The Nurse Novel

by Alice Brennan

  “Probably because he didn’t know it,” Lindsay laughed. “I caught a ride in town, and there wasn’t a chance to let Uncle Doc know I was coming. I’ve been wanting to see Amalie ever since I came to Bayou House, but this was my first chance.”

  “Well, seeing you is going to do Amalie a right smart lot of good, I know,” Clara Bates said breezily, her eyes taking Lindsay in from head to foot with lively curiosity. “How’s your aunt? I’m looking forward to taking care of her one of these days when Doc thinks I’ve had enough training.”

  “Dr. Corbett was telling me about that plan,” Lindsay answered.

  Clara Bates eyed her shrewdly.

  “Don’t reckon you’ll mind being set free to go back to your own job, will you?” she asked.

  “Not as long as I can feel sure Aunt Jennifer is adequately taken care of,” Lindsay answered cautiously.

  Clara nodded in complete understanding.

  “Well, you’d have to be sure of that,” she agreed. “But Doc has checked my background from the day I was born, just about. Guess he’s talked to everybody who ever said as much as ‘how-do’ to me; so I suppose he thinks my character is all right. Guess now all he’s waiting for is to be sure I know how to give a bed-bath without drowning the patient, and will see to it she gets her medication on the dot. I’m still just a mite clumsy with the bed-bath. But you know what folks say—practice makes perfect—and I’m sure practicing.”

  “There’s a sort of knack to the bed-bath business, Clara. I’ll stay on for a few days after you come to Bayou House, and maybe I can show you the knack. Most of all, Aunt Jennifer needs companionship, and you can give her that more than I can. You are closer to the same age, and I think I—well, I think I annoy and irritate her somewhat.”

  Clara studied her shrewdly and smiled.

  “I’ve heard Miss Jennifer’s a mite strange. If having you around irritates her, then she’s plenty peculiar,” she observed.

  Lindsay smiled warmly at her.

  “Let’s just hope she isn’t too peculiar to welcome a change of companions,” she answered. “She is so sure that Amalie will be coming back that it may be hard to persuade her to accept someone else.”

  “Then we won’t even try to persuade her,” said Clara comfortably. “I’ll just move in, and you will leave, and she’ll take me or live alone. And from what Doc says, I don’t think she’d like that a penny’s worth.”

  Amalie looked at Clara with a faint touch of awe.

  “And you’d do jes’ that, wouldn’t you, Miz’ Bates?” she asked.

  “Well, of course I would! Why not? She’s helpless; she can’t live alone. I’ll take good care of her. I won’t bully her or take advantage of her, so what’s the gripe?” demanded Clara.

  “Ain’t no gripe, ain’t no gripe at all,” Amalie answered hastily, and winked at Lindsay, her eyes brimming with mirth.

  “I’ll tell Doc you’re here, Lindsay,” said Clara, with obvious satisfaction at the thought that her plans for Bayou House were all set.

  “She’s a good, kind person, Miss Lindsay honey,” Amalie told Lindsay earnestly. “She likes to talk big and make out she’s goin’ to be real tough. But she ain’t. She’s the kindest, best woman, and Miss Jennifer’s going to be took care of real good.”

  “I’m sure she is, Amalie. But she’s going to be very disappointed when she finds you aren’t going to be able to return.”

  “Yessum, I know,” Amalie answered heavily. “I’m real disappointed, too. But Doc says I’m lucky I can get about at all, and luckiest of all I got my little pension and my little cabin.”

  She looked up at Lindsay with a trace of anxiety.

  “You reckon Miss Jennifer will let me keep my cabin, Miss Lindsay, even if I can’t work for her no more?” she asked, and Lindsay sensed that it was a fear that had been hovering in the back of the woman’s mind.

  “Why, Amalie, what a thing to ask! Surely you must know—”

  Amalie’s grave eyes met hers steadily.

  “I know Miss Jennifer pretty well, Miss Lindsay,” she said quietly. “If she has a use for that cabin, she’s not going to waste it on somebody ain’t able to work for it.”

  Lindsay was shocked and repelled at the thought. And yet she knew that Amalie could be right; that Miss Jennifer might refuse the use of the cabin that had been Amalie’s home since the day she was born. But she put the thought indignantly away from her and bent over the woman who had put in so many years of devoted service to Miss Jennifer.

  “Amalie, I’m giving you my word of honor that your cabin will be yours as long as you want it!” she pledged swiftly. “I’ll guarantee that! You can depend on it.”

  Amalie met her eyes and grinned.

  “Yessum, Miss Lindsay, I hear you,” she said gently, a faintly mocking tone in her voice.

  Dr. Potter came hurrying into the room, with Dr. Corbett only a few paces behind him. There were eager greetings, and Lindsay was sharply aware of the look in Dr. Corbett’s eyes as he beamed at her.

  “I had the feeling when I woke up this morning that something very nice was going to happen to me today,” said Dr. Corbett happily, and his eyes brought a tide of color-to Lindsay’s cheeks. “But I had no idea it was going to be anything as extra-special nice as this. What are you doing in town, Lin? I mean, of course, aside from coming to see me?”

  “Well, of all the impudence!” protested Dr. Potter. “To see you, indeed. It was to see me, wasn’t it, honey?”

  Lindsay smiled demurely.

  “It was really to see Amalie, if you must know,” she told them sweetly, and Amalie preened herself.

  Dr. Corbett eyed Lindsay for a moment before he said accusingly, “I suppose Alden brought you in?”

  “As a matter of fact, he did.” As there had been a trace of accusation in his voice, there was a trace of defiance in Lindsay’s. “I don’t know how he managed to persuade Aunt Jennifer that it would be all right for me to be away for the day, but I didn’t ask questions. I just accepted a day off, and here I am.”

  “We’re mighty glad to see her, ain’t we, Doc?” said Amalie.

  “We certainly are, Amalie! We certainly are,” said Dr. Potter.

  “Have you had lunch?” Dr. Corbett asked Lindsay.

  “I don’t think so. I’m really too excited to be sure.”

  “Then come and have it with us. Unless you’ll let me take you across to the hotel—”

  “Don’t do it, Lin girl; don’t do it. The hotel gives us some of our best training in ptomaine cases,” Dr. Potter protested firmly. “You come along with us. After all, hospital meals are no treat to you, but then neither is a nice case of ptomaine!”

  “Oh, I don’t believe it’s as bad as all that,” Lindsay protested, laughing as she tucked a hand through the arm of each man. Smiling down at Amalie, she said, “I’ll see you before I go, Amalie.”

  “Yessum, Miss Lindsay honey, you do that!”

  Amalie watched them go, her dark face wreathed in a happy smile.

  Chapter Nine

  A table near the window of the staff dining room was waiting for Lindsay and the two doctors. As they were seated, a woman in a neat cotton-print dress beneath a checked gingham apron came out of the kitchen, bearing a laden tray.

  “You see, we don’t bother with menus here,” Dr. Potter explained to Lindsay, smiling at the woman who was serving them. “We are served whatever Mrs. Hastings has prepared for us. It’s always good and nourishing, and we are grateful.”

  The woman serving them smiled and said deprecatingly, “Now, Doctor,” and hurried back to the kitchen.

  Before Dr. Potter had more than dug a fork hungrily into the laden plate before him, a nurse came in to summon him to an emergency that had just been brought in, and Dr. Potter looked wistfully at Dr. Corbett.

  “I don’t
suppose it would do a bit of good for me to suggest you handle this one, Marvin?” he asked.

  “Sorry, Doctor. I’m afraid not,” said Dr. Corbett firmly.

  Dr. Potter put down his napkin and sighed as he rose and went away.

  “That wasn’t very kind of you,” Lindsay told Dr. Corbett.

  He grinned at her, completely unabashed.

  “It wasn’t, was it?” he agreed. “But I’m sure it was just what he was expecting. He couldn’t think I’d willingly give up a chance to spend a few minutes with you, especially since it’s been so long since I’ve seen you!”

  “It has been an age, hasn’t it?” she murmured, a twinkle in her eyes. “Two days? Or is it three?”

  “It’s a whole week, and you know it,” he answered swiftly. “And I’m not a bit sure I like your cavorting around the countryside with Alden Mayhew.”

  A spark replaced the twinkle in Lindsay’s eyes, and she stiffened slightly.

  “Then isn’t it nice that you don’t have to like it?” she pointed out, frost feathering her tone.

  “Well, a man has a right to object to his girl galloping around the country with another man!”

  Lindsay blinked, trying desperately to deny the sweet, tantalizing leap of her heart at his words.

  “His girl?” she repeated. “Really, Dr. Corbett!”

  Dr. Corbett leaned toward her across the narrow table, and his eyes were ardent and pleading.

  “Well, you are my girl, aren’t you, Lin darling?” he asked softly.

  “Certainly not!” The frost was more audible in her voice now. “After all, we have barely met.”

  “Oh, come off it, girl,” Dr. Corbett all but snorted. “Barely met my eye! Why, you must surely have known from the very beginning—”

  “I knew nothing from the very beginning, as you put it, except that you thoroughly disapproved of me and thought me a disgrace to the nursing profession.”

  “Now you’re going back to ancient history,” he protested swiftly. “I came out and apologized for that, remember? But ever since that I’ve been courting you assiduously. You can’t deny it, now can you?”

  “I suppose you could call it that,” she drawled judiciously and now the frost was out of her eyes and the merry twinkle was back. “But of course I had no way of knowing whether you were serious or not. Oh, I mean of course I know you were not.” She broke off, flushed and uncomfortable, because she had spoken rashly and revealed far more than she had meant to do.

  Dr. Corbett grinned at her impishly.

  “That, my girl, is a bare-faced lie,” he accused her. “You knew I was serious, very serious. I’ve been meaning to tell you so, but there hasn’t been a chance. I meant to tell you the night we went to the Tavern the second time, but Mayhew was there. And having a third person around when I want to whisper love words in a maiden’s ear always cramps my style.”

  “I should think it would,” Lindsay agreed demurely.

  “So I still am not happy about your running around with Alden Mayhew.”

  “Hitching a ride to town with him just once, when he was coming in on business, is hardly what I’d call ‘running around with him,’ would you?” she asked.

  “It’s just a beginning,” Dr. Corbett protested. “He’ll ask you again. And you must say, ‘No, thanks a whole lot, but no, thanks.’”

  “I must?” Lindsay bristled slightly.

  “You must,” said Dr. Corbett, and added hastily, “That is, I’m asking you very seriously if you won’t!”

  “But why should I?” Lindsay asked stiffly.

  All hint of levity was gone from Dr. Corbett’s eyes as he laid his hand on hers and leaned toward her, entirely in earnest.

  “Because, Lindsay, I have a terrible conviction that I’m in grave danger of falling irrevocably in love with you.” His tone was so low, the words so unexpected, that Lindsay could only leave her hand in his and stare at him helplessly across the table. Dr. Corbett curled his fingers over hers and tightened them, drawing her hand closer, and she had the idiotic idea that he was about to kiss her, there in the staff dining room with three tired-looking nurses at a table across the room.

  And then the shape of his words forced themselves into her consciousness, and her eyes flashed as she struggled to free her hand.

  “In grave danger, Doctor? A terrible conviction? Irrevocably? Those are odd words to use when you are telling someone you love her!”

  He refused to release her hand, and his eyes were somber as they dwelt on her flushed face.

  “I know. It frightens me, too, darling,” he told her simply.

  “Frightens you?”

  He nodded. “Doesn’t it frighten you a little?”

  “Why should it? You’re the one who’s in danger; I’m not.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Well, of course not.”

  “You’re lying, honey, and you know it as well as I do! From the very first there’s been a sort of chemistry between us; something that warned me this could easily happen. And now that it has, what are we going to do about it?”

  She stared at him incredulously and realized that he was in deadly earnest. Somehow, the fact shocked her. She made another effort to free her hand, and this time she was successful. She tucked her hands in her lap and faced him, head erect, color flying pink flags in her cheeks.

  “What are we going to do about it?” she repeated, and was secretly proud that her voice was fairly steady. “I don’t know what you’re going to do about it. But I’m just going to ignore it.”

  “You can’t do that. I won’t let you!” He sounded violent, the three nurses at the other table glanced curiously at them.

  “You won’t let me!” Lindsay repeated, her voice low and angry. “Dr. Corbett, it’s been a long time since anybody let me do something, and I’m not about to start now allowing you to tell me what I can or can’t do.”

  She corrected herself hastily. “I mean, of course, unless it’s something professional, between a doctor and a nurse. But as a man and a woman—”

  Dr. Corbett was studying her intently.

  “You’re a sassy piece, aren’t you?” he drawled at last.

  “You’d better believe I am!” she flashed, and remembered just in time to keep her voice low.

  A young, wide-eyed nurse’s aide came swiftly into the room and to their table.

  “Dr. Corbett, Dr. Potter would like you to come immediately. He needs you. There’s been a bad car crash and two people are badly hurt,” she announced breathlessly, and smiled shyly at Lindsay, as though in tacit apology for upsetting their lunch.

  Dr. Corbett thrust back his chair and looked down at Lindsay.

  “Don’t go away.” His tone was an order. “I’ll be back. We haven’t finished.”

  “I’m afraid we have, Dr. Corbett,” Lindsay told him coolly, and stood up. “Goodbye, and thanks for the lunch and the entertainment.”

  “Entertainment?” The word seemed to enrage him.

  But the aide was waiting, and Dr. Corbett followed her from the room.

  Mrs. Hastings came in to offer dessert, which Lindsay declined with thanks and appreciation for the very appetizing meal. Mrs. Hastings’ sun-tanned, weather-beaten face was wreathed with smiles when Lindsay left the room, with the eyes of the three nurses following her enigmatically.

  Lindsay paused to say goodbye to Amalie and to promise that she would return at the first opportunity. As she walked out into the lobby, Clara Bates came hurrying after her.

  “Doc thinks I may be ready to come out to Bayou House a week from today, Lindsay,” she announced eagerly. “Will that be all right with you?”

  “Oh, yes, of course, Clara,” Lindsay assured her. “I’ll try to prepare Aunt Jennifer by then. And if you like I’ll stay on for a few days until she is completely satisf
ied.”

  “That’s fine!” Clara beamed at her. “It’s nice here at the hospital, and I’m grateful that they gave me a job. But I sure hate living in a furnished room, and I know I’m going to love living at Bayou House; having a home for the rest of my life where I won’t have to be seeing people that’s badly hurt and in pain. That sure takes it out of a body, don’t it?”

  “You have to get used to it, Clara.”

  “Have you?”

  Lindsay hesitated, and then she answered frankly, “No, Clara, but I keep trying to.”

  Clara nodded soberly. “Well, I do, too, but I don’t seem to be making much headway. Take the emergency that just came in—a bride and groom on their wedding trip. She’s dead, and he doesn’t know it yet. Doc thinks he’s going to live, and I know he’d much rather not. Life sure can get complicated, can’t it?”

  She sighed and turned away, and Lindsay went out into the sunshine of the parking lot. There was as yet no sign of Alden, and she walked along the main street, knowing that as long as she stayed on it, Alden would be sure to see her.

  She did a bit of shopping, hurrying outside frequently to look up and down the street until at last she saw him come down the steps of the hotel, called out to him and went to meet him.

  His face was twisted in a scowl, and Lindsay asked, “Is everything all right?”

  “No, everything’s all fouled up,” he growled. “The editor wants a dozen or more revisions on the last article, and the fact that if I make the revisions it will destroy the authenticity doesn’t bother him a bit.”

  “But how stupid of him!” she protested.

  Alden grinned and said, “Sh, girl! Editors are sacred! You mustn’t even think an ugly thought about them!”

  They were walking to his car, and as he tucked her into it, Lindsay asked, “Are you going to make the revisions?”

  “If a doctor asked you to administer certain medications, even if you didn’t approve, what would you do?”

  “Administer them, of course, and pray that the doctor was right and that I was wrong.”

  Alden nodded. “So I do the revisions and hope the editor is wrong. But, damn the guy, he rarely is. Which, I suppose, is the reason he is demanding revisions.”