Cherry Ames, Island Nurse by Helen Wells - Chapter 01

1960 Genre: Mystery / Nurse Detective

Little does Nurse Cherry Ames realize when distinguished Sir Ian Barclay is rushed by his nephew Lloyd to Hilton Hospital that her newest case will carry her north to misty, sea-beaten Balfour Island, off the rugged coast of wind-swept Newfoundland. "Sudden hemorrhage of a peptic ulcer," Dr. Joe Fortune had quickly diagnosed, and Cherry is assigned to care for the truculent but endearing old Scotsman.

Cherry soon suspects that more than illness is worrying the peppery owner of the Balfour Iron Mines, and her suspicions only deepen upon their arrival at Barclay House on Balfour Island.

True, there is trouble at the mines. But the mysterious actions of Sir Ian's erstwhile friend, Jock Cameron, force Cherry to conclude that trouble of even greater consequence is in the making.

What hold does the industrialist Broderick have over Sir Ian? Who is "Little Joe" Tweed, and why does his trawler Heron ride at anchor off Balfour Island?

The startling solution to this baffling mystery waits for Cherry in three different places: deep in the salt-stained recesses of Rogues' Cave, in the musty tower room of Barclay House, and in the hole on the hill. But first, Cherry must face the effects of an island storm, as she and the island doctor struggle to save the crew of a shoal-wrecked boat.

CHAPTER 01

A Call from Dr. Fortune

Cherry stopped in front of Hilton hospital and glanced at her wrist watch. She was not due to be on duty for twenty minutes. She stood for a moment, enjoying the sunshine and the fresh, sweet air of spring. What a glorious morning!

In the sky overhead a small plane was circling about. Shading her eyes with her hand, Cherry watched it descend slowly in widening spirals and bank to come in for a landing at the new private airfield outside Hilton.

"I wouldn't mind being up in a plane myself this morning," Cherry thought dreamily.

"Nurse Ames, you have a very bad case of spring fever," she heard a voice boom. Startled, she turned her head and saw Dr. Watson, a wide grin on his face, beside her. "Check that fever at the door," he told her, laughing. "It's highly contagious. "

"Good morning, Doctor. You sneaked up or I would have heard you," she accused him as he started up the walk. Her eyes followed his clumsy, bearlike figure to the entrance. She had a warm spot in her heart for Dr. Ray Watson who was in charge of Men's Orthopedic Ward. He had been patient, understanding, and always cheerful when she was a nurse on his ward.

Cherry was now one of the Emergency nurses and was often the nurse on one of his cases. Dr. Watson handled accident cases involving orthopedics, such as fractures and other conditions which caused interference with the use of bones and joints.

Cherry forgot the sunny sky and the plane and walked through the door into the antiseptic smell of the hospital. The quick change from the air outside made her nose prickle as always, but the odor quickly became familiar and she felt completely at home.

"Good morning, Miss Ames. "

"Good morning, Mrs. Peters," Cherry returned the greeting from the head nurse on Orthopedic Ward.

"Whenever you've had enough of Emergency," Mrs. Peters said with a smile, "remember, I can always use an extra nurse. "

"I'll say we can," declared Nurse Ruth Dale, as she came in the door and fell in step with Cherry. "We're always short of nurses, you know that."

"Hospitals are always short of nurses," agreed Cherry. They went on down the corridor toward the section where the nurses had their lockers. "It's a complaint as common as the common cold, or haven't you heard?" Cherry asked airily.

Ruth made a face at her, taking the teasing in good nature. She and Cherry had been on duty in the same ward and had been good friends for a long time. Ruth was frank to say that Cherry was shining proof that beauty and brains went together. Cherry's dark-brown, almost black eyes, black curly hair, and red cheeks, which had won her the name of Cherry, always called forth admiring remarks. Her patients appreciated her cheerful presence.

The doctors and head nurses recognized Cherry's ability and skill as a nurse and her deep interest in nursing. She could use her head when clear thinking was needed. And she was as good as a detective about getting at the facts of anything.

On her part, Cherry never seemed to be aware that she was special and that is what endeared her to her fellow nurses.

She and Ruth reached the lockers and put their handbags, and the light sweaters they had worn around their shoulders, in their lockers. As they adjusted their caps, Ruth said, "You know, Cherry, I miss you. I guess we all do."

"Why, Ruth, what a sweet thing to say!" exclaimed Cherry. "But why be so sad?" She grinned at her friend. "I may not be on the same ward but I'm right in the same hospital, so we just might arrange to lunch together sometime."

“What a creature!" cried Ruth. "Taking my kind words and turning them into a feeble joke." She peered over her shoulder to see if her petticoat showed below her uniform. "But, Cherry, honestly I envy you sometimes. No, I don't think envy is the right word. Admire is better. You are always, it seems, on interesting cases. That last case you had . . . Tom . . . Dick . . . oh, that young man with amnesia."

"Oh, you mean Richard Albee," Cherry said. ''Yes, I'd never been on a psychiatric case before, and working with Dr. Hope was a wonderful education for me in a new field. Before that, the mind always seemed to me to be rather a separate thing. But now I realize just how interrelated mind and body are—how the mind can actually affect physical well-being." Cherry hung her head in mock chagrin. "Sorry, Ruth," she apologized, "my mind must be back in nurses' training at Spencer School. I really didn't intend to give an early morning lecture. "

"Now, I know what your next job is going to be," Ruth announced solemnly. "You're going to be a lecturer on psychosomatic diseases, or in simple plain English, those diseases which can be traced to emotional disturbances." She smoothed down her uniform. Well, I'm off to the bones-and-joints department. See you later." Ruth went bouncing off.

Cherry turned down the corridor leading to Emergency. Here interns were on duty round-the-clock. In addition, there were a head nurse and assistant nurses and doctors quickly available on call. Medical help had to be on hand day and night to take care of any casualty that came in.

An ambulance with a driver was always ready to answer an emergency call.

In Emergency the staff was on the move all the time. Seldom more than an hour or two passed without a call. It sometimes seemed to Cherry that for as small a city as Hilton, Illinois, there was an unusual number of people who were just plain accident prone.

Walking along the corridor, all the familiar sounds of the hospital greeted Cherry's ears: the whisper-like tread of feet, glass gently clinking, nurses speaking low or crisp, a child crying or laughing, the complaining voice of a patient. Over the intercom came repeated calls for one of the doctors to call the chief resident physician's office.

Before Cherry reached the door of the Emergency room, she heard the motor of the ambulance start up outside and saw one of the young doctors come hurrying down the hall, clutching his bag in one hand and buttoning his white jacket with the other.

''You'd think people would give a man time to get dressed," he complained, "before they started getting sick or burned or smashed up or something."

“Where are you off to?" Cherry asked.

"That new private airfield," replied the doctor and dashed out to the ambulance, which took off at once.

Trouble at an airfield usually meant only one thing—a crash of some sort, with people broken or burned or both. Cherry recalled the plane she had seen in the air only minutes ago. How sad if something had happened to it or anyone in it.

Emergency at Hilton Hospital consisted of a large room and three cubicles for patients. It was near the wide doors for receiving stretcher cases. A head nurse and assistant nurses were on duty there at all times. Cherry was one of the nurses on duty from eight A.M. to four P.M.

Cherry was just entering Emergency when she heard her name called. Dr. Phipps, one of the assistant resident physicians, came striding through the Emergency entrance, carrying a sturdy-legged boy across his outstretched arms. The boy's face was streaked with blood and he was unconscious. Two boys in T-shirts and blue jeans, their faces almost as white as the patient's where it was not coated with blood, trod upon the doctor's heels.

"Is Chuck hurt bad, Doc? Chuck isn't going to die, is he, Doc?" the boys kept repeating like a refrain.

"Of course not. Of course not," Dr. Phipps told them. With a nod, he directed Cherry to one of the cubicles and she helped him lay the youngster carefully on the narrow bed.

Chuck's two jean-clad friends would have barged on in, but Cherry captured them and got them seated, assuring them in a clear, confident voice that their friend was going to be all right. "Dr. Phipps will take good care of Chuck," she said. "The doctor let you come in with him because he knew you wouldn't make a fuss. Now, you just wait right here quietly.

They obeyed her, sitting straight in their chairs and staring out of big, round eyes, rather like two owls.

Cherry returned to the cubicle. While she cleaned the blood from the boy's face, the doctor continued to examine him. Then she fixed cold packs which Dr. Phipps applied to the bruised and swollen, but unbroken nose.

Upon regaining consciousness, Chuck was frightened. Cherry soothed him and in a few minutes he began to touch the pack on his nose softly with his finger, his freckled face crinkling up as he sort of grinned around the pack.

"Guess I broke it," he said tentatively.

"No. Lucky you," said Dr. Phipps. "But a fine way to start spring training for the baseball season is all I can say. "

"My brother Charlie had the same thing happen to him when he was a kid," Cherry said. "Stood right in the way of a bat and got clipped."

"That's right, how did you know?" asked Chuck. "But it wasn't Mickey's fault. You see, Johnny was pitching, Mickey was batting, and I was catching...”

"And you stood closer to the batter than a catcher ought to," interrupted the doctor. "Result: you were knocked unconscious and got a bloody nose. You don't have to tell me—I was passing in my car and I saw the whole thing. How did you think you got here so quickly?" he asked with mock gruffness.

"Does my mother know?" Chuck asked.

Dr. Phipps nodded. "One of the ballplayers raced off to tell her."

Within a few minutes, Chuck's mother arrived.

"His nose is swollen. Don't be alarmed if it bleeds a bit more," Dr. Phipps told her. "Take him home and keep an ice bag on it."

"Thank you, Doctor," she said. "And on my way home with Chuck, I will drop these two members of Hilton's all-star ball team at school," she added, nodding at the two boys, who, relieved to find their friend's injury was not serious, went whooping out to the car.

Cherry saw Chuck and his mother out into the hall. "Don't be surprised," she warned, "if Chuck has a real beaut of a black eye." She went back inside.

"We don't have enough business," the head nurse commented dryly to Cherry, as Dr. Phipps was preparing to leave, "so some of our doctors have to find patients and bring them in on their way to the hospital."

"Hospital, rats!" exclaimed Dr. Phipps inelegantly.

"I did it solely in the interest of Little League baseball." The telephone rang and the head nurse picked up the receiver. She listened a moment, then handed the phone to Cherry. "It's for you. Dr. Joseph Fortune calling. Very important."

Dr. Fortune—Dr. Joe to all in Hilton Hospital and the city of Hilton as well—what in the world could he want? Cherry wondered as she took the receiver.

"That you, Cherry? Well, thank heaven!" Dr. Fortune exclaimed as soon as Cherry spoke. "Now, I want you to get over to the Private Wing and get everything ready in Suite 6 for an emergency patient."

"But, Dr. Joe," she protested, "I'm on duty here in Emergency. "

"I know. I'll arrange it with the head nurse," said Dr. Fortune. "I'm calling from the airfield, the private one outside town. Man had an ulcer attack, a bad one. I've done what I could and we're bringing him to Hilton immediately. Now, here's what I want you to do," and Dr. Joe gave her a list of instructions. Then he asked to speak with the head nurse.

"Of course. Of course, it's all right, Dr. Joe," she was saying as she waved Cherry out the door.

Cherry walked briskly through the hospital to the Private Wing. It was a special wing of the hospital where patients, who could well afford to pay for comfort, service, and beautiful surroundings, might spend the time during their illnesses.

Dr. Fortune's patient must be wealthy, Cherry thought. It made her happy to think that Dr. Joe, whom she had known all her life, would for once be well paid. So often he was not very well paid and more often than that he gave his service freely to those who were sick and unable to pay him at all.

Dear Dr. Joe with his seamed, sensitive face and boyish spring to his step.

Inside Suite 6, Cherry paused a moment to look around. She was not familiar with the rooms. They were tastefully decorated and furnished. There was nothing to remind the patient that he was in a hospital. In fact, he might well imagine himself in a fine hotel. Cherry caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror in the sitting room of the suite. Her practical, antiseptic uniform certainly struck an odd note.

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