by Helen Wells
CHERRY AMES NURSE STORIES
CHERRY AMES
CRUISE NURSE
By
HELEN WELLS
Copyright © 1948 by Grosset & Dunlap, Inc.
Copyright © renewed 2007 by Harriet Schulman Forman
Springer Publishing Company, LLC
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Springer Publishing Company, LLC.
Springer Publishing Company, LLC
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Acquisitions Editor: Sally J. Barhydt
Series Editor: Harriet S. Forman
Production Editor: Carol Cain
Cover design: Takeout Graphics, Inc.
Composition: Apex Publishing, LLC
07 08 09 10/ 5 4 3 2 1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wells, Helen.
Cherry Ames, cruise nurse / by Helen Wells.
p. cm. — (Cherry Ames nurse stories)
Summary: Looking forward to a working vacation as nurse on a cruise ship to the Caribbean, Cherry Ames soon finds herself embroiled in a dangerous mystery involving a sickly child and greedy men anxious to find a secret stockpile of precious ambergris.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8261-0411-3 (alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8261-0411-8 (alk. paper)
[1. Nurses—Fiction. 2. Ocean travel—Fiction. 3. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 4. Mystery and detective stories.] I. Title.
PZ7.W4644Cde 2007
[Fic]—dc22 2007016206
* * *
Printed in the United States of America by Bang Printing
Contents
FOREWORD
I
WAITING FOR A LETTER
II
“BON VOYAGE!”
III
SICK BAY
IV
TIMMY
V
MR. ROUGH DIAMOND
VI
SCUTTLEBUTT
VII
A STORMY NIGHT
VIII
TIMMY’S MYSTERIOUS VISITOR
IX
UNCLE BEN
X
JAN’S PROBLEM
XI
TIMMY’S PIRATE
XII
CAUGHT OFF BOUNDS!
XIII
A STOLEN LETTER
XIV
WAIDLER AND ZIGGY ARE EVASIVE
XV
MILK OF MAGNESIA
XVI
JAN SETS A TRAP
XVII
A TREE FOR TIMMY
XVIII
CHRISTMAS JUGGLERY
XIX
HAPPY ENDING
Foreword
Helen Wells, the author of the Cherry Ames stories, said, “I’ve always thought of nursing, and perhaps you have, too, as just about the most exciting, important, and rewarding profession there is. Can you think of any other skill that is always needed by everybody, everywhere?”
I was and still am a fan of Cherry Ames. Her courageous dedication to her patients; her exciting escapades; her thirst for knowledge; her intelligent application of her nursing skills; and the respect she achieved as a registered nurse (RN) all made it clear to me that I was going to follow in her footsteps and become a nurse—nothing else would do. Thousands of other young readers were motivated by Cherry Ames to become RNs as well. Through her thought-provoking stories, Cherry Ames led a steady stream of students into schools of nursing across the country well into the 1960s and 1970s when the series ended.
Readers who remember enjoying these books in the past will take pleasure in reading them again now—whether or not they chose nursing as their life’s work. Perhaps they will share them with others and even motivate a person or two to choose nursing as a career path.
My nursing path has been rich and satisfying. I have delivered babies, cared for people in hospitals and in their homes, and saved lives. I have worked at the bedside and served as an administrator, I have published journals, written articles, taught students, consulted, and given expert testimony. Never once did I regret my decision to become a nurse.
During the time that I was publishing a nursing journal, I became acquainted with Robert Wells, brother of Helen Wells. In the course of conversation I learned that Ms. Wells had passed on and left the Cherry Ames copyright to Mr. Wells. Because there is a shortage of nurses here in the US today, I thought, “Why not bring Cherry back to motivate a whole new generation of young people? Why not ask Mr. Wells for the copyright to Cherry Ames?” Mr. Wells agreed, and the republished series is dedicated both to Helen Wells, the original author, and to her brother, Robert Wells, who transferred the rights to me. I am proud to ensure the continuation of Cherry Ames into the twenty-first century.
The final dedication is to you, both new and old readers of Cherry Ames: It is my dream that you enjoy Cherry’s nursing skills as well as her escapades. I hope that young readers will feel motivated to choose nursing as their life’s work. Remember, as Helen Wells herself said: there’s no other skill that’s “always needed by everybody, everywhere.”
Harriet Schulman Forman, RN, EdD
Series Editor
CHAPTER I
Waiting for a Letter
CHERRY OPENED ONE DARK-BROWN EYE AND CLOSED IT again quickly. Shivering, she pulled the covers up until her black curls were hidden beneath the thick, crazy-quilt comforter.
Cherry had been dreaming. It was such a very pleasant dream she didn’t want to stop. She was dreaming that she was back in her own room in Hilton, Illinois. She had cautiously opened one eye to make sure everything was exactly the same in the dream as it was in real life:
Her dressing table with its dotted-swiss skirts and brisk red bows; the crisp, ruffled white curtains tied back with bright-red ribbon; a stream of cold December sunlight pouring through the open window to bring out the varied colors in the hooked rug her grandmother had made.
Cherry sighed. If only the dream could come true. But, of course, she wasn’t home. She was with the rest of the Spencer Club in Greenwich Village, New York City.
For one year and three months now Cherry had been a visiting nurse, sharing No. 9, the Greenwich Village apartment, with Josie, Gwen, Bertha, Vivian, and Mai Lee. They were all visiting nurses too. Thinking about the Spencer Club made Cherry realize more than ever that she must be dreaming. If she were awake she would hear them chattering as they dressed and breakfasted.
No one could sleep through the chatter and the clatter and confusion of an early working-day morning in No. 9. You couldn’t even dream through it, Cherry decided, and boldly opened both eyes. She sniffed tentatively.
The crisp, cold air was laden with the delicious blend of freshly perked coffee and thick slabs of bacon frying on the stove in her mother’s kitchen. Cherry pinched one red cheek and then the other. She was awake. She wasn’t dreaming! She was home!
And then it all came back to her. She remembered that two weeks ago the dizziness had suddenly gotten worse; so much worse that everything went black for a minute. The dizzy spells, she had known for a long time, were due to fatigue.
Cherry had been making a report about a contagious disease that had suddenly broken out in her district: Mumps—nothing very serious, but should they try the new inoculation?
“The Lerner children are all down with it,” Cherry was stuttering. Her tongue felt thick and dry in her mouth. Her head ached. Her back ached. Her legs ached from knee to toe. Her feet were weight
ed down with the iron clamps of complete exhaustion.
She stared across the desk, trying to focus her eyes on Miss Dorothy Davis, her supervisor. And then all of a sudden Miss Davis’s face began to dance and whirl. Nausea flooded over Cherry. She gripped the edge of the desk with sweating fingers. She wasn’t going to faint. Nurses don’t go around fainting. Nurses can’t even spare the time to be sick. Not when they know that in one year in New York City alone the Visiting Nurse Service gave nursing care to almost five million people!
But Cherry did faint. Everything went black for a minute. When she came to, Miss Davis had pushed Cherry’s head down between her knees. Now she handed Cherry a glass of water into which she had stirred a teaspoon of aromatic spirits of ammonia.
“Drink up,” Miss Davis said briskly. “You’re going to be all right, Ames. You’re overtired. Need a vacation. Take your work too seriously.”
Cherry drank up and felt better. The dizziness ebbed away, but the ache had spread to every bone and joint in her body. She struggled to her feet. Miss Davis tucked Cherry’s hand in the crook of her arm.
“I’m sending you home in a cab,” she said. “A relief nurse will cover your district while you’re gone. And you’re going to be gone for one whole month.”
“Oh, no, please,” Cherry had protested weakly. “Mr. Morvell … Mrs. di Pattio … the Lerner children—”
The supervisor snapped her fingers, her brown eyes flashing. But her smile was warm. “Listen to me, Cherry Ames. You’re not the only visiting nurse in the world. Run-down and exhausted as you are, you’re not really much good to us. You’re a liability right now.” She grinned to take the edge off her words. “A month’s leave of absence and you’re an asset again. We need assets. Your boss’s orders. See?”
Cherry had managed a sickly laugh. “Yes, ma’am, but—”
And then Mrs. Berkey, the assistant supervisor, appeared on the scene. She was tall and capable looking, and her gray eyes were grim. “I’m taking you home, Ames,” she said. “Now. Have an errand downtown anyway. Cab’s waiting. Hustle into your coat and rubbers. I’m a busy woman.”
Cherry meekly obeyed. Orders were orders. She was too weary to argue further anyway.
Outside in the street, Mrs. Berkey, holding Cherry firmly by the arm as they walked toward a waiting cab, said, “Miss Davis and I have had our eyes on you for the past month. You need a good long rest. And a change.”
During the ride downtown Mrs. Berkey had said something else which even now Cherry couldn’t quite believe. She’d said that what Cherry needed was a Caribbean cruise. Miss Davis was going to try to arrange it. Her brother, Dr. Fowler Davis, was in the medical department of one of the big steamship lines.
There was, however, a long waiting list. Cruise jobs were prized by nurses, exhausted by long hours and understaffed hospitals. But Cherry, Mrs. Berkey said, should spend a couple of weeks at home before taking on any new duties anyway. And then it would be the holiday season. A great many nurses on the list might withdraw their names, preferring to spend Christmas at home …
Cherry sat up in bed and tugged the comforter around her shoulders. It was too good to come true. A Caribbean cruise! The round trip would take twelve days. Almost two weeks of warm weather and sea air. A stopover at the exciting-sounding island of Curaçao in the Netherlands West Indies; then on to Venezuela and Colombia in South America.
But there was a long waiting list. That, Cherry decided, was the catch. There must be hundreds of other overtired young nurses ahead of her on the list. They must have signed up ages ago for ship’s-nurse jobs on luxury ocean liners cruising to glamorous Caribbean ports. What chance did Ames have?
Ames, Cherry admitted ruefully, had waited too long. She had known a month ago that she was suffering from fatigue and needed a vacation, if not a change.
“I was silly,” Cherry scolded herself now. “As Miss Davis said, I’m not the only visiting nurse in the world.”
Well, she had learned her lesson. She had been relaxing now for almost two weeks and felt fine. But it still seemed like a dream to be home.
Breakfast in bed. Window-shopping with Midge, home too, for the holidays. Long, satisfying talks with Midge’s father, Dr. Joe. And best of all, wonderful, quiet evenings around the fire with her mother and father. They talked very little as they munched buttered popcorn and lazily cracked nuts, watching the smoldering logs crumple into dying embers. But the very peace and quiet of those happy evenings had gradually stopped the dull ache in her tired body. And now that Charlie was home on vacation too, life was perfect.
“In bed from nine to noon,” Dr. Joseph Fortune had ordered, affectionately stern. He had ushered Cherry and her twin brother, Charlie, into the world. It was Dr. Joe who had inspired her to become a nurse.
Dear Dr. Joe with his beautiful, sensitive face and luminous eyes! “He was really worried about me when I tottered off the train and practically collapsed into Dad’s arms.”
Charlie had been worried too, Cherry knew; almost as upset as her parents had been, although she had gained back a few pounds before his arrival. But he hid his anxiety under a steady stream of teasing:
“If you don’t get those red cheeks back soon, Nurse Ames, we’ll have to change your name to Lily.”
Charlie was the only one to whom Cherry had confided her dream of a Caribbean cruise. Cherry felt certain that her parents and Dr. Joe would have strenuous objections if she so much as mentioned it. It would be hard to convince them that she was well and strong now; that the trip actually would be good for her.
But Charlie understood. Charlie was as fair as his twin was dark, but they both had the same pert features. And Charlie was as much in love with preparing for his engineering career as Cherry had been with hers.
“Of course, nothing may come of it,” Cherry had told him one night as they crunched through the snow on their way home from an early movie. “But I can dream, can’t I? A ship’s nurse on a luxury liner complete with swimming pool! You and Dad shoveling snow while I’m taking sun baths on the promenade deck.”
“Wait a minute!” Charlie had stopped and swung her around so fast that her overshoes skidded on an icy patch in the sidewalk. “Let me get this straight. Are you working your way to South America or going as a passenger?”
Cherry giggled. “Both. I understand the work’s not too hard except when there’s an epidemic of seasickness or an emergency of some sort. Besides, I like to work. I’d be bored to death lying in the sun and dunking myself in the pool all day long.”
Charlie chuckled. “You’ll run into seasickness, honey, the first night out. But good. Rough seas when you hit the Gulf Stream around Cape Hatteras. Wouldn’t be surprised if you landed in sick bay yourself.”
Cherry pretended to pout. “You’re just jealous, you landlubber you!”
“Seriously, honey, it’s a wonderful idea. I hope you get the job. You deserve it, and the change will fix you right up. You’ll be as good as new when you come back; fat and brown with those fabulous red cheeks of yours.”
“Keep your fingers crossed, Charlie, please.” Cherry had tucked her arm affectionately through his. “There’s a long waiting list.”
There it was again. That disheartening little phrase: just three simple words, “Long waiting list!”
Now Cherry jumped out of bed, closed the window, and popped into the warmth of the bathroom to brush her teeth and dash icy cold water into her face, “I won’t think about it any more,” she resolutely mumbled into the towel. “I’m almost halfway through my month’s vacation now. If word doesn’t come soon I wouldn’t be able to take the job anyway.”
She snatched up a warm bed jacket of quilted blue silk and hopped hack into bed, obeying Dr. Joe’s orders to the letter. Then counting on her fingers she said out loud:
“I’ve already had twelve days. The round-trip cruise is another twelve days. Twelve and twelve make twenty-four. One month is four weeks. There are twenty-eight days in four weeks …”<
br />
There was a knock on her door. It opened a crack. Midge’s face appeared. “Talking to herself. That means money in the bank. Or that she’s losing her mind.”
After Midge’s face came the rest of her; or at least what you could see behind the enormous breakfast tray she was carrying.
“Good morning, Miss Fortune,” Cherry greeted her teen-age neighbor, Dr. Joe’s mischievous daughter. “Since when did you start specialing me?” She crossed her legs under her and reached out hungrily for the tray.
Midge sniffed. “Specialing indeed. I’m not your private duty nurse. I’m your mother’s helper, that’s all.” She curled up at the foot of the bed adding, “And my father’s private detective. I’m to sit right here and see that you eat every morsel on the tray. Even that burnt crust on the toast I made.”
Cherry gratefully gulped down a large glass of fresh orange juice. “There’s my vitamin C for the day. And I like burnt toast. Especially when you can coat it with sweet butter and homemade strawberry jam.” She sighed in ecstasy. “Did you scramble these delicious, fluffy eggs, Midge Fortune?”
It was, of course, a rhetorical question. Midge didn’t bother to answer. It was an accepted fact in Hilton that harum-scarum Midge was about as domestically inclined as a longshoreman.
After Dr. Fortune’s wife died, Midge had tried in her own way to keep house for him between school and mischievous pranks. But her own way was so topsy-turvy that Dr. Joe might have become anemic if he hadn’t been frequently invited to supper by Mrs. Ames. Cherry herself had often swept and dusted the Fortune house; made beds, seen to it that the kitchen cupboards and the refrigerator were stocked with easy-to-prepare but vitamin- and mineral-packed meals.
“It’s wonderful to be home,” Cherry said, completely dismissing her dream of a Caribbean cruise. “I’m just beginning to realize how much I missed you all. As Gwen kept saying, ‘Life in Greenwich Village is glamorous and exciting,’ but—but …” She nibbled thoughtfully on a piece of bacon. “I guess I’m pretty much of a homebody in spite of all my wanderings.”
