Nurse in White (3 page)

CHAPTER
THREE

The clock on
the bank building had just struck twelve strident notes. Midnight, and Anthony Ware Hospital, sprawling on top of Main Street Hill, blinked sleepily. Three hours before it had been wide awake, its five shabby stories ablaze with light, dominating the town that dozed at its feet. In the receiving room opening off the concrete court in the rear, light streamed from the long uncurtained windows. Inside, slim young nurse Gaylord and plump, not so young Dr. Braddock worked over a disreputable man who claimed to have been the victim of a hit-and-run driver. The name and address he gave were unquestionably fictitious. Not for a moment did either member of the staff believe him, but they had grown used to such things and his record was completed as if he were indeed the John Smith he claimed to be. Just another heel getting free treatment. That was the worst of an endowed hospital. Every chiseler in the vicinity felt it his right to get all he could for as little as possible.

However, John Smith’s injuries were carefully treated and he shrugged into his coat muttering his surly thanks into a week’s growth of beard. He had nearly reached the door before he asked grudgingly, “How much doc?” He turned and his uninjured hand went into the torn pocket of his shabby trousers. He nodded to Ellen. “A neat job, miss. Well, how much?”

“Why—why—” stammered Braddock surprised. “Can—do you want to pay? You know—”

“Sure I want to pay,” John Smith growled with wholly unexpected and indignant pride. “I ain’t no charity case. I pays fer what I gets see? How much?”

“Mmm—mmm shall we say three dollars? That’s about what your family doctor would charge.”

“Okay.” John Smith peeled three soiled bills from a small roll and handed them to the doctor. “Thanks,” he muttered again surlily, and shuffled out into the night.

“Well!” Dr. Braddock grinned. “One never can tell an honest man from his exterior, can one?” His blue eyes twinkled. “Let that be a lesson to you, Gaylord.”

Ellen, who had been cleaning up, suddenly stopped. She began searching along the floor and amid the paraphernalia on the long table. In the next room she could hear Mary Trent moving about replacing the instruments used in the last emergency case—a messy one. She was splashing a good deal of water and humming softly as she swished. Ellen went to the door and asked a question, then returned to continue her search.

“Lost something?” the doctor asked, busy scrubbing his hands.

“Only a clinical thermometer and a pair of expensive scissors. Three dollars—umph! He got them cheap.” Her brown eyes met the startled blue ones of the fat little house physician and the two went into a paroxysm of helpless laughter. “And let that be a lesson to you, Dr. Braddock,” Ellen gasped.

“I thought there was something fishy about that guy—he had all the earmarks of a heel,” the doctor said. “Well, I wasn’t mistaken—that’s something.”

“Better make sure the three dollar bills aren’t phony, too,” Ellen reminded him skeptically.

“I’ll soon find out. I owe Mac five bucks—this three’ll pay part of it. Trust a Scotsman to know if they’re counterfeit or
not. I
wouldn’t have Anthony Ware lose out, Gaylord—not for a moment.”

Cyrus Dent wasn’t coming tonight, thank goodness! Mary Trent was a long time cleaning up. Ellen wondered if he was deliberately keeping out of the way, but called herself a
self-conscious
idiot for dreaming such a thing. If the idea she wanted none of him had at last penetrated his thick skull, it was something. Ellen sighed with what she felt sure was relief.

“Poor Anthony Ware always loses, doctor,” she said, resolutely putting the young intern out of her mind. “It can’t win. And how about the thermometer and scissors?”

“We-ll, there’s always a certain amount charged to profit and loss each year. In a concern of this kind there’s bound to be.” The little man eyed the pretty nurse with concern. “You’re not really worried about it are you, Gaylord?”

“Worried?” shrugged Ellen. “Why should I worry? It isn’t my money; but it burns me up to be taken in—that I ever allowed such a stupid thing to happen. How could it have, doctor? How could he have taken them with both of us right here?”

“What’s up, doc? You look concerned. Don’t tell me that Gaylord’s been saucy to you, too!”

Oh, that hateful chuckle! Ellen felt the blood rush to her cheeks and she shut her eyes tightly to hide the rage she knew burned in them. Oh, dear! Now she was in for another trying time and it upset her so!

Dr. Braddock frowned. Sometimes he felt this good-looking youngster was a bit brash. It wasn’t seemly in a young intern and he wondered if Mac had noticed it.

“Miss Gaylord is never saucy, Dr. Dent,” he said with dignity and stalked from the room.

“Just like a bantam cock,” grinned Dent, hooking a white-clad knee over a corner of the long table where he could watch the color ebb and flow beneath Ellen’s clear skin. “Jove!” he said to himself, “the girl is lovely!”

“But he’s such a peach!” Ellen defended him loyally. “We’re all crazy about him.”

Cy slid along the table and laid his hand over hers. “Why waste your affection on old Braddock—a fat little benedict, Gaylord?” he whispered. “Don’t—” he began softly, then drew back hastily as the door opened.

“Hmm, er, your lunch, Gaylord.” Marcella Harris set down her tray with a thump and marched from the room—head high and eyes straight ahead.

“O—oh!” whispered Ellen in a stricken voice. “How could you!”

“O—oh!” the young intern mimicked and laughed. “Surely you don’t mind a good, harmless little soul like Harris seeing me, er, well, sort of making friendly advances toward you, do you?” he chided. “Now if it were Agatha Forsyth, my child, or even mild Hattie Williams—now there’s a gal! Knows her place—the cozy nook off Hades. Does she ever go the rounds? I hope not, but in either case it would be something else again, or if, perhaps, I should happen to be caught doing what I really want to do. But what possible objection can anyone have to our spending a minute or two in each other’s company? I ask you. Don’t be so straitlaced, Nightingale. We’re only young once and—”

Ellen’s heart hammered in her breast and she knew from Cy’s twinkling eyes that he knew it. She drew away and clasped her hands tightly behind her back to still their trembling. How she hated this smiling, assured young doctor!

“I happen to be on duty, Dr. Dent,” she managed, coldly, “and I certainly do not like—”

“So am I on duty but I do like,” the young man laughed. “Be your age and generation, gal! Stolen fruit is always sweetest—I like it best.”

“Well,” said Ellen sturdily, “I don’t. And I don’t like feeling guilty.”

Cyrus Dent chuckled again and Ellen bit her lip in annoyance at the slip.

“But why should you feel guilty, darling?” the young man drawled in that hateful mocking voice—and Ellen suddenly saw red.

“Because you have no business here, and,” she went on blindly, “disliking you as I do, I have no wish to have your presence misunderstood. Please go.”

“Ah—ah—be careful, Nightingale,” he teased, quite unoffended. Then insinuatingly. “Sure you don’t like me—mm? Even a little bit, darling? Not even a little smitch?”

Ellen’s brown eyes blazed into his blue ones for a moment and she choked—“I—I hate you!”

But Dr. Dent cried involuntarily, “Jove, you’re lovely, Nightingale!”

A car shrieked to a stop just outside and Ellen, thankful for the interruption, flew to the door. Dr. Dent followed. Braddock, who appeared almost at once, betrayed no knowledge of the rendezvous and although he disliked Dent’s methods and his exposing Ellen to a possible reprimand, he would never report what he knew of the affair. He liked Ellen Gaylord and didn’t want to see her hurt, and if he knew anything about men, he feared that Cy Dent was a philanderer.

The man they brought in was badly battered, a leg broken in two places and a deep laceration over one eye. Ellen was surprised at the change in young Dent—at the speed and efficiency with which he worked—almost like Dr. MacGowan, she thought. But of course this was nothing—simple compared with things the surgeon did. The man was taken to the service elevator and shot up to a private room on the third floor. Ellen, Mary and the two doctors scrubbed themselves amicably and for once Cyrus Dent
forbore
his teasing manner. Dr. Dent departed on his midnight round of special cases and Dr. Braddock went into his own small laboratory off Emergency. Ellen and Mary Trent sat down to cold coffee and sandwiches. Mary ate with her eyes on her textbook, Ellen drank cold coffee and let her mind wander.

“Did you hear that Dent has a swell job in Boston?” Mary asked suddenly and Ellen jumped.

“Has he?” Ellen was quite indifferent.

“With some ritzy specialist—nerves. I forgot his name.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Ellen said. The other girl glanced at her, then down at her book.

Well, Ellen said to herself scornfully, this is the day of specialists. He’d be in his element hobnobbing with a lot of silly women. Young Dent was soft—looking for an easy job and easy money. Probably become a popular woman’s doctor—listening to a recital of their ailments, real and imaginary, at a huge fee per recital. She could see him in her imagination—lolling at ease in his luxurious offices, while a stream of idle, perfumed, foolish, exotic women passed before him, each unconsciously taking with her as she left, a portion of his manhood, leaving him more and more the spoiled plaything of society. What a waste! Uncle John had been a country doctor and Uncle John was still Ellen’s ideal of what a doctor should be.

Her thoughts swung to Dr. MacGowan and then to Miss Forsyth. Was the superintendent really a man hater? Did it follow that just because a person didn’t marry he must necessarily dislike the other sex? She didn’t think so. In fact, she had a strong suspicion that Miss Forsyth admired the plump little house physician. It seemed as if her voice changed—softened and mellowed when she spoke to him.

Poor Dr. Braddock with his peevish, demanding neurotic wife! Life was rather a mess at times. The wrong people tied together. What a grand wife Miss Forsyth would have made for the house physician! To be sure she was taller and perhaps a year or two older, but what did that matter when they were both so splendid? Let the other girls poke fun at the superintendent and Dr. Dent sneer at the house physician, Ellen knew them for what they were, fine, strong and sincere; devoting their lives to helping the sick and, in addition, spending endless hours trying to imbue their students with something of the same helpful spirit. A sadly hopeless task in some cases, Ellen knew.

A telephone rang and almost simultaneously the ambulance left the courtyard. Mary Trent tossed her textbook aside and yawned sleepily. Ellen, whose thoughts were becoming somewhat muddled, jerked to attention. Braddock came in from the laboratory, one sleeve of his white coat scorched and stained. Ellen smiled at him.

“Hear where it went?” he asked her.

“No. It’s been so unusually quiet tonight that we’re probably in for a mob scene now. O-oh, here it comes! Must have been close.”

But the ambulance was empty. The woman was already dead when the ambulance had arrived and both driver and intern were sleepily truculent.

Five o’clock. Braddock went back to the lab and his own private experimenting. Dr. Fielding and the orderly drifted away. Mary picked up her textbook and Ellen brought out a card index. It was a long two hours until seven. This had been an unusually tiresome trick—only six cases when twenty was merely a fair average. Ellen wondered where Cyrus Dent had gone. Probably up to seventy-nine where the Webster girl was recovering from a ruptured appendix. There were two special-duty nurses on her case—both from Corinth. Well, what of it? Corinth General couldn’t produce them any better than Anthony Ware, nor as good for that matter. But of course visiting girls are always more popular, Ellen knew, and she knew also that both specials were exceptionally pretty girls. Well, what did she care? Cyrus Dent was nothing to her.

“Hist!” Ellen turned sharply. Mary, after a sly look beneath her lashes, went on studying diligently—a frown of concentration on her brow. Ellen’s face flamed. “Hist!” came again, somewhat more pronounced and Ellen went over to the door. “Well?” she demanded coldly.

“I hope it is well. Say, come on over to Butternut Grove with me this afternoon. I’ll take a lunch and we’ll view the landscape and invite our souls.”

“Thank you, Dr. Dent, but—”

“Are you human, woman? Is there a heart in your bosom? Have you a soul? Give me ten good reasons why you won’t come?”

“One will be sufficient. Rules,” Ellen said icily. “I happen to feel like obeying the rules of the hospital, that’s all.”

“Oh, thank heaven it’s only that. I was afraid it was something personal. That maybe you didn’t like me.”

“I don’t,” Ellen said bluntly. “I think you are presumptuous and—and fresh!”

“Well, and what if I am? Surely you could never come to care for a chap who was stale, shall we say? Oh, come on, Nightingale, it’s time to defrost. We could have a lot of fun. I’ll meet you just around the corner and we’ll be back by six-thirty. Come on, it’s going to be a swell day—I personally saw to that—”

“You did?” Ellen jeered. “Listen!”

Icy particles struck the window and somewhere a shutter banged. Cy looked dashed for a moment but recovered almost at once.

“We could go to the club and dance—”

“And have half the town dropping in—”

“What of it? I’ll take the blame. I’ll square it with the bosses—”

“That won’t be necessary for I’m not going.” Ellen spoke with quiet decision but inside she felt a wild yearning to accept.

The young intern turned her around and examined her face closely.

“Really, Gaylord, I can’t understand you. You’re a paradox. Young, beautiful, attractive and yet you have such low H. and D.Q.’s—way, way down. Let’s see, I’d rate you as subsubnormal. Too bad in one so very lovely. Unutterably sad—tragic.”

“H. and D.Q.’s?” Ellen’s brow wrinkled in perplexity.

“If you don’t know what H.Q. stand for, Nightingale, your I.Q. is off, too.” His laugh showed exasperation. “Do you know, Gaylord, I’m afraid that some day you’ll tempt me beyond my powers of control and I’ll do something about it.”