BLUE SKIES, BLUE WATER, YOUNG FACES ON THE SUNNY decks … and now, on the watery horizon, rose a purple silhouette of land. Cherry leaned against the ship’s rail, along with the crowds of soldiers, and stared. As their ship plowed nearer, she excitedly made out beaches fringed with palm trees, and blue mountains rising sheerly out of the sand.
Cherry took a deep breath of the sweet, hot, ripe wind from land. “It even smells exotic,” she thought. She could almost imagine strange music, fiery mountains, and voices clattering in a new tongue. “But where are we?”
A metallic voice presently rumbled out of the ship’s loud-speaker. “We are approaching the Republic of Panama. We stop briefly at the port of Cristobal, then continue via the Panama Canal to Panama City.”
“The announcer makes it sound so prosaic,” Cherry mourned to “Ding” Jackson, who had pushed through the crowd to her side.
The lanky New Englander grinned. “Why, girl, Central America is one of the most romantic little stretches of land in the world! Look here!” On the back of a prescription pad, he drew Cherry a tiny map. It showed a long, very thin, crooked piece of land, like a turkey’s neck. These few little miles of land were all that connected the vast northern and southern continents of the two Americas, all that separated the mighty Atlantic from the endless Pacific. “But the oceans aren’t separated any longer,” “Ding” said. “The Panama Canal, which the United States built and operates through treaty and purchase from Panama, cuts right through.”
Their boat nosed its way into Cristobal. Cherry saw, lying in its harbor, warships and merchant ships flying the flags of Russia, China, England, Canada, South Africa! Panama was certainly an international zone! The Cristobal docks rang with staccato words of Spanish, flashed with dark Latin and Indian and Negro faces. Cherry nearly fell over the rail watching the longshoremen on the pier below. They were loading huge boxes and bales onto ships bound for the States.
“Pirate treasure,” “Ding” nudged her. “Pirates used to hide in Panama and waylay ships bringing jewels from the Orient, or caravans laden with gold from Brazil. In Panama City, which they burned and sacked, you might still find a stray ruby stolen from India, buried deep in the sand!”
On the dock below, something else caught Cherry’s attention. Several brisk young men, Americans, were giving the ship opposite Cherry’s own a thorough, rapid search. They were the G-men of health safety … on the trail of germs, fever-bearing mosquitoes, and disease. They worked relentlessly with the military in charge of the Panama Canal Zone. Cherry knew that these men of the United States Public Health Service were as adventurous and daring, fighting disease in the Rockies, in the Louisiana swamps, or here in ocean-bound Panama, as any pirates had ever been. No ship, plane, train or auto could move across an American border until these men were satisfied that no infection was being carried from one land to another. And no wonder, for an epidemic can kill more thousands than bombs.
Out of Cristobal, the most amazing part of their journey began. It was fascinating to float down the intricate man-made canals and locks, to look from deck to land. Panama was a land of volcanos, of hilly tawny earth, of steamy jungle, and flowering plantations. Everything was lush, tropical, intensely colored under the densely purple sky and the fierce burning rays of the sun.
That night, Cherry looking from deck at the passing beautiful hilly country, lying so still and peaceful under the brilliant star-studded sky, wondered what adventure lay before her in this picturesque land.
Next morning, in Panama City, the girls disem-barked and clambered onto busses. Cherry was eager to go sightseeing, but they were urgently needed at the Army base hospital. So she had to satisfy herself with glimpses from the bus of Latin-American Panama City, and its sister American city, Ancon, where they were to live and work.
Everywhere were white stone government buildings in Roman style, cathedrals of white marble, sunny plazas and pigeons and wide low marble steps. They drove past gardens, behind wrought-iron fences, full of playing fountains and leafy shadow and cabbage-size white and red roses, blooming in this first week in November. Beyond all this, beyond an old fort high on the harbor’s hill, lay the Pacific Ocean.
The nurses were led into an exposition building converted to nurses’ quarters. “Did you ever see anything so romantic?” Cherry marveled, as they unpacked in a dormitory room. There were eight girls to a smallish room containing double-decker beds.
“Yoo-hoo, I’m Carmen!” Gwen waltzed past her, snapping her fingers, her comb between her teeth. Hi, Señorita Cherry!
“I’m only an imitation!” Cherry took a good-natured poke at her. She slipped into her brown and white seersucker dress, with its matching jacket and jaunty cap. They all went out together in search of a bus.
The girls promptly got lost, wandering through a little park. A frantic Chief Nurse caught up with them.
“A fine way to behave!” she scolded them. She was a lithe and lively woman of about forty, very professional, with reddish brown hair and snapping brown eyes. “What do you girls mean by running out on me? I was delayed at the dock—didn’t you get word? I’m Captain Johnny Mae Cowan, your Chief Nurse, and after this you stick close to me!” When they begged for lunch, she had to grin. “Serves you right,” she said. “There’s a Nurses’ Mess waiting for you. And a special bus will take you from quarters to the hospital and back.”
Cherry soon saw how badly they were needed. This base hospital had two thousand beds. But instead of the hundred and eighty nurses needed, they had less than a hundred native nurses because the hospital unit assigned there had been reassigned to move on. Fortunately, less than half the beds were full at the moment. But Captain Johnny Mae Cowan warned them, “In the Army, you never know what’s coming!” She led them through the wards and Cherry saw another difficulty. This sprawling old building had been enlarged by tacking on wings here and there, so that a single ward stretched out for two or three blocks. One lone nurse responsible for two or three wards would have to run to make her rounds! And if, in an emergency, the cases doubled or tripled overnight …!
It was the patients in those beds, however, who concerned Cherry most. These men who lay under khaki blankets, pale under their fading sunburns—some of them were mere boys—smiled when the girls came in. Some of them had been lying there a long time, Captain Johnny Mae Cowan whispered. Some of them had been injured in the line of duty. Some were victims of common illnesses. Cherry saw many postoperative cases, as well. Corpsmen, too, smiled at the new nurses. So did the few native nurses, little dark-eyed girls in white.
From floor to floor, from one sprawling old wing to another, Cherry saw each soldier’s face turn on the pillow and light up gratefully as the new nurses came in. “Lord knows they need you!” Johnny Mae Cowan whispered. The girls nodded soberly, but inside, Cherry glowed. One boy weakly called out to her, “Hi, Red Cheeks, it makes me feel better just to look at you!”
When Cherry left the hospital late that afternoon, she did not at first recognize the tall elegant uniformed figure blocking the big door. Then her heart sank, Paul Endicott!
“Hello, Lieutenant Ames. So nice to see you,” he said wryly.
“How are you, Captain Endicott? It’s a surprise to find you here.”
“I’m working with the supply ships leaving this port. I’m also,” he added, “still doing liaison work with Spencer unit.”
“How nice,” Cherry said faintly.
“Is Vivian Warren coming out soon?” Paul asked. He made no further pretense of being friendly with Cherry.
“Yes, Vivian will be right down. See you again.” And Cherry left. So she thought she was safely rid of him! She should have known anything can happen in the Army … should have guessed that Paul would continue in the same work at home or abroad! She wondered what sort of work he was doing with the incoming and outgoing ships.
Except for the disturbing thought of Endicott, Cherry spent a happy evening with Ann and Gwen. They wandered a while through picturesque markets, then dined by candlelight in an open patio. Later they walked along the crumbling Paseo, arm in arm, in the tropic night.
Cherry was curled up in bed, and the other girls were drifting off to sleep, when Vivian tiptoed into their room. Cherry knew she had had a date with Paul Endicott. Vivian softly came over to Cherry’s bed. Cherry grinned at her in the half-light.
“I’m awake. Hello.”
Vivian whispered, “There’s the most beautiful moon. It really is worth getting up to see.”
Cherry understood Vivian was thrilled after her romantic evening, and wanted to tell her about it. She rose, put on her robe and slippers, and the two girls slipped out to a little balcony. The enormous moon shone down with pure blue-white radiance on the sleeping white city.
“Did you ever see such a lovely night,” Vivian murmured. Her wistful face, pale in the moonlight, was deeply moved. “Just look at that moon!”
She did not mention Paul. But Cherry knew that it was not the beauty of the night, only a rather shabby sort of man, that stirred Vivian so much. It made Cherry feel terribly sad. Vivian’s first taste of happiness might be pathetically short-lived. She should have warned her sooner about Paul. Vivian’s danger was growing, she had certainly better not delay that warning any longer. The look on Vivian’s dreaming face did not make her task any easier. Cherry chose her words with care.
“Moonlight and romance are wonderful, aren’t they? It’s pretty hard to keep one’s head sometimes.”
Vivian smiled and admitted, “It is hard to keep your head. But Paul’s so sweet to me. Honestly, he’s so wonderful, Cherry! Why, this is the nicest thing that’s ever happened to me!”
“It must be extra hard,” Cherry agreed sympathetically, “to keep your head about Paul Endicott. He really is awfully handsome and charming. I don’t want to interfere, Vivian, but … anyhow, why don’t you think about it a little bit.”
The two girls leaned against the balcony rail, drinking in the lovely night and musing. Finally Vivian said earnestly:
“Tell me something, Cherry. I can see you’re really worried about me. Why don’t you like Paul?”
“It’s not that I dislike him. I don’t. And for all I know, I may be judging him unfairly. Maybe he’s every bit as nice as you say he is,” Cherry said, bending over backwards to be fair. “But I’m certain of one thing. He is self-centered and I’m just afraid he’ll do something to make you unhappy.”
“Oh, no!” Vivian protested. “He’s too fine! Besides, what could Paul do to hurt me?”
Cherry looked out over the silvery roofs, then back to Vivian. She laughed a little ruefully. It was so hard to make Vivian see. “You’ve had so many disappointments, Vivian, I … I just hope you don’t have another one on Endicott’s account.”
Vivian sighed. “But it’s so nice, falling in love …” She gave Cherry’s arm an affectionate squeeze. “How’s about you?”
Cherry grinned and yawned. “If you mean Lex, I don’t even know where Lex is. Come on in. What you and I need just now is sleep! In … large … quantities!” Cherry yawned.
Yet Cherry missed Lex that first week. She had had no word of or from him. Finally one day his familiar voice came over the crackling wire of the ward phone. He sounded warm and reassuring.
“I’m going to work on your ward,” he told her. “In about a week!”
“Oh, Lex! I’m so glad!” she replied, and meant it. She waited for the good sight of his solid, reliable figure striding down the ward.
Toward the middle of the month, Cherry looked up from making a bed to see Lex marching down the aisle of beds. With his broad shoulders and competent air, he clearly promised help to these patients. His golden brown eyes sought her out immediately. Cherry was surprised at how glad and relieved she felt to see him.
“It’s been a long time,” he said to her. Then he looked around the ward. “There’s a lot to do here, isn’t there? We’ll talk tonight, if you can come out.” Lex went from bed to bed. He examined, discussed, prescribed, leaving a feeling of security and encouragement among the men.
Cherry met Lex that evening at the Army Hospital’s library. When every other doctor and officer despaired of even time to sleep, Lex managed to squeeze in studies of new developments in medicine. As he put aside the pamphlets he was studying, Cherry saw he had something white and lacy in his hand.
“A mantilla for you,” he said, and handed it to her.
Cherry thanked him as Lex hurried her out into the cobblestoned street and helped her into an old-fashioned, horse-drawn hansom.
They rode, in the twilight, into the hills. They came to a ranch with a big farmhouse. On its wide porch, under the amber light of lanterns, tables were set. Cherry and Lex chose a corner one which looked far out over the night-shrouded mountains, down into the lighted city, beyond the harbor fortress to the Pacific.
“What a spot!” Cherry murmured, her black eyes widening. She looked back to Lex appreciatively. “I’ll bet even that ladies’ man Endicott hasn’t discovered this place. You know, Lex, he doesn’t like me because he suspects I disapprove of him. And because Vivian is one of my best friends, Paul is afraid I’ll influence her.”
“Quite possible,” Lex agreed. “But let’s not let him spoil our dinner. What shall we order?”
As they ate, Lex explained why he and Major Fortune had not sailed with the rest of Spencer unit. Dr. Joe had precious drugs and equipment, too precious to risk to enemy submarines. He and Lex had flown to Panama. Since their arrival, they had been secretly—almost under guard—setting up Dr. Joe’s laboratory for the field experiment he wanted so urgently to test out. Until now, Lex had been unable to see her. And even now, he hinted at some vague, strange risk.
“Why all the secrecy? What’s the danger?” Cherry puzzled. She added wistfully, “I miss seeing Dr. Joe.”
Lex filled Cherry’s demitasse, then his own, before he replied. “I think,” he said slowly, considering his words, “that I’m going to take you to see Dr. Joe. He needs encouragement. It would do him good to see you.”
They went on to talk of many other things. Cherry looked at his strong, familiar face smiling at her across the table. It was so satisfying to be with Lex! Lex had asked her an important question just before her graduation and, one of these days, Cherry foresaw, Lex would ask her again, and she did not know what she should reply. It would be only a matter of time. And in the Army, time could be startlingly telescoped.
They left the hacienda in the hills, and when they came back into Panama City, something else roused Cherry’s curiosity. Their cab driver, an old man, returned via the native barrio. These narrow, twisting streets were crowded close with square white clay houses, pressing against the sidewalk and each other. But the driver circled his horse past a deserted lane which had no houses, except one at the end which he carefully avoided.
Lex shouted to the driver, “Why are you taking us the long way around?”
The old man turned around. “That house.” He pointed. Unlike the others, this dark, empty house stood alone in a wilderness of neglected garden. “That house no good! Don’t go near!”
Lex shrugged. “He’s superstitious, probably. Well, every town has its haunted house.”
The driver turned around again and said insistently, “Not a story. Bad house! Haunted!”
“Did you hear that, Lex?” she said under her breath.
Lex laughed at her. “Oh, pooh! If you want local color, just tie that mantilla over your head!”
Cherry had quite another sort of mystery to think about when Lex took her to visit Major Fortune some afternoons later. Lex was waiting for her when she went off duty. They walked over to a small, guarded laboratory building, in the U.S. Medical Corps area. Entering Dr. Joe’s littered research room, they walked into the middle of an argument. Both Major Fortune and Colonel Wylie, Spencer unit’s director, were furiously excited.
“I said no and no it remains!” Colonel Wylie was shouting. His steely gray eyes and hawk face made Cherry shudder, not entirely from force of habit. The eminent surgeon was thoroughly, stubbornly angry. “Let me remind you, Fortune, that you as a researcher are present here … that you are accompanying this unit … solely through my courtesy! You know this isn’t a usual arrangement. You simply haven’t the time to do research on two things. Stick to the one that’s militarily necessary, and drop the tropical research! The U.S. Public Health Service is handling that. Your precious time must be used for the other problem. Concentrate on that!”
Dr. Joe started to speak, but Colonel Wylie turned away, refusing to hear another word. Cherry and Lex were standing still in the doorway. Colonel Wylie saw them now, and nodded curtly. Major Fortune came over to Cherry.
“I’m glad to see you, my dear.” He put his hand heavily on her shoulder. “I wish I could ask you how Midge and the Ames’s and Hilton are.”
“Don’t worry. They’re all right.” Cherry smiled her very warmest at him.
Dr. Joe’s troubled face cleared a little. He patted her shoulder, and turned away to talk with Colonel Wylie again in low tones. Meanwhile Lex explained to Cherry what all the excitement was about. Dr. Joe wanted to try out new control measures against malaria and similar tropical fevers to protect soldiers from disease in jungle warfare. Lex went on to talk of an extraordinary military base here in Panama. It was a U.S. Army base, but it was carved out of the jungle. No woman had ever been there, and the only men there were our soldiers and Indians.
“Indians?” Cherry echoed.
“Yes, our soldiers in that jungle base owe their lives from day to day,” Lex told Cherry, with a warmly appreciative look in his eyes, “to the natives and Indians who work with them. Those Indians know the secrets of the jungle. They know how to fight the jungle. They’re fighting this war, too.” He continued, “Our soldiers are hard pressed to keep alive in the jungle with its treacherous swamps, its poisonous undergrowth, its dense wildernesses, its deadly creatures—that’s where the Indians help—and with its intense wet heat, mosquitoes and the steady threat of malaria—that’s where the U.S. Public Health Service comes in, waging a never-relenting war against all carriers and sources of tropical fevers.”
Colonel Wylie, who had been listening to Lex, suddenly burst out:
“Exactly. The U.S. Public Health Service is on the job twenty-four hours a day. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Fortune.”
Then, seizing his hat, Colonel Wylie strode out.
Cherry saw Dr. Joe’s head droop. The straight lock of gray hair fell over one eye. He looked like a disheartened little boy. Cherry felt very sorry for him. She understood how much this new malaria serum meant to Dr. Joe. He, with Lex’s assistance, had started research on it back at Spencer … had already put in many months on it … and here he was in Panama, where an epidemic was a constant threat, with no time for proving his serum. Her heart went out to him and she wanted very much to help her old friend.
Lex and Cherry stayed a while, chatting with Dr. Joe. But the elderly man was upset and preoccupied. He clearly wanted to be left alone. Cherry said good-by to him, and a few minutes later to Lex.
She walked along, unaware of her surroundings, lost in deep thought about poor Dr. Joe and the recent scene she had witnessed. Suddenly she realized that she was in front of the hospital library. She decided to do a little reading on malaria. But the library was just closing.
Cherry worked hard on the wards all this summery month of November. She was assigned to Medical, a long spread-out, old-fashioned three rooms, along with a Panamanian nurse. Rita Martinez was a tiny, wiry, dark little girl, as lively as a sparrow. She had sharp, small features, olive skin, tilted black eyes that gleamed with fun, and a quick smile that showed off perfect white teeth. Her raven black straight hair was knotted demurely under her nurse’s cap. As a citizen of an Allied nation, she too was a lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corps, and very proud of it. Rita turned out to be a delight to work with, and Cherry’s good friend.
Despite Cherry’s being very busy, thoughts of Dr. Joe and the scene in the laboratory occasionally crossed her mind. She had had lectures on malaria in basic, but they were necessarily sketchy lessons. One day, Cherry asked Rita what she knew about tropical fevers. Rita knew a great deal about them. She described the symptoms of such fevers to Cherry. Although the U.S. Public Health Service had it pretty well under control in Panama, there was still tropical fever in the backwoods. Tropical fevers were deadly diseases and Rita hoped some day to specialize in them. Cherry became so interested that she borrowed a reference volume on tropical fevers with the hope that she could somehow find the time to learn more about them.
One of Cherry’s ward duties was to train several corpsmen. They, not the nurses, did the actual bedside nursing, and all the handling and lifting of patients, while the nurses supervised. Bunce and George and another boy had been Cherry’s corpsmen at Herold, the other six were new. They had had some theory but too little practice. Bunce stood out easily as the best corpsman of the group. He watched the patients as constantly and closely as Cherry herself. He was eager to help and entirely unselfish. But Cherry noted, from his preoccupied grin, and from his whispering with the corpsmen and patients, that Bunce was preparing some deviltry again.
“Don’t forget I’ve got an official eye on you!” Cherry warned him.
“Yes’m,” Bunce agreed, his blue eyes twinkling. “If you can reform me, you’re good! But if you could,” he added almost pleadingly, “before I get into real serious trouble, I’d be much obliged to you!”
He was promoting non-existent stamps among the patients and corpsmen with an ardent sales talk that almost convinced Cherry herself to invest in them. Cherry squelched that quickly.
Rita Martinez had an unquenchable love of mischief, too, Cherry discovered. One day Cherry asked Rita where she had learned to speak such good “American.” Cherry was helping her put away linens, for tiny Rita could not reach the top shelves.
“I lived with my aunt in New York. I’ll tell you what, Señorita Cherry!” Cherry groaned—what with her black eyes and red cheeks, that nickname was catching on. “I’ll teach you to speak Spanish!”
Bunce ambled up just then. He was almost twice as tall as little Rita. The two of them grinned at each other.
“Learn Spanish?” Bunce looked interested too. “Go right ahead—don’t mind me.”
“All right,” Rita said. She primly folded her little hands in front of her apron. “Loco, that means Chief Nurse. You call her that. When someone tells you to hurry, you say, “Si, mañana. If you want to say——”
“Hey! Just a minute!” Bunce hitched up his trousers in perplexity. “I learned some Spanish in school. Loco means crazy—she can’t call the Chief Nurse crazy to her face! And if someone says, Hurry, she dasn’t say, Yes, tomorrow. Say, what is this?”
Rita leaned against the linen closet door, doubled up with laughter. “Why did you have to tell her?”
Bunce’s eye kindled, as he joyously if warily recognized a kindred spirit. Cherry was convulsed, too, in spite of her visions of the wild results of Rita’s coaching.
“Just wait!” Rita said, still giggling. “I’m going to teach someone Spanish yet!”
“Seriously,” Cherry pleaded, “teach me a few useful words, like hospital, doctor, nurse, medicine, and … uh … hello, okay … and food! Roast beef, steak, and potatoes.”
“Certainly,” Rita said. As Cherry and Bunce listened, she reeled off, “El hospital, el doctor, la nurse, el medecino, hóla, okay, rosbif, biftec, patatas.” Then she broke down again with laughter.
Cherry and Bunce were reeling. “You’re … you’re kidding us!” Cherry gasped. They choked back their laughter, stopped fooling and got to work.
There was plenty of work on the ward. Cherry was trying to get Medical Ward in top-notch running order. The Chief Nurse and the Ward Officer both had too many duties to give them much help. That, plus the nurse shortage, kept Cherry and Rita busy. Ann and Gwen, who were assigned to the special departments of Receiving and Out-Patient, told Cherry they too wished urgently for more nurses. Cherry worked rather desperately against the day when Colonel Wylie, and probably Liaison Officer Endicott, too, would inspect her ward.
Cherry did not find the going easy. She was on duty seven to eight hours a day, with a half day off each week. On her half day off, she was too tired to wander about Panama City, curious as she was to see it. She merely went back to Nurses’ Quarters, dug her way through the double-decker beds and the welter of suitcases, foot lockers, curling irons, drying stockings, cosmetics, snapshots, pausing just long enough to pick up her book on tropical fevers, threw herself on her bunk and started thumbing through the book, picking out sentences here and there. “Yellow fever and malaria are infective tropical fevers, transmitted by the bite of a tropical mosquito. There is danger of epidemic … Malaria causes a higher sick and death rate than any other disease. Preventive inoculations … curative serum … spray oil to destroy mosquito and larvae.” Inoculations … oil spray … Dr. Joe had devised new and improved versions of those! And his serum was a brand-new type of serum!
Cherry continued to read with more concentrated interest. “Symptoms of malarial fevers are (1st stage) chilliness, shivering, face pale or livid, fingers white … (2nd stage) dry heat, skin burning and flushed … (3rd stage) profuse sweating.
“Incubation period is four to five days … breed in any still water where they can lay eggs … telltale film in water. Object … to kill larvae before they develop. Guard and treat water supply.
“Rigid quarantine restrictions on infected people. Malaria and related fevers not a remote threat. In southeastern U.S., three to five million cases yearly. Spraying and rigid inspection of all planes, ships, trains, autos, before leaving danger area.” Cherry thought of the ships of many nations lying in Panama’s harbors and shuddered at the thought of a possible epidemic. She read on “… several special forms of malaria are stamped out in developed countries. But these fevers are still present in South and Central America. They can come back to other countries easily.” Cherry shuddered again at the horrid thought of what an epidemic would be like, especially now, with a war going on—a war that must be waged with the fewest possible interruptions. Then one sentence seemed to rise off the page in burning letters——
“Severe rare form of malaria called blackwater fever must be treated with serum.”
She lay still for a while thinking about Dr. Joe and wishing that he could have had the time to continue with his malaria research and prove his serum. Then she fell fast asleep.
Cherry kept busy on the ward. She longed for her full day off and she hoped that the rest of the month would go by quickly.
“I want out—a change, some excitement,” she confided to Rita. “I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to explore the haunted house.”
Rita said quickly, “The house at the end of the lane?”
“Yes! How did you know?”
Rita frowned a little at the dressing cart she was preparing. “Have you the other scissors? Did you sterilize it?”
“Yes and yes,” Cherry said impatiently. “What about that house?”
“Oh, nothing.” As Cherry waited, Rita added, “Some silly people say there’s a ghost in there.”
“You’ll have a ghost,” Bunce said, suddenly filling the doorway, “if you don’t give Williams something to eat! He must be getting well, he claims he’s starving again!”
Rita rushed off to her patient. Bunce shuffled into the utility room and perched his lanky length on a white stool beside Cherry. “Mind if I take a break, boss? I’ve been runnin’ my legs off all day.”
“Certainly, sit down and rest, Bunce.” Cherry went on preparing the dressing cart, while Bunce obligingly handed her things.
“Talkin’ about the haunted house, weren’t you?” Cherry’s big dark eyes flew open in surprise. Bunce grinned. “Oh, I get around. I know that old house. Nobody wants to live in it. Don’t know why. Guess it’s harmless enough … unless there’s some ghosts rooming there.” Bunce chuckled.
“Well, I’m going to see it on my first free day,” Cherry decided aloud. “And if I don’t find at least one ghost, I’m going to be darn disappointed. That is, if my free day ever, ever comes!”
This month of work, though hard, was inspired because of Cherry’s soldier patients. Little by little, she was coming to know them … the boy who was as much homesick and frightened as physically ill … the middle-aged man who knew he was dying of cancer and begged to be allowed to die fighting, rather than go home … the boy from a backwoods Panama base who had not seen an American girl for a year and followed Cherry with his eyes, “because you kind of remind me of home.”
They wanted Cherry to be mother and sister and friend, as well as nurse. She found that half her nursing was kindness. The boys were wonderfully cooperative, heartbreakingly grateful and uncomplaining … the most unselfish patients Cherry had ever had. Everyone of them was determined to get well quickly, so he could return to his soldier’s work. “We can’t win the war lying here,” they said impatiently from their beds. “Besides, the Army’s got a lot of new tanks and guns we haven’t seen yet!”
As Cherry saw these men get well, and walk out sound and courageous, she was thankful that she was a nurse.
Her idealism grew, nourished by the everyday heroism of her soldiers. Her assurance grew, too, in her ability to succeed as an Army nurse. Cherry was trying hard to make a good record for herself. Perhaps some day she might win promotion to Chief Nurse—her youthful age was no handicap. It would be wonderful to be promoted! It would be proof to the world, and especially to herself, that her uncertainty about her ability to meet every test, no matter how severe, with flying colors was unfounded! Perhaps Cherry’s assurance grew a little too heady as the month neared its close. Although she was not quite fully aware that she was in a mood for overreaching herself, a faint warning ticking in her mind reminded her that she was ripe for trouble. But it was very faint.
Cherry should have known better than to let Lex and Captain Endicott meet on her ward. She easily could have steered one young man one way, and the other young man in an opposite direction. She knew she should keep Bunce, particularly, away from that inflammable combination. She knew Johnny Mae Cowan was a stern Chief Nurse.
Lex and Paul came face to face late one afternoon on Cherry’s ward. Rita was off duty, and Cherry and Bunce had been struggling all day, along with the other corpsmen, to get everything done. It had been an exasperating day. The medicines had not arrived, the hot water had been turned off, Williams’s hot water bottle had cracked and flooded his bed, three boys had to have treatments every time Cherry turned around. Now, on top of it, Captain Upham and Captain Endicott were coldly facing each other across Williams’s bed.
“You here again, Endicott?” Lex said caustically, as he looked over the charts Cherry handed him. “This seems to be your pet ward. Nurse! Why hasn’t Lazlas been getting the bland diet I ordered?”
Cherry replied indignantly, “He has!”
Paul looked at her with a sympathetic grin, inviting Cherry to grin back disloyally over Lex’s bent head. She stiffened. “Do you mind very much, Dr. Upham,” Paul said charmingly and dryly, “if Lieutenant Ames gives me my report now, or must I wait indefinitely?”
“You’ll wait,” said Lex.
“Certainly, Captain Upham,” said Paul, with the faintest tone of ridicule.
Bunce, who was making the patients comfortable for the night, was working at the next bed. Cherry heard him say in a tired voice, “You’re all set for the night, I guess. You don’t need a back rub, do you?”
The young patient answered gamely, “Sure, I’m all right. I’m no sissy.”
Cherry whirled and shook her head at Bunce. No matter how tired Bunce was, the patient’s comfort came first. That boy had been lying there all day. Bunce should not ask the boy if he needed a back rub. He should roll him over and give him one. Lex too had heard. He glanced up with a warning nod at Bunce.
But before either Cherry or Lex could speak, Paul Endicott stepped over to Bunce at the adjoining bed.
“That’s the kind of inefficiency my department wants to know about!” he said sharply. “Why do you let this boy shirk his job?”
Cherry rushed to Bunce’s defense. Shirk, indeed! But Paul interrupted her.
“Bunce Smith’s record is already open to question. Poor performance of duty like this should be reported!” All Paul’s charm was gone, as his gray eyes, on Bunce, turned cold and hateful.
Lex said quietly, “Smith is an excellent corpsman. Everyone slips up occasionally. You seem, Captain Endicott,” Lex said bluntly, “to be maliciously looking for charges to pin on Smith.”
For a moment, Cherry thought these two low-voiced men were going to strike each other. Their faces had gone white with hatred. She hastily started giving Paul his report, frantically maneuvered Lex to a patient at the end of the room, and signaled Bunce to get on fast with that back rub. Paul walked out with his report, still sneering.
Cherry felt exhausted by the suppressed strain of that clash. She went into the utility room and limply sat down. That was quite a revelation Paul had made! Charming as he was with Vivian, he certainly was petty and unfair with his subordinate, poor Bunce. Lex, bless him, had saved the boy.
Bunce stumbled in. He flopped down on a low stool at Cherry’s feet. His youthful face was wretched.
“And I thought maybe if I worked hard, I could get to have dispensary training and be a technician, and earn a corporalcy some day!” he muttered. “Not a chance with that dressed-up taskmaster picking on me!”
“Never mind, Bunce,” Cherry patted the boy’s clumsy hand. “I’ll recommend you and I’m sure Dr. Upham will, too.” She did not mention what Captain Johnny Mae Cowan might do. The stern Chief Nurse probably would hear of this incident. Cherry dreaded that for Bunce’s sake and also because Johnny Mae would mark “poor executive supervision” on Cherry’s record.
Bunce dejectedly blinked his blue eyes. “And besides I’m awful homesick,” he confessed. “Oh, gee, Miss Cherry, I hate this war. I want to win it, quick as we can, and go home.”
“That’s it. We’ll win provided everybody works hard. And if you work, and if you keep out of trouble just a little longer, well, you’ll be a technician yet.”
For the few days left of November, Bunce was a model of deportment. It was so long since he had done any mischief that Cherry feared he was due to burst soon. She felt nearly ready to burst herself, after this crowded month of hard work. Thank goodness her day off was just around the corner. She would have her chance finally to go seeking pirates’ rubies in the sand, and maybe even a ghost in that fantastic house.
“I may not find a thing, but,” Cherry promised herself, “I certainly am going to have myself an exciting day off!”