Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 292, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 December 1913 — HER FIRST CASE [ARTICLE]

HER FIRST CASE

By BRUCE WATSON.

“I shall sleep an hour. Draw the -shades, and leave some drinking water beside me, and do get out for a -walk. You’ve been losing your rosy cheeks the last week, and I only chose you from all the other girls on account of them —and your smile. That’s better. Run along now.” Miss Livingston waved her nurse away, crossly. She was glad to go, too. Hour after hour shut in the hotel suite with her elderly patient, did not add sunshine to Nan Gleason’s life, any more thhn it helped the color to stay in her cheeks.

She slipped her long blue cloak around her and went out without the bonnet Somehow, she had not grown used to the nurse’s bonnet yet. It was only eight weeks since she had left the hospital.

Nearly all of her class were younger women. She was twenty-nine. They had asked her, these girls of twentyone and twenty-four, why she had taken up nursing so late. And she had told the truth, how there were six younger children, and she had stayed at home, helping her mother bring them up. Every since she could remember, there had been a new baby every few years for her to care for, and trundle around.

Then at last they had. grown up, old enough to care for themselves, and when the last, Teddie, their baby, went into high school, Nan had calmly announced her plans to the family, and entered the big gray stone City hospital for her training. She had enjoyed the entire course, too, especially as she went forward, and was chosen at some of the major operations for her steady hand, and quick responsiveness. That was how she came to meet Hal Thurber. There had been a motor accident It was late at night, and they rushed the injured to the operating room. Little Kate Caxton had roused her. There were six other nurses in the anteroom when she, stepped out of the elevator, and they were just carrying one of the men by on a stretcher. She had never forgotten his face as he lay there unconscious, his dark curhair damp with perpiration, his face a curious ivory color from the mingling of tan and palor. When the surgeon chose her for his case, she felt her first throb of anxiety. The scent of the ether made her faint as she watched them hold the cone over his face, but from habit she moved about, obeying orders until the thing was done. Afterwards she had been assigned to nurse him but it had only been for two days. His mother had arrived from Washington with special nurses, money, everything. After a week his case was only a memory at the City hospital, but to Nan, it was the one thing that stood out in her mind from her three years there. She had never had a love romance In her life. There had not been time. Two of her younger sisters had come to her first with their shy, sweet stories of first love, and she had helped make their wedding outfits. And that night, after they had left her with him, Thurber had come out of the anesthetic restless, dreamy, dazed with pain and shock, and calling for someone over and over again, so pleadingly in his deep toned rich voice, so imploringly, so tenderly that it had made her thrill just to hear him. Nobody knew, not even himself, how she knelt beside him and held his poor, aching head on her shoulder, talking to him softly, smoothing back his hair with her cool fingers, hushing him until he was quiet and drowsy, even letting him kiss her. The next day he had been himself, with no memory at all of his delirum, no suspicion that the quiet, calm faced nurse at his bedside had gained bor first knowledge of what love can give from his ravings the night before. She had been left alone with him for a minute or two just before he went away. He was carried down on th© stretcher, still helpless and in pain, but he had smiled up at her with a touch of his half reckless challenge at the cuff fate had dealt him. "Good bye nurse,” he said. “Pleasant dreams.” The color had risen in her face, and just for an instant their eyes met, she wondering what hidden meaning his words held, he with the provocative mischief in his smile and gaze. Then they had taken him away. That had been all, yet it remained the one splendid bit, of romance in her whole life. She knew she could never give to another man all of her love, not with the memory of that night, with his words in her ears, his hands reaching out for her, holding her fast and close to him. The week Before hqf leaving the hosnitaJ, tne head surgeon had sen* for her to take a chronic case, as he said, a bit dryly. “It is the rich Miss Livingston. 6he thinks she has various ailments, and always carries a trained nurse as part of her entourage. Her last one gave out. Nervous prostration. Went home to Canada. She is very irritable, very excitable, and is going to California and later on to the islands, I underatand. If yod care to take the case, I can get it for you.” ‘TH go,’ said Nan, eagerly. It had sounded like heaven then. No operar tions, no horrors for awhile, nothing but a cross old woman to cater to. She had managed well with her. Her fussing and unceasing ordering around had been almost a comic relief from

the suppression of the hospital life. The long overland trip west was a delight/ and she found that the old lady began to take a certain grim pleasure in watching her nurse enjoy the sights that she never even saw. “Tell me what you’re looking at,” she would say, closing her own eyes, and Nan would sit by the car window describing everything she saw that appealed to her. - *

"You’ve got ideas and sense of beauty too,” said Miss Livingston, tersely, “and you’re the first nurse I ever had that was a human being. You can go on to the islands'with me if you like.”

They were in Los Angeles now, at a wonderful hotel set in a great garden of palms and roses, with the sea breaking on the shore below. Nan sut across the green lawns down to the path along the shore. It was nearly eleven. She would have a full hour to walk and rest before luncheon. Mies JdVingston expected her lawyer at noon. She was forever changing her will as her temper changed towards a host of relatives. Before sailing for Hawaii, she had decided to make a new will, and cut off a reprehensible niece who had eloped with a chauffeur recently. ,

It was all part of the new comedy of life to Nan. She hoped with all her heart the little niece would be happy. And even while she hurried along the path, she thought of her, and of how Miss Livingston had probably never ’known a real throb of love in all her pinched, starved, luxurious life, so how could she ever sympathize with one who threw away a chance at a fortune for its precious gifts. She would leave most of her money now to a nephew who had been somewhat of a scapegrace, ehe told Nan, and had been shut out of her favor for some time. • An automobile rolled up the broad drive under the palms. Nan glanced towards it, and stopped dead short. The machine stopped also, and Hal Thurber sprang out, hat off, hand outstretched to her. "Do you remember me, nurse?’ Remember him! She could feel the hot color mount her cheeks as he held her hands close in his. The car went on without him. In the wonder of |he moment, Nan did not even realize that he Intended staying with her, walking with her, until she found they had gone far along the shore, and it was noon. He had told her so much of himself, and of how the accident had jolted him out of a careless, happy-go-lucky Sort of existence. "But I must hurry back now,” said Nan. "I am nurse to a Miss Livingston —” “I know, of course. My aunt,” said Hal. "Your aunt? Oh, dear!” "Why?” “Because—” she hesitated. “Because I hate to have you ge£ her money when the little runaway bride needs it” “Do you?” he smiled down at her. “Then I tell you what to do. Aunt always cuts us off when- we iparry against her wishes. I never amounted to anything in my life until you wakened me out of a dream of inferno with your dear arms around me —” “You were delirious,’ said Nan, trying to keep her voice steady. Her chin was held high, her eyes met his fearlessly. “I was not, pardon me, but I know. And you kissed me. Aunt has been writing to me' for several weeks, and telling me of her delightful new nurse, Nan Gleason. Don’t you suppose I found out your name before you left? Don’t you suppose I made old Carruthers, the head surgeon, send you out here with Aunt Lydia? I brought my mother with me also, to make peace for me. She has gone up now to talk to aunt about us. When the lawyer gets there she needn’t change the will a bit, simply leave it as it, and let the poor little cousin get it” "But, Mr. Thurber,” Nan faltered, trying to draw away her hands, “I don’t see why you did all this —” “Don’t you, Nan. Look up at ma Did you forget me? Did you?” She shook her head, without meeting his eyes. He lifted both her hands to his lips. “Dear, I can’t kiss you here on the beach, but you will please consider yourself kissed, and my promised wife.” “And I took a three-year course just for one case,” Nan said later, when they strolled back to the hotel. “Two,” he corrected. "Aunt is better, but I am the chronic one.” (Copyright, 1913, by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.)