He Married a Doctor

By Faith Baldwin, ©1943
Cover illustration by Forté

Carey Dennis had been in love once, deeply in love. Then he had been hurt, just as deeply. Once was enough. If he ever fell in love again, Carey told himself, it wouldn’t be with a woman like Hilda. A woman whose mind and hands had been highly trained, a woman whose heart was big enough to love all humanity—but perhaps not intimate enough to love a man.

GRADE: A-

BEST QUOTES:

“I might forgive you your profession if you were plain and wore your teeth on the outside and had mouse-colored hair in a bun. Or if you were the hearty collar-and-tie type.”

“How come you aren’t taking pulses somewhere instead of increasing them?”

“Kathy didn’t like women her own age, she loathed those who, like Hilda, were younger, but she was wonderful with any woman over fifty.”

“She was forbidden alcohol. Besides, she didn’t approve of the stuff, except medicinally. However, she had no objection to other people’s ruining their stomachs and brains, she said cheerfully, adding disparagingly that, as far as the brains went, few individuals had the type you’d miss, if ruined.”

“Possibly your aunt feels you might turn into one of these very modern, hideously efficient young women who scorn all masculine aid and protection. Perhaps she’d like to prevent it as it would reduce your chance of marriage.”

“If you married a woman you expected that you would be her job.”

“Most marriages are a compromise, an armed truce—men and women having been born natural enemies.”

“Confession may be good for the soul but it could raise merry hell with married life!”

“The bridegroom instinctively expects to be greeted on the threshold of the home by the palpitating bride crying, ‘Darling, I thought you were never coming, the day has been endless!’ ”

REVIEW:

Hilda Barrington is a doctor. Not just any old kind of doctor, though; she’s a very special kind of doctor. She’s a woman doctor, a “hen medic.” At 27, she has just finished her training and gone home to Waynefield, New York, to work alongside her aunt, Jane Redding, who is a general practitioner there. And a spinster, because being a woman and a doctor is difficult enough, but to add marriage into the mix is utterly impossible. Indeed, Hilda has decided she herself will never marry: “That problem hasn’t changed, no gadgets have solved it. I ought to marry and have a dozen … well, three or four. How can I? Someone would be hurt, someone neglected even. Unless I stopped practicing. And I won’t, she told herself fiercely, not for any man alive. I can’t.”

Then she meets this guy … Carey Dennis is 36 and has just moved to town. He’s very wealthy and recovering from a broken heart, as his fiancée, Maida, abruptly married a German baron, Franz von Kunst, which he learned about in the papers. Carey and Hilda get off to a spicy start with plenty of witty and insulting repartee. So we know where this is going. The problem with this book is that it gets there too fast, and indeed, as you might have guessed by the title, Hilda and Carey are married before we’re even halfway through. This takes some of the starch out of the book’s spine, as now the central question is not whether they will end up together but rather whether they will get divorced. It just doesn’t make for an entirely satisfying problem. (A little zest, however, comes from the fact that the couple actually has a sex life, which is demurely alluded to on occasion.)

The plot concerns the arrival of Maida and her new husband in town. It turns out that Maida doesn’t love Franz after all; it’s Carey she wants, again, despite the fact that he’s married now, and—oh, yeah—she is, too. So she plots and schemes, aided and abetted by Carey’s discontent with Hilda’s career and the arrival of World War II. Franz, being both German and dislikeable, is highly suspect, though we are advised several times that even if he is an ass that doesn’t necessarily make him a Nazi. (The Japanese cook, however, is not treated so gently after the bombing of Pearl Harbor; no sooner does the news come in over the radio than Carey turns to Hilda to say they must fire him. “I can’t look that little—” he begins, and Hilda agrees to do the job.) Hilda is always running out of parties when an emergency arises, missing dinner, and leaving the house in the middle of the night, and Maida is usually around to point this out to Carey, and then cry on his shoulder about how frightened she is of her husband.

If the love triangle is the skeleton on which the book hangs, its heart is the conflict of being a woman, a doctor, and a wife. The urgency and importance of this question is vastly exaggerated, when viewed through 21^st-century lenses, but it’s not entirely foreign to the modern era. The situation is summarized in a scene in which Carey is obliged to help Hilda intubate a seven-year-old boy with diphtheria and is utterly horrified by the entire experience, and at the same time awed by Hilda’s skill and competence. This makes him, as “a mere man, feel degradingly inferior. No man likes that feeling. I’d rather you weren’t—so capable; I’d rather you screamed at spiders and sickened at snakes.” Her abilities, detrimental as they are, are made up for by the fact that she’s “a feminine woman. A woman.” And a good-looking one, at that. Then again, he wonders, “What would it be like to have such a woman in love with you and yet to know that you had a rival always, one stronger than yourself, which all her love for you could not deny?” It’s all right for him to have a career that keeps him out late, and some day there may be children who will supersede him a fair amount of the time, but that’s different.

Dr. Jane is another mirror on the question of being a woman doctor. Jane was a real pioneer in medicine, having been born in 1875 and attended medical school before the turn of the century. It’s regularly acknowledged that Jane has made greater sacrifices than, and opened the door wider for, Hilda and the other young women doctors. Jane also points out the differences in medicine in the 1900s compared to the 1940s—which sound true even today: “Sometimes it seems to me that we diagnose by gadget. Your grandfather could tell more about a heart by using his ear, a stethoscope and common sense than any machine ever invented. Use every new scientific aid—provided it’s been tested and proved—that you can lay your hands on, but don’t forget you have eyes and ears and common sense. All the rest is help, new knowledge and short cuts. But sometimes gadgets fail. They haven’t souls or hearts.”

Faith Baldwin is a wonderful writer, and starting with the first page I sighed happily when a hospital was described as “exclusively expensive or expensively exclusive,” at “a small, plump, dyed woman,” that Dr. Jane has “fine, square teeth, all of them her own.” Her characters are warm (well, most of them are), true, funny, and smart, people you wish you could hang out with for more than just 223 pages. The world she creates is relaxed, humorous, comfortable, and smart. She thinks about things, mulling them over through the course of the book, and if no easy answer is found, it makes for a much better book than arriving at some pat, facile truism with enough holes to make an excellent colander. The second half of the book is not its finest, but even with that flaw, Faith Baldwin handily outscores almost any other writer in the genre.

Young Nurse Rayburn

By Arlene J. Fitzgerald, ©1964
Cover illustration by Mort Engel

A career in a big-city hospital … marriage to a brilliant, popular surgeon—or a life of service to the Indians and lumbermen of the rugged timber country…and the thrill of working beside a virile, dedicated young doctor? As Nurse Rheva Rayburn hesitates between two ways of life, drama and mystery explode—and in a night of crisis and terror, she makes her fateful choice.

GRADE: D+

BEST QUOTES:

“One of the first things a good nurse learned was not to take the drug inspired comments of her male patients too seriously.”

“It was common knowledge that an Indian was incapable of holding his liquor with any kind of grace.”

“Half aware of Dave’s appraising eyes following her movements, she thought again that the administration of a pain relieving agent, or an anesthetic certainly had the power to release the wolf in a male patient.”

“Pregnancy is a woman’s natural role.”

“Hell, Doc, I’ll bet you could take it. And I can stand anything a damn Indian can.”

“Once we’re married, you won’t have to worry over patients, or anything but making me happy.”

REVIEW:

Being optimistic in nature, I always start a new nurse novel with a sense of hope, an expectation of a pleasant hour or two, a few laughs, enjoyable characters, and good writing. And I took up this book, with its Mort Engel cover, with just such anticipation. “The road twined inland,” it began, but right there – with that one word, twined, a feeling of dismay settled over me, an inclination that only worsened until the back cover approached and the realization that it would soon come to an end dawned.

Rheva grew up with her lumberjack father, Tim, in rough logging country in the Pacific Northwest, but left all that behind to move to San Francisco to become a nurse. In that fabulous city she was scooped up by Dr. Spencer Sandeen, and the handsome, wealthy surgeon is about to head off to a glorious internship at a fancy Chicago hospital with her as his bride. Her heart doesn’t seem to be in it, though, judging by the constant snarky observations she makes about her so-called beloved. For starters, “He would be shocked, to the tips of his immaculately polished kidskin shoes, if he could see her now, crouching in the dense woods beside the big, rugged ranger.” And then, “Spence had never exhibited that certain, thrilled exuberance for his work—or anything else.” “It was the sort of thing Spence would say. And do, Rheva thought. The easy way out, with little danger—to Dr. Spencer Sandeen’s flawless medical record.” “Spence had made it clear to her that he wanted a wife willing to devote herself exclusively to him, body and soul.” Good luck with that, buddy.

She’s come home to visit her dad for two weeks and help him bag an elk (he scored one of the few permits distributed during the elk season). While she’s there, she meets Dr. John O’Garra, a “strange, dark halfbreed doctor” of Irish and Hoopa Indian ancestry. If you find the term half breed a bit unsettling, better pour a tall glass of Pepto Bismol right now, because the word is used at least half a dozen more times, along with a liberal helping of “inscrutable” and “mysterious” – we are treated to all your favorite Native American stereotypes, from the beautiful, wild young woman Sasoo to drunk Indians getting into bar fights.

Rheva really has quite the hots for the doctor, and her lust is quite startling for a VNRN: “Dr. O’Garra’s long thigh pressed against her own, as he leaned with the swerving ambulance. The hard, sinewy pressure of his muscles burned through the thin fabric of her uniform. A sudden surging tingled along her veins in response to his ruggedly appealing masculinity. She hadn’t known a woman could be … She pushed the thought out of her mind, telling herself that the feeling Dr. O’Garra aroused in her was the mysterious ‘libido’ defined by her nursing textbooks.” Call it what you will, sister, but I call it more appropriate for a sleaze novel.

Beyond her own unabashed hankering for Dr. O’Garra’s lithe, muscular form and “exotic Indian darkness,” it seems we’re also supposed to sport a hard-on for Rheva herself, as we are regularly offered glimpses of her uniform “rustling cleanly against the length of her shapely thighs,” her “soft, full mouth,” or in the shower, where “the chilling water sliced against her creamy, pink tinted body.” She’s scrubbing to assist in a surgery in which her father, gored by his elk, may die, but before we scrub up for a very serious operation, we watch her “slip a wrinkled scrubgown over panties and bra, and bind her generous mop of soft hair away from her pert face.” Speaking of lingerie, we learn more about that, too:“She slipped out of her old hunting pants revealing startlingly brief and pretty underwear, mere wisps of filmy, delicately tinted nylon. Most of the nurses Rheva knew were extravagant in their choice of undergarments. A nurse’s uniforms were attractive, coming in a variety of attractive styles. But it somehow enhanced the femininity of the white garments to know that she was daintily attired beneath them.” Whoa, Nellie!

In a shockingly original plot twist, Dr. O’Garra offers Rheva a job at the woefully understaffed hospital, and she can’t decide whether to stay with the half breed hunk or go back to her asshole fiancé who will force her to give up the career she loves and host parties for his shallow friends. Hmmm – what to do, what to do? Then there’s the “night of crisis and terror” alluded to on the back cover blurb (see above), when she and Dr. O’Garra deliver a baby. We’ve already met the woman’s husband, Dave, when he checked into the hospital after rolling his rig. In Rheva’s every encounter with Dave, he makes salacious remarks and looks her over with x-ray vision. She tries to shame him by mentioning his enormously pregnant wife Peggy, but it doesn’t work: “ ‘She’s not much to look at right now,’ he added, his young, handsome face naïve. His gaze traveled the length of her trim figure, shapely in the well fitted, princess style uniform.” The best thing about his wife’s pregnancy, it seems, is that it will soon be over. Indeed, the first words out of Peggy’s mouth after she delivers her son allude to her relief at getting her figure back: “ ‘It feels … good to be thin again,’ Peggy managed. ‘Dave … will be glad.’ ”

So with the baby – and Peggy and Dave’s sex life – saved, all that’s left is for Rheva to choose Dr. O’Garra. Spence shows up to be jilted to his face, but not to worry: There’s that hot Indian woman, Sasoo, for him to claim instead. All the better that she’s actually an accomplished painter.“Sasoo was beautiful. And with a talent like that she could make a fortune in San Francisco. Spence had a penchant for primitive art, as did most of his friends.” Apparently no matter how many art classes you’ve taken – and she’s been studying for years, financed by Dr. O’Garra – if you paint people with brown faces, it’s classified as primitive.

If I were a bigger person, I would not feel compelled at this point to whine about the book’s numerous allusions to Rheva’s pericardiac anatomy: “Her heart twisted behind her sternum.” “Rheva felt a dull ache starting behind her sternum.” “Rheva felt her heart quicken behind her sternum.” “Her heart had begun a sudden fluttering behind her sternum.” “Fear tugged behind her sternum.” “A knife-sharp pang sliced somewhere behind Rheva’s sternum.” “The wild beating behind her mediastinum had grown to thundering proportions.” (Apart from everything else, it would have helped if the author had checked an anatomy book to find out what the mediastinum actually is.) But this book has not encouraged my finer qualities, no doubt because it has none of its own.

Dude Ranch Nurse

By Arlene Hale, ©1963
Cover illustration by Charles Gehm

Jan Gordon came to Deer River, with its dude ranches deep in the Rockies, in order to thrust aside all the unpleasant memories of the past and rediscover herself. But Jan found that as a nurse and as a woman, she couldn’t turn her back on conflict. There were two young doctors in Deer River; Jan owed loyalty to both. To Dr. Coe, Jan was bound by her conscience, but it was Dr. Lester who held her heart.

GRADE: C-

BEST QUOTES:

“You’re too pretty to be a nurse.”

“You’re more than a nurse. You’re a woman. You know that no matter how important he is, or how old, or even how tough, a man needs the touch of a woman’s hand.”

“There’s some joy in gettin’ sick, if a fellow’s got a pretty nurse like you.”

“I let a few women slip through my fingers. Nice, tasty tidbits, but a man can’t exist on that sort of thing, can he?”

“Wow! Man, you were pretty before, but that uniform really does something for you.”

REVIEW:

The cover of this book, after I posted it on my companion blog, Vintage Romance Covers, earned more comments than any other (so it was just two, but still!). I take it from this (albeit meager) sign that the general public holds some interest in this book, perhaps similar to its feeling for Hootenanny Nurse. These titles epitomize the extremes of the genre and bespeak great possibilities of camp, adventure, and fun. If only what lies inside held half the joy of its promise. Dude Ranch Nurse, I am sorry to say, has one E too many in its title.

Now, some may call this a quibble, but our heroine, Jan Gordon, does not work at a dude ranch. In fact, the only time we actually see one is when spends an evening at Pete’s Dude Ranch on a date, and then it’s a passing reference to singing cowboys and thick steaks. Jan has left her home and a boring, nice guy there to “chase her rainbows and satisfy her dreams and search for that elusive thing called happiness.” Just so you know, this is actually a bad thing – the smarter plan would have been “to fall into a dull, humdrum routine. It would have been safe, secure.” But here she is, in Deer River, Colorado, an hour into the mountains from Denver. She gets off the bus and carries her letter of recommendation straight to Dr. Dan Lester’s clinic, and he hires her on the spot, as his son, Dr. Noel Lester, is expected to return home from a few years in New York doing research, and Noel will need a nurse.

The Lester clinic is a shabby place. The paint on the walls is peeling, the linoleum is badly scuffed, the medical equipment was “only fair and very old.” It’s staffed by Nurse Schmidt, one of those stereotypical battleaxes: “the buxom, hard-eyed, tough kind … that sassed patients, jabbed roughly with the needle and ate spike nails for breakfast.” The only thing it has going for it is that it’s “scrupulously clean.” Needless to say, patients are in short supply at Dr. Dan’s. Across town, though, is the Coe Clinic, run by Dr. Mavis Coe. Her establishment is new, modern, decorated with plush carpeting and the latest in medical technology. She even has a few hospital beds, which saves desperately ill patients from being trucked to Holden General Hospital, 20 miles away, in emergencies. Jan’s first day in Deer River gets her into the Coe Clinic when a young girl is thrown from a horse and Jan accompanies the patient there. The problem is that Dr. Coe and Dr. Dan are bitter enemies, and if Dr. Dan finds out that Jan is stopping by the Coe place to visit with little Debbie, who is paralyzed from the accident, she will lose her job.

After much asking around, Jan learns that Dr. Noel and Dr. Mavis had once been engaged. But Mavis had wanted a bigger and better clinic, and Dr. Dan had refused. She and Dan waged a tug of war over Noel, and neither won: Noel packed up for New York. So Mavis opened her fancy clinic across town, and it’s been a big success. The story is a bit confusing, but it seems that Noel had asked Mavis to wait a few years, for Dr. Dan to retire, before improving the Lester clinic. “All he’d asked for was a few years. All they had to do was wait, but Mavis wouldn’t,” Noel thinks. “She had always been ambitious, going hell bent toward her goals. … If Mavis had really loved him, nothing else would have mattered – neither the clinic nor her fantastic ambition. Mavis didn’t love him, never had and never would.”

There’s a lot wrong with Noel’s assessment, starting with the fact that Noel is mulling this over after he had gone to Mavis’ house before she had arrived home, let himself in with the spare key she keeps under the flowerpot, fought with her, grabbed her and kissed her against her will, and she had bitten him on the lip so hard it bled. Then one could ask why, of the affianced couple, it’s Mavis who ought to have given in. If Dan’s clinic is so clearly shabby and not meeting the needs of the population, why must a new facility that would improve local healthcare hinge solely on Dr. Dan’s whims? We could say that if Noel had loved Mavis, he would have chosen her over his father. This is the point of view taken by Jan: “There was too much respect for this woman doctor in her heart. She had seen how skilled she was, how much she cared about her patients. Perhaps she was ambitious. That was no crime. Perhaps she had wanted a nice building, a decent place to treat her patients. That was no crime either. Dr. Dan was wrong. Worst of all, he knew he was wrong and it ate at him like a burning infection.” But this exculpatory passage doesn’t let Mavis off the hook until the penultimate chapter, so for most of the story Mavis wears a scarlet MD.

Anyway, all that’s just the backstory. In the meantime, Jan has a monster crush on Noel, who is quite the hot tomato. “Noel Lester was one of the most attractive men she had ever seen. … To be involved romantically with a man that looked like this was probably the answer to most girls’ dreams.” So she hankers after Noel, but he mostly just toys with her, as it’s Mavis who owns his heart; Jan “was his ace in the hole,” thinks the lousy cad. For her part, Jan dates Noel, a frisky mountaineer called Buzz, and a reclusive writer next door named Damon. It’s a little peculiar to watch Jan and Noel bounce around, kissing everyone in sight despite their professed love for one person only. By the end of the book, the only person I really respect is Mavis.

The story concludes with Noel – once again – displaying his hydrozoan tendencies by decamping for New York, letting his father and Mavis know via a cowardly telegram. The wrench in his plans is the fact that his plane comes to earth a bit prematurely, in the mountains just outside of town. Does he survive? Will this tragedy bring peace at last to all the warring factions? Will Jan find herself a man? All these important questions are answered, of course, but you won’t be surprised by any of it, and you will care even less. And so my quest for a sublimely titled book that is actually worth reading continues.

Winged Victory for Nurse Kerry

By Patricia Libby, ©1965

When Kerry came to Hartford Memorial Hospital, she wanted to forget the past, with its nightmare of the airplane crash, and Johnny … She did not want to risk love again. Yet Dr. Garth Hamilton, handsome and rich, offered her a new kind of love, a love that protected without demands or challenges. Kerry knew she would be safe with him. But there was another doctor, a young man with stormy eyes who reminded her of the lost Johnny … and the spark of his courtship threatened to kindle a flame in her that would push security away in a renewed memory of peril and ecstasy.

GRADE: A-

BEST QUOTES:

“It was nice to be regarded with something akin to awe. Did lots for a man’s ego.”

“She was a tall girl with creamy skin, black hair, and the kind of a figure that even a critically ill male patient had been known to appreciate.”

“The Officer’s Club. Center of the base social life and springboard to romance.”

“It isn’t nurses that I dislike. It’s career women in general. When they work it tends to make them competitive and independent. They lose much of their femininity. But you’re different, Kerry. Gentle, vulnerable. All woman.” 

“Don’t lean too close with that sensational figure of yours, or he’s liable to have a relapse.” 

“Don’t look so embarrassed. You aren’t the first nurse to be caught necking in the sacred halls of Hartford.”

“She might fail as a woman, but never as a nurse.” 

“Smile if it kills you, sweetie. No man likes a moody girl.” 

“Brett slept on through dinner and dishes and Gina washing her hair.”

“Honesty was a vital part of courage.”

REVIEW:

After the long dearth of good nurse novels that I have recently endured, I am all the more grateful to Patricia Libby, who has given us a pretty good book with Winged Victory for Nurse Kerry, even if the title is a bit of a mouthful. In Ms. Libby we have the campiest writer in the genre, who can toss off phrases like, “There was no security in Brett—only challenge,” with a flip of the carriage return on her Smith Corona. We have high drama, in this case a plane crash into the ocean that left our heroine bereft of her fiancé, Johnny, and with an enduring phobia of airplanes. And we even have characters whose evolution over the course of the book is its central theme, and the boys circling around the perimeter are just the prizes for conquering your personal demons.  

Kerry Kincaid had once been a second lieutenant in the Air Force, working as a flight nurse with pilot Major John Bowman. But then came the aforementioned plane crash, in which he tows her through stormy waves to a life raft, then slips into the briny depths, à la Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic. After 11 months in the hospital, she’s honorably discharged and lands a job at Hartford Hospital in San Diego. She’ll never love again, or step on a plane, either. But she can still date, and Dr. Garth Hamilton, a wealthy OB/GYN senior resident, quickly impresses her with his showman-like skill in the OR and lines like, “It seems to me that a little girl like you belongs in a house dress instead of a uniform.” He obviously prefers his girlfriends without spines, and she’s only too happy to oblige: “Garth knew the terror she’d been through. He wouldn’t ask her to be brave, to put aside memory and do things that were beyond her. The strength that Garth Hamilton offered seemed like a kind of haven. Suddenly she wanted to lean on it. Let herself be protected, sheltered.” 

On the other hand, there’s Dr. Brett Taylor, a ladies’ man, flippant, brash, demanding, and rich, too. And—can you believe it?—he owns a plane, which he uses to make mercy medical missions to Mexico. No girlfriend of his can be afraid of flying, so he presses Kerry to let him take her up in his plane to conquer her fear, and she shrinks in terror until Garth steps in and defends the frightened little mouse nurse. When Brett hears that Kerry is dating Garth, he snaps, “It should prove to be a sterile relationship. No danger of you being infected by any consuming emotion.” All they do is argue when they meet in the cafeteria, but she allows herself to be coerced into a date with Brett, largely because his humble dedication as a surgeon and his Mexican missions bespeak a big heart inside the wolfish exterior. Before long, over the hospital bed of a young boy whose life Brett has just saved, they’re kissing and declaring their burning love for each other.

But it’s only page 69, so we’ve got time for more internal struggle. Garth does not approve when he finds Kerry specialing a young Mexican patient of Brett’s who has suffered severe burns: “Brett has no right to carry his experiment in psychology this far, forcing you to accept challenge in the belief that it will give you back your courage. Make a strong, self-reliant woman out of you. Kerry darling, don’t allow Brett to make you into something you aren’t. Something I don’t want you to be.” This actually gives her pause, and then, on a date, Brett decides to surprise Kerry with a little trip to the airport, telling her he’s going to take her up in his plane. She becomes completely hysterical, running out onto the landing strip, and Brett has to bundle her back into the car before a plane runs her over. He takes her home and tells her that he can’t see her again: “You need a different kind of man. One who won’t push and demand and apparently hurt you so much.”

So when Garth proposes to her, she accepts, because she thinks marriage to Garth will bring a life of security and peace—and then she meets his parents, a snooty pair who immediately starts impressing on Kerry their need for grandchildren. She is unnerved by this, but when Garth tells her that his parents are coming with them on their honeymoon in Hawaii—which is going to be a business trip as well, by the way—she says nothing of her discontent with his fabulous idea. Garth, who doesn’t know when to quit, then tells her that he is having her transferred from surgery to OB/GYN so she can special a rich woman who might send Garth lots of referrals if she is pleased. “It had never occurred to Garth to ask if she minded the transfer. He simply took it for granted that she’d follow his wishes, just as with the honeymoon arrangements.” But she still can’t tell Garth what to do with his spoiled, rich patient, so she goes to the chief of staff and asks him not to take her out of surgery. Dr. Keller tells her he wouldn’t have approved the transfer anyway, then mentions that Brett is flying to Mexico shortly to work at a village wracked by typhoid fever. Will she go with him? Panic ensues, and she quickly flees Dr. Keller’s office.

Safe inside the elevator, she promptly has an epiphany: “Everyone wanted to decide things for her. Garth. His mother. Even Brett. Did they all think her incapable of decision? Unable to stand alone? And was she to blame? The choice was suddenly, frighteningly clear. She could marry Garth and be babied, asked to do nothing more hazardous than compete in tennis and bridge. Or she could be the real Kerry Kincaid again. Dependable, self-reliant, unafraid to make decisions and stand by them.” Guess what she does next? Well, it’s not a completely straight road; she still tries to convince herself that “Garth would make a wonderful husband. She was lucky to be marrying him.” It’s irritating to watch her waffle, though it is quite clear to us what the right, and best, choice is. But it’s just a few pages until she’s finally resolved, and the ending is actually kind of cute—a real rarity in VNRNs.

I found this book all the more pleasing because Kerry is made whole again not by one guy or the other, but by her own design. Though she ends up taking the path Brett would have her follow, it’s on her own timetable, not his; Brett’s attempt to coerce her onto his plane on their date fails badly, and when she eventually does get back on a plane, it’s because she has made that choice herself, not because someone else forces her to. I also feel compelled to note that this book, like many VNRNs I’ve read, takes a rather dim view on wealth. Poverty is noble in these books, and if you must have money, you have to work pretty hard to overcome that disadvantage by ruthlessly sacrificing yourself, for example, in impoverished Mexican villages. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s seldom poor doctors who take on these missions; they’re too busy working themselves to the bone to get through their residencies and refusing to marry their girlfriends. Fortunately for Kerry, Brett has money, so they can get married and she can keep working, so as to prove her worth as a useful person. Happy endings for all.

Spotlight on Nurse

By Tracy Adams (pseud. Sofi O’Bryan), ©1962

Inspired by her medical student fiancé, Cindy Thorne abandoned her acting career to become a nurse. But the details of medical training and the strain of awaiting his return made her question her decision. Was her dedication to helping humanity strong enough to counter the excitement of a new appearance behind the footlights and the charm of an intriguing leading man?

GRADE: C+

BEST QUOTES:
“With a love scene like that you’ll give all the doctors high blood pressure and they’ll kick you out of nursing, baby.”

“My heart is in real bad shape, suffering from a stenosis there’s no name for.”

REVIEW:
Cindy Thorne is a former child stars with a haranguing stage mother who has lost her chance at glory by association when the child in question opted for a more pedestrian career: While research a role at a hospital, Cindy met this intern, Bruce, and soon decided to chuck Hollywood for nursing school so she could help him when he goes into practice. (But it’s also apparent that Hollywood had dropped Cindy as well, as she had become too old to play a child, and roles for older girls weren’t forthcoming.)

When the book opens, Cindy is a few months from graduating from nursing school, and her class has decided to stage a production of My Fair Lady. Cindy, of course, lands the lead. There’s this intern, Ted Morrow, who qualifies for the part of Henry Higgins basically by being cute, but he comes with the extra advantage that he’s already pining for his leading lady. As play rehearsals progress, Cindy spends a lot of time thinking about how much she loves being on the stage and asking herself if nursing is really the right career for her. Oh, and dating – and kissing – Ted, despite her being all but engaged to Bruce. As graduation and opening night approach, her internal struggles increase in frequency and amplitude, until both are over and Cindy is heading out for a celebratory night on the town with Bruce, planning to tell him that she’s going to quit nursing before her shiny new RN pin has even cooled. Then their cab is brought to a halt in a traffic jam caused by a fire in the subway near the Times building on 42nd Street – and she and Bruce are simultaneously tumbling out onto the street to go help the injured. Somehow this instinctive reaction completely negates all those pages of internal turmoil, and “she belonged in this white uniform, in these white oxfords and white stockings. She wouldn’t exchange places with any other girl in the world.”

I’ve spent the morning wondering what to say about this book. As you can see from the pair of paragraphs above, there’s not really much to say. It’s mildly pleasant, but it has next to no camp or humor, and it’s a bit earnest for my taste, with too much fretting over how emotionally demanding nursing is. The cast of characters is overly large; we whiz past 12 other nursing students, getting to know just one, who is unfortunately a bit irritating. Our brief exposure to Bruce – he doesn’t even have a last name – is not enough to make for a satisfying ending when she chooses him over Ted. I was also somewhat taken aback, given Cindy’s previously strong conviction that she needed to be an actress, that she could reverse herself for apparently no more of reason than that she reached for a car door handle in a moment of crisis. In the end, the spotlight is focused on a fickle nurse engaged to a stranger, and I’m more than ready to leave the theater.

Nurse Kitty’s Secret

By Fern Shepard
(pseud. Florence Stonebraker), ©1963
Cover illustration by Rudy Nappi

At times, Kitty McCarthy thought she had buried her unhappy past. She was young, beautiful, raven-haired—and now all she wanted was to make good as an R.N. at Miner’s Hospital in the Kentucky hills—and to marry rugged Dr. Gary Harding—whose dream it was to see his little hospital properly equipped and endowed. Then, one day, Kitty’s brave new world fell apart—when Hollywood film queen Sherri Shannon was brought in—an accident victim. Sherri soon decided she wanted young Dr. Harding and would win him—if she had to destroy Kitty by ruthless trickery and by divulging the dark secret that involved both their pasts …

GRADE: C

BEST QUOTES:
“Being born my child was the most important thing that could have happened to you.”

“Nurses don’t weep!”

“Jeff would be a good catch for any girl. One of these days he was going to be an excellent gynecologist. He had all the necessary qualities.”

“I’ll be twenty-four. That’s pretty ancient, so maybe by then I’ll have more sense and a clearer head.”

“No wonder it had been so easy to lose Gary who, for all of his serious side, was a very human man. Such men were attracted to women who never forgot to be intensely feminine, who understood the importance of small vanities, of working hard to look beautiful even if they were not beautiful.”

“When you want something with all your heart, you must expect to pay a price for it.”

REVIEW:
You can usually count on Florence Stonebraker for a lively romp, with sparkling writing, characters that hold nothing back, and a wry wit. Nurse Kitty’s Secret could have been all that. It has the necessary ingredients: a femme fatale, a sassy sidekick, and even a tiny revolver pulled from a sequined clutch. Just add vodka and a twist of lemon, and enjoy responsibly! But despite these individual gems, they’re just not substantial enough to produce something to sigh over. In the end, Nurse Kitty’s Secret is your longtime fiancé finally pulling out a ring—and it’s microscopic diamonds set in silver.

I was hopeful with the very first sentence: “At exactly what moment Sherri was going to let the cat out of the bag concerning their relationship, Kitty McCarthy did not know.” All right! Enter Sherri Shannon who, at 42, is one of Hollywood’s most beautiful women, but you know as well as I do how keeping your chins and crow’s feet in check at such an advanced age can make a gal utterly neurotic. She’s been in a car accident in the boonies of Kentucky and has been transported to Miners’ Hospital, where Kitty is a nurse. No coincidence, this: Sherri had hired detectives to track down her long-lost daughter when she found herself alone and bored after the death of her fourth husband. In no time flat she is fluffing her platinum blonde hair and pressing her sculptured moue on Dr. Gary Harding, the medico who runs the hospital, in spite (or—could it be?—because) of the fact that he is currently all but engaged to Kitty. (As usual, the man in question cannot bring himself to marry, “as long as I am not earning enough to provide the kind of life I would want to provide for a wife and family.” These sorts of dopes unfailingly find themselves at the altar within 100 pages of such idiotic declarations.)

Kitty wants nothing to do with her glamorous mother because seven years ago the woman tried to have her committed to an insane asylum. It’s not clear why Sherri is so eager to persecute her daughter after a such a long hiatus, and she gets off to a weak start, haranguing Kitty to find her favorite tweezers—“I simply couldn’t get along without them!”—in amongst the creams and oils and lipstick papers littering the bathroom of Sherri’s hospital room. Indeed, after this weak attack she barely has the chance to sharpen her claws any further, immediately striking a deal with Kitty: She will organize a huge fund-raiser to build a new wing for the hospital if Kitty will quit her job and leave town. Kitty realizes that “it was Gary’s lifetime dream. To take it from him would be to take everything that was important to him”—or, in Sherri’s words, Kitty is “a foolish little sentimentalist […] just the type to give up your man in order to give him his heart’s desire”—and promptly tenders her resignation.

Kitty plans to leave town, but something always stands in her way. There’s that 16-year-old bride carrying an ectopic pregnancy, who begs Kitty to help her: She’s been advised by Kitty’s uncle, who plays the role of the wise, aged family doctor, to “guard against over-exertion and fatigue, be careful of her diet,” but I just can’t see how either of these precautions is going to keep her fallopian tube from rupturing and causing serious hemorrhage, even death.

So Kitty’s always hearing rumors from her pals at the hospital about the romance that Sherri is foisting on the dopey Dr. Gary. He wants his new hospital so much that he plays along—only to realize too late that “that fiendish woman—and she must be a fiend, treating you as she did—expects me to marry her! […] Think what it will mean to me to be married to that screwy woman!” But the pragmatic Kitty reminds him that his precious hospital hangs in the balance. And besides, “Marrying Sherri won’t mean a life sentence, honey. Her marriages never last very long.” Oh. Well, in that case …

The benefit goes off, but without the doctor—whose engagement to Sherri was to be announced at its conclusion—because he’s in surgery saving the kid whose ectopic pregnancy has indeed nearly killed her. Never saw that one coming. The money is raised, and Sherri turns up in a gold lame sheath dress, sporting a small shiny revolver to collect her vengeance. But it’s too little, too late. This scene plays out like a mangy stray with heatstroke compared to the fiery tiger it could have been.

Another sign that this book was doomed to disappoint was the fate of the liveliest character, hospital receptionist Liz Tracey. Liz is the sassy, wry sidekick who flings off lines like, “What’s with our Love Goddess this bright spring morning?” and “Miss Shannon is holding her own: Her temperature is normal, her blood pressure is normal, her appetite is normal, she wanted champagne for breakfast. We think she will live.” And she decamps for California halfway through the book, after Sherri told her that she ought to “strive to project a sweet, cheery personality. Me!” Frankly, I wish we could have gone with her. It would have made for a spicier book.

University Nurse

By Arlene Hale, ©1967
Cover illustration by Lou Marchetti

Sara Arnold, the nurse at Heights University, knew what it was to go beyond the call of duty, to help sick or troubled students. But she needed love, too, and she couldn’t share Noel with so many of his devoted—and beautiful students. Sara loved the dedicated young professor, but how could she accept just a small corner of his life when someone like Hal offered her his whole world? For Hal was the kind of man who would give up all for the woman he loved. As a responsible nurse, Sara could understand Noel’s dedication to his career, but sometimes even a girl like Sara, usually so full of common sense, had trouble choosing between what reason dictated and her heart demanded.

GRADE: C

BEST QUOTES:
“It’s a living. I’d
swap it any time for a home, kids and a husband.”

“ ‘Hmm, your hair smells so good.’
“ ‘Shampooed it last night, just for you.’ ”

“ ‘You look right in a kitchen. I thought professional women were never much for homemaking.’
“ ‘You’re wrong,’ Sara answered. ‘We’re women first and then professionals.’ ”

REVIEW:
Arlene Hale was a very prolific writer, penning more than one hundred books under this name, and she had at least six other pseudonyms as well. Quantity, however, seldom has anything to with quality in a best-selling author; I have found Arlene Hale’s books to be mostly mediocre (this is the eighth I’ve read). And so we have University Nurse.

Sara Arnold, the RN for Heights University, is dating sociology prof Noel Tyler. Their dates consist of her laying her head on his tweedy shoulder as he smokes a pipe in his book-lined study. Oh, and fighting about how he spends too much of his free time with his students, the co-eds especially, and this one girl in particular. Anne Marie Parker, a 22-year-old senior, is perennially turning up on Noel’s doorstep. Noel won’t tell Sara what he and Anne Marie talk about, because it’s confidential, but Sara has a few unflattering ideas.

Despite Sara’s objections, the visits to Noel’s house don’t stop, and now Professor Garth, the old chem prof, is dropping by as well. He has a troubled marriage, and rumors are flying that he is involved with one of the undergrads. Soon the Dean hears that it’s Anne Marie who is getting extra help in chemistry, and Prof. Garth is fired. Anne Marie is about to be expelled herself when she turns up at Noel’s house again. Noel sees no problem in “tightening his arms around her for a moment. In a way, Anne Marie was much as he had been as an orphaned boy, needing help, needing love, needing someone’s shoulder to lean on. He would and could help this girl. He lifted her tear-smudged face in his hands. Even like this, she was a fragile, beautiful thing and his heart ached to help her.” Clearly he has learned nothing from the cautionary tale of Prof. Garth.

Anne Marie tells Noel that nothing happened between her and Prof. Garth, and he insists that she go to the Dean and tell him this, or he will. Of course, when Sara learns of this latest tête à tête, she argues with Noel; she feels that if she had really wanted to, Anne Marie would have gone to the Dean long ago and prevented Prof. Garth from being fired in the first place, and Sara wonders if Anne Marie needs some therapy. Noel is hotly defending Anne Marie’s psychiatric integrity and about to break up with Sara when the phone rings: rather than go to the Dean, Anne Marie went to the medicine cabinet and attempted suicide with its contents.

When Sara and Noel get to Anne Marie’s hospital room, she asks them if anyone has cabled her father, an elusive businessman who has never had time for his daughter. “They must! They must!” she tells them. “Otherwise, it was all for—” Sara and Noel immediately deduce that Anne Marie had set up the whole “affair” with Prof. Garth as well as the suicide attempt to get her father’s attention. Noel takes the whole thing very hard, feeling that it’s entirely his fault that Anne Marie attempted suicide, because his rescue of Prof. Garth’s reputation and Anne Marie’s enrollment in the university meant that Anne Marie felt compelled to take some other drastic action to force her father to notice her.

I’m sure I don’t have to explain any more for you to see where this story is going. It’s a
simple story, simply told, without much camp or fun or humor. It’s a quick read, but the best thing about this book is the cover—the illustration by Lou Marchetti as well as the cover line, “The professor understood everything but love.”