The Nurse Novel

by Alice Brennan

  “No. It’s spelled like the Merry in Merry Christmas.”

  “Now I’ve heard everything,” he said. “Merry Christmas.” He suddenly exploded into helpless laughter.

  She said lightly, “My mother read a Christmas story. She was very impressed by it.” She backed away from the car. “Thanks for everything. The ride, the orange juice…”

  “And for being a perfect gentleman,” he said. “Don’t forget that.”

  “An especial thanks for that,” Merry said. She stood watching as he pulled away from the curb, and frowned as she walked towards the apartment house entrance. That voice…she shrugged. “Forget it.”

  She turned the knob and stepped inside the small lobby. There were two flights of stairs to climb. The apartment she shared with two other nurses from the hospital was on the second floor.

  She smiled to herself. Arch. Arch for Archibald? She grinned at the thought. He’d been nice. He hadn’t once tried to paw her, or hinted that she owed it to herself to visit his apartment. He’d been just plain nice.

  When she opened the door to her apartment, there was an unexpected visitor waiting for her.

  She was sitting on the slip-covered day bed, looking brittle and scornful and expensive and out of place in the shabby room. “They said you’d be home a half hour ago,” she said in a cold voice implying that Merry had done this deliberately to upset her. “I’ve been waiting nearly thirty-five minutes for you to get home.”

  Merry closed the door behind her and stood leaning against it. She knew Mai Hinge, and she didn’t have to ask why she’d come. She knew.

  Chapter Two

  When Merry was in the last year of high school, a New York columnist had come to speak to the graduating class. She’d been sleek and chic and sophisticated.

  Merry, like the rest of the girls in the class, had been overwhelmed by her. The boys had been scornful…“Who wants a girl who don’t look like a girl, huh?”

  Mai Hinge reminded Merry of that other columnist, except that Mai was more of everything. More glamorous, more chic, more expensive. More caustic. “Well, don’t stand there like an ass,” she told Merry. “Come on over here and sit down. I want some information from you.” She tapped the black bag that rested in her lap. “I have a reputation for paying well for information I want.”

  Mai was wearing a bright red dress and an outlandish hat that sat high on her dark hair. Her eyes were dark, and just a little slanted. They seemed to move constantly, as did her hands.

  She crushed out the cigarette she’d been smoking when Merry came in and immediately lit another one. Merry watched her, thinking there was something repellently fascinating about her thin, ugly, and yet attractive face. “Well, are you just going to stand there?”

  Merry walked over and sat down in the armchair across from her.

  Mai said, not bothering to take the cigarette from her lips, “You know who I am, don’t you?” She said it in the tone of voice that said anyone who didn’t know her was a complete ass.

  Merry nodded. “You’re Mai Hinge, the columnist.”

  “Nationally syndicated,” Mai said. The dark eyes flashed over Merry’s face. “I’ve made and broken quite a few people in the ten years I’ve been in Hollywood, Miss Neil,” she said in her loud, brittle voice.

  Merry stared at her. Surely she wasn’t threatening her. “I’m a nurse,” she thought. “Nobody to make or to break.” Or was she? She frowned at the thought.

  She half rose to her feet. “Would you like some coffee?” she asked Mai politely.

  The other woman shook her head. “This isn’t a social visit,” she snapped.

  “Someone mention coffee?” Agnes McLeod, small and slender, her brown hair mussed, a smudge on her nose, appeared in the doorway of the tiny kitchenette.

  “Hi,” Merry said. She shook her head in answer to Agnes’ query. “I guess not,” she said.

  She looked at Mai. “This is my roommate, Miss…”

  “I’ve already met Miss McLeod,” Mai told her crossly.

  Merry glanced back at Agnes and shrugged. “Where’s Tammy?”

  “I forgot onions,” Agnes told her. “Tammy went to the store for them. We’re having chicken sandwiches and coleslaw.”

  Merry laughed. “Sounds good.” It was Agnes’ week to cook. She wasn’t the best, but she was better than Tammy, whose culinary ability ran to opening cans or popping TV dinners in the oven.

  “Don’t tell me three of you live here!” Mai’s voice hinged on the incredible. Her dark eyes swept the two-room, kitchenette apartment.

  “Oh, we manage,” Merry said. She glanced around the room in which they sat. She thought it bright and colorful and attractive. It was home. It had been home for three months now. She loved it. She didn’t like Mai Hinge coming here and…

  Mai leaned forward on the couch, and her words jabbed at Merry like tiny cutting knives. “There’s been talk of cancer,” she said bluntly. “Is that what Pierson has? Is he going to die?”

  Merry stared at her and slowly began shaking her head. Agnes had disappeared into the kitchenette. “I’m sorry, Miss Hinge, I don’t know anything about Mr. Webb. If you want any information, I’m sure his doctor…”

  Mai puffed viciously at the cigarette she’d lit. “Horne wouldn’t give me the time of day. And you damn well know it.” She stabbed out the cigarette in the overflowing ashtray, although she’d taken no more than a half dozen puffs on it. “You nurses make me sick to my stomach,” she snorted. “Letting on that you’re so much better than other people. Money doesn’t matter to you. You’re only interested in being noble and dedicated.” Her voice mocked. “Everyone has his price, sweetie. What’s yours?”

  And then, not waiting for Merry to answer, she sat back on the couch suddenly, and her eyes narrowed on Merry’s face. “I’m going to tell you something most people in this town don’t know. Pierson and I used to know each other years ago, before he was anyone. We both lived in this awful small town, and Pierson worked in a factory…an automobile factory, can you imagine? And he got this little theatre group together. I was very young, and on my first newspaper job. I was told to write something about the theatre group. That’s how Pierson and I met. Only he didn’t call himself Pierson in those days. He was Pete. He was loud and crude even then, but he had something. I knew he was going to make it.”

  Merry saw some of the hard lines go out of Mai’s face, as if remembering made her young again.

  Then Mai shrugged. “Pierson didn’t want any serious attachments…he was too concerned with trying to make it. And while I concentrated on not letting him know I wanted it to be serious, he up and married another woman.”

  She took the cigarette from her mouth and stared at it thoughtfully. “I forgave him,” she said. “He was a genius and geniuses have more rights than ordinary people. I’ve remained his friend. I’m probably the only one he’s got in this town.”

  She leaned forward on the couch again. “So you see,” she said, “this desire in me to know about Pierson…it’s purely personal.”

  Merry asked slowly, “And if you did get information about Mr. Webb’s condition, you wouldn’t use it in your column?”

  “Well now,” Mai began. A smile smoothed itself across her face. “If it could hurt him, I wouldn’t print it,” she said. “Naturally.”

  Merry said slowly, “Mr. Webb entered the hospital yesterday for a rest and a checkup. That’s all I know. You could check with the doctor at the hospital…”

  “You told me that before,” Mai snapped. “And I told you what you could do with it!” She gathered up her purse and gloves and got to her feet. She pushed her cigarette at the ash tray, making no attempt to pick it up when it missed and fell to the floor.

  Merry walked over, picked up the cigarette and put it in the ash tray. Mai watched her coldly. “Why didn’t you leave it fo
r the maid? Isn’t that what they’re paid for?”

  “We don’t have a maid.”

  Mai walked to the door, and then turned around and looked at Merry. Her eyes were vicious. “I always pay my debts,” she said. “I can wait, sweetie. I can wait as long as I have to.”

  The door opened and closed behind her. Merry stared at it, stunned. “Why would she think I could tell her anything about Mr. Webb?” she asked Agnes who had come out of the kitchen and was preparing to set the table. “It wouldn’t be ethical, even I wanted to. Which I didn’t.”

  Agnes said softly, “She probably never heard of the Florence Nightingale oath, Merry. And if she had, she’d dismiss it as a joke.”

  She frowned. “I wonder what in the world’s keeping Tammy.”

  As if on cue, Tammy Moore, slender, dark-haired, and dark-eyed, burst in the door. She flung the bag she carried at Agnes. “Catch.”

  Her dark eyes flashed towards the door. “Was that Mai Hinge I just passed on the stairs? She looked ready to boil somebody in oil.”

  Agnes, on her way to the kitchen with the onions, said over her shoulder, “Merry.”

  “It seems to me,” Tammy said, giving Merry an envious glance, “that for someone who doesn’t want the breaks, you get them all.”

  Merry, kicking off her shoes, said, frowning, “I wonder if she’s always like that when she doesn’t get something she wants.”

  “She didn’t get Pierson Webb,” Agnes reminded her.

  Tammy said, “Maybe she’s never forgiven him for it.”

  Merry shot her a quick glance. “It could be like that,” she thought. “It didn’t have to be the way Mai said it was.”

  Agnes said, “Dinner’ll be ready in ten minutes.”

  Merry said, “I want to get out of my uniform first,” and disappeared into the bedroom.

  “Need a hand in the kitchen?” Tammy asked Agnes.

  “Nope,” the other girl said. “I’ve got everything under control.”

  “Fine.” Tammy flopped on the couch on her stomach, propping the newspaper she’d brought in front of her. “Hey,” she called out. “Natalie Pries has just ditched her third husband, Mai’s column says, and she’s hunting around for a fourth. It could be an attorney, it says here.”

  Nobody answered her. Merry was busy slipping into a pair of stretch pants in the bedroom, and Agnes was rattling dishes around in the kitchenette.

  Tammy folded back the newspaper and let it drop to the floor. She scrounged up farther on the couch so that she could rest her head on the arm.

  She closed her eyes, and her lashes, thick and dark, curved against her cheek bones.

  Why did the right things always have to happen to other people? she thought crossly, while here she sat on the bottom of the barrel, being what she was never meant to be. She wasn’t like Merry or Agnes…dedicated.

  She was a nurse only because her mother had thought she should be one. Because nursing had such a sane, respectable sound to it.

  Tammy’s lips twisted wryly. Her mother had been very distressed by Tammy’s interest in the theatre. “Why on earth would you want to be an actress?” she’d asked Tammy. “Nobody in our family was ever in the theatre.”

  “Drama school?” Her father hadn’t even raised his voice. “No sireee, young woman. No daughter of mine’s going to be one of them actresses if I can help it. You take nurse training, like your ma wants, so you can earn yourself a living if you have to. Or you don’t take anything.”

  Tammy slid to her feet and padded bare-footed across to the gas fireplace. A mirror hung above it.

  She surveyed herself critically. The wide, dark eyes, the winged brows, the slender oval of her face, the slightly petulant mouth. “I’m every bit as pretty as Natalie Pries,” she said to her reflection. “What has she got that I don’t have?”

  She swallowed convulsively. A break. That’s what Natalie Pries had that she lacked. A lucky break. She’d been working as an extra and clerking in a drug store when Pierson Webb had walked into the drug store one day and decided to make her a star. “It should happen to me,” Tammy thought bitterly.

  She’d thought it had when she’d learned Pierson Webb had been admitted to Hollywood General as a patient. He’d be right there where she could visit him as often as she liked, on one pretext or another. She’d be in a position to do things for him, push herself into his gaze, make him aware of her.

  But it hadn’t turned out that way at all. The best she’d gotten from him had been, “Listen, sister, go peddle your wares someplace else. I’m a sick man. I ain’t interested. Pretty girls are a dime a dozen in this town. I got more pretty girls than I know what to do with.”

  Tammy flung herself away from the mirror. “I hate him,” she thought. “I hate him, I hate him, I hate him!”

  Agnes came in, carrying a plate of sandwiches and a bowl of salad. “It’s ready,” she said. “There’re éclairs for dessert.”

  Merry came in, wearing black stretch pants and a yellow blouse.

  Tammy looked at her with reluctant admiration. “You’ve managed to look almost sexy,” she said.

  Merry laughed. “I think that’s meant as a compliment.” She slipped a piece of cheese from the salad and popped it into her mouth. “What was that you were saying about Natalie Pries?”

  “She just got rid of her third husband,” Tammy said. She fluffed her hair, pulling it forward on her face.

  “I wonder why she keeps getting married,” Agnes said, pulling out a chair and sitting down.

  Tammy said, pretending shock, “Anything else would be immoral and illegal, wouldn’t it? Hey,” she said to Merry who was not yet sitting down, “switch on the radio, huh? If we can’t eat by candlelight, let’s at least have music to dine by.”

  Merry obediently turned on the radio dial, and canned music blared out. She frowned as she sat down. “I hate rock and roll.”

  Agnes said, “I like Bach.”

  “I’m right in my groove,” Tammy said, biting into a chicken sandwich. “Rock and roll, I dig it.”

  The disc jockey’s voice came out, sounding tired and forced in his joviality. “This is the sunshine state, folks. The Chamber of Commerce provides colored glasses free, for those tourists who insist that ain’t the sun up there today.”

  There was a scratching sound, and then, “And here’s himself, the great new sensation, Arch Heller. Let her swing, boy.”

  The voice came out, slow and easy at first, and then rose wilder and wilder. Merry paused, her bite of salad halfway to her mouth. “That’s his voice,” she said. “I knew I’d heard it somewhere.”

  Tammy said, “Shhhh,” and then swiveled in her chair to look at Merry, her eyes wide. “Whose voice?” she asked. “What are you talking about?”

  “He said his name was Arch,” Merry replied, “and he rescued me from those awful reporters and he bought me orange juice and he…”

  Tammy said, “My God, you don’t mean Arch Heller brought you home? Arch Heller?”

  “Their voices sounded the same,” Merry said. She was frowning. “I’m almost sure…”

  “What kind of car was he driving?” Tammy demanded.

  “Jaguar,” Merry told her. “White.”

  “With red upholstery?” Tammy asked, her voice excited.

  Merry nodded. “That’s his car,” Tammy said. “It was described in the last Screen Gems magazine. Wait a minute.” She disappeared into the bedroom. When she came back, she was carrying a magazine folded back to a picture of a young man lounging in the seat of a white Jaguar sports car. He was wearing giant dark glasses, and he was grinning.

  Tammy thrust the magazine in front of Merry. “Is that him?”

  Merry carefully studied the picture. “Yes,” she said, “I’m sure it is.”

  Tammy flung down the magazine and frowned at Merry.
“For a girl who doesn’t want any breaks, and who wouldn’t know what to do with a break, you’re getting them all. It’s a shame you’re so nice, because I’d like to hate you.”

  She went over and turned off the radio. “I’ve lost my taste for music,” she said dispiritedly.

  * * * *

  The two girls helped Agnes clear the table and do the dishes. “He’s nice,” Merry said. “I mean really nice. He didn’t try a pass or anything like that.”

  Tammy said crisply, “I’d feel insulted if I were you.”

  Agnes emptied the dishwater and scoured the sink. Only a part of her mind listened to the talk between the other two girls. She was wondering, as she’d wondered for the past week, if this would be the night the phone would ring for her.

  The kitchenette had one window. Outside it, the town was a fairyland of lights. Unreal, Agnes thought. As unreal as Disney’s Fantasyland.

  She wrung out the dishcloth and put it away. It wasn’t the unreal that hurt. It was the reality.

  Chapter Three

  An operating room is a world apart, composed of four enclosing walls. Outside sounds don’t penetrate; it is an alien world, and the green-gowned and capped men and women who move in it are alien creatures. Every sound has a meaning—the transfer of surgical instruments from the nurse’s hand to the surgeon’s; the flutter of the breathing bag, in…out…in…out; the faint rustle the scrub nurse makes as she wipes the surgeon’s brow.

  The clock on the wall is electric and soundless, yet every person in the room is vibrantly aware of its soundless ticking.

  Merry, her blonde hair hidden under the green surgical cap, looked at the man on the operating table. He no longer looked big or Important, but small and pathetic and defenseless, lying flat and draped, his head and face screened from the operating team. There was the faint click of steel as installments moved from the table to the nurse’s hand to the surgeon.

  There was no talk, only movement. Merry watched Dr. Horne’s hands as the final incision was made. When he raised his head, she saw the verdict in his eyes.

  Everyone in the operating room knew. Pierson Webb was going to die. Not today or tomorrow or next week, but he was going to die.