Dr. and Mrs. Ward, gentle people whose greatest fear was of dying and leaving the other alone—a fear that was never to be realized because of the hurricane; Dusty Hosey and his leather-coated gang of teen-agers, who came looking for trouble, but found their match—and incidentally, friends—in the school nurse and Cliff Warrender. There were others, of course, at the schoolhouse during those three days of the storm, but how the lives of these people were changed by a cataclysm of nature makes an exciting and intensely human nurse story.

GRADE: D

BEST QUOTES:
“You’re polite enough for a divorced couple meeting for the first time in public.” 

“Nothing draws two people together like a common dislike.”

“Wouldn’t it be painful to be the complete lady all the time?”

“New lipstick had made the menace of the storm seem less imminent.”

“Even if you haven’t been here but a month, surely you have heard of hurricane parties? They’re one of the nicest features of our fair city.”

REVIEW:
You’d think a major hurricane bearing down on a school full of frightened Floridians would make for an interesting book. Though there are quite a few adventures in this Hurricane Nurse (see also Peggy Gaddis’ version with the same title), unfortunately the story dwells mostly in stupidity—and the primary sinner unfortunately is our heroine, Donna Ledbury. She is a 22-year-old school nurse about to experience her first hurricane, which she did not realize means that she has to ride out the storm at the school with whatever refugees show up, though that seems an important part of a job description to neglect to mention to your new hiree. She’s not alone, though; principal Henry Fincher is there to lend a hand. He’s a rather hot guy, and the pair have dated a few times—and “she liked Hank. She always had fun when they went out together. But was that love?” Well, a hurricane is certainly just the ticket to help her figure it out!

So off she goes to the high school, unfortunately accompanied by Cliff Warrender. “He was a lawyer, not the sort of lawyer she wanted to know. ‘A mouthpiece’ they called his sort in gangster novels. He had got Genio (the Ox) Alcotti off from a bookie charge. She didn’t want to be friendly with Cliff Warrender.” She’s even scornful of the fact that he is well dressed, though “there was nothing garish about him.” The problem with him in my view is that he comes on too strong, constantly saying things like, “This is my girl, but she hasn’t caught onto it yet,” adding that he’s going to win her over despite her prejudices. She snaps back, for some strange reason, “If you are implying that red-haired girls are man-crazy—”. But Cliff just helps her into the car and off they go to the market where he purchases lots of helpful supplies, and everyone greets him like he’s their best friend. But she’s angry that he’s going to defend a woman who was arrested for shoplifting, even though the woman told him she did it. “She was disgusted with him,” we are told, but the sad part is that Cliff never is allowed to explain to this moron what defense attorneys do, that they are there to keep the system honest and keep people from being given unfair sentences if they are convicted. So her prejudice against his occupation is never dealt with in any satisfactory way, just swept under the rug.

Over at the high school, people show up—even after the hours after which the staff is supposed to turn away anyone seeking shelter, like that’s a good idea? There’s a 90-something couple married for 65 years, each expressing privately to Donna that they can’t imagine how the other will survive after the other dies. There’s a gang of “smart alec” “young squirts,” initially sassy to Donna, but quickly brought in check by Cliff, before he takes off on a run to the hospital to obtain medical supplies that Donna never thought to bring. Baby Larue, a 70-year-old former stripper, shows up in a tiny dress and three-inch stilettos, and carrying her mangy parrot, which Donna stuffs in a locker in the dispensary and promptly forgets about.

Once the storm gets underway, the hijinks ensue! A bunch of middle-aged men show up with cards and whisky, and spend about two solid days gambling, only to take a break for a knife fight, which Donna treats with a tourniquet. Later Donna hears loud voices in the hall and “resolved to do nothing about it.” It turns out it’s a married couple and the husband is beating the wife. With a crowd watching, the man “hit her with his fist with force enough to lift her from her feet. She fell several feet away, whimpering, accusing, begging somebody, anybody, to save her from being killed. None made a move. They only stood.” When Hank finally steps in and is knocked unconscious, Donna, too, just stands and watches. “She did not move to Hank’s side”; only Hank’s wannabe girlfriend comes to his aid. Which is appropriate for a woman who’s always saying that she’s not allowed to do anything unless a doctor tells her, but still!

Then one of the women staying there is robbed of $100, and one of the male refugees is found to have given the kids marijuana. But Donna, now back in her manic phase, insists that everything is fine: “We haven’t had any crime, not really,” she insists, “still argumentative.” “And we haven’t had a death,” she adds—but she should be careful what she wishes for, because while having cake with the old couple, a palm frond comes flying through the window and whacks the old lady on the head, killing her instantly—and her husband has a fatal heart attack at exactly the same instant. Donna’s first words after this calamity, interestingly, are, “I’m glad,” because now they won’t have to be alone. Awww.

You will not be surprised to learn that as soon as the lights go out, though, Donna falls apart. Her hands start trembling, and she’s convinced that everyone in the place is going to die, especially a young woman in labor who can’t walk from one building to another, yet is “pacing up and down, flinging her arms about wildly, moaning and muttering” during her contractions, wailing, “Why doesn’t my mother come? She would stop all this hurting. I want my mother.” Donna is equally helpless: “She had a sudden picture of the girl dying because she was inept, because she was ignorant, because it was dark.” Soon it’s “time for her to grow more nervous, to feel more helpless.” As Cliff heads off to let her deliver the baby in peace, she’s “fighting off the desire to cling to his arm, to beg him not to leave her alone with the responsibility that was hers.” Everyone really needs to pull themselves together! But Baby Larue shows up with some whiskey, gets the mother-to-be drunk—with Donna’s permission—and stays to help, proving to be of far more worth than Donna: “Baby had a good deal of practical experience with the work in hand. And best of all, she remained self-confident and cheerful.” In the next sentence, the baby is born, and now Donna starts worrying that the baby is being held by too many germy people. “I do hope she’ll stay well. We haven’t been able to keep her in sterile places, and she’s already been handled by unsterile people.”

Now one of the young kids in the place gets sick, and Donna promptly starts obessing again: “She fervently prayed that it would not turn out to be acute appendicitis, with an operation indicated.” Guess what? It’s not! But what is it? “Polio? Scarlet fever?” As more of the kids start dropping with the same symptoms, she spends literally two days worrying about what it might be—until the first kid gets a scarlet rash, and now she’s so relieved, because it’s just measles! Even though most of them have gotten their vaccinations!

Between caring for sick kids, she’s starting to flirt more with Cliff, who again and again proves himself to be useful and reliable. But “she didn’t believe that Cliff was the man for her. She honestly couldn’t approve of his idea of the practice of law. He spent most of his time defending criminals. The right sort of lawyer would defend the law, not support those who broke it.” Then, in a very bizarre scene, Donna joins the teenagers dancing in the gym and completely loses control while dancing with one of the hoodlums. When the dance stops, “she saw disapproval in hard adult faces,” and she’s pretty much shunned—Principal Hank even suggests that she may lose her job after such a shocking loss of decorum. “She had made a spectacle of herself. She felt shamed by the scorn of the older faces,” and for the rest of the book she’s apologizing for disgracing herself and the school. But what she’s really upset about is that Cliff had gone off to talk to another woman while Donna was dancing, giving her “a feeling of being lost in the great reaches of the universe, as lost as a child who knows not where to go. Somehow it was in the midst of that feeling of being lost that she knew she was in love with Cliff Warrender.” But wait! Two sentences later, “I can’t be in love with him. I have more sense than to get a crush on a stranger. Even a crush. Certainly I wouldn’t fall in love with one.”

Again and again while reading this book I was overcome with the desire to slap Nurse Donna Ledbury silly. She is badly trained and without the disposition to be caring for a complex group of refugees with few supplies and even less sense; she’s frequently telling everyone that she does not have the authority to dispense medicines, bandage wounds or practice any kind of medicine apart from taking temperatures—but she can’t sterilize the thermometers, so there’s only so many times she can do that. “Nurses don’t give whiskey to patients except on order from a doctor,” she says, after she’s already gotten the mother-to-be drunk. She is a complete disaster as a nurse and as a human being, and I could only feel pity for the man she ended up with. I don’t want to have to pity you, too, so take my advice and run for shelter if you happen to encounter this appallingly awful Hurricane Nurse.

 

Dr. Jenny of Timberland

By Isabel Stewart Way, ©1964

In the surgical wing after the operation, young Dr. Mike took Jenny’s hand. “You were wonderful, Jenny. You saved this man’s life. You’re so young—a girl. I couldn’t believe it.” Suddenly he was holding her in his arms, kissing her with a strange ardor. Just as suddenly he let her go. “My tribute,” he said formally, “to a very able doctor.” Lovely, young Jennifer Warden was a skilled and dedicated physician, but this handsome, arrogant man had touched something deeper in her nature—her pride as a woman!

GRADE: B-

BEST QUOTES:
“Gossip is like a bottle of strong medicine—you’re entirely remiss if you don’t check the label before and after giving.” 

“Let’s get away from here fast—before these hospital smells seep in and anesthetize us both!”

“Don’t you laugh, Missy! It ain’t no joke for a man to find himself without his pants! Especially around females!”

“What a loo-loo of a redhead! Any chance to make out with her?”

REVIEW:
Dr. Jennifer Warden was all set to step into a cushy job as a general practitioner when she got the call from an old friend to help out at the High Valley Lumber Corporation’s mountain hospital, caring for the employees and their families at a clinic that “runs the usual gamut of cases from obstetrics to brain surgery.” Doesn’t sound like work for a GP, but Dr. Jenny is “smart at surgery,” so she’s tapped for the job. She’s not wild about it, but the chief suggests that she’s a little too, well, flirtatious, and tells her, “You need to find yourself, Jenny. You’ve got to find some way to bring the woman and the physician into accord within you, Jenny.” She accepts the assignment, though, because she realizes that “when a good-looking guy looked at her with admiration, she felt a definite response. In fact, she liked to feel this response, liked to feel the warmth spreading through her veins, liked the tingling excitement that a man’s kiss could give.” I’m not sure how working in a logging camp is going to fix that, or if that’s even a problem. 

Not surprisingly, the plan to “integrate” her two selves gets off to a poor start when she meets company general manager and hot guy Nathan MacLaren, who immediately decides, “As soon as I can arrange the company affairs, I’m going to get sick—and have a nice long stay at our camp hospital!” He asks her to dinner and she agrees, then chastises herself: “She was banishing herself to the lumber-camp hospital just to get well rid of this frivolous, unprofessional attitude toward men!” But she decides to worry about that tomorrow, and sets off for some dinner and dancing and smooching.

Up at the hospital, though, there’s this big oaf, Dr. Mike Raditche, who scowls a lot and seems to regard women doctors rather poorly. So even before chapter two, we’re prepared for the old trope about falling for the guy you hate. And on day one, when a tree falls on Benjy Hart, Jenny acts as lead surgeon for a middle lobectomy, a surgery very nicely described, in which Mike assists—and then afterward confesses, “I was appalled at first, when Dr. Luke said you’d do it—you’re so young, somehow, and a girl! But well, it was thrilling to watch you, and a privilege to assist.” Thanks, Mike. He crowns the backhanded compliment with another one, grabbing her and kissing her, “vehemently, with fierce ardor,” and then calls it a “tribute.” Do we think he kisses Dr. Luke after an appendectomy?

She’s on her way home the next day when one nurse’s boyfriend, logger Gig, offers to drive her home but takes her to a mountaintop and kisses her without asking. She isn’t so pleased about that and jumps in his jeep and drives herself home, leaving him to walk. But in her anger—and, of course, “peculiar attraction” for Gig—she forgets about her postop patient Benjy, who’s been running a temp, because she had been “sunk in her own female ramifications of emotion!” Whatever that means. Mike and Luke have patched up the patient, and Jenny goes to the hospital to confess all, even her attraction for Gig, which seems a bit excessive. They forgive her—but Gig tells everyone in camp that Jenny was chasing him, and that Benjy almost died due to her neglect, and now everyone else is quite cool to her.

Benjy’s wife arrives in the hospital to have a baby but refuses to let Jenny see her, even though Jenny is the only doctor available, and the nurses keep mum about the patient’s incipient delivery until it’s essentially showing its little head and are forced to alert Jenny to the situation. It’s a tough delivery and the baby almost dies, but Jenny brings it around with mouth-to-mouth rescuscitation. Later Mike chews out the nurses, and Jenny feels all warm inside to have “a man championing a woman’s honor,” but then goes all frosty when he tells her that she’s a “damned good doctor! You’ve got the right to practice your profession without these personal things coming between you and your work!” Because he’s thinking of her as a doctor, not a woman. Grrrr!

The two become close partners, but it peeves her that he seems to think of her only as a friend. “This was, of course, what Dr. Devers had prescribed for her—removal to a climate where men wouldn’t notice her, except as a member of her sacred profession. But it certainly was a bland tasteless medicine.” Fortunately Nathan shows up, takes her to dinner, and proposes, but if she wants to say yes to him, she has to say goodbye to medicine. “You were created to be a woman, Jennifer, and not a sexless professional! You’re made to be a wife, a mother, the center of a home,” he tells her. “She smiled at him, feeling protected and desirable and feminine—and she liked it.” But she cuts short their date so she can bone up on a surgery she’s doing with Mike the next day. Still, she’s mad at both men—Mike who doesn’t seem interested in her as a woman, and Nathan who wants her to give up her profession. Who will she choose?

The problem with this book is that is main premise—woman vs. professional—is completely weak and illogical, not to mention sexist. It’s not clear how Jenny is supposed to “integrate” both aspects of her personality, unless it means that she’s supposed to fall in love, but she’s not supposed to like going out with or kissing men, because that would make her a “flirt.” Interestingly, though, there is a quick reference to the fact that Mike, completely immersed in his career, has sacrificed his own heart; “If a man is ever to be a good doctor, he has to go through that phase, that wholehearted absorption in his work. Of course, Mike has been in that phase for a long time,” notes Dr. Luke with dismay. Jenny is miseducated by the times—she constantly blames herself for accepting a ride home from Gig the day he assaults her, and seems sadly bought into the belief that if she has a home life (“is a woman”) then she must sacrifice her professional life, to an even greater extent that women must continue to do so even today. But she is generally a strong character who regularly stands up for herself and demonstrates a lot of confidence, and skill, in her work. Another plus is that we get to observe a lot of medicine in this book, even a couple surgeries in detail. In the end this book has enough decent features to make it worth reading, even if the main trope is stale and stupid.

Calling Nurse Linda

By Patti Stone, ©1961

 

GRADE: B+

 

BEST QUOTES:

“Now, Helen, you aren’t going to go fussy on me. You know I wouldn’t have done a hysterectomy unless it was absolutely necessary. Don’t you worry about a thing. A few little old shots and some pills and you’ll feel younger than ever—prettier too.”

 

“Ladylike, that was the word for Linda. She would make a good wife for a doctor.”

 

“Climb into bed with a grateful patient, and you were climbing into bed with trouble.”

 

“I think she’s got trouble—doctor trouble.”

 

“She’ll stick around till he teaches her some facts of life she’s never learned in textbooks.”

 

“Why does a woman choose to be split from stem to stern when she could so easily produce her baby through the regular route? Maybe she wants to be fashionable and keep a virginal vagina on top of everything—no pun intended.”

 

“Witty women bore me. You’re just supposed to sit there and look decorative.”

 

“You don’t mean you’re going to turn down an invitation to go to this marvelous pool because of a bunch of crippled children?”

 

REVIEW:

This is an Ace double novel, meaning if you flip the book over, another complete novel starts on the other side—which is why there is no back cover blurb accompanying this review. This book is backed with Dr. Kilbourne Comes Home, which not only features a male doctor as the star, but has no nurse, no matter what the cover illustration might make you think. So you will not be seeing a review of that story; I might put out a review of a book with a male protagonist if he ends up with a nurse in the end, but if there is no RN in sight, neither will I be.

 

In the half of this book that does concern us, Nurse Linda Shore is hopelessly in love with gorgeous OB/GYN Dr. Shelby Tailor, who is a shameless cad. He strings her along, breaking dates at the last minute when a better offer comes along, and she is hopelessly smitten, the poor dolt. She’s working on the pediatrics ward when she meets Adam Ralston, “an Abe Lincoln in specs,” Linda thinks of him. He’s studying for a master’s degree in education, with a focus on handicapped children. He steps in to comfort a frightened child, and Linda is impressed: “He had been so calm and cool, and—oh—exactly right.” Adam has a son of his own, Teddy, who is “spastic,” which is what they used to call someone with cerebral palsy. He has a farm in the country, where he takes Teddy and a group of handicapped children for a few weeks in the summer, but his dream is to turn this into a year-round rehabilitation center. Where his wife is, he is slow to reveal—they’re divorced, it turns out—but since Linda’s heart is irretrievably sworn to Shelby, it doesn’t really matter, right?

 

Linda’s sister soon moves to town, and 18-year-old Robin soon proves to be a quite the flirt. And when Shelby, who has been cooling toward Linda, meets Robin, suddenly he’s stopping by more frequently. When Linda finally gets wind of the fact that Shelby has been taking Robin out, he smooths it over by telling her, “You’re becoming more important to me than any woman I know.” And she falls for it, the dope. He keeps seeing Robin, calling her multiple times daily, and she becomes increasingly petulant, demanding that he drop Linda and marry her, but he is quite convinced that, despite his obsession with Robin, he doesn’t want to marry her, so he’s in a bit of a jam there.

 

His professional life isn’t going much better: He’s taken on wealthy Gilda Dalrymple, daughter of the hospital chief of staff, as a patient. He induces her labor for no medical reason, which is ethically and medically dicey, and messes up the dosing of the oxytocin. Needless to say, Gilda’s labor progresses too fast, her cervix tears, and she will never be able to have another child. Not only that, but her son turns out to have Down syndrome: “He was—dear God—he was an idiot!” Which is apparently worse than if he’d been stillborn, as Gilda lapses into a near coma of depression and grief and refuses to see the baby. Shelby’s career is in tatters, so he proposes to Linda—she’s become good friends with Gilda during Gilda’s long stay in the hospital, and “maybe she could put a good word in for him. Yes, it might be a very good thing for Dr. Shelby Tailor to be engaged to Linda Shore.”

 

Linda saves the day, of course, by gently encouraging Gilda to care for her son and by taking Gilda and her son out to see Adam and Teddy at the house in the country. Adam helps talk sense into Gilda, diagnosing her with postpartum depression, which her illustrious doctor failed to pick up. For his part, “Teddy, who loved everybody, leaned against Gilda’s knee, and slowly she overcame her revulsion for his braces and jerking movements, and her arms went around him.” Gilda stays at the farm for a week, with Linda there to nurse her, and soon she’s everything a new mother should be.

 

Now all that we have to do is push Linda into Adam’s arms, and what better to do that than a classic VNRN device, the natural disaster? A tornado blows through, destroying Adam’s farm—and the Black Cat, a seedy nightclub, where Robin and Shelby were, coincidentally, out on a date! Robin winds up in the hospital and, in her panic, blurts the affair to Linda, which finally wakes up our pathetic heroine. She dumps Shelby, who departs for Mississippi, and Gilda and her father are so grateful to her and Adam for their help that they fund the transformation of the destroyed farm into the John Dalrymple rehabilitation center for handicapped children, named after Gilda’s son. Adam offers her a job there as head nurse, and she accepts—thinking of the years she will devote to her career instead of a husband. And if Linda finishes the book with a broken heart instead of an engagement ring, we understand Adam will wait for her.

 

It’s a sweet ending, one of the better ones I’ve encountered, particularly since it doesn’t brush off her love for Shelby with a flick of the pen the way most VNRN writers do. The writing here is steady and enjoyable, if not the most exciting. Patti Stone’s prior four books (Nina Grant, Pediatric Nurse; Sandra, Surgical Nurse; Judy George, Student Nurse; and Big Town Nurse) have earned either a B+ or a C, and this is definitely good enough to win the former mark.





The cover of the second novel
in this Ace Double Book



Runaway Nurse

By Florence Stuart
(pseud. Florence Stonebraker), ©1964

“Your man hasn’t broken away from the past—and never will.” Nurse Gail Winters tried to forget her mother’s words. She and Dr. Craig Hadley were in love and that was all that mattered. But was it? Craig was divorced. He had nothing but hatred for his former celebrity wife, Vera Vaughn. But there was a matter of a million dollars involved and Vera was a very greedy woman. All Gail could offer Craig was her love. But was that enough when his ex-wife was offering him his child? It was a game with high stakes—and the winner would take all.

GRADE: A-

BEST QUOTES:
“How about some lunch before you go? I have some nice indigestible frankfurters.”

“ ‘Now when I was a kid, about your age, there was a character known as Popeye who was something of an authority on spinach. Is he around any more?’
“Bobby’s round blue eyes gazed up at her with utter disgust. ‘Oh, to hell with Popeye,’ said Bobby.”

“As always, Gail longed to take the child in her arms, to give him a big bear hug. But a bear hug could kill Jimmy.”

“This was a good neighborhood, the homes in the thirty or forty-thousand-dollar class, the cars mostly Cadillacs.”

“If I hadn’t tried that judo hold we nurses are taught, she might have killed me.”

“Gail sat very still, her hands clasped in her lap, and found herself wishing fiercely, a bit madly, that she had a shotgun.”

REVIEW:
Gail Winters has something no other vintage nurse romance novel heroine I’ve ever met has: a divorced fiancé. Well, at least she’s not the one with the divorce, which would impugn her virginal status. But even more scandalous is the fact that Dr. Craig has a five-year-old daughter. Ginny was born with a heart condition—“some heart veins were on the wrong side,” we are told, these days known as transposition of the great vessels, for all you aspiring cardiologists out there. She had surgery at age 18 months and barely survived the long odds, but now she must be kept from the least stress or pressure lest her defective little heart explode or something.

Naturally, Mommie Dearest isn’t helping much with this. Craig’s ex-wife, Vera, is a fabulous piece of work, in the noblest glamorous-fading -starlet-run-amok tradition. She’s still got it, but not for long: “Despite her forty-three years, Vera was still a lovely-looking woman, even now, in the morning.” Pregnancy, rather than bestowing her with a beatific glow, just “ruined her figure.” When Ginny lands in the hospital with pneumonia, Vera shows up, “a stunning, black-haired woman, wearing a white wool suit collared in flattering white fox fur,” leaning over her delirious child and seething, “You’re the most exasperating child. Screaming tantrums, now this. As if I didn’t have enough on my mind already.” Vera stars in a TV show that is losing sponsors by the minute, but she has the idea that if she can get Ginny on the show—“Ginny is perfect for the part of my obstreperous little stepdaughter, just perfect!”—her ratings will climb back up again. Dr. Craig and Gail, however, are of the opinion that the stress would kill pathetic little Ginny.

Vera had a hardscrabble childhood, living “in a horrid little flat above a cheap, smelly delicatessen where her German father sold greasy sausages and revolting concoctions that were enough to turn your stomach. The odors that came up from that shop were sickening … and out of them were born Vera’s determination to get away to be somebody, to get hold of money.” In what could be a smart bit of writing or just a fortuitous accident, the author ends this description of Vera’s motivations with a subtle study of contrasts: “Now, at forty-three, what did she have to show for all her splendid dreams, for the hard work and sacrifices of a lifetime? She rubbed herself dry with an enormous towel, slipped on a yellow satin robe and went back to the bedroom.” In her California mansion, Vera has clearly come a long way from the delicatessen, but it’s just not enough for her insatiable appetite.

And the main fuel to her ambition is the million bucks that a rich dying patient bequeathed to Dr. Craig, though he really intended it to be for Gail, who had cared for him in his final days. He couldn’t just give it to her, apparently, because his greedy, thieving relatives would contest the will and “make something nasty of it.” To protect Gail’s reputation, the thoughtful old dear, he gives it to her fiancé—but then Vera gets the idea that if she marries Craig, she’ll get the money. And Ginny is the perfect bait to lure him into this trap.

You know exactly where this book is going, but it’s a fun ride. I expected greatness from Ms. Stuart, who also penned The Nurse and the Orderly, another camp fest. The only problem is that it gets an idea and really beats it hard. Of the three main female characters—there’s a head nurse in the mix—two of the three are bona-fide psychotics, complete with stopovers in the loony bin on their resumes, and the third (that would be Gail) is repeatedly accused of being one. And as fabulous as Vera is, she’s a one-note wonder that wears a bit thin with repeated pounding. A little less exposure to her ranting would make her a more worthy character.

One unique aspect of this book is how it lets us into the delivery room. We get to witness two babies being born, both of them to teenagers, curiously. One of the doctors is “palpating Hilly’s abdomen with one hand while his rubber-gloved left hand explored the pelvic region”—a possible shocking reference to a vaginal exam!! (Could this bear any relationship to the persistent VNRN fascination with a doctor’s long, slender fingers?) The patient is in labor, and he’s telling her to “just relax and doze off if she felt like it.” Do you suppose the author has actually experienced childbirth?

More of a quibble is that Runaway Nurse is another one of those titles that has very little to do with the story. There is, in fact, a point near the very end of the book where Nurse Gail Winters takes off with Ginny, but the whole situation seemed so unimportant, resolved in a few pages, and occurred so late in the book that I didn’t really associate it with the title. But with such a great cover illustration, and a magnificent story inside, I forgive all.

This book was republished with 
a better title but a really hideous
cover illustration by the master of
ugly covers, Valentine Books.

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.

Cover Girl Nurse

By Patricia Libby, ©1963 

Merridy Martin had learned the truth about her glamor as a cover girl the hard way. She had lost her one chance at happiness in an automobile accident that had killed her interne fiance, and left her lying injured and despairing in a hospital bed. It was then that Merridy realized how selfish and heartless her glamor world was, and made her decision to become a nurse. So she buried Merridy martin, cover girl, and Merridy martin, R.N. was born. But could such a glamorous past remain buried or would its ghost rob Merridy of a second chance at happiness? 

GRADE: A- 

BEST QUOTES: 

“She’s a real Hawaiian and has a heart as big as the muumuus she wears.”
 

“Someone should set Sheila straight. She’s playing for keeps, but Clint is playing for kicks.” 

“The surgeon’s deft fingers that could incise her heart even as they did a patient.” 

REVIEW: 

This book is, hands down, the campiest vintage nurse romance novel I have read yet. It gets off to a bang on the very first page as Merridy Martin, former cover girl, is about to land in Hawaii for her first job as a nurse: Her seatmate “was frankly curious about the beautiful, copper-haired girl who had sobbed in her sleep.” And the tone is carried all the way through to the final page: “A sedative for a broken heart, I suppose. But it was the wrong prescription.” I mean, really, it’s pretty great stuff. Merridy’s fiancé, a former intern, was killed in a car accident, which prompted her to bury her heart and put her shallow career behind her: “The truth was clear. Bob’s world gave. Her world took. His had depth and meaning. Hers was glittering surface and the pursuit of self. … She would dedicate her life to helping the sick and frightened by becoming a nurse. And in a small way she might make Bob’s death seem less futile.” After graduation, she is invited to work at Moana Kai, a hospital on Oahu, by her nursing school friend Sheila. 

About ten minutes after her arrival there she meets Jay Flemming, obstetrical intern (why are they always interns?), at a luau. Jay puts the moves on, but Merridy puts the brakes on: “ ‘So you think that kissing is the kind of therapy I need to—to loosen up a crippled heart?’ she demanded. ‘Your eyes are shooting sparks, Merridy. Yes, that’s my prescription. And Dr. Flemming will be glad to fill it personally.’ ” Not long after this, a knife-wielding schizophrenic patient crashes the maternity ward and attempts to kidnap his wife and newborn son; Merridy beans the man with a vase of flowers and knocks him unconscious. And that’s just a few pages into Chapter 3! Snappy dialogue aside, this book does have a few faults. 

One is that there are too many characters in it. We are introduced to no fewer than 14 of Merridy’s patients, many of whom appear multiple times, and keeping track of them can be a bit confusing. Not to mention all the doctors and other nurses, each with romantic dramas of their own to work out. In addition, the author seems to believe that every good plot turn should be telegraphed from the mountaintops: “A feeling that exploded into bone-chilling horror moments later.” “She was totally unprepared for the news that Sheila brought with her.” “She might have succeeded if it hadn’t been for the inquest.” Then there’s the contradictory racism. One doctor is torn about marrying his nurse girlfriend because her mother is Hawaiian, and the book emphatically supports this relationship. Yet another girl, caught out with a beach boy who is Filipino and Hawaiian, causes a scandal. “Why? Why would she do it? An Oriental—oh, my God, they’ll crucify us in the papers,” sobs the girl’s mother. Merridy herself “drew a sigh of relief” when she finds out that the girl was not in love with the boy. And there’s the offhand remark about a patient’s work with the “suspicious, ignorant Chinese.” 

Medicine has an actual presence in the book, though it’s confusing by today’s standards. There’s an in-depth description of a corneal transplant, and how Merridy nurses the patient through the difficult recovery (he is not allowed to move even the tiniest muscle for ten days following the surgery: “Even a smile would endanger the corneal graft”). The schizophrenic is given an injection of morphine to keep him unconscious; today’s standby, haloperidol, wasn’t in use yet. These flaws, however, are vastly outweighed by the laugh-out-loud writing, the kind of dialogue you will repeat to your friends and anyone else sitting near you. This book had me at the title, and the font on the cover is an added delight, even if the gal in the illustration should sue the doctor who gave her that nose.

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