The Nurse Novel

by Alice Brennan

  “You’re returning to the hospital? To your old job?” he asked.

  “Well, of course,” Lindsay answered, obviously puzzled by the question. “What else could I be doing?”

  “Naturally, I thought you and Alden—” Dr. Corbett began.

  “Excuse me, Doc. I’ve just remembered a phone call I have to make,” said Alden briskly, and hurried out of the room.

  Neither Dr. Corbett nor Lindsay seemed aware of his departure or of the fact that they were now alone. They stood looking at each other, and Lindsay’s cheeks were pink, though her head was high and she met his eyes gravely.

  Dr. Corbett seemed not quite able to find words until at last he said, “Alden’s boss, Henderson, stopped in at the office to discuss Alden’s condition and to try to get a prediction about how soon he could return to work. Said he was going to give him a month’s leave and a handsome bonus, so I naturally thought that you might be going with him when he started out on his leave.”

  “I don’t quite see why you should ‘naturally’ think anything of the kind, Doctor,” said Lindsay evenly. “I’ve tried to tell you from the first time I met him that his plans for the future and mine have absolutely no connection whatever. I went out to the hut, when that man came for me, because I thought one of a party of hunters had been badly hurt. I was as stunned to recognize Alden as the victim as you could possibly have been to find me there.”

  “I’d like to believe that,” Dr. Corbett said.

  Anger flamed in Lindsay’s eyes and she answered hotly, “Well, believe it or not as you wish, Doctor. Frankly, now that I am no longer working with you on a case, and we’re not a doctor and a nurse but a man and a woman, I can tell you quite frankly that what you believe or disbelieve couldn’t possibly interest me less! Your whole attitude concerning this case has been just plain silly. And what a relief it is to be able to say that to a doctor!”

  “Wow!” murmured Dr. Corbett, and now there was a twinkle in his eyes. “So you’re not in love with the guy after all?”

  “Would you believe me if I said I wasn’t?” she snapped.

  “Oh, yes, and it would make me very happy.”

  “Then do allow me to make you very happy, Doctor.” Lindsay’s tone was as near sneering as Lindsay was capable to making it. “This whole crazy household seems determined to throw me at Alden. Mr. Henderson suggested the convalescent leave would give time for a fine honeymoon and seemed to take it for granted I’d be delighted to know about it.”

  “I’m sure the thought must have occurred to Alden, too,” Dr. Corbett murmured.

  “As a matter of fact, it did!” Lindsay snapped. “But he wasn’t hard to convince that I wasn’t in love with him. He seemed willing to believe it.”

  “But not, I’m sure, as anxious as I am.”

  Lindsay stared at him, and then she said hotly, “Well, now that I’m no longer on a case, serving with you, Doctor, will you please excuse me so I can go and get my packing done?”

  “No,” said Dr. Corbett so flatly that Lindsay was caught in mid-step and momentarily held her breath. “I won’t excuse you, Lindsay, for this could easily be our last chance for a final talk.”

  Lindsay waited.

  “Remember when you came to the hospital in town with Alden and we had lunch together?” he asked quietly.

  “The day I came to see Amalie? Of course.” Her tone was curt, but in the pockets of her uniform her hands were clenched tightly, because that was a day she was quite sure she would never be able to forget.

  “Do you remember something I said to you then: that I was afraid I was falling in love with you?” he asked so quietly that for a moment she could not answer him. “Well, I was a colossal fool that day.”

  Lindsay stammered faintly, “Were you? I think you said you were in danger of falling in love with me and that the thought frightened you.”

  He nodded, and his jaw was set and hard. However there was a completely unexpected plea in his eyes.

  “Well, that was the fool thing I said. I wasn’t in danger—I’d already fallen in love with you—and I was frightened because I thought you were more drawn to Alden than to me. I had the crazy feeling that if you couldn’t love me, I’d go on breathing, eating, sleeping, working—but it wouldn’t be living.”

  There was a silence that seemed to them both to stretch endlessly. Dr. Corbett waited, his eyes pleading, until at last Lindsay drew a long hard breath and whispered, “Oh, I wish I could believe you!”

  She saw the tiny start he gave, the jerk of his head. His voice was husky when he asked, “Would it mean anything to you, darling, if you did believe me? Please do, dearest! I’ve never said a more truthful thing in my life than that I love you with all my heart. And more than anything else in the world, I want you to marry me.”

  Quick tears misted her eyes and clogged her throat, so that she could only smile at him tremulously and hold out her hands that his reached for.

  “Lindsay,” he whispered, his voice shaken as he held her, not quite yet daring to kiss her, his arms holding her so that she could have slipped from them if she had had any such idiotic wish. “Darling, are you trying to tell me that you care for me—that you ever could?”

  She looked up at him, and now crystal tears were sliding down her cheeks.

  “That I ever could? What kind of silly talk is that?” she asked. “Alden has known from the beginning that I was in love with you. I don’t see why it has taken you so long to discover that.”

  “Oh, so Alden knew, did he?”

  “Of course. Almost as soon as I did.”

  There was a tiny silence, and then Dr. Corbett said pityingly, “Poor devil! It must have been quite a blow to him, since he is in love with you himself. It sticks out all over him.”

  Lindsay stared at him, and then she tipped back her pretty head and laughed.

  “Men!” she derided him with tender mockery. “I cannot understand why you think you are such brilliantly clever people, playing ring-around-the-rosy this way. There’s one thing I think I can be very proud of: that the only two very attractive eligible men in the whole Bayou both think themselves in love with me! How did I ever get this lucky!”

  Dr. Corbett grinned at her laughter. Then she was close in his arms, so close that against her out flung hand she could feel the hard, uneven thudding of his heart against her palm, and his arms held her so tightly that she could scarcely breathe. Yet she made the impossible effort to creep even closer as she laughed up at him.

  “What do you mean, ‘think themselves in love with you’?” Dr. Corbett scolded her tenderly. “We know darned well, both of us, that we’re crazy about you. I’m sorry for Alden, poor devil. He’ll just have to go find himself somebody else to love, because you are mine from this moment on. Aren’t you?”

  “Well, of course, darling. And you are mine, and what a wonderful world it is! And to think how I hated to come back to the Bayou!” she marveled, and turned to look out of the window at the ancient trees, their ghostly draperies of moss stirring faintly in the breeze. “Oh, darling, it’s beautiful, isn’t it? And to think I used to hate the place!”

  “Beautiful!” Dr. Corbett’s eyes followed hers to the dank, gloomy depressing scene outside. “The Bayou?”

  “It’s beautiful because it’s here I found you,” she told him joyously. “And I could be happy and we could make a good life for ourselves even if we decided to stay here the rest of our lives!”

  Alarm touched Dr. Corbett’s face, and he gave her a firm but loving shake.

  “Hey, angel-face, snap out of it! Nobody could build a good life here at the Bayou. It just isn’t possible,” he protested.

  Lindsay smiled serenely up at him, undaunted.

  “I could,” she told him radiantly, “if you were here with me. For anywhere you are is where I want to be, always.”

  He
kissed her long and ardently, and then he said firmly, “Well, that’s the way I feel, too. But I’m sure we can find a much better place in which to build a good life and practice our profession than the Bayou, my treasure! That’s for very darned sure!”

  Lindsay laughed, her eyes dancing, a small dimple tugging at the corner of her mouth, as she murmured docilely, “Yes, dearest, whatever you say—always!”

  A NURSE FOR DR. STERLING, by Ruth MacLeod

  Chapter 1

  He sensed the change of speed and altitude before the signal, in words of green light, announced it was time to fasten seat belts and stop smoking.

  We’re there already! The brevity of the jet flight from the east coast hadn’t surprised him, but on this two-motor job from International Airport, he’d hoped for a little more time to assemble his thoughts.

  Seeing that his hand wasn’t quite steady as he stubbed out his cigarette, he forced the fingers to relax, willing the same limpness into the muscles of his arms, shoulders, neck and the jaw that had clenched persistently since the first disastrous day of the trial that had gone so surprisingly and appallingly against him.

  Peering from his window in the tail section, he watched the miniature town ahead grow to full size. Spanish architecture predominated, the red tile roofs partially hidden by tall palms and a lush growth of trees and shrubbery that seemed remarkably leafed out for February.

  So that was Las Lomas, where he might manage to pick up the pieces of his career.

  A wry grin slanted his tense mouth. The friends he’d left in the snowbound east would probably call him lucky to be here. Then the mild feeling of descent was intensified to sharp pain as he yearned to be back at his burgeoning practice in the modern suite of offices his grandfather’s bequest had provided, the incredible damage suit just a nightmare from which he could awaken; the word, malpractice, something he couldn’t possibly believe would ever be charged against him.

  Luxurious homes gave way to orange groves and patches of bare new housing projects as the plane glided into a last low circle before landing at the airport which was some distance from town. He waited until all the other passengers had filed down the aisle, then leisurely gathered his belongings. He couldn’t stifle a certain reluctance over this meeting with Graham Burns whom he hadn’t seen for nine years, and whose help he had never expected to require. Nine years ago it was Dr. Burns who had desperately needed help. And Grandfather Sterling had generously bestowed it. This meeting was no doubt considered the discharge of an old obligation—but it was still irksome to have to be on the receiving end.

  He was the last passenger to descend the steps and pass the waiting stewardess. “Nice flight,” he told her perfunctorily, scarcely hearing her gay, professional, “Glad to have you aboard, Dr. Sterling!”

  He searched the crowd beyond the fence as he walked slowly to the gate, a tall, slender young man whose slight stoop had been recently acquired during the grueling ordeal in court. His eyes were dark brown, and bitter under the bright attention he tried to blink into them as he picked out his friend in the crowd.

  Nine years had done things to Graham Burns. He’d grown heavier, his head more leonine, the shaggy, curly hair almost pure white now—and he was still in his early fifties. Though sun-browned and rugged, there were too many lines in his face, underlying the beaming smile as he came forward, hand outstretched.

  “David!” he exclaimed. “David Sterling! I can’t say, ‘My how you’ve grown!’, yet you definitely don’t look like the stripling student I saw last.”

  It seemed hardly tactful to tell Graham he’d changed too, for the change couldn’t by any stretch of the imagination be called an improvement. Nor could the change in my circumstances, David thought, and their mutual cognizance of that change swamped them with embarrassment as David tried to murmur something noncommittal.

  Dr. Burns turned to the man beside him. “Cyril, David Sterling. David, this is Dr. Claibourne, head of the clinic I wrote you about. I think you’ll enjoy working with us.”

  “Providing I qualify,” David said, then immediately wished he could bite the words back. There was no need of his being so damned modest. He was as good a doctor as he’d ever been, the unjustified verdict in an outlandish damage suit couldn’t change that!

  “You’ll qualify!” Burns declared with a little too much enthusiasm. “Ever since you wrote me, I’ve been telling Cyril of your splendid record, your love of medicine from the time you were a little boy tagging your grandfather around on his calls. The thing that happened to you… Well, but for the grace of God, and a steady run of good luck… Well, anyone…”

  Letting Burns’ chatter run down, David met the steady blue eyes of the other doctor. Larger than Burns, Dr. Claibourne was better proportioned. Probably older, too, though he didn’t show it. Almost bald, he seemed to trying to make up for the lack of hair on his head by a lush, old-fashioned mustache that gleamed white against his somewhat florid face, and scarcely hid the delicate curve of his thin lips. He and Burns both were hatless and wore casual, very unprofessional looking sports clothes.

  “We’ve had a report from your Medical Society and State Board,” Claibourne said quietly, “and a transcript of the trial. We’ll discuss it on the way to town. My car’s over here.”

  It was a long black Lincoln with a chauffeur waiting at the wheel. Clinic business must be pretty good, David reflected, but it did nothing to raise his spirits. Money had never been a prime consideration when he decided to study medicine.

  “Well, now,” Dr. Claibourne said when they’d settled down in the back of the Lincoln, “I’d like to hear the case history from you just once—then we’ll forget it. According to your attorney, there was nothing to indicate massive spongioblastoma when the patient came to you for a complete physical.”

  “Nothing whatever. Of course, if I’d done a spinal puncture I’d have caught it—but there was nothing to give me an idea one was indicated at that time, or an electroencephalogram either. His reflexes were all normal, and there was no disturbance of vision, probably because he’d lost the sight of one eye by retinal detachment. Otherwise he’d have suffered double vision and I’d have considered the probability that his symptoms were neurological rather than psychological.”

  David paused, remembering the big, strapping electric company lineman with the body and muscular co-ordination of a boxer, a black patch over the eye in which only a scrap of distorted vision remained, the other eye filled with bewilderment as he made the shamefaced admission that he’d been having some “goofy daydreams—like my imagination went haywire” since taking over the housework so his wife could earn their living.

  “Never was sick a day in my life, doctor,” he’d said, “until a red curtain shut down on half the sight of one eye and they stuck me in a hospital for an operation. Nearly killed me. Not the operation—I didn’t mind that. But they had me flat on my back with my head held steady between sandbags and I thought I’d go nuts! I ought to be glad now just to be up and around, but it’s tough not having a job. Everything I know how to do is something that might cause the same thing in the other eye, so my wife got her old job back—she’s a crack stenographer—and I fiddle around the house. I don’t really mind—only a big strong guy like me washing dishes, ironing the kids’ clothes, running the vacuum… I began to get these funny feelings.”

  It had been while he was vacuuming a rug that he’d experienced his first disturbing episode.

  “Oh, I’d had a sort of depressed feeling now and then before that,” he’d said, “but nothing I couldn’t shake off if I went out for a round of golf, or something. This time it seemed like I was hearing music off somewhere that wouldn’t quite run to a tune, then I thought I was out in space looking down at myself and I’d become an old, old man. It made me so depressed and sad I couldn’t stand it. I had to get out of the house and walk around until the feeling wore off.”

&n
bsp; There’d been other, similar episodes that didn’t seem too surprising in a man accustomed to vigorous activity, forced now by his endangered vision to do sedentary work. In addition he was in his late forties, at an age where a man sometimes may be afflicted by the sort of neurotic symptoms that occasionally accompany the menopause in a woman.

  “So you prescribed hormones,” Dr. Claibourne said as David paused thoughtfully in his report.

  “Yes—and it was probably the worst thing I could have done. But his blood-pressure, pulse, respiration, and temperature were all normal, his heart action fine and strong without a trace of a murmur, his chest expansion close to seven inches, blood count negative for any abnormalities, also abdominal and rectal examination. Chest X-ray…”

  “I know—it’s all in the report.” Dr. Claibourne gave him a sharp glance. “You never saw the patient again?”

  “No. I made a follow-up appointment for three weeks later, thinking I’d send him to an alienist then if the episodes persisted and no physical symptoms had developed. But a week before the appointment was due, he phoned to cancel it. Said the hormones had done the trick. He was feeling much better. His wife’s vacation had been rescheduled and they wanted to take the kids on a camping trip. He sounded so much better and more cheerful I thought it would be safe enough to postpone his appointment for a couple of weeks. He didn’t keep that appointment, and no one answered the phone when my nurse tried to call to remind him. When my bills went out at the end of the month I got his statement back with a bitter letter from his wife, charging me with having missed the boat completely in my diagnosis of her husband’s condition. He’d become suddenly worse while they were camping and was virtually paralyzed by the time they got him to the hospital. At her writing he was close to death following surgery for brain cancer. She figured I should have discovered it in time to save his life.”

  David faced Dr. Claibourne squarely. “I honestly don’t believe that an operation on the day I first saw him could have saved his life. Might have prolonged it somewhat, in a state of partial to complete paralysis and mental deterioration. It was only eight weeks after I saw him that the craniotomy revealed a growth so massive it took up half the cerebral space, shoving the brain over to one side. The man had an unusually large skull; pressure didn’t build up early, and that’s probably why the initial symptoms were so mild. Plus the fact that he was in such good health otherwise, I suppose.”