Read Online Cherry Ames 04 Chief Nurse by Helen Wells - Free Book Online

kept on in Panama, and even Josie would be reliable as dispensary nurse. But how can I take them off the wards when we’re already short of nurses?” she despaired.
    She wished she could talk things over with her old nursing teachers, supervisors and head nurses. Miss Mac or Miss Reamer would know exactly how to help and advise her. She certainly missed these firm, quiet, experienced nurses whom she had loved so much.
    On her way to the wards, she groped her way into the darkened X-ray tent. Here films were developed on the spot, for the use of surgeons in the Operating hut. This was a tent within a tent. Major Pierce had received complaints from the surgeons that X-ray was slow and had asked Cherry to “do something about it.” She started by asking the two young men in charge of X-ray how their work was going.

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    “There’s something wrong with the machine,” they told her. “Oh, we know we’re slowing up operations! But we can’t help it, Lieutenant Ames—this tube seems to be choked up—we’ve tried to repair it but no luck—” Cherry looked at the big, shiny, metal rods, thick rubber tubing, and camera box, sitting incongruously on the dirt floor. She was stumped. The best she could suggest was, “I’ll send the repair truck over. And I’ll also try to hunt up a soldier who is a mechanic.” Cherry made a note to take care of this and half ran to her next job. She must divide up the work—she must have a regular anaesthetist instead of using a ward nurse in O.R.—Just then, she heard a tiny humming above her. Immediately she threw her head back and squinted into the sun. There, high in the brilliant sky, was a plane, looking about as big as a fly. It rapidly crossed their island and proceeded south toward Janeway. Where had it started from?
    But there was no time to speculate now. She should have stopped in at the laboratory tent, which overflowed with basins and test tubes and burners. She should have had a look in at the tent drugstore, where hundreds of prescriptions were filled from hundreds of bottles. But there was no time, no time! Cherry scurried on to her daily rounds of the wards.
    This was the part Cherry liked best. She missed doing actual nursing, although often enough even the Chief T R O U B L E S
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    Nurse was pressed into bedside service. Mostly she missed having patients of her own. However, she knew most of the patients, and they all certainly knew Cherry!
    She was enormously popular.
    “Hello, Lieutenant Ames!” thirty-seven of them called out, as she entered the doorway of Mai Lee’s rough Medical Ward.
    Cherry grinned and waved and called back to the boys in the beds, “How are you today?” She turned in at the utility room to speak in a low voice to Mai Lee.
    Mai Lee, with the help of two corpsmen, was setting up trays for the patients’ noon dinner. It always reassured Cherry to see standard hospital routine going on here in the jungle, with the same order and cleanliness as in a real hospital back home.
    “How are those colds? The shock cases? And the gastritis case?” Cherry asked Mai Lee anxiously.
    “Pretty fair,” the Chinese-American girl replied.
    “Come have a look at the charts. But, Cherry, I’m worried about the boy with the brain fever. When Dr. Willard made his eight-thirty sick call this morning, he said we ought to put that boy on isolation and keep him more quiet—if you can possibly arrange a private room for him.” Mai Lee’s almond eyes pleaded with her.
    “Certainly I’ll get him a room,” Cherry said, hastily scrawling this job too in her tiny notebook. “There isn’t 66
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    any such room but we’ll rig one up, that’s all. Don’t ask me how!” She grinned at Mai Lee. “Anything else?”
    “I’m not sure I remember exactly how to set-up for that tricky spinal tap,” Mai Lee confessed. “Is this right?” The two girls carefully recited together