The Nurse Novel

by Alice Brennan

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFO

  A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

  HOLLYWOOD NURSE, by Alice Brennan

  BAYOU NURSE, by Peggy Gaddis

  A NURSE FOR DR. STERLING, by Ruth MacLeod

  NAVY NURSE, by Rosie M. Banks

  The MEGAPACK® Ebook Series

  COPYRIGHT INFO

  The Nurse Novel MEGAPACK® is copyright © 2017 by Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.

  * * * *

  The MEGAPACK® ebook series name is a trademark of Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved.

  * * * *

  Hollywood Nurse, by Alice Brennan, is copyright © 1968 by Alice Brennan. Reprinted by permission of her son, T. Casey Brennan.

  Bayou Nurse (also published as Strange Shadows of Love), by Peggy Gaddis is copyright © 1964 by Peggy Gaddis Dern. Reprinted by permission of her family.

  A Nurse for Dr. Sterling, by Ruth MacLeod, is copyright © 1962 by Ruth MacLeod.

  Navy Nurse, by Rosie M. Banks, is copyright © 1960 by Rosie M. Banks.

  A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

  Reading trends change over the years. One of the pretty much now-forgotten genres of fiction was the “nurse novel”...which was itself a subset of the “doctor novel” and featured (what else?) the romantic adventures (usually with a doctor) of a nurse!

  Hundreds of nurse novels were published, with titles that sometimes stretched credulity. One of our contributors to this volume, Peggy Gaddis, seemed to specialize in nurses (she wrote dozens of books about them). Is it any wonder that authors sometimes had to stretch to find subjects that hadn’t already been covered?

  Consider these volumes:

  Hockey Star Nurse.

  Hootenanny Nurse.

  Night Club Nurse.

  And my own personal favorite:

  These are just a few examples of the nurse novel. Try a Google search for “Nurse novel book cover”—you will be amazed at some of the book covers that pop up. Scandalous Nurse. Future Nurse (no, it’s not science fiction—but it might have been!) Mountain Nurse. Nurse in the Tropics. Resort Nurse. Ozark Nurse. Everglades Nurse. Night Club Nurse. Undercover Nurse. Debutante Nurse.

  Television Nurse. Prison Nurse. Poison Nurse. Nurse Voodoo. The list goes on and on.

  Enjoy!

  —John Betancourt

  Publisher, Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidepress.com

  ABOUT THE SERIES

  Over the last few years, our MEGAPACK® ebook series has grown to be our most popular endeavor. (Maybe it helps that we sometimes offer them as premiums to our mailing list!) One question we keep getting asked is, “Who’s the editor?”

  The MEGAPACK® ebook series (except where specifically credited) are a group effort. Everyone at Wildside works on them. This includes John Betancourt (me), Carla Coupe, Steve Coupe, Shawn Garrett, Helen McGee, Bonner Menking, Sam Cooper, Helen McGee and many of Wildside’s authors…who often suggest stories to include (and not just their own!)

  RECOMMEND A FAVORITE STORY?

  Do you know a great classic science fiction story, or have a favorite author whom you believe is perfect for the MEGAPACK® ebook series? We’d love your suggestions! You can post them on our message board at http://wildsidepress.forumotion.com/ (there is an area for Wildside Press comments).

  Note: we only consider stories that have already been professionally published. This is not a market for new works.

  TYPOS

  Unfortunately, as hard as we try, a few typos do slip through. We update our ebooks periodically, so make sure you have the current version (or download a fresh copy if it’s been sitting in your ebook reader for months.) It may have already been updated.

  If you spot a new typo, please let us know. We’ll fix it for everyone. You can email the publisher at wildsidepress@yahoo.com or use the message boards above.

  HOLLYWOOD NURSE, by Alice Brennan

  Chapter One

  It was cold and rainy, unusual weather for southern California. Merry Neil, blonde and blue-eyed, raced down the steps of Hollywood General, hoping to make the next bus before it pulled out.

  The soles of her white oxfords had hardly set down on the sidewalk when the crowd of six waiting reporters encircled her. “Give us the low-down on Pierson Webb, baby,” a voice stabbed at her from the crowd. “Exactly what’s wrong with him? Is it cancer?”

  “Come on, sweetheart, be a doll,” another voice wheedled. “We’ve got deadlines to meet. And Webb’s a very important personage in this town. People want to read about him.”

  Merry shook her head to all of their queries. “Please,” she begged, “I haven’t anything to say. I’m only a nurse. Now, if you’ll just let me by… I don’t want to miss my bus.”

  In answer, a woman’s voice said, in a tired monotone, “Look, doll, give, whydoncha? What’s he to you?”

  “What’s he to me?” Merry thought. “A human being. A tired, scared old man who has the right to be ill in private; to die in private, if it comes to that.”

  But she didn’t say it out loud. “They’re only doing their jobs,” she told herself, “the same as I’m doing mine. I’ve got to remember that.”

  They were only giving the reading public what it demanded. And what it demanded was every crumb of news about the great ones. Their pains, their hurts…what they ate for breakfast…how they slept…and if they were going to die. “Come on, doll,” the voice coaxed again.

  Merry bit at her underlip. She thought fiercely, “I’m tired of being called ‘doll’ and ‘sweetie’ and ‘darling’ and ‘baby.’”

  She felt slightly hysterical as she pushed through the circle, forcing it to open for her. She was tired, and her feet ached. She’d been on them since seven that morning.

  One of the reporters leaned too close and smoke from his cigar blew into her face, causing her to cough. She strangled a hysterical giggle. He was fat and short and balding.

  Whoever heard of a middle-aged, balding reporter who smoked cigars? They were supposed to be young, the trench coat type.

  She heard her bus pull out, and she could have cried. It would be a good fifteen or twenty minutes until another bus came along. They always managed to be late.

  She knew with a sinking heart that the reporters would follow her to the bus stop. They’d nag and ride her until the bus came along and she could escape by getting on it.

  It had been like this since two o’clock yesterday when Pierson Webb had entered the hospital and someone had discovered she’d been assigned to take care of him.

  She wanted to turn on them. Wasn’t anything private in this town? Not even death?

  And Pierson Webb could die. She’d seen it in Dr. Horne’s eyes when he’d come into Pierson’s room tonight.

  He’d drawn up a chair beside Pierson’s bed and announced cheerfully, “We’re going to haul you down to surgery in the morning, Pierson, and see if we can find what’s causing those bellyaches of yours.”

  Pierson had been smoking a thin, black cigar. He’d jabbed it viciously at an ash tray. “Oh, come off that jazz, doc,” he’d said. “You know I got cancer. Why the hell don’t you just come out and admit it. I’m going to die. Why not admit that too?”

  “I don’t know anything of the sort,” Dr. Horne had told him calmly. “If I did, this wouldn’t be an exploratory I’m going to do on you.”

  Pierson’s eyes, hollow and almost lost in the folds of fat around them, had darted around the room. “I’m on to you guys,
doc. You can’t fool me with that kind of talk. I’ve made a few medic pictures myself. Remember Dr. Lance? That one was mentioned for an Oscar.”

  His eyes had gone musing. “I’ve made some great pictures. Know that, doc? And I discovered Natalie Pries. Where’d she be if it hadn’t been for me? A sheer nobody. And look at her now. The biggest piece of box office in the business.”

  Dr. Horne had risen slowly to his feet. “I know that, Pierson,” he’d told the older man. “But right now I don’t want you doing any more talking. I want you to get some rest. And don’t worry about anything.”

  “Rest?” the other man had laughed harshly. “You mean, sleep? I ain’t slept in years. You think I’m going to start it tonight just because you tell me to?”

  “You’ll sleep tonight,” Dr. Horne had told him. “I’m going to prescribe a sedative for you.”

  The reporter with the cigar blew smoke once more into Merry’s face. Merry automatically put up a hand and brushed at the smoke as she brushed at the smog that sometimes enveloped the Los Angeles countryside. Unlike the smog, heavy and odorous and lung-penetrating, the smoke brushed away.

  The lights were beginning to come on, the lights on the cars and in the buildings, relieving the drab grayness of the cloud-heavy skies.

  She walked briskly towards the bus stop, and the reporters tagged at her heels. “Like ghouls,” she thought fiercely.

  “Listen, doll…”

  The word grated on her nerves, like a fingernail being raked down a blackboard. Pierson Webb had called her doll too, as she’d stood over him, the hypodermic needle poised.

  “Listen, doll, if you think you’re fooling me, forget it. I’ve been around for fifty-six years, and I’ve seen them all. They’ve got just one thing on their minds, and you ain’t no exception, sweetheart. Everyone in this town is out to get everything they can get, without having to pay for it. So you might just as well throw that Florence-Nightingale jazz of yours out of the window as far as I’m concerned. It don’t penetrate.”

  Merry had seen his eyes. They were afraid. The bluster and bravado were only pretense…to show how unafraid he was.

  Car horns sounded, with the steady sound of wheels on the concrete, and the constant noise over and above and around everything—the pulse of a big city.

  “I should have stayed back in Michigan,” Merry thought. “Three months I’ve been here and I still can’t get used to it.” The noise and the phony glitter and the phony endearments…and the loneliness that pushed against one like the smog.

  For a moment she thought of Emmett and the small community hospital she’d worked at before coming to Hollywood. There was a pain of remembering tangling in her throat.

  “I should have stayed there.” And then, “All right, why didn’t I stay?” The familiar pain made itself felt, and it startled Merry that it could still be so sharp after all these months.

  She’d left not only Emmett, but Michigan as well, to escape Tom. How had he gotten into her thoughts? Hadn’t she determined she’d never think of Tom again after she left Michigan? Tom had certainly made it clear enough that he wanted no place in her thoughts.

  “When the moon is on the clover

  Oh, my lover,

  I’ll remember

  How your arms so tender…”

  “Stop it,” she told herself. “What you trying to do? Bring it back? You were the one who tried to make it more than it ever was. Tom wasn’t the one who said the words…you put them into his mouth…and then tried to fool yourself into believing he lied to you.”

  “Listen, doll, do you have to walk so fast?” the reporter with the cigar complained. “My feet are killing me. I’ve got corns.”

  Merry let out a sigh of exasperation. “If you’d only…” She became aware of the white Jaguar pulling to the curb and turned her head to look; the rest of her sentence remained unsaid.

  A tanned arm in a white sportshirt reached across and opened the car door. “Hop in,” a masculine voice said, the sound seeming to drift slowly forward from behind the sunglasses and the tan.

  He winked at her. “You want to escape the pack, don’t you? With luck, I think we could outrun them.”

  Oh, no I don’t, Merry thought. Whoever heard of anyone getting into a car—even a Jaguar—with someone she didn’t know? Not on your life, she wouldn’t…

  “Doll,” the reporter who’d said his feet hurt him had changed his voice to a whine.

  Merry felt the pressure growing at the back of her head. “My feet hurt too,” she thought. The prospect of waiting ten or fifteen more minutes for the bus, being called “doll” repeatedly, and having cigar smoke blown into her face wasn’t very appealing.

  Before she had time to reconsider, Merry climbed into the car, settled herself in the bucket seat, and pulled the door closed. “Off we go.”

  Merry’s head jerked back as the powerful car took off. “Hold on to your seat belts, folks.” A tanned hand reached over and clamped down on her shoulder, holding her for a second, against the seat.

  “Hey, do you know who that was?” The words rang out from one of the reporters Merry had left behind.

  The hand left Merry’s shoulder. “I guess you’re okay now. I thought for a minute there you were going to take off.”

  She turned in her seat to look at him. His laughter had a natural sound, low and pleasant, and there were glimpses of freckles beneath the huge sunglasses.

  She cocked her head to one side and frowned at him. “Why would that man say, ‘Do you know who that was?’ Are you someone important?” Her eyes widened. She said tightly, “Are you one of them? Is this a trick to…to…”

  “Now, dear,” he told her, “slow down. You aren’t making sense.” His mouth was serious, but Merry was sure that his eyes were grinning behind the covering glasses.

  But she was not going to let herself be hoodwinked.

  “Are you a reporter?” she asked fiercely. “Because if you are, and if you think you’re going to pry any information out of me about Mr. Webb—”

  “Well, well, well,” he said. “So that’s who you are. I should have known. You’re Pierson’s nurse. So that’s why they were after you.”

  Merry said, “If you’re trying to fool me—”

  “’Pon my honor I’m not a reporter,” he told her. “Scout’s honor. And I promise not to pump you for even one word about Pierson.” He pulled the Jaguar off the highway and whirled into the parking lot of an orange juice stand, “How about an orange juice?”

  “Oh, come now,” he coaxed when she started to refuse. “Everyone who comes to California has to drink orange juice. It’s part of the protocol.”

  Merry laughed. “How do you know I’m not a native of Hollywood?”

  He shook his head. “You haven’t got the look. There’s a certain look.” He parked the car and hopped lightly over the side without bothering to open the door.

  He came back carrying two giant glasses of orange juice. Merry sipped at hers. It was cold and sweet. “It’s good,” she said.

  He grinned at her. “Have you ever been to Florida?”

  Merry shook her head. “I thought the Chamber of Commerce outlawed that word in California.” She was feeling gay, like the sun suddenly deciding to make its appearance in the west just in time to set.

  He laughed. “Oh, every once in a while I feel brave and defiant.” He swung the car close to one of the trash receptacles, and Merry dropped in the paper cups.

  “You can drop me off at the nearest bus stop,” she told him.

  “I’ve got a better idea,” he told her. “Why don’t I just drive you home?” When Merry started to protest, he said lightly, “You’ve been safe so far, haven’t you? Honest, I don’t bite. My teeth are my own, and I promise not to ask questions.”

  Merry laughed. “I live on Fourth,” she told him, and gave him
the number of the apartment house.

  He shook his head. “That’s not a good address.”

  “They don’t pay a nurse the money to afford a ‘good’ address,” she said.

  A cross-town bus lumbered across in front of the car. A truck camper, with the words “Hitchhikers and dogs welcomed. Pay in advance” blazoned in red paint on the back, cruised leisurely behind the bus.

  Across the street, a young woman in tight white shorts, extravagantly high heels, and a pale pony tail of hair that swung to the small of her back walked a miniature poodle.

  The man beside her began to hum under his breath. Merry, frowning in concentration, twisted around on the seat to stare at him. “There’s something about your voice,” she told him. “It sounds so familiar…”

  “Do you ride the elevators at the May Company?” he asked her. “I’m an elevator operator.”

  Merry laughed at him. “An elevator operator driving a Jaguar? Besides, they don’t have elevators anymore; they have escalators.”

  “You’re taking all of the fun out of it,” he told her. “I really was an elevator operator once. And I got the Jaguar by saving trading stamps. Really.”

  Merry touched his arm. “Turn there at the corner,” she directed him. “It’s the second house, that aging stucco.”

  He pulled to the curb in front of a bedraggled sedan. He reached across Merry and opened the door for her. “Call me Arch,” he told her. “In case you get to thinking about me in your dreams tonight.”

  Merry shot him an appraising glance. “You don’t look like an Arch,” she said.

  He said wryly, “Does anyone look like an Arch?” His hands played on the wheel as he let the car idle. “No one really seems to have a name in this town,” he said. “They’re all ‘honey’ or ‘sweetie’ or ‘doll.’”

  Merry shuddered. “Please. If I have to hear myself addressed just once more as ‘doll’… My name’s Merry.” She got out of the car and slammed the door gently.

  “Mary, Mary, quite contrary,” he quipped, grinning up at her.