Emergency Nurse

By Rosamund Hunt, ©1964

Amy Whiting came to Elsalock Island seeking escape. The young nurse had lost the doctor she loved to another woman, and wanted nothing more to do with nursing or with men until her painful emotional wound had healed. But fate had other plans. Her first day on the lovely New England island, Amy was pressed into service when a tragic accident filled the understaffed local hospital with needy patients. Soon Amy had won far more than the professional admiration of two handsome young doctors, and the vengeful jealousy of a stunningly beautiful yet strangely moody fellow nurse. Amy had only her heart to guide her through a maze of personal rivalries and conflicting feelings … the heart she had sworn never to trust again …

GRADE: C+

BEST QUOTES:
“Couldn’t do that. Couldn’t pick out one woman in the whole world and make her happy. Think of how many others I’d make miserable if I took myself out of circulation!” 

REVIEW:
Amy Whiting RN has turned up on Elsalock Island, which is located off Cape Cod, vowing never to love again!!! Or nurse again, either, because even just being in a hospital makes her remember Dr. Alec Osborne, a boy she’d loved since high school and followed into medicine with the dream of working alongside him after they were married—except that he’d decided to marry someone else, the rat bastard! Amy needs a serious dose of coping skills. To demonstrate how destroyed she is, “she wore no make-up because she had lost faith in such things. Alec had rejected her for an older, plainer woman, and she was not interested in trying to make herself attractive any longer.” She’s also pretty shallow; did I mention that? 

Anyway, after quitting nursing and life altogether, she’s going to hole up on this remote island in the cottage left to her by an aunt. On the ferry over, she’s taken up by a suave charmer, Peter Pepper, who regales her with humorous stories to such an extent that she hardly notices the two cops who are scrutinizing every male passenger exiting the ferry. “A guy could lose himself up here for a long, long time,” Peter observes. “He could hide out from the world, and his enemies would never be able to find him.” Nope, Amy doesn’t pick up that clue he’s putting down, either. Peter also finds the island attractive because it’s itching to raise money to build a new hospital, and he’s just the man to make all that happen, as long as he gets to put his name on the bank account!

But en route from the ferry stop, the bus she and Peter are riding on tips over, and all the injured folks are hustled off to the local hospital. Amy is not harmed, but she is instantly pressed into duty by mean old Dr. Dan Spencer, who hears Amy’s story and is not exactly impressed. “You decided to quit the profession that you only went into for selfish reasons of your own,” he sums up. “Didn’t it mean anything to you at all, except as a means to your own ends?” At least she has the nerve to answer, “I don’t think it did. It was a job.” Ah. 

But with all these injured folks lying around, she does agree to help out, initially thinking it would be just for one day, but she keeps coming back, because she likes the patients, and besides, Dr. Aaron Moon is “the most impressive-looking man Amy had ever seen.” He’s Indian, of the Chackonee nation, which inhabits one end of the island. He and the charge nurse, Jeanne Halderson, are apparently desperately in love with each other, but for some reason—could it be his Indian heritage?—Jeanne is just nasty and brutish with poor Dr. Moon, so he dates Amy now and then.

Meanwhile, as Amy finds out that more and more folks who can’t really afford it are digging deep into their piggy banks to help the persuasive Mr. Pepper finance the new hospital, she starts to get uneasy. “Don’t get involved in something which isn’t your affair,” she eventually decides, and keeps her suspicions to herself. We’re lucky it’s just one con man, and not a band of international terrorists, that are hiding out on Elsalock Island. You will not be surprised to learn that Mr. Pepper and the money vanish on the same day, and the cops are not so pleased with Amy when they discover she had concerns all along. “Even though this crook was going around collecting money from everyone on the Island. You simply sat back and did nothing when, as you say, you felt that something was ‘wrong’?” Um, yeah, that about sums it up. Interestingly, we’ve met other VNRN heroines who minded their own business and allowed a baddie to get away with a crime (see Jane Arden Space Nurse), but she is not shamed for her stupid behavior the way Amy is. 

So the entire population of the island stops speaking to her, except for the Chackonee people and Dan, but surprisingly, Amy sticks to the job she never wanted in the first place. She even decides that she likes Dan; “there was a certain ease between them, as thought they had known each other for years. There had not been the strain, as there sometimes had been with Alec, of being bright and witty in order to hold his attention.” Because if one man hasn’t worked out, we just have to be informed that the fellow wasn’t all that awesome to start with, that it wasn’t really love that she felt, that it didn’t count for anything.

In the end there’s another disaster, a hurricane this time, and by the end of it, Amy is finally seeing the shining light of Florence’s lamp: “She had found the satisfaction of hard work, of service, of helping and being needed as she never had before in her life. Before, nursing had been to her only the means to an end, something impatiently learned for a selfish purpose. … Words like ‘serve’ had had no part in her life until she had come to the Island, in spite of her glib recitation of the Florence Nightingale oath.” It’s nice that the author bothered to try to give her character some personal growth, but it’s mostly told to us, not shown, unfortunately.

The book ends completely as expected. One big disappointment comes when Amy has just realized that she loves Dan as he is driving her home. He asks her what she’s thinking about, “and, of course, she could not tell him. She could not even turn her head and meet his eyes.” It isn’t until he puts his arm around her and tells her that he has feelings for her that she is able to reach for him. I’ve been realizing lately how passive all these heroines are romantically, how in the end, it is almost always the man who makes the first move. No matter what we’ve been sold throughout the pages about the heroine standing on her own feet and taking ownership of her life, she still can’t extend a hand or face toward a man she loves until his answer is assured. Weak and hypocritical is what it is. The only “plus” in this book is that the Indian community was treated respectably, with honorable, hardworking characters who don’t talk much, of course, but who stand by Amy when Peter runs off with the loot. It’s not much, but with Rosamund Hunt’s Emergency Nurse, we’re not given much, so it’s best to just take that small token and close the book.

The Strange Quest of Nurse Anne

By Mary Burchell
(pseud. Ida Cook), ©1964
Cover illustration by Paul Anna Soik 

To Anne Weston, brought up in an orphanage, the sudden discovery of her American cousins was as astounding as it was wonderful, and when they invited her to stay with them in their Maryland home her cup of happiness was full. But as her visit went on, Anne found herself becoming filled with suspicion—and unease…

GRADE: A-

BEST QUOTES:
“Rumor flourishes more luxuriantly in hospital ground than in any other known soil.”

“Surgeons are the biggest menace in creation to susceptible girls.”

“Only dull dogs are universally loved.”

“It has changed a good deal, New York, in the years I’ve known it, and certainly not always for the better. But there’s something about it, there’s something about it. There’s champagne in the air and adventure just around the corner.”

“If anything is obscure or dreary it’s sure of excellent reviews.”

“There’s no great virtue in refraining from doing something that’s no temptation.”

REVIEW:
What could have been a truly superlative book is slightly dampened by the old trope of a VNRN heroine who is dumber than a beetle, as my grandmother would have said. Time and time again, faced with the obvious, Anne Weston, who had the brains to get through nursing school and emerge a very talented nurse, is unable to recognize it. The interesting thing here is that her character in some ways makes this stupidity feasible: Raised in an orphanage without any knowledge about her parents, Anne has had no support or family to fall back on, and has made her own way in the world, which was essentially to take a path straight from the orphanage to the hospital nursing school, where she has lived for the past three years—from one sheltered environment to another, with little exposure to the world. The unfortunate part is that author Mary Burchell has not been able to prevent us from feeling anything other than contempt for Anne’s stupidity. Though her talent as a writer is clearly evident, I wish Ms. Burchell had tried a little harder to sell us on Anne’s blind spots and make us believe her decisions a little better.

As the book opens, Anne is about to bid farewell forever to the hospital and surgeon Philip Coram, on whom she’s had a slight crush, but of course, “he could hardly have been more impersonal and was sometimes cruelly critical.” But on her way out the door, he stops her and tells her she’s one of the best nurses he’s known, asks her what her plans are—and, curiously, what her name is—and when she says she’s going into private nursing, he says he’ll ask for her for his patients.

He calls her for the job of wrestling wealthy and self-centered widowed dowager Mrs. van Elten across the ocean to New York, and it’s worth reading this book just to meet Mrs. van Elten. She’s a salty, outspoken, smart, hilarious, manipulative, and kindly grande dame, and she is Fabulous! Then, just as she’s to leave for the trip, Anne receives a letter from a long-lost cousin, Paula Weston, who has somehow tracked her down, following up the efforts of Anne’s father Donald, who had moved to Australia and died a year ago without ever locating Anne. Paula and her brother Glen live in Maryland and are eager to meet their new cousin, who now will be not as far from them when she finishes her job with Mrs. van Elten. But Anne’s best friend Karen, who “had what she called hunches,” is uneasy about the whole thing, and Anne herself catches a “deep and ominous chill” as the boat pulls out of the Southampton harbor en route for the New World. She’s warmed to the core a few minutes later, though, when she learns that Dr. Coram is sailing on the same boat, bound for medical conferences in New York!

Needless to say, Mrs. van Elton instantly divines Anne’s interest in Dr. Coram, and starts to work on the pair. “I find people intensely interesting,” she tells Anne. “My daughter says I can’t mind my own business about them. But I like to advise and praise and criticize. Particularly to criticize.” Though Mrs. van Elton warns Anne that Dr. Coram is engaged, she still schools Anne on what color dress to wear and insists that Anne stay at the dances after she herself has turned in, the better to dance with the doctor. Anne’s relationship with Dr. Coram grows organically, and soon they’re on the Lido Deck under the stars, but Anne remembers the fiancée at home and becomes chilly just when things start to heat up. After they land in New York, Dr. Coram goes way beyond the call of duty to drive Anne the five hours from New York to her cousins’ house, which is a decaying former country estate; as it turns out, the cousins’ father had gambled away most of the family fortune and they are barely able to keep the place.

Cousin Glen is a smarmy sort of fellow, and his “almost beautiful smile never touched his handsome eyes, which remained hard and curiously inscrutable.” He’s instantly all over Anne, insisting that she marry him, and tells her that Dr. Coram, who had grown up in the area, had “played fast and loose with one or two girls in Washington, it seems, and he got quite a bad name in a set where it takes really something to make people talk.” This runs completely counter to everything Anne knows about Dr. Coram, but she starts to feel less about him, the dope, when it’s completely clear what’s Glen is really up to. There are many other obvious warnings about the cousins’ ulterior motives: A letter written by Anne’s father has been “accidentally” destroyed, and—curse the postal system!—so has another letter sent to her in care of her cousins from a Sydney attorney who, Karen says, is looking for Anne to give her good news about her father’s estate. Then Anne meets the old, slightly senile man who had been a groom on the estate for 50 years, who tells her that her father was rich and that the cousins are trying to get her money. Does the penny drop? No!

When Dr. Coram arrives to bring her back to New York two days later, Anne is completely rude to him, all but slamming the door in his face, and thanks for the ride, bub. The author suggests that Anne is so enthralled with the idea of having a family at last—“it gives one a sort of confidence and security to find a place and a family where one belongs,” she tells Dr. Coram—and Anne genuinely likes Paula, who deserves it, and Glen, who does not—which sets her up to believe what is an obvious ploy to get Dr. Coram out of the picture. And then she’s deeply flattered to be the object of affection for the first time in her life: “It was so utterly wonderful to feel that someone—perhaps, above all, her big, handsome warm-hearted cousin—thought her all-important.” So it is possible, given Anne’s background, that she could be this stupid—but it’s not well-sold to the readers, who can’t help wanting to give Anne a hard shake.

But then Mrs. van Elten drops a bomb—the fiancée is just a myth she’d created to keep Anne from running after Dr. Coram, thinking that “if he were made to do the running, you were just the right girl for him,” as she explains. Fortunately, Anne has the strength of character to call up the abused doctor and apologize profusely, and the pair are restored to friendly terms. But then Mrs. van Elten goes to Florida, freeing Anne to go back to her cousins’ house, and there our suspicions of them pile up—until finally even Anne can’t deny that something terrible is afoot, and when she sneaks out of the house to visit the old retired groom again, he suggests that the cousins might kill her for the money! Finally coming to her senses, she puts on a happy face, makes a frantic call to Dr. Coram to come get her tomorrow, and goes to her bedroom to lock herself in, but the key to her bedroom door has been taken! She stuffs her money in her dress, jumps out the bathroom window, and runs away—but Glen is coming after her in the car! Oh, no!! What will happen next?!?

Overall, this is a lovely book, with a truly outstanding character in Mrs. van Elten (she reminded me of Lady Travitt in Nurse Stacey Comes Aboard, though that book does not come close to this one) and a relationship between the lovers that grows honestly. Its biggest flaw is the fact that Anne is such a dunce about people, and the tragedy is that I think that an author who has given us a book this good could, with a bit more effort, have made Anne’s gullibility more understandable, so we might have wanted to smack Anne upside the head fewer than the two dozen times I did—especially at the end, when she makes a bizarre decision about the money she’s inherited. The title and the cover illustration are both more than a little perplexing, but we can’t pin those sins on Ida Cook, here writing as Mary Burchell, who likely had nothing to do with either. But overlook the strange envelope, and you will enjoy what you find inside it, if your evil cousins don’t destroy it first.