The Nurse Novel

by Alice Brennan

  “The doctor says you are to be admitted as an observer.” She looked at Alice with compassion. “Boy friend?”

  Alice smiled a noncommittal reply.

  “They’re discussing the X rays now. I don’t think they’re going to operate. Somebody’s coming from the Navy for consultation anyhow.” She knocked at the doctor’s office, was admitted, and signaled to Alice to wait.

  A few moments later, Captain Trilling appeared, preoccupied. He nodded to Alice. “I think we’re going to be all right. Close, though. You’re to stay and help in any way you’re asked. Remember, though, he’s Bellevue’s patient, not yours.” And he strode away.

  The doctor appeared, followed by the friendly nurse. “Miss Smith, please follow me and put on your mask when you enter the operating room. You’ll hear everything I have to say when I get in there. No use saying it twice.”

  And he was off, striding down the corridor, a full six feet ahead of the scurrying nurses.

  The operating room was a familiar scene to Alice. There were three nurses by the table, masked and standing, it seemed, at attention. There was an anesthetist and his assistant. And another doctor and an interne. The trays of instruments were ready. Everybody was poised, ready to go. Alice, without being told, slipped into a corner where she could observe without being in the way. There was no sound—save for the tiny gurgling of a sterilizing machine and an indistinct hum of electricity.

  It was a scene familiar, indeed, to Alice. But there was a difference tonight. The man, eyes closed, lying on the operating table and bathed in the bright shadowless light of the circular fixture above him was Morgan O’Neill. He was either still unconscious or under sedation. He, Morgan O’Neill!

  The doctor spoke briefly and crisply. “I’m awaiting a consultation with Dr. Bauman of the Navy—our case is a Navy man, by the way, and Miss Smith, over there, is a Navy nurse. She’s been assigned to us to help in any way she can and to relieve us of our load. She’ll take watches. She’ll take orders like anybody else. For the time being, she’s a member of the staff. Glad to have her.

  “From the spinal tap, there is indication of a trace of blood in the fluid. It is not conclusive, nor is the X ray of the skull. This is close to a fracture, but it may not be one. We don’t want to trephine unless absolutely necessary. The Navy doctor should be along in an hour or less…”

  The doctor was a great teacher as well as surgeon. It was his habit—when he had the time and, as he often ruefully admitted, he never did have the time—to explain the reasons for his orders, rather than to issue them arbitrarily and imperiously to a staff which must obey them to the letter…

  “There’s a room next door ready for the patient. I want him checked every fifteen minutes for the next six hours. Then every hour if all is going well. I’ll be here all night. I want the reports in my office as soon as you have them. Dr. Thayer, you take over and get this properly organized and be in my office in ten minutes. Plenty of time for you. I need you on that Jacobowsky case…” and he was gone.

  They were like a ballet troupe—perfectly trained. The anesthetist and his assistant put away their equipment and disappeared. An orderly appeared from nowhere and Morgan was transferred to that wheeled stretcher which brings mothers to childbirth and old men to death and which incessantly purrs up and down the corridors of hospitals and bears upon it hope and despair and sorrow and happiness, the beginnings and the finalities.

  The light above the operating table was extinguished and Alice followed the procession, a member of it and yet apart. Morgan was to be checked every fifteen minutes—temperature, blood pressure, respiration, pulse. Oh, let her do this. These nurses had other cases. She had but this one. She would check every ten minutes, every five, if they would let her. She followed like an automaton.

  In the room where Morgan was put to bed the friendly nurse now turned to Alice. “Smith,” she said. “I’m the nurse in charge. I have a place for you where you can sleep. We won’t need you tonight.”

  Alice protested, but the nurse cut her short. “These are my orders. Nurse Webster will show you where to go and give you a nightgown and things. And, Webster, she’s to take this pill. Look,” she said, relenting, “you’ve been through more than you know. You’d be in our way tonight if we have to operate. And anyhow you could only be an observer. You’ll do us and your man more good if you’ve had a good sleep and are strong tomorrow.

  “We’ll get you up in time tomorrow and expect you on duty at eight. Good luck. Get that sleep. He’s going to be all right.”

  Alice suddenly realized that never in her life had she been so tired. She wanted to telephone Pat, to tell her what had happened, to ask if she might stay with her while she was assigned to Bellevue and Morgan, but such a weakness now assailed her that she wondered if physically she could follow Nurse Webster to wherever it was she was going. She nodded her thanks, obeying orders, and recognizing common sense.

  Nurse Webster led her to a nurses’ dormitory and helped her undress. She made her take the pill. Alice’s only memory of the trip was of corridors that seemed to swirl, of floors that seemed to sway.

  Yet on the morrow when she was awakened at seven by a bright-eyed young student nurse, she felt strong and confident. After the initial shock of remembering where she was and what had happened, she felt as if a nightmare had passed and that at hand was a benevolent dawn. She didn’t have to be told by the youngster that Morgan was all right, that they didn’t have to operate. She knew.

  “The shower is down there,” said the bright-eyed youngster, “and I’ll be back in about twenty minutes to take you to the cafeteria and show you where to report. And somebody left some things for you. They’re there on the chair.”

  There were two working uniforms, her Navy cap—her beloved Navy nurse’s cap—and a couple of pairs of white stockings and a pair of her white shoes. A note on them said, “Pringle said you’d need these.” It was initialed E. B.

  That would be Dr. Bauman, Captain Bauman, USN. And Pringle was Lieutenant Pringle, the one who always spoke as if she were reading. Pringle, Pringle—how thoughtful can you be, and sound so cold?

  At eight o’clock sharp, Nurse Alice Smith reported for duty at the room of Lieutenant Commander Morgan O’Neill.

  His head was bandaged, but he gave her a grin that was like a million suns. “Never saw you in work clothes before,” he said. “‘Gridley, you may fire when ready.’ Old joke. We had a plebe called Gridley in my class. I meant, ‘Hardy you may kiss me’…” and then he promptly fell asleep.

  Was he irrational? Alice quickly read the chart. Morgan was okay.

  CHAPTER 11

  Friendship is no fragile thing. There are those who will claim it is a more sturdy emotion than love. Absence does not make it grow fonder nor does proximity cause it to grow stale. Friendship, as Mr. Ernest Hemingway might put it, is a true thing and the mark of it is that you can see a friend with whom you have not communicated in years and be completely at ease with her as if you had seen her only the day before.

  It was so with Alice and Pat, in whose apartment they were now chatting. So much had happened, so much, and yet they were talking as if they had seen one another yesterday. Actually, it had been months. But there was ease between them and confidence. Outside, the East River was splashing around as usual, and all was well.

  “No, all isn’t well,” Alice was saying. “He’s well. He’s happily in S.O.Q.—‘Sick Officers’ Quarters.’ We moved him to St. Albans for three weeks’ observation and he has one to go. He’ll be all right…”

  “We have decided not to operate,” the doctor had said. He was the Bellevue man and next to him was the St. Albans doctor, Captain Bauman. He was speaking to a group of maybe fifteen nurses, students, and interns; he was teaching, as was his desire; he was using Morgan to illustrate some points. As if he were a chart. But Morgan was Morgan. He might die, Alice thought.
And if he does—even in death he will be giving something. To his country. And to mine. These students will learn something because I led Morgan O’Neill to death…

  “Now we are going to watch him. Carefully. Scrupulously. There’s a joke about surgeons being knife-happy. I’m a surgeon and so is Dr. Bauman here. But we don’t like to use our knives unless we think them absolutely necessary. And, in this case, we determined not to trephine…

  “We must watch carefully now, lest we made the wrong decision. If the patient becomes progressively lethargic and eventually comatose, we have what we call a subdural hematoma.

  “That, as you know, is a collection of blood in the brain. Commonly known as a blood clot. Then we trephine. We cut the skull and drain out that blood. Otherwise, the patient will die.”

  “Otherwise, the patient will die.” Morgan seemed cheerful—but if he fell asleep she had the haunting dread: “the patient becomes…lethargic or comatose…the patient will die.”

  Never had “vital signs” been checked so often. But Morgan was reacting normally. In another week, he’d be out of the hospital.

  “He’ll be all right,” Alice was saying, “but I’m not.”

  “It took you some time,” Pat said, understanding fully. “But I knew you’d do it. You, Alice, have finally grown up.”

  “I must always have loved him. Didn’t you?”

  Friendship is also a matter of ellipsis. You can skip things that are anyway understood and get right to the point.

  “Oh, for a time I thought so. But it was really because I was sorry for him. You treated him abominably. And he was so in love with you. And still is, of course.”

  “Pat, dear Pat, I’d give anything in the world if he was. How could I have been so mistaken?”

  “You hadn’t grown up. You know,” she added, “he’s really shy. Big Navy man and all that. Probably could steer a destroyer at twenty knots up this river, but it’s hard for him to talk to a girl. You know what I’d do? I’d propose to him. We’ve got the vote, haven’t we? Why is it always the man who must propose? Girls can, too. I did.”

  “You what?”

  “You know the story about the kid around the corner? I had one, a little guy named Joe, and the first time I met him—I was six, I think, and bigger than he—I punched him in the nose and knocked him down. He hated me ever after. And the other night, out of the blue, he asked me to dinner—oh, I’d seen him now and then since we grew up—and I just looked at him and I heard myself saying, ‘Joe, I think I’d like to marry you,’ and he said, ‘It’s a deal.’

  “Romantic, eh? I always thought it would be in a gondola in Venice or at least on a ski lift in the Adirondacks. So it was in a two-bit Italian restaurant and I was the one to say it…

  “‘It’s a deal,’ he said, and I’ve never been happier. He has no money at all and that means we will be twice that happy. He’s out this minute shopping for an engagement ring and I’ll need a magnifying glass to see the stone…”

  “Pat…” and the girls embraced, Alice so happy in her own friend’s happiness…and Alice so happy, selfishly, for herself. For she felt this was an augury.

  “What happened,” said Pat after a while, “to your former boyfriend?”

  “They’re sending him back to France. Deporting is the word, I guess. I haven’t spoken to Jacques since… I couldn’t…”

  “And what happened to that little bibelot he gave you? A sort of nice-looking diamond necklace from Cartier’s?”

  Girls do not forget matters like these and levelheaded Pat was sure to remember it.

  “I gave it to Captain Trilling to return. He said legally it was mine. I said I wanted no part of it; either return it or sell it and give the money to Navy Relief.”

  “That was the right thing to do,” said Pat, “though I think if you had offered it to me I would probably have accepted it.”

  “I didn’t think of it, Pat. I’m sorry.”

  And the girls laughed. And Pat thought: she has really grown up. And Alice thought: I’m so happy for Pat. And, please God, make me happy, too. For I can make Morgan happy. “Propose.” What a silly word. But if Pat could do it, so can I.

  The romantic idea of slipping hack to Alexanderville and working in its hospital seemed suddenly far away. With grim determination Alice took the subway back to St. Albans where she was not only going to take care of her patient (she had the eight-to-four shift) but she was going to propose to him.

  * * * *

  Robert Burns wrote a poem about the best laid schemes going aft agley. It was thus with Alice. Morgan O’Neill was going to be dismissed from the hospital in three days and she had decided that today she would propose to him. She was going to be very business-like about it. No sentimentality. So that if he did not accept her there would be no trouble or embarrassment. But embarrassment and trouble there was.

  Morgan’s father had come to the hospital at seven o’clock that morning and was sitting in his room when Alice reported for duty. She was steeled for the proposal she was going to make and seeing the genial old man there abashed and disconcerted her as if she had been late—whereas she had been precisely on time. Would he think, he who might be her father-in-law, that she didn’t take proper care of Morgan?

  And the thoughts raced on: Morgan was a patient like anybody else and who had let Mr. O’Neill in anyhow? Morgan shouldn’t have visitors that early; and while Mr. O’Neill was a nice old man, that Pat Smith was an idiot. A girl doesn’t propose to a man who is obviously through with her after all she’s done to him, and anyhow you turned him down once, and then…and then it was only three minutes past eight.

  Mr. O’Neill said, “My son says he’s going to marry you.”

  Nurse Smith promptly spilled the glass of orange juice she was holding and went into a bathroom and cried. A few moments later, crisply a nurse, she returned.

  “Is there anything you want, Morgan?” she asked. She had the feeling she had invented what had gone on before.

  But Morgan answered, “You.” And then added, “Come on, Dad. You’ll be late at the office. Alice and I have things to talk about.”

  The old man rose and kissed Alice on the cheek and Alice wished she were back in the bathroom crying again. But as soon as he left, she leaned over the hospital bed and kissed her patient fully and moistly upon the lips. This was strictly against regulations.

  “Darling,” she said.

  * * * *

  And then she was on leave and he was on leave and they were sitting in Pat’s apartment and it was six o’clock (1800 Navy time) and the sky was blue and there was one cloud in it. “Darling,” she said, and it seemed there was nothing more to be said. Tomorrow they were to go to Alexanderville to be married and Pat would be her maid of honor.

  “Darling,” she said again, for there were indeed more things to talk about and some of them should be spoken now and then forever forgotten. “How could I have made such a dreadful mistake?”

  “You will please,” said Lieutenant Commander O’Neill, “forget about that. We will not discuss it further. It was very understandable and everybody is entitled to at least one mistake.”

  “Darling,” she said—that wonderful word she had just invented—“you’re not making one now, I promise.”

  “I know,” he said, and Pat being blissfully away, blissfully they kissed.

  “You know,” he said, a few million years later, though actually it was only a trifle of minutes, “you are something of a heroine. Through you we got onto a spy ring, but also through you we got the leader, the man behind the mirror. The one who had escaped all of us!”

  “How? Who?” She was interested, intrigued, but she would have much preferred to have him kiss her again.

  “It was the young man who was your guide on that trip you took around the island. You know I never could get diamonds out of my head and ju
st on a hunch—his saying at high noon that the George Washington Bridge looked like a diamond necklace—well, we followed it up and that was that.

  “All his agents had cue words and when they came to town they took the trip and he would drop the word into his spiel. Stern’s was diamonds. That meant he had to report immediately to Van der Meer, poor man, who actually was on our side. We picked him up just a couple of days ago and he told everything in the hopes of leniency.”

  “Such a young man. Such a nice man.”

  She remembered him, with the black hair and the easy manner and the thick glasses.

  “A young man, yes, but not so nice.”

  And then Morgan kissed her again and it was the closing of a chapter.

  * * * *

  Everybody was there at the church in Alexanderville and everybody came to drink New York State champagne at Hiram Smith’s old farm, loaned for the occasion. It was a simple ceremony. Pat was maid of honor, looking stunning in an apple-green dress, and Morgan’s best man was a classmate from Annapolis. Hiram Smith gave his daughter away and there was no prouder man in the state—he who had once said his daughter was plain. They were married in U.S. Navy uniforms and all Alexanderville felt as proud as Hiram, as if somehow they had something to do with it. The mothers said, “I told you that Alice was one of the nicest girls in town,” and looked with distaste at their daughters-in-law. And everybody gasped when they heard that the couple would honeymoon in Tokyo.

  It remained for Spence Williams, who three million years ago had made a pass at Alice by Road Lake, to ask, “Are you staying in the Navy, Alice?”

  And it was Alice, triumphant, grown-up, and calm at last, who smilingly answered, “For a while, probably, Spence. But, you see, a Navy nurse cannot have dependent children under eighteen years of age. And I never heard of a baby being born nineteen years old. So someday I shall be leaving the Navy. But Morgan will carry on.”

  And Mr. O’Neill, who hated champagne but had prevailed upon Hiram to give him a bottle of bourbon whisky, drank a toast to the thought.