Cherry Ames 22 Rural Nurse (5 page)

“Still, I don’t understand,” Jane said. “Why would there be this persistent family rumor of a secret, if it didn’t have
some
basis?”

Dr. Hal smiled. “Maybe a hundred years ago a cricket chirped all night and convinced your great great great-aunt that she heard a ghost. Maybe a freak animal was born on that farm, and legend called it the work of the devil.”

Jane looked half disappointed. Cherry said:

“I’ll tell you what. As soon as you feel able, we’ll drive over to the abandoned farm, and we’ll see what we can see.”

This page intentionally left blank
c h a p t e r i v

All Kinds of Patients

at eight o’clock tuesday morning cherry reported to her offi ce in the courthouse. Dr. Miller was already there for a conference with her, and was looking through mail from patients and health agencies.

As they exchanged “good mornings,” Cherry’s telephone rang. Doctors in the country were calling in to request that the county nurse visit certain of their patients and gave her orders for nursing and treat-ments. Cherry would see these doctors later on, to report to them. By the time she had answered several telephone calls, she had a long list of visits to be made that week. In addition, there were letters from county people requesting help.

“It’s going to be a short work week after the holiday,” Dr. Hal said to Cherry. “Today I want you to follow up on the Reed baby and old Mr. Bufford, and when you can, visit Mrs. Swaybill. Dr. Clark would like you 37

38
CHERRY

AMES,

RURAL

NURSE

to see his patient, Dickie Plant, sometime this week.

I’ll take care of the three urgent calls needing medical consultation myself.”

Dr. Hal described the Swaybill and other cases and gave Cherry his orders. She then read records of families she would see today or tomorrow. Four or fi ve thorough home visits was about maximum for a rural nurse in one day, as she had to spend some time driving to her various families.

The county health clerk stopped by to ask when their statistics on the number and types of their car-diac cases would be ready. Dr. Hal picked up his black leather bag, gave a few more instructions, jammed his hat on his head, and left. Five minutes later Cherry gathered up her own list of calls, her nursing kit, the sandwiches Aunt Cora had packed for her, and started off on her own.

She felt a lively sense of freedom, driving along in her small blue car, on her way to take care of patients by herself. She was even able to choose her own dark-blue cotton uniform, and carried in her bag a white coverall apron. A uniform of her own choice was a sign of her independence! Cherry felt as if she had burst out of the four walls of a hospital, with its rigid schedules and strict supervision. For although she had doctors’ orders, and also had the regulation “standing orders”—rules to follow in the unlikely event that she could not get in touch with a doctor—she now would rely heavily on her own judgment. “And with no hospital, no clinic, few doctors, for miles around, I’d better do a good job!”

ALL KINDS OF PATIENTS

39

Cherry drove to the Reed farm fi rst, with its small house and huge red barn. She had been here before with Miss Hudson, to teach nineteen-year-old Mrs.

Reed prenatal care. Now Baby Reed had arrived, and young Dan Reed had brought mother and baby home from the hospital upstate. The new mother needed advice in caring for her baby.

Dot Reed was waiting for the nurse. She could hardly wait to show Cherry her bouncing baby girl.

“We named her Ella after my mother. Don’t you think she’s a big baby? Do all babies cry so much? I’m not sure I’m doing all the right things, the way you taught me—”

Cherry admired Ella, and weighed her in the kitchen scales. “Yes, she’s a fi ne healthy baby,” Cherry encouraged the new mother. “Tell me about her crying.” Cherry asked other questions, too, checked over the baby and its mother. She explained away some of the worrisome ideas a neighbor had implanted in her.

“Babies aren’t breakable, you know.” Cherry talked to Dot Reed about feeding Ella. Then she demonstrated to Mrs. Reed a simple, safe, and easy method of giving the baby a bath.

“That’s fun!” Dot Reed exclaimed as Cherry fi nished.

“The baby seems to think so, too,” Cherry said.

She reminded the new mother to keep a written record of her baby’s development, to show to her doctor and also to the nurse on subsequent visits. Then Cherry cleansed her nursing equipment, packed it away in the bag, and said goodbye to her two young 40
CHERRY

AMES,

RURAL

NURSE

patients. A good part of the morning had been spent here, but tiny Ella Reed was an important person and getting her off to a healthy start in life was too important a matter to be hurried.

Further down the road was Bufford’s dairy farm. The Buffords were a large, vigorous, hard-working family, Cherry discovered, and at the moment they felt a little impatient with Grandpa. The old man had fallen down the cellar stairs and while, miraculously, he had not broken any bones, he was laid up with cuts and the aftereffects of shock. No one in this busy household had much spare time to spend with him. Besides, his daughter-in-law, Mrs. Sally Bufford, told Cherry in the driveway:

“I tell you, Grandpa is a handful! He won’t let me or my girls nurse him—insists the menfolk of the family do it. Well, now, Miss Ames, my husband and boys can’t stop their work just to humor him!”

“Maybe we can fi nd other ways to humor him,” Cherry said. Dr. Boudineau, who was the Buffords’

family doctor, had instructed Cherry on the telephone this morning to see what she could do for the old man’s morale.

Mrs. Bufford led her into the house to see the stub-born old man who refused to stay in bed. Cherry got no response from Grandpa until she found he considered himself an expert at raising chickens. Cherry knew as little about chicken farming as she did about astro-physics, but she could and did ask Grandpa’s advice on raising chickens. His attitude thawed out considerably.

ALL KINDS OF PATIENTS

41

After that, it was a matter of giving a very old person some of the attention he was hungry for. Cherry managed at the same time to check his temperature, examine the cuts on his leg and arm, make sure there was no infection, and apply fresh sterile bandages. He told Cherry he had fallen down the cellar stairs when he was “tryin’ to help Sally.”

Cherry decided to talk to Mrs. Bufford about those hazardous stairs, and how the family could prevent accidents there and elsewhere on the farm. She urged Grandpa to take life easier, to help chiefl y by cooperating—“with the women of the family, too, sir.” He grumbled but promised. He even crawled back into bed.

To Sally Bufford, Cherry tactfully suggested: “Can’t you fi nd light tasks to keep Grandpa occupied? And can’t the men and the youngsters of the family spend a little more time visiting with him? It would help him a great deal. What about a game of cards, or between-meals refreshments, or a radio of his own?” Cherry did not venture to suggest raising chicks in his bedroom, which probably was what Grandpa would have enjoyed most.

By now it was noon. Cherry voted time out for lunch, found a place to turn off the road, and sat down in the grass under a shade tree. While she ate Aunt Cora’s sandwiches, she reviewed the morning’s visits. A few cars and farm trucks, loaded with produce or cattle, drove past. She was interested to see the Watkins Company door-to-door salesman pass by in his station wagon. The man was well dressed; the car looked trim 42
CHERRY

AMES,

RURAL

NURSE

and professional. Cherry remembered Phoebe Grisbee’s saying that farm people were in the habit of buying from door-to-door salesmen. She thought she’d like to do her shopping that way herself.

“Shopping!” Cherry thought. “I shouldn’t even
think
about shopping with all the calls I have to make this week!”

On Wednesday Cherry found time to visit Jane Fraser. As Cherry entered the Barker cottage, the parrot in its cage was squawking: “None of your business! None of your business!”

“Mike! Quiet!” Mrs. Barker threw a cover over the cage. The parrot continued to mutter darkly.

“That bird! Repeats everything we say, especially arguments! Just because my son Floyd talked back to me—Sit down, Miss Cherry.”

Mrs. Barker sat down, too, and fanned herself. She seemed upset. Jane, she said, was napping.

“I hope the argument Floyd and I had a little while ago didn’t disturb her. Honestly, that Floyd! I’m so exasperated with him that if I don’t talk to somebody, I’ll blow up.”

“Talk to me,” Cherry said. She was glad to sit and rest for a few minutes, and she did take an interest in Jane Fraser’s friend.

“Well, Miss Cherry, you can see for yourself that I work hard around this poverty-stricken place, and I can barely make ends meet. Now wouldn’t you think an ablebodied, grown man would do more to help his mother? Or even to help himself? Not Floyd! No, sir,

ALL KINDS OF PATIENTS

43

not that lazy hunk.” Mrs. Barker fanned herself furiously, then relented. “I don’t mean to sound mean toward my only child,
but
—!” Floyd, she said, had never worked steadily at anything, never married, never undertaken the least responsibility. What he liked to do was to hunt and fi sh and wander around the countryside. “He aims to enjoy himself.” He usually earned just enough cash money to buy gasoline for his jalopy.

“There’s no harm in Floyd,” his mother said. “It’s just that it don’t bother him a bit to live in my house and eat his meals here at my expense and leave me with most of the work.”

“No, that isn’t fair to you,” Cherry murmured.

“Precisely! Oh, dear.” Mrs. Barker took a long breath.

“I told Floyd he’s lazy, selfi sh, shiftless, and not growing any younger. What will become of him when I’m gone? I don’t like to nag but I
had
to tell him—” Outside, a car screeched to a stop. Mrs. Barker sat up straighter in her chair. Mutters of “None of your business!” issued from the covered cage. Then the screen door slammed open and Floyd sauntered in.

He was a lanky, sallow, loose jointed man in blue jeans and open necked shirt, in need of a shave, with an amiable and rather blank expression. He was carrying an armful of yellow squash which he set down on the table beside his mother.

“Peace offering, Ma,” he said. “Neighbor gave ’em to me for helping him mend his hayrack.” He nodded at Cherry and stood waiting to be introduced.

44
CHERRY

AMES,

RURAL

NURSE

His mother looked scornfully at the squash, as if Floyd ought to contribute more than a few vegetables.

Cherry thought Floyd was not much of a man. She heard Mrs. Barker say: “—the new county nurse.” Cherry said hello to Floyd, and decided she must not be prejudiced against him. He probably couldn’t help being a weakling. Part of the fault might be his mother’s overindulgence. He grinned at Cherry.

“I’ll bet from the glint in Ma’s eyes that she’s been telling you about how I have a gift for avoiding work,” he said. His homely face gleamed with humor. “I hope she told you, ma’am, how I’m doing better now.”

Mrs. Barker looked slightly ashamed of herself, but said tartly, “A
little
better, son. Only a little.”

“It’s a good horse that never stumbles, Ma.”

“You’ve been stumbling much of your life,” his mother said sadly.

“I don’t like work,” he said with a wink at Cherry.

“Work tires me, Ma.”

His mother retorted, “Some men acquire that tired feeling from looking for an easy job.”

“Ah, come on, Ma! You know that if I had the time, I’d build us a roadside stand, and you could sell your apples and zinnias to the city folks that drive past. The way a lot of our neighbors do.”

“That’s all I need!” Mrs. Barker was indignant. “To tend a roadside stand, on top of all else I have to do!” Floyd shrugged. “Well, if you don’t like the idea—” He helped himself from a dish of hickory nuts, and

ALL KINDS OF PATIENTS

45

held out the dish to Cherry. “Have some. I gathered

’em last fall, still tasty.”

Cherry said, “No, thanks.”

Floyd moved good naturedly toward the door. “Well, nice to meet you. I’ll be home in time for supper, Ma.” The screen door slammed again, and Floyd was gone.

Mrs. Barker sighed and then listened. Jane had not been wakened by the racket. “It’s a wonder,” Mrs.

Barker said. “Jane’s worn out, that’s why. Well, Miss Nurse, I’m glad that at last you’ve met my son.” The older woman waited for her to make some comment. Cherry did not wish to say anything unkind—

she kept to herself her unpleasant impression of Floyd.

She thought him shrewder and harder than the bumpkin he appeared to be. She did say that Floyd seemed to have a cheerful disposition.

“Yes, he does.” Mrs. Barker looked gratifi ed. “Provided he can be outdoors. He loves the countryside and all living, growing things. I taught my boy all the nature lore I know. And, if I say it as shouldn’t, that’s considerable. But that’s no excuse for him not working, and idling in the woods year in and year out. I told Floyd so. Finally!

“To tell you the truth,” Mrs. Barker said, “I never could bring myself to turn my son out of the house. I’d miss him. But recently, Floyd’s been so selfi sh, so irresponsible—just at a time when we need cash money for supplies, and to repair the roof against the winter!

Finally, a month or two ago, I told Floyd either he had 46
CHERRY

AMES,

RURAL

NURSE

to earn some money and pay for his keep, or else get out of my house.”

“Good for you,” said Cherry. “Did it help?”

“Yes, because he actually brings me a little money, now and then. Floyd’s got himself a part-time job at the cannery over at Muir.”

“Good.” Then Cherry was puzzled. “How can he be at home in the middle of the working day?”