Cherry Ames Boxed Set 1-4

by Helen Wells

  It was the patients in those beds, however, who concerned Cherry most. These men who lay under khaki blankets, pale under their fading sunburns—some of them were mere boys—smiled when the girls came in. Some of them had been lying there a long time, Captain Johnny Mae Cowan whispered. Some of them had been injured in the line of duty. Some were victims of common illnesses. Cherry saw many postoperative cases, as well. Corpsmen, too, smiled at the new nurses. So did the few native nurses, little dark-eyed girls in white.

  From floor to floor, from one sprawling old wing to another, Cherry saw each soldier’s face turn on the pillow and light up gratefully as the new nurses came in. “Lord knows they need you!” Johnny Mae Cowan whispered. The girls nodded soberly, but inside, Cherry glowed. One boy weakly called out to her, “Hi, Red Cheeks, it makes me feel better just to look at you!”

  When Cherry left the hospital late that afternoon, she did not at first recognize the tall elegant uniformed figure blocking the big door. Then her heart sank, Paul Endicott!

  “Hello, Lieutenant Ames. So nice to see you,” he said wryly.

  “How are you, Captain Endicott? It’s a surprise to find you here.”

  “I’m working with the supply ships leaving this port. I’m also,” he added, “still doing liaison work with Spencer unit.”

  “How nice,” Cherry said faintly.

  “Is Vivian Warren coming out soon?” Paul asked. He made no further pretense of being friendly with Cherry.

  “Yes, Vivian will be right down. See you again.” And Cherry left. So she thought she was safely rid of him! She should have known anything can happen in the Army … should have guessed that Paul would continue in the same work at home or abroad! She wondered what sort of work he was doing with the incoming and outgoing ships.

  Except for the disturbing thought of Endicott, Cherry spent a happy evening with Ann and Gwen. They wandered a while through picturesque markets, then dined by candlelight in an open patio. Later they walked along the crumbling Paseo, arm in arm, in the tropic night.

  Cherry was curled up in bed, and the other girls were drifting off to sleep, when Vivian tiptoed into their room. Cherry knew she had had a date with Paul Endicott. Vivian softly came over to Cherry’s bed. Cherry grinned at her in the half-light.

  “I’m awake. Hello.”

  Vivian whispered, “There’s the most beautiful moon. It really is worth getting up to see.”

  Cherry understood Vivian was thrilled after her romantic evening, and wanted to tell her about it. She rose, put on her robe and slippers, and the two girls slipped out to a little balcony. The enormous moon shone down with pure blue-white radiance on the sleeping white city.

  “Did you ever see such a lovely night,” Vivian murmured. Her wistful face, pale in the moonlight, was deeply moved. “Just look at that moon!”

  She did not mention Paul. But Cherry knew that it was not the beauty of the night, only a rather shabby sort of man, that stirred Vivian so much. It made Cherry feel terribly sad. Vivian’s first taste of happiness might be pathetically short-lived. She should have warned her sooner about Paul. Vivian’s danger was growing, she had certainly better not delay that warning any longer. The look on Vivian’s dreaming face did not make her task any easier. Cherry chose her words with care.

  “Moonlight and romance are wonderful, aren’t they? It’s pretty hard to keep one’s head sometimes.”

  Vivian smiled and admitted, “It is hard to keep your head. But Paul’s so sweet to me. Honestly, he’s so wonderful, Cherry! Why, this is the nicest thing that’s ever happened to me!”

  “It must be extra hard,” Cherry agreed sympathetically, “to keep your head about Paul Endicott. He really is awfully handsome and charming. I don’t want to interfere, Vivian, but … anyhow, why don’t you think about it a little bit.”

  The two girls leaned against the balcony rail, drinking in the lovely night and musing. Finally Vivian said earnestly:

  “Tell me something, Cherry. I can see you’re really worried about me. Why don’t you like Paul?”

  “It’s not that I dislike him. I don’t. And for all I know, I may be judging him unfairly. Maybe he’s every bit as nice as you say he is,” Cherry said, bending over backwards to be fair. “But I’m certain of one thing. He is self-centered and I’m just afraid he’ll do something to make you unhappy.”

  “Oh, no!” Vivian protested. “He’s too fine! Besides, what could Paul do to hurt me?”

  Cherry looked out over the silvery roofs, then back to Vivian. She laughed a little ruefully. It was so hard to make Vivian see. “You’ve had so many disappointments, Vivian, I … I just hope you don’t have another one on Endicott’s account.”

  Vivian sighed. “But it’s so nice, falling in love …” She gave Cherry’s arm an affectionate squeeze. “How’s about you?”

  Cherry grinned and yawned. “If you mean Lex, I don’t even know where Lex is. Come on in. What you and I need just now is sleep! In … large … quantities!” Cherry yawned.

  Yet Cherry missed Lex that first week. She had had no word of or from him. Finally one day his familiar voice came over the crackling wire of the ward phone. He sounded warm and reassuring.

  “I’m going to work on your ward,” he told her. “In about a week!”

  “Oh, Lex! I’m so glad!” she replied, and meant it. She waited for the good sight of his solid, reliable figure striding down the ward.

  Toward the middle of the month, Cherry looked up from making a bed to see Lex marching down the aisle of beds. With his broad shoulders and competent air, he clearly promised help to these patients. His golden brown eyes sought her out immediately. Cherry was surprised at how glad and relieved she felt to see him.

  “It’s been a long time,” he said to her. Then he looked around the ward. “There’s a lot to do here, isn’t there? We’ll talk tonight, if you can come out.” Lex went from bed to bed. He examined, discussed, prescribed, leaving a feeling of security and encouragement among the men.

  Cherry met Lex that evening at the Army Hospital’s library. When every other doctor and officer despaired of even time to sleep, Lex managed to squeeze in studies of new developments in medicine. As he put aside the pamphlets he was studying, Cherry saw he had something white and lacy in his hand.

  “A mantilla for you,” he said, and handed it to her.

  Cherry thanked him as Lex hurried her out into the cobblestoned street and helped her into an old-fashioned, horse-drawn hansom.

  They rode, in the twilight, into the hills. They came to a ranch with a big farmhouse. On its wide porch, under the amber light of lanterns, tables were set. Cherry and Lex chose a corner one which looked far out over the night-shrouded mountains, down into the lighted city, beyond the harbor fortress to the Pacific.

  “What a spot!” Cherry murmured, her black eyes widening. She looked back to Lex appreciatively. “I’ll bet even that ladies’ man Endicott hasn’t discovered this place. You know, Lex, he doesn’t like me because he suspects I disapprove of him. And because Vivian is one of my best friends, Paul is afraid I’ll influence her.”

  “Quite possible,” Lex agreed. “But let’s not let him spoil our dinner. What shall we order?”

  As they ate, Lex explained why he and Major Fortune had not sailed with the rest of Spencer unit. Dr. Joe had precious drugs and equipment, too precious to risk to enemy submarines. He and Lex had flown to Panama. Since their arrival, they had been secretly—almost under guard—setting up Dr. Joe’s laboratory for the field experiment he wanted so urgently to test out. Until now, Lex had been unable to see her. And even now, he hinted at some vague, strange risk.

  “Why all the secrecy? What’s the danger?” Cherry puzzled. She added wistfully, “I miss seeing Dr. Joe.”

  Lex filled Cherry’s demitasse, then his own, before he replied. “I think,” he said slowly, considering his words, “that I’m going to take you to see Dr. Joe. He needs encouragement. It would do him good to see you.”

>   They went on to talk of many other things. Cherry looked at his strong, familiar face smiling at her across the table. It was so satisfying to be with Lex! Lex had asked her an important question just before her graduation and, one of these days, Cherry foresaw, Lex would ask her again, and she did not know what she should reply. It would be only a matter of time. And in the Army, time could be startlingly telescoped.

  They left the hacienda in the hills, and when they came back into Panama City, something else roused Cherry’s curiosity. Their cab driver, an old man, returned via the native barrio. These narrow, twisting streets were crowded close with square white clay houses, pressing against the sidewalk and each other. But the driver circled his horse past a deserted lane which had no houses, except one at the end which he carefully avoided.

  Lex shouted to the driver, “Why are you taking us the long way around?”

  The old man turned around. “That house.” He pointed. Unlike the others, this dark, empty house stood alone in a wilderness of neglected garden. “That house no good! Don’t go near!”

  Lex shrugged. “He’s superstitious, probably. Well, every town has its haunted house.”

  The driver turned around again and said insistently, “Not a story. Bad house! Haunted!”

  “Did you hear that, Lex?” she said under her breath.

  Lex laughed at her. “Oh, pooh! If you want local color, just tie that mantilla over your head!”

  Cherry had quite another sort of mystery to think about when Lex took her to visit Major Fortune some afternoons later. Lex was waiting for her when she went off duty. They walked over to a small, guarded laboratory building, in the U.S. Medical Corps area. Entering Dr. Joe’s littered research room, they walked into the middle of an argument. Both Major Fortune and Colonel Wylie, Spencer unit’s director, were furiously excited.

  “I said no and no it remains!” Colonel Wylie was shouting. His steely gray eyes and hawk face made Cherry shudder, not entirely from force of habit. The eminent surgeon was thoroughly, stubbornly angry. “Let me remind you, Fortune, that you as a researcher are present here … that you are accompanying this unit … solely through my courtesy! You know this isn’t a usual arrangement. You simply haven’t the time to do research on two things. Stick to the one that’s militarily necessary, and drop the tropical research! The U.S. Public Health Service is handling that. Your precious time must be used for the other problem. Concentrate on that!”

  Dr. Joe started to speak, but Colonel Wylie turned away, refusing to hear another word. Cherry and Lex were standing still in the doorway. Colonel Wylie saw them now, and nodded curtly. Major Fortune came over to Cherry.

  “I’m glad to see you, my dear.” He put his hand heavily on her shoulder. “I wish I could ask you how Midge and the Ames’s and Hilton are.”

  “Don’t worry. They’re all right.” Cherry smiled her very warmest at him.

  Dr. Joe’s troubled face cleared a little. He patted her shoulder, and turned away to talk with Colonel Wylie again in low tones. Meanwhile Lex explained to Cherry what all the excitement was about. Dr. Joe wanted to try out new control measures against malaria and similar tropical fevers to protect soldiers from disease in jungle warfare. Lex went on to talk of an extraordinary military base here in Panama. It was a U.S. Army base, but it was carved out of the jungle. No woman had ever been there, and the only men there were our soldiers and Indians.

  “Indians?” Cherry echoed.

  “Yes, our soldiers in that jungle base owe their lives from day to day,” Lex told Cherry, with a warmly appreciative look in his eyes, “to the natives and Indians who work with them. Those Indians know the secrets of the jungle. They know how to fight the jungle. They’re fighting this war, too.” He continued, “Our soldiers are hard pressed to keep alive in the jungle with its treacherous swamps, its poisonous undergrowth, its dense wildernesses, its deadly creatures—that’s where the Indians help—and with its intense wet heat, mosquitoes and the steady threat of malaria—that’s where the U.S. Public Health Service comes in, waging a never-relenting war against all carriers and sources of tropical fevers.”

  Colonel Wylie, who had been listening to Lex, suddenly burst out:

  “Exactly. The U.S. Public Health Service is on the job twenty-four hours a day. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Fortune.”

  Then, seizing his hat, Colonel Wylie strode out.

  Cherry saw Dr. Joe’s head droop. The straight lock of gray hair fell over one eye. He looked like a disheartened little boy. Cherry felt very sorry for him. She understood how much this new malaria serum meant to Dr. Joe. He, with Lex’s assistance, had started research on it back at Spencer … had already put in many months on it … and here he was in Panama, where an epidemic was a constant threat, with no time for proving his serum. Her heart went out to him and she wanted very much to help her old friend.

  Lex and Cherry stayed a while, chatting with Dr. Joe. But the elderly man was upset and preoccupied. He clearly wanted to be left alone. Cherry said good-by to him, and a few minutes later to Lex.

  She walked along, unaware of her surroundings, lost in deep thought about poor Dr. Joe and the recent scene she had witnessed. Suddenly she realized that she was in front of the hospital library. She decided to do a little reading on malaria. But the library was just closing.

  Cherry worked hard on the wards all this summery month of November. She was assigned to Medical, a long spread-out, old-fashioned three rooms, along with a Panamanian nurse. Rita Martinez was a tiny, wiry, dark little girl, as lively as a sparrow. She had sharp, small features, olive skin, tilted black eyes that gleamed with fun, and a quick smile that showed off perfect white teeth. Her raven black straight hair was knotted demurely under her nurse’s cap. As a citizen of an Allied nation, she too was a lieutenant in the Army Nurse Corps, and very proud of it. Rita turned out to be a delight to work with, and Cherry’s good friend.

  Despite Cherry’s being very busy, thoughts of Dr. Joe and the scene in the laboratory occasionally crossed her mind. She had had lectures on malaria in basic, but they were necessarily sketchy lessons. One day, Cherry asked Rita what she knew about tropical fevers. Rita knew a great deal about them. She described the symptoms of such fevers to Cherry. Although the U.S. Public Health Service had it pretty well under control in Panama, there was still tropical fever in the backwoods. Tropical fevers were deadly diseases and Rita hoped some day to specialize in them. Cherry became so interested that she borrowed a reference volume on tropical fevers with the hope that she could somehow find the time to learn more about them.

  One of Cherry’s ward duties was to train several corpsmen. They, not the nurses, did the actual bedside nursing, and all the handling and lifting of patients, while the nurses supervised. Bunce and George and another boy had been Cherry’s corpsmen at Herold, the other six were new. They had had some theory but too little practice. Bunce stood out easily as the best corpsman of the group. He watched the patients as constantly and closely as Cherry herself. He was eager to help and entirely unselfish. But Cherry noted, from his preoccupied grin, and from his whispering with the corpsmen and patients, that Bunce was preparing some deviltry again.

  “Don’t forget I’ve got an official eye on you!” Cherry warned him.

  “Yes’m,” Bunce agreed, his blue eyes twinkling. “If you can reform me, you’re good! But if you could,” he added almost pleadingly, “before I get into real serious trouble, I’d be much obliged to you!”

  He was promoting non-existent stamps among the patients and corpsmen with an ardent sales talk that almost convinced Cherry herself to invest in them. Cherry squelched that quickly.

  Rita Martinez had an unquenchable love of mischief, too, Cherry discovered. One day Cherry asked Rita where she had learned to speak such good “American.” Cherry was helping her put away linens, for tiny Rita could not reach the top shelves.

  “I lived with my aunt in New York. I’ll tell you what, Señorita Cherry!” Cherry groa
ned—what with her black eyes and red cheeks, that nickname was catching on. “I’ll teach you to speak Spanish!”

  Bunce ambled up just then. He was almost twice as tall as little Rita. The two of them grinned at each other.

  “Learn Spanish?” Bunce looked interested too. “Go right ahead—don’t mind me.”

  “All right,” Rita said. She primly folded her little hands in front of her apron. “Loco, that means Chief Nurse. You call her that. When someone tells you to hurry, you say, “Si, mañana. If you want to say——”

  “Hey! Just a minute!” Bunce hitched up his trousers in perplexity. “I learned some Spanish in school. Loco means crazy—she can’t call the Chief Nurse crazy to her face! And if someone says, Hurry, she dasn’t say, Yes, tomorrow. Say, what is this?”

  Rita leaned against the linen closet door, doubled up with laughter. “Why did you have to tell her?”

  Bunce’s eye kindled, as he joyously if warily recognized a kindred spirit. Cherry was convulsed, too, in spite of her visions of the wild results of Rita’s coaching.

  “Just wait!” Rita said, still giggling. “I’m going to teach someone Spanish yet!”

  “Seriously,” Cherry pleaded, “teach me a few useful words, like hospital, doctor, nurse, medicine, and … uh … hello, okay … and food! Roast beef, steak, and potatoes.”

  “Certainly,” Rita said. As Cherry and Bunce listened, she reeled off, “El hospital, el doctor, la nurse, el medecino, hóla, okay, rosbif, biftec, patatas.” Then she broke down again with laughter.