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  The two girls walked on past the formal and charming reception room, with its wood-paneled walls, to the big sitting room. The new probationers already filled the comfortable sofas and chairs and others were clustered around the huge fireplace. Cherry noticed more books, desks, and a radio-victrola here. But she was more interested in her new classmates. There were about sixty of them—tall girls, short girls, thin, fat, but all of them radiating eagerness and expectancy. Cherry’s attention was caught by a girl near by whose cold eyes and overrouged mouth did not seem to belong here.

  “I’m Vivian Warren,” Cherry heard her say to a plump girl who was placidly eating chocolates from a paper bag.

  “My name’s Bertha Larsen,” the plump girl said. She generously passed over the candy, and urged the stranger to share it.

  Cherry saw Vivian’s look of amusement and scorn as she helped herself to the other girl’s candy. Vivian then rose and without a word left Bertha to herself. The rolypoly girl looked after her, puzzled and hurt.

  Cherry felt a quick wave of anger, although she knew it was no concern of hers. She had an idea that she and Vivian Warren were not going to be bosom friends. Ann had seen the little incident, too.

  Cherry shook her head and her dark curls danced. “Unfortunately, she’ll probably turn out to be one of those terribly efficient nurses—instead of flunking out. What makes people so rude, I wonder?”

  “I wonder, too,” Ann said thoughtfully.

  A burst of laughter came from the other side of the room. Cherry saw a group of girls intent on someone in the center of their circle and she saw a flash of red hair, then heard another peal of laughter. She wondered who the clowning redhead was.

  Sitting alone just outside this group, and watching them with a smile, was a slender delicate-looking Chinese girl. She wore a simple black dress, not the traditional long, narrow silk robe, and her satiny black hair was cut short. Her lovely ivory face was marked with the look of tragedy, thought Cherry, though she could be no older than herself.

  Suddenly the circle opened, the red hair flashed, and Cherry and Ann caught sight of a snub-nosed face sprinkled with freckles. Cherry recognized it as the face that had popped in cheerfully at her door that afternoon. The redhead bounded toward the Chinese girl. Not even that subdued ivory face could help laughing back into the redhead’s gleeful blue eyes.

  “We need one more!” she announced and without any further ceremony drew the astonished and pleased Chinese girl into the group. “Can you act?”

  “I don’t know—I never—” the girl in black said hesitantly, but she disappeared gratefully into the circle. Cherry and Ann looked on fascinated.

  “We certainly have a variety of human beings in our class, haven’t we?” Cherry commented.

  Ann laughed. “By the week end, we’ll probably all be as well acquainted as with our own families.”

  At that moment a tall middle-aged woman in a rustling white uniform came into the lounge. She had such authority in her bearing that the girls instinctively rose to their feet. She smiled at all of them warmly out of keen gray eyes as she made her way to the front of the sitting room.

  Miss Reamer, the Superintendent of Nurses, introduced herself, welcomed the probationers, and asked them to be seated. Her face and voice were matter-of-fact. But Cherry discerned in this businesslike woman the same seriousness she respected so deeply in Dr. Joe. Miss Reamer started by telling them that from now on, they were professional women, and that their personal behaviour must reflect the dignity of their profession.

  “The first duty of a nurse,” the superintendent said slowly and deliberately, “is always to her patient.” The words sank in and Cherry knew she would never forget them. She wondered, though, how completely she could forget or sacrifice herself for her patient, or how her dream of being a nurse would stand up under the grim realities of hospital life.

  Miss Reamer went on to tell them the history of the great hospital—“my hospital,” Cherry thought—and its long tradition of helping the suffering and the needy. Spencer nurses were scattered in all far places of the world, doing their life-bringing work, sometimes in the fire of the battlefields, blazing a path around the globe against pain and death. The girls in the room stirred as she spoke.

  “Your own first steps toward a nurse’s skill—and toward the coveted nurse’s cap,” Miss Reamer said, “will be classes. But not for long.” They would learn hospital routine gradually on the wards, then more and more, until each student nurse would be responsible for her own patients. Cherry noticed the redheaded girl’s face shine at the words, “your own patients,” and she herself felt pretty excited at the prospect. “… different shifts until you are nursing around the clock,” Miss Reamer was saying. Cherry thought of the night nurse whose room she had stumbled into. Soon she would be the lone nurse in charge of twenty or thirty helpless people all night long on a sleeping ward. She glanced at Ann and together they blew out big, half-humorous sighs.

  Now the Superintendent was giving them the rules. As nurses, they would rise in the presence of doctors and graduate nurses, in respect to their profession. Nurses’ relations with internes—“like Jim Clayton, for instance,” Cherry grinned to herself—were to be purely professional. Nurses were not to wander around the hospital but go only to the wards assigned. Nurses must not wear their uniforms or caps on the street, nor wear street clothes on the ward. Miss Reamer recommended a thick white sweater for night duty. No jewelry, no high heels. Several pairs of feet were hastily tucked under chairs.

  “As for caps,” the Superintendent said with a smile, “if you can pass the three months’ probationary period, you will win your cap. Then you will be full-fledged student nurses. Let me remind you that you are going to need good health, intelligence, unselfishness, patience, tact, humor, sympathy, efficiency, neatness, plus plenty of energy for hard work.” A groan echoed around the room. “But let me remind you, too,” Miss Reamer said, “that nursing is the most rewarding of all professions for women. And frequently the most romantic and exciting,” she added with a twinkle. She rose and the probationers rose to their feet with her. “The best of luck to all of you,” the Superintendent concluded. “You look to me to have the makings of an exceptionally fine class.”

  The moment after Miss Reamer had left, the room filled with laughter and moans and a buzz of talk. “An exceptionally fine class, she said!” … “Boy, are we going to have to work!” … “But the caps are so darling, it’s worth it.” … “I thought all superintendents were slave drivers but she’s actually human!” … “Gosh, I haven’t got all those nurse’s virtues!”

  “Uniforms tomorrow and my apron still slides around!” … “Wonder how the internes like that rule.”

  Cherry and Ann picked their way through the milling girls in Spencer lobby to the bulletin board where the hospital listed general announcements. Miss Reamer had told them that T.S.O. posted their class schedules, rules, and special announcements on the bulletin board in the Nurses’ Residence. Several nurses in blue and white were also studying the Spencer bulletin board. Other members of the new class came up, too, keeping an awed distance from the older nurses.

  Suddenly, from around the bend of the corridor, they heard a peculiar sort of explosion. A door shut so violently that one of the blue-clad nurses ran to catch the teetering water cooler. A man’s gruff angry voice, and many rapid footsteps, approached them.

  “Better duck, kids!” one of the student nurses whispered. “It’s the Old Man and he’s in battle formation!”

  There was no place to duck. A short but imperious man bore down upon them. His long surgeon’s coat flapped about his legs, and three nervous internes and two terrified nurses hurried in his wake. He had a sharply intelligent face, with a hawk nose, a jutting square jaw, and a thin mouth tightly clamped shut. The student nurses and the puzzled probationers vainly tried to make themselves inconspicuous. His piercing eyes took in every last detail.

  “What are you doing here
after ten?” he roared at them, although actually his gruff voice was pitched low. “Childish irresponsible students—get more impossible with each generation!”

  He must be pretty important, Cherry thought, for even the two R.N.’s who were standing near by looked troubled. Then, unfortunately, his scowling gaze shifted to Cherry. She wished in terror that she could vanish in a puff of smoke and wondered what she had done. The doctor stared at her fixedly for a long terrible minute of absolute silence.

  “Wipe that rouge off your face!” he ordered. All eyes turned fearfully to Cherry. “Soap and water. Good Lord, what is this hospital coming to?”

  She said faintly, “I can’t wash it off, sir, it’s——”

  “No impertinence, if you don’t mind, young woman!” The doctor turned red in the face. He looked at Cherry as if memorizing her face, then walked on.

  It should have been funny but no one laughed. Cherry was trembling. In an irrelevant flash of attention she saw Vivian Warren, carefully expressionless, but with a hint of malicious pleasure about her too red mouth. An older nurse came up to Cherry. She said gravely,

  “It’s too bad that happened, youngster. He’ll remember you.”

  “Who is he?” Cherry asked innocently, and all the shaken probationers seemed to be breathing the same question down the back of her neck.

  “You don’t know? You poor kids,” said one of the two R.N.’s. “That’s Dr. Wylie, Head Resident Surgeon and one of the administrators of the hospital. That’s all.”

  So this was the man the night nurse had warned Cherry about. Other probationers coming out of the lounge asked, “What’s the matter?” and fell silent too. The other graduate nurse turned to Cherry. “You’d better get that rouge off. And leave it off.”

  “But it isn’t rouge!” Cherry wailed. “It’s me!”

  Someone laughed, and it set them all off like a string of firecrackers. They laughed hysterically, even—or especially—Cherry. The two graduate nurses did not join in the laughter. One of them said in sepulchral tones:

  “You’ll never be able to convince Dr. Wylie that it isn’t rouge. He’ll merely think you are disobeying his orders.”

  Ann linked her arm through Cherry’s, and the redhead, surprisingly sobered, bobbed up on the other side of her. A sort of funeral guard accompanied Cherry across the black lawn to their residence hall.

  “Maybe you ought to carry me back on a stretcher,” Cherry said.

  “Never mind the old terror,” the redhead said under her breath. “A humble probie won’t be hobnobbing with the mighty surgeon.”

  And Ann said, “It’s unfortunate but, after all, a surgeon has more important things to worry about.”

  By the time they had gone up the elevator and trooped through the upstairs corridor, Cherry was laughing at the incident, but there was a persistent little gnawing at the back of her mind. “Silly!” she told herself. “Worrying over a comical mistake. Why, look, it’s made me the belle of the class!”

  At Cherry’s door most of the girls said good night and went chattering off to their own rooms, but Ann and the redhead waited. To Cherry’s surprise, she saw the little Chinese girl lingering in the corridor. Cherry turned to invite her in, but she shyly slipped away.

  “You mustn’t worry about—” Ann said, and at the same instant, the redhead said, “Don’t you worry about——”

  Cherry stared at them and all three girls burst out laughing. “That’s nice of you,” Cherry said warmly, “Anyhow, I’m too dazzled with Spencer to waste any time worrying.”

  “So am I,” said the redhead. “Also excited and scared.”

  Ann nodded agreement in her calm way.

  “So scared, in fact,” the redhead continued, “that now I wonder why I ever wanted to be a nurse!”

  “Why did you?” Cherry asked practically. “Come on in, you two, and we’ll——”

  “Not tonight you won’t,” said a smiling student nurse behind them. “Sorry, children, but it’s lights out. I’m the Student Organization proctor and you’d better scamper.”

  “Oh, too bad.” They all three looked disappointed.

  “Have to make it tomorrow. Think we’ll recognize each other in our uniforms?”

  “See you at breakfast—if I can pry my eyes open.”

  “My gosh, classes and stuff tomorrow!”

  “Good night!”

  “Good night—Nurse!”

  Ann vanished down the stairs. The redhead turned halfway down the hall and hissed back at Cherry, “Have you a name?”

  Cherry was startled before she laughed and whispered back.

  “I’m Gwen Jones and would you please pin down my uniform collar in the morning? It just won’t stay down.”

  “I’m an expert pinner. Bring your problems to—” Cherry saw the proctor coming and ducked into her room. Well, she had two friends already. That was a good start.

  She did not remember falling asleep. With her head lying on a strange pillow and not quite recognizing this shadowy room, Cherry felt too excited to sleep. Far away she heard an ambulance gong. Then it seemed that young Dr. Clayton and the Superintendent of Nurses hopped from the ambulance and went off in search of Dr. Wylie, who was furiously roller skating up and down the hospital corridors in pursuit of Cherry’s whole class of probationers. Cherry opened her eyes and sat straight up. She had been so sleepy she had forgotten to open her window.

  She tiptoed across the moonlit room—the room that was to be hers for the coming year—opened the window and leaned out. The great white hospital buildings gleamed in the darkness. She remembered, after all, the various wings Miss Kent had pointed out to her. Here and there a window glowed softly where nurses kept watch through the night. Over to the right, a whole ground floor blazed brilliantly and Cherry saw tiny figures moving in what she realized must be Emergency Ward. Muffled sounds rose from where she guessed the hospital kitchens were. A single laboratory window shone out steadfastly, as some patient researcher worked. The windows of several operating rooms were alight. The hospital throbbed all about her.

  Cherry took a deep breath and slipped back into bed.

  “This is the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me,” she thought.

  CHAPTER III

  Miss Mac

  THE RISING BELL CLANGED AND CHERRY WOKE UP WITH a start. One dark eye opened reluctantly and looked at the clock in a puddle of sunshine on the chest of drawers. Six o’clock. Outside in the corridor Cherry heard much pattering of footsteps and running water and sleepy chatter. For a moment she could not think what all these people were doing in her house. Then she remembered where she was, and leaped out of bed in her excitement.

  “Nurse Ames, on with your uniform!” she told herself. But the uniform, which had fit so neatly at home, balked under her trembling fingers. And she had to tie the apron three times before she was satisfied with its perky bow. She straightened the room and was thinking of breakfast, when there was a lively knocking on her door. There stood Ann and Gwen, both of them in their gray dresses with white aprons, and both of them pink with pride and very sleepy.

  “We’re looking for the girl in the red suit,” Gwen announced, peering around.

  “She’s gone,” Cherry laughed back. “Won’t Nurse Ames do?”

  “How can you joke on empty stomachs?” Ann murmured. “And will you look at that dipping, rolling hem on my dress! Makes me seasick just to gaze upon it.”

  But they looked at one another’s uniforms with admiration. “I think we look elegant,” Cherry declared. “We’d gladden the eyes of any patient.” However, they pinned and straightened one another before setting out for Spencer and the dining room.

  A voice wailed after them. “Oh, wait for me!” They turned to see Bertha Larsen hurrying along, looking untidy in her gray uniform but shining with excitement. “My goodness, but I’m hungry,” Bertha Larsen panted. “Breakfast is a whole two hours late for me!”

  “Sounds like a farm,” said a small pretty
blonde girl in the elevator, whom Cherry vaguely remembered from the day before. “Me, I’ve always had breakfast in bed around noon. And I’m sick and tired of it. Guess we’ll breakfast at seven and like it.”

  Cherry and the other girls looked at her curiously, and saw from her humorously determined little face that she meant what she said. When they entered the dining room, to Cherry’s surprise, at least a dozen girls greeted her and joked with her about her cherry cheeks.

  “You’re practically a celebrity,” Ann told her as they sat down at a sunny table.

  “A nurse ought to look healthy—good advertisement for the profession,” Gwen defended her. “Can you imagine how a patient would feel looking at a sick, gloomy nurse who was barely able to crawl?” She shuddered in mock horror and fell upon her food as if determined that no such thing should ever happen to her.

  “I’m going to run, not crawl, if I ever see Dr. Wylie coming,” Cherry replied.

  Bertha was too busy eating to talk. She looked up only once and said sadly, with her mouth full, “Did you hear? We aren’t allowed to eat on the wards! Bet some of the nurses do it, though.”

  The little blonde girl had drifted to another table. Other girls came up to speak to Cherry. The dining room buzzed with rumors of what their classes and teachers would be like.

  “You poor innocents!” called a senior nurse from the next table. “I hope you’ll be able to eat your lunch!”

  Choruses of bewildered “Why?” “What’s so terrible?” echoed around the room. But the night nurses shook their heads pityingly and their shoulders shook with laughter.

  “Just wait,” they said ominously. “Misplace one sponge—or put the thermometer back in the wrong place—and T.S.O. will—–”

  “Maybe we’ll do everything right,” a timid voice quavered.

  “Oh, the poor lambs! Just asking to be slaughtered!”

  Cherry rose and fled, with Gwen and Ann right behind her.