Nurse Hilary

by Peggy Gaddis

  “It’s about those empty wards, Mr. Ramsey—” she began.

  Instantly the pleasant smile left Drew’s face and his eyes chilled.

  “So Marsden has sent you to try to persuade me to change my mind—” he began sharply.

  Color bloomed in Hilary’s face.

  “Dr. Marsden knows nothing about my trying to see you,” she shot back at him. “I came to you on my own initiative, because it seems to me almost criminal that those wards should be standing empty when there are so many people desperately in need of hospital care—”

  “Anyone in need of hospital care who can afford to pay our rates for beds in the ward are perfectly welcome to enter—” he began.

  “I don’t mean people who have a lot of money—”

  “Of course not,” he sneered, and she wondered why she had ever thought him charming. “You mean we should turn the T. & C., into a charity place. And have you thought what that would mean to our paying guests and their families? Can you imagine, for instance, Mrs. Keenan paying five hundred a month, plus extras, to share a place that has charity wards?”

  “It’s not a crime for the poor to be ill, you know, Mr. Ramsey—”

  “And there is adequate provision made for them by the various charity hospitals, city, state, county—”

  “There isn’t, Mr. Ramsey; there’s not room even for some of Dr. Marsden’s most critically ill patients in the county hospital, and they aren’t eligible for care at Grady Memorial, because they’re not residents of the counties sponsoring Grady.”

  “And I’m supposed to ruin a two or three million dollar operation, that is just beginning to get its financial head above water, by throwing the doors open to all the rag tag and bobtail in the county that want to cadge free hospitalization?” he snarled at her, and stood up, strode to the door and jerked it open. “The subject is closed, Miss Westbrook, once and for all.”

  Hilary marched out, her head held high, her cheeks scarlet. Dr. Marsden, just completing his morning rounds, which consisted chiefly of chatting for a few moments with each guest before his clinic hours began, was coming along the hall, and as she stopped outside Drew Ramsey’s office for a moment, head high and fists tightly clenched in the capacious pockets of her uniform, he grinned wryly at her and crossed to his own office door, swung it open and motioned her inside.

  “So it’s come,” he said dryly, and pushed her gently into a chair beside his desk. “I’ve been expecting it, but not quite so soon. Want to tell me about it?”

  Hilary drew a deep, hard breath and forced an unconvincing smile.

  “I—have to tell you about it, because I owe you an apology.” She gulped back the angry tears and accepted the cleansing tissue Dr. Marsden offered, scrubbed hard at her eyes and blew her nose.

  Dr. Marsden watched her, concerned yet slightly amused, too, as she tried to master the threatening tears.

  “I can’t imagine you owing anybody an apology,” he admitted frankly. “If you do, I’m sure it’s for an error of the head, not the heart. So you have been rowing with our esteemed Administrator.”

  “It wasn’t really a row,” she admitted huskily. “I only got a chance to put in the opening words, and then he threw me out.”

  “It was about the empty wards, and the use to which you feel they should be put, of course,” said Dr. Marsden in a tone that said there could not possibly be any question of that.

  “And of course he thought you had put me up to it,” she managed. “That’s why I felt I owed you an apology, since you didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  Dr. Marsden shook his head, smiling.

  “Oh, yes, I did. I showed you the wards and told you the use I felt should be given them, to fill them,” he reminded her, and smiled faintly. “Though I did warn you that it would be useless to try to talk to him.”

  “It was only because that poor man, Thad Carter, died,” Hilary said huskily. “And because he might have had a chance to get well if he had been in a hospital.”

  “He might, of course,” Dr. Marsden agreed heavily. “But we must remember that he was in his seventies, that he was frail and weak from overwork and underfeeding practically his whole life. When pneumonia caught him, he had very little to fight back with. You and I like to feel that, given a chance where there was an oxygen lung, all the paraphernalia which is sitting in the empty wards unused, he might have lived. But he only might—you mustn’t torture yourself by thinking that we failed him because he couldn’t be brought here, or to some place comparable.”

  Hilary nodded, her emotions under control.

  “I know,” she admitted, her voice somewhat steadier. “I’ve seen elderly patients die even when they’ve had the very best of care. I served a year at Grady Memorial, and of course I know that. After all, medical skill, the best of care, every sort of equipment can only do so much. But the thought of those empty wards, and of people needing them so desperately ...”

  She broke off before the tears could threaten again and gave him a pallid, quite unconvincing smile.

  “I hope I haven’t made things awkward for you by going to Mr. Ramsey. He’s sure you sent me.” She offered humbly.

  Dr. Marsden laughed, his eyes cool.

  “You mean that he might fire me? Don’t give that a second thought,” he comforted her. “Oh, he might like to, at times; but I’m pretty solidly entrenched here, if I may say so without boasting.”

  “Well, I should think you would be! I can’t think of anybody who could possibly do a better job than you’re doing—” She broke off, flushed, as she heard the ardent enthusiasm in her voice.

  “That’s most kind of you,” he told her, and though his tone was warm with appreciation there was the ghost of a twinkle in his blue eyes. “I had my battle royal with Ramsey when I refused to come unless he’d let me have the clinic. He was horrified, of course; but I went before the board, explained what I hoped to accomplish and got the wholehearted endorsement of the Board, to a man. I also had Mrs. Keenan’s approval—and as you have probably learned by now, the Duchess packs a lot of weight, not all of it physical, I might add.”

  “I’m awfully glad,” said Hilary simply. “I think you’re doing a grand job here, and I’d—I’d do something drastic if I thought I’d made trouble for you.”

  “Thanks, Hilary, you’re very sweet,” said Dr. Marsden, and looked almost as startled to hear himself say that as Hilary was.

  He stood up then, as the buzzer from the clinic sounded, and said, “Well, there’s my first patient. I’d better get to work. See you later, Hilary.”

  Chapter Eleven

  She always had two hours off duty in the afternoon, and today, without changing from her uniform, she swung her blue and scarlet cape about her shoulders and stepped out into pale golden sunshine. She walked down the drive, followed a path that led off at right angles, and suddenly paused in delight.

  Before her two giant cedar trees guarded a low green-painted wooden gate set in a five foot wire fence. Beyond the gate, a flagstoned path led between flower beds that were beginning to show green spikes that in a few more sunny days would be tulips. Daffodils already spread a yellow carpet, starred here and there with clumps of grape-hyacinths. But the thing that held Hilary’s eyes and had so delighted her was the house set far back at the end of that flagstoned walk.

  It was a Cape Cod cottage, white shingled, green-shuttered, with a door that had been painted a gay Chinese red. Beneath the front windows were green painted flower-boxes where green plants already showed. It was small, unpretentious, not more than five rooms at most, and like something straight out of a story book.

  As she paused, delighting in the pretty scene, a huge yellow cat came streaking towards the gate, and in hot pursuit a girl in soiled, earth-stained blue jeans and a ragged sweater, calling to him, “Minnie-Mike, you come back here this minute. You want to get yourself squashed on that drive? Come back here!”

  Laughing as she recognized Angela Ramsey, Hilary he
aded the cat off, caught him, held him so that he could not scratch her, and laughed into his furious golden eyes.

  “Hi! Thanks—the beast. He knows he’s not supposed to go out on the drive.” Angela was panting, breathless, as she took the cat, gave him a smart spank and set him down on the grass.

  The cat gave them each a lowering glare, and then began washing himself, getting his fur in order, making it very plain how much he loathed being handled.

  “He’s my pride and joy,” Angela announced, smiling lovingly down at the cat. “How he’s survived a year and a half without being run over, I’ll never know. But I keep hoping his luck will hold.”

  She looked up at Hilary, laughing.

  “Hello, Hilary—welcome to the Manse!” She waved a grubby hand towards the charming cottage. “Come in for a drink.”

  “Thanks, I’d love to,” Hilary answered. “What a perfectly charming place. Is this where you live? Not the T. & C.?”

  “That plush dump crawling with old gals and old gents? I’d cut my throat first,” answered Angela briskly. “Pop lives there. He hates this place. It was the residence on the twenty-seven acres when he bought the land; he was all for tearing it down, setting fire to it. But I fought him to a stand-still, and finally he agreed very unwillingly to have it moved here where it won’t ‘lower the tone’ of the T. & C. Pop sets great store by the ‘tone of the T. & C.’ ”

  “Yes, I know,” said Hilary dryly, walking with Angela along the flagstoned path to the house.

  Angela threw open the scarlet door and looked at Hilary, eyebrows raised.

  “Oh, so you and Pop have had a run-in? Come on in and let’s see the bruises,” she commiserated.

  The cat thrust its way between them and stalked into the house, yellow tail waving, and Angela grinned at him as he vanished toward the kitchen.

  “He really didn’t want to go visiting,” she announced to Hilary. “He just knows that if he pretends he’s going to run away, he’ll get fed something he likes very much. Blackmail, nothing less. That’s my Minnie-Mike.”

  Hilary laughed, liking the girl more and more.

  “What an odd name for a cat,” she laughed.

  “Isn’t it?” Angela agreed good-humoredly. “When I first got him, he was a kitten about the size of my fist. My first kitten; I’m afraid I wasn’t well up on the facts of life. I thought he was a girl, and being so beautiful, I thought a fancy name would be just a little too much, so I said, ‘Minnie.’ Before he really got used to the name, Pop reminded me that ‘Mike’ would be more suitable, so now it’s Minnie-Mike.”

  “I see,” Hilary answered, smiling. “And a very nice name it is, too. Does he answer to it?”

  Angela shrugged.

  “Oh, when he wants to.” She called over her shoulder, “We’ll have tea, Nora.”

  From the kitchen a booming voice touched with scorn answered.

  “Oh, will you, now? Then you’d best be coming out here and fixing it for yourself, me with me hands full getting ready for the dinner party tonight.”

  Angela chuckled.

  “I adore a well-trained servant, don’t you, Hilary?”

  “I wouldn’t know; I never had one,” Hilary admitted.

  “Neither have I, but I never quite give up hoping.” Angela heaved herself up from the deeply cushioned, slip-covered sofa into which she had dropped when they first came in.

  A huge woman in a neat blue-print dress beneath a dark apron appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, eyeing Hilary with a lively interest.

  “Oh, is it company you’ve got?” Her voice was pleasant, no longer booming or touched with scorn, and her broad, florid face was grinning. “Then I’ll serve your tea. Sit down and be a lady—and keep your muddy feet off that slip-cover. It’s just out of the laundry and I put it on fresh for the party tonight.”

  “Yessum,” said Angela obediently, and straightened out her long lovely legs, her scuffed, earth-stained tennis shoes held straight out so that not even the heels could rest on the shag-rug.

  “That’s better,” said Nora, and disappeared.

  “Isn’t she a sweetie-pie?” murmured Angela fondly. “She was my foster-mother after my own mother died, when Pop was too poor and harassed to be bothered with me. It was all he could do to rake and scrape up enough money each week to pay Nora my room and board, which was all of five dollars a week. So when he finally struck it rich with the T. & C., I wouldn’t come out here to live until he gave Nora and me this house. I couldn’t get along without Nora.”

  “And see that you don’t forget it ever, will you?” demanded Nora, rolling a tea-cart into the room in front of Angela and looking down at the girl with such warmth and affection that Hilary was touched.

  “Nora, me love,” said Angela, reaching up to clasp a big, work-worn hand and hold it to her cheek, “this is Hilary Westbrook, a nurse at the T. & C. Hilary, this is my beloved friend, Mrs. Britt.”

  “Nora to Angela’s friends, Miss Westbrook,” said Nora firmly.

  “Fine, and I’m Hilary, Nora.”

  Nora put her hands on her hips and studied Hilary with shrewd eyes.

  “You won’t be here long, Hilary,” she announced.

  Startled, Hilary asked, “What does that mean?”

  “Simply that you look like you had a mind of your own, and that’s something Himself won’t tolerate,” answered Nora, and walked out of the room.

  Angela smiled ruefully as she held out a cup of tea and offered it to Hilary.

  “Nora and Pop aren’t what you’d call the best of friends,” she admitted reluctantly.

  “So I gather,” Hilary smiled at her.

  “Well, it’s really nobody’s fault, I suppose,” Angela struggled to explain. “Pop was so terribly poor after Mother died; before, too! But he always had big ideas, schemes, plans by which we were going to be rich overnight. But there were a lot of disappointments; so many of his schemes backfired and blew up in his face. And always, in the back of his mind, was this place. Nora had lost patience with him long before that; and they used to fight like the cats of Kilkenny; until at last the T. & C. became a realization of Pop’s fondest, wildest dreams. And I suppose he couldn’t forgive Nora for not believing in him all along; and she felt that the T. & C. was just a lucky fluke and still wasn’t too much in favor of it. Then the money began rolling in; and Pop wanted to bring me out here to live, and had a swanky apartment built on the top floor of the Club. I hated it, and I’d seen this cottage; so I made a deal with Pop: give me the cottage, move it back here, let me bring Nora with me, and we’d come here to live. Finally I wore him down; he was so busy with getting the Club equipped, filled, and working smoothly that I suppose I should be ashamed of insisting on my own way. But I got it, and here Nora and I are. And there Pop is with his cherished dream come true.”

  Hilary said thoughtfully, “So the Club means that much to him. I suppose, then, it’s no wonder he is so appalled at the bare idea of putting charity patients into the empty wards.”

  Angela all but choked on the cake she was about to swallow, and her blue eyes were enormous.

  “Migosh, Hilary, you didn’t spring that on him?” she gasped. “No wonder you had a row with him! That’s—why, that makes him perfectly livid, just to hear those wards mentioned. He and Stu went about fifteen rounds, with no holds barred, before he agreed to the clinic.”

  Hilary nodded.

  “I know,” she admitted wryly. “Dr. Marsden told me about that. And Middy warned me, too. But, well, one of Dr. Marsden’s patients, desperately in need of just what a bed in one of those wards could have given him, died.”

  Angela said quietly, “I’m so sorry, Hilary. Stu will be terribly upset, I know. But I really love Pop, and I think I probably understand him better than anybody in the world, and I’m convinced that nothing you or anyone else could ever say to him could persuade him to open those wards to anybody except the type of people for whom they were meant—really ill people who could pay the
T. & C.’s rates, plus all the extras of any hospital.”

  “It seems such a terrible waste, and there’s such a desperate need,” Hilary reminded her.

  “Sure,” Angela answered, “but the T. & C. is the dream of Pop’s life come true. Nothing, but nothing, is going to be allowed to lower its high-toned standard of ‘only the best is good enough for our guests, and the best costs plenty!’ ”

  Hilary nodded, and for a moment the two sat in thoughtful silence. Then Nora came in, glancing at the tray.

  “Have you two finished?” she demanded. “I’ve got work to do, and I won’t have time to clean up this room again before your company comes.”

  Angela gave her a look that tried to be haughty but was too full of affection to be completely convincing.

  “Scat,” she ordered sternly. “Reid Keenan is coming to dinner tonight, and there’s a possibility Dr. Marsden may drop in later, and you’re making a full-scale production out of it. Hilary, could you come to dinner tonight? I’d love to have you!”

  Nora said eagerly, “We would that, Hilary. There’s enough food for an army; Angela and I’ll be eating left-overs for the next week.”

  Hilary laughed.

  “I’d love to, but I’m on duty until eight,” she answered. “Some other time, maybe?”

  “Any time, any time,” said Nora cordially. “Angela gets lonely out here.”

  “I do not!” protested Angela.

  Nora’s glance ordered her to silence, and Nora went placidly on, “It would do her good to have some young friends. That’s why I let her have that young Keenan to dinner once a week, and let her go to town with him to the movies.”

  “You let me? Well now, that’s big of you!” snapped Angela hotly.

  “I think so, too,” Nora agreed cheerfully. “It’s a mighty big responsibility on an old woman like me, having a brash youngster like her to look after.”

  “Well, you should be used to it by now,” Angela pointed out, grinning amiably. “After all, it’s been going on for ten years. If you’re not used to it by now, you never will be.”