Cherry Ames 05 Flight Nurse (6 page)

“Sergeant, get up there in the plane with three loaders. Put the broken back in a middle tier where I can reach him easily. Put the internal wounds case way up forward, where the riding is smoother. See if the back
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case needs a sedative. I have to check in the second ambulance load.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Bunce disappeared into the plane.

Cherry returned to the ambulances and the Flight Surgeon. The second ambulance load was gently being lifted out now. After consulting with the Flight Surgeon she hurried back again to the plane. Cherry climbed up into the big transport and stood in the doorway, where she could watch each wounded man as he was lifted in. The litter-bearers sweated and strained under their heavy loads of inert men. They were wonderfully skillful, gentle and patient.

Cherry saw to it that the men were firmly taped in, each on his tier. They seemed to relax, now that they could lie still in one place. She said reassuring words, laid a broken arm in a more comfortable position, and gave a tense soldier an extra smile and pat on the arm.

To see a smile come over these wounded men’s faces, as she bent over them, was her reward.

In twelve minutes, all eighteen men were loaded and the five ambulances rolled off down the runway. Just before the plane’s bay doors were slammed shut, Major Thorne jumped aboard for a last-minute check of the wounded. The Flight Surgeon gave Cherry a few instructions about the spinal and chest cases, then left her in sole charge of the lives of the eighteen men.

Now Cherry looked around for Captain Cooper. He was not in sight.

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She found him, not in the base operations hut but not very far away, wistfully poking around a bomber.

“Captain Cooper!” Cherry said furiously. Her black eyes seemed to shoot sparks. “Here is our list of patients!”

They hurried back together to the base operations hut. Wade gloomily reported the list of patients. He and Cherry synchronized their watches. All this went on in heavy silence.

When they got outside, Cherry demanded:

“Wade, what’s the matter? What’s bothering you?”

“Playing nursemaid! Me!”

“Wade Cooper, this job’s every bit as important as piloting a bomber!”

“I know, I know.
More
important. That’s just it. I can handle a bomber. I know how to fight. But when I think of eighteen beat-up kids lyin’ back there, all helpless, all depending on me—I’m scared cold. Scared and nervous, I tell you.”

“Silly, you shouldn’t—”

“What altitudes do you want?”

“Keep it as low as you can. We’ve got a bad chest wound aboard. If you have to go up over eight thousand, give me as much advance notice as you can. Look, you old worrier, there’s nothing to be scared of. This is easier than—”

Wade bolted, calling, “Get all belts fastened. Let me know when you’re ready back there to take off.”
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“We’re ready now. Won’t you come back and tell the boys—”

But Wade was gone. Cherry bit her lip in exasperation.

She tried to reassure the wounded soldiers. Standing in the aisle, she said:

“We have a fine, experienced pilot, fellows. And Sergeant Bunce and I are going to take good care of you. So you just relax and try to sleep.” The weakest men seemed not to have heard. The rest stared back at her solemnly.

Their engines roared. She and Bunce made a final check to see that all the patients were secured. Then they sat down on bucket seats and strapped in. They felt the plane strain, then gently lift. Cherry clasped her hands anxiously. Now came the big test for her—for all of her crew.

Bunce was anxious, too. He whispered to her:

“I put water and coffee and fruit juice in the kitchen.

There’s plenty of plasma, extra oxygen, and I laid out fresh dressings for that internal wounds case. Oh, yes, and I gave the spinal cord case a sedative. All right?”

“Very all right!” She wished silently that Wade were as thoroughly reliable as Bunce.

They leveled off at around four thousand feet and flew along smoothly in the morning sunlight. Now Cherry had to take back that mental comment. The cockpit door opened and in came the pilot. He walked 50

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unsteadily down the aisle between the litters, his eyes glancing into each tier. He faced Cherry sheepishly.

“Copilot took over.” Wade cleared his throat. “Uh—

everyone comfortable?” Then, without any prompting, he raised his voice and self-consciously said:

“Men, my name’s Cooper. I just want you to know that when I was in the ATC, I flew from San Francisco to Stalingrad through a series of storms with a load of machinery and we set her down without a scratch.” Wade said it all in one breath, as if he were ashamed of it.

One weak voice called, “Get any vodka?” Wade relaxed. “Vodka and champagne and caviar—

for breakfast! And they met us at the airport with a brass band!”

There were amused murmurs and smiles along the tiers of wounded men.

“Thanks, Wade,” Cherry whispered.

“Sure. Take it easy, fellows!” Cherry whispered, “I thought you’d flown only in China.”

“Well—I—uh—I have to go up forward now. ’Bye.” Wade stopped on his way up the crowded aisle to shake a soldier’s hand.

“Nice guy,” said the patient at Cherry’s elbow. He turned his head contentedly and shut his eyes. Cherry could have hugged Wade at that moment.

The flight went off smoothly, and the patients (who had already had considerable hospital care) slept most of the way. Subsequent flights went off well, too.

Cherry became familiar with the holding hospital at Prestwick, Scotland. Here patients waited six hours or three weeks, to be picked up by transatlantic ATC

planes. Four hundred wounded were flown out every morning, westward over the Atlantic, fifteen enormous C-54’s at a time. The transfer hospital was a huge barn of a place. “Must be a good deal like lying in Grand Central Station,” Wade commented. The men there were cheerful, though, because they were going home.

These short hops to Prestwick were easy, Cherry realized. When her team went into combat areas, it would not be so easy as this. Until then, jumping back and forth across the British Isles, eating in strange places, sleeping when and where she could, was a gypsylike existence.

The trips back to home base were carefree. The plane then was empty of patients. They would carry back supplies from ships docking in Scotland, usually medical supplies. Once Cherry was entrusted with a precious package of oral penicillin, which an ATC plane had rushed from New York for a stricken soldier in a British hospital. Cherry thought it would have heartened that soldier’s family to see this swift, conscientious aid. On the way back, too, she had a chance to see from aloft 52

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the long chain of American Army hospitals scattered throughout England.

Cherry’s favorite perch on the way home was beside a low window, back in the fuselage. Lying flat, while floating along in the empty sunshine, she would watch the green hills skim by, listen to the motors’ ceaseless throbbing, and dream. Sometimes the sun would sink before they reached home. Then the cabin filled with shadows, while all around and under them, cloud banks piled up, savagely red, swiftly fading.

Sometimes they flew at night. One particular night, an incandescent moon lighted the air. It seemed to Cherry their plane was flying right at the moon. Wade’s low voice called her up front. He dismissed his copilot.

The silvery-white planet hung just outside the plane’s nose.

“Bomber’s moon,” Wade said to Cherry. “Where is Bunce?”

“Asleep on a litter.”

“Want a blanket over your lap?”

“Thanks.”

He tucked her in, keeping one hand on the stick.

Cherry could see his face in the night light. On his chin there was a streak of red from the dim glow of lights on the instrument panel. Wade smiled at her and his hand touched hers.

“Nice to have a lady aboard.”

“Nice to
be
aboard, Captain.”
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“This particular lady, I mean.”

“Cooper, Ames, and Company.”

“I mean more than that, Cherry.” Then came an event which shattered the smooth-going, easy tenor of these many days and nights.

One afternoon, a mission to Prestwick completed, they circled and prepared to land on their home field.

They kept circling. Cherry heard the officers up in front grumbling about something. Lieutenant Greenberg’s radio tapped insistently. Finally they did land, easily and smoothly. When Cherry and Bunce flung open the side bays and jumped down, they found the whole field almost deserted. No men, no planes.

Wade shouted from the cockpit, “There’s been a bombing! I’m going to taxi the ship over to the hangar.

You and Bunce take cover.”

Two ground crewmen came running to see if the arriving C-47 was all right. They told Cherry something further.

“Robot bombs. Not aiming for this base—just aiming to destroy anything, kill anybody. One of the villages was hit.”

Cherry gasped. “Any civilian wounded in the hospital?”

“Yes—coming in right now—a lot of them.” Cherry and Bunce sprinted across the airfield for the hospital. They saw Army ambulances coming up along the country roads. Redoubling their speed, they 54

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burst through the front door, and Cherry started for the second floor where she was assigned.

Captain Betty Ryan caught her on the stairs. “Oh, thank heavens! You got in all right! I’ve been worrying about you!”

“Yes, ma’am! I’m going to pitch right in!” and Cherry raced on up the stairs. In the corridor she saw dazed-looking English people, women and children and a few old men, some of them badly hurt. She noticed particularly one indignant white-haired lady, a piece of quilt tied over one eye, but her head held high.

The Chief Nurse in charge of the second floor was trying to bring some order into the confusion.

Army doctors already were taking care of the severely wounded. Army nurses were trying to classify the walking wounded, according to their injuries, and send them to the right facilities. Cherry was assigned to a cubicle of a room, given supplies, and told to cleanse, medicate, and dress the surface cuts of the people who would be sent in to her. She hastily put on an apron over her flying slacks, and washed, her hands in strong anti-septic. A thirteen-year-old girl Cadet brought a list of names to her, and lined up the patients outside Cherry’s door.

“Mr. Thomas Trethaway!” Cherry called.

Into her cubicle came an elderly man. He wore a rusty suit and a blue muffler. His right hand was wrapped in a bloody handkerchief.

“Good day, mum.”

“Hello, sir!” Cherry eased off the sticky handkerchief and examined the gaping cut for glass or other particles.

“What’s happened to that hand?”

“I was just setting meself down to a nice dish o’ tea and kippers when—blimey! Jerry drops his calling card.

Bits o’ the window glass come whirling all over my tea.

Kippers aren’t easy come by, I can tell you. It was a fair disappointment to me, it was!” Cherry deftly cleansed and dressed the deep cut.

“Well, it may have cost you the kippers, but you’re lucky you weren’t hurt worse than this.”

“I been through worse bombings,
far
worse indeed!

But that’s nothing. We don’t take no notice of that sort of thing.”

Mr. Thomas Trethaway calmly took his departure.

Cherry called the next name on her list. “Mrs. Ivy Drew!”

In came a frightened young mother with a very young, crying baby. The baby showed no outward signs of injury. Youthful Mrs. Drew said in a trembling voice:

“I found him thrown on the floor. He won’t leave off crying, Sister. This time, I thought, ‘the Jerries will have had enough of bombing the Drews.’ But it seems I was wrong. Can you make him stop crying? Please?” Cherry took one careful look and saw that the baby had suffered a concussion. She summoned the young Cadet and sent her speeding for a doctor.

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“Let’s go across the hall, Mrs. Drew,” she said gently and led the young mother, with her baby, into a doctor’s examining room. Cherry laid the baby down on the table and gave the woman a sedative, to calm her. “Don’t you worry. The doctor will take good care of your baby.” Talking soothingly, she laid out supplies and instruments which the doctor might need.

The doctor arrived, a little out of breath. “All right, Nurse, thank you.”

Cherry returned to her cubicle and treated several more people. Gradually she worked her way down the list. There were only two or three names left. She consulted the list and automatically called out the next name—

“Mrs. Hugh Eldredge!”

—then suddenly recognizing the name, Cherry tensely waited.

The white-haired lady entered. She was quite tall—

spare, straight, almost stately, dressed very quietly in black. The taut delicacy of her features and fine faded skin was apparent, despite a large makeshift bandage which completely covered one eye and the side of her face.

“This annoying eye,” she murmured. “I daresay it’s nothing.”

Despite the restrained voice, the elderly woman was quivering. Cherry got her into a chair. Mrs. Eldredge sat defiantly erect. Cherry was bursting with curiosity,
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but her duty as a nurse came before her personal concerns.

“Now just let me look,” Cherry said reassuringly.

The eye was badly bruised, the whole cheek was beginning to discolor, but it was only a surface injury.

“What happened, Mrs. Eldredge?”

“We didn’t hear the buzz bomb coming, though the warning had sounded. I went to fetch my little granddaughter from school. On the way—this one was quite near, you see—” Mrs. Eldredge put her hand to her head and sighed.