PAGE EIGHT
SERIAL STORY
INTERNE TROUBLE
r By Elinore Cowan Stone
CHAPTER XII
TATHEIUNE MILLER said
tremulously as U she had
been Just any romantic girl In
love Instead of the most efficient
and hard-driving supervisor of
nurses at Saint Vincent's, "What
makes you say that? I mean thai
he how do you know?"
"Oh,' that?" said Tran briskly.
' "That's one set of symptoms you
don't have to be a registered nurst
to recognize. You'd see it your
self if you weren't so scared of
acting and feeling like a human
being. . . . Oh, do go along before
you have time to dry off! If you
could only keep yourself looking
that way you're so sweet, all
bright-eyed and drippy like that."
Without another word Miss
Miller amazingly turned and went,
almost running, down the corridor.-
; Tran sat down stiffly on the
edge of a chair.
: If the worst happened if Ste
phen Sargent were really never
to operate again, then she had
nothing left. For the first time
she realized how Inseparably her
enthusiasm for her work had been
bound up In the thought of work
ing with him. . . . For if her
youthful visions Tran was only
20 had ever held a more per
sonal significance, it had long ago
been sublimated in the rest.
Finally she got up heavily and
wandered out into the corridor.
She hardly knew how or why she
made her way to the instrument
room except that suddenly she
. wanted very much to cry, and its
unfrequented sterility offered an
admirable privacy for that pur-'
pose. ...
Curled up in a limp little gray
heap on a wide window ledge, she
was going about the business for
which she had come in a thor
pughly workmanlike manner when
a door opened, and a man's voice
said: .
."Good ; Lord! Hasn't anyone
warned you yet that floods don't
do surgical instruments any
good?" .
TJOB BENCHLEY sauntered
across the room and stood,
leaning against the wall, his hands
In his pockets, grinning down at
her.
In her passion of loneliness,
Tran was so glad to see him that
she sobbed all the more loudly.
"I had an idea you'd be letting
your hair down somewhere," he
went on cheerfully. "You would
pick a nice festive little nook like
this lor it."
So he had been hunting for her.
"I just thought you might like
to know" he was lighting a ciga-
ret as he spoke, frowning down
at it, carefully not looking at her
"that it isn't so bad as we
thought at first about Old Sarge,
I mean. The paralysis was mostly
due to shock. The tendons and
nerves will probably be all right"
Tran gasped, "Oh, Bob, are you
sure?" - - -
' "As sure," he said dryly, "as a
mere junior surgeon is ever pre
sumed to be about anything. But
It may reassure you to know that
the Lord High Executioner, him
self, is pretty sure, too. We d
.hardly. got the bleeding stopped,
by the" way, before he assumed
charge of the case, himself."
"He wouldn't," she asked, "have
been taking his own pulse, would
he?".
. "He was leading up to that
when . Miss Miller came in. She
soon put a stop to it. There'i
never any question about who's
In charge of a case when the per
fect: nurse steps into the room."
t "So she's nursing him, then?"
,., -."Very much so. . . . And it may
interest you - to know that she
asked-for you as her relief. When
I opened the door a few minutes
ago, the perfect nurse was weeping
into her patient's pillow, while he
patted her shoulder with his good
hand, , and looked well, respect
for the red-blooded man-eater old
Sarge used to be makes me hate
to use the only term that aptly
describes the way he was looking,
i .. '. I don't know what the disci
pline of this hospital's coming to."
FLAPPER FANNY
XOPA.miBYNCASCRV1Ct.lN& t. M. .C& U . .AT, 0" j
"But she broke their engagement, didn't she?"
"Yeah but not until after it broke him."
COPYRIGHT. IMS.
NKA eiWVICC. INC.
"Well, we've still got you to
uphold the good old traditions,"
Tran observed wickedly.
Then, at thought of Stephen
Sargent patting Katherine Miller's
shoulder while she wept into his
pillow, her own loneliness swept
over her in an engulfing tidal
wave, and she sobbed anew.
VOUNG Dr. Benchley took his
hands out of his pockets; then,
ts if alarmed by his own impulse,
thrust them hastily back again.
"Gosh, kid, I'm sorry!" he said
after a moment. "I'd been think
ing all this time that you were
lust off me because my frivolous
companionship interfered with the
eriousness business of life. I
didn't know it was because vou
were in love with him."
"But I'm not," Tran sobbed.
"Not in the way you mean. It's
just oh, he's so swell, and I'm so
darned glad he's all right. I
couldn't bear it about his arm, I
mean."
"Well," Bob said, "two shocks
like this in one day are almost too
much for me. First I find the ideal
nurse weeping into a patient's pil
low; and then I And her most ar
dent admirer and imitator dis
solved in tears because she says
she's happy. "I"
"Who?" Tran sat up abruptly.
"Me? Imitate her?"
"Well, who has been your In
spiration then? Why, it was get
ting so you even looked and talked
like her!"
Tran stared. ... So that was
the way she had been seeming to
Bob like Katherine Miller the
perfect icicle.
"Honestly, Agility," he was go
ing on, "it restores my confidence
In the balance of the universe to
find out that you have an honest
cry left in your system even If
It is all for another man."
He was grinning now that old
whimsical grin that made the
homeliness of his lean dark face
Bash into boyish charm; but there
was a wistful twist to the grin that
tugged at Tran's heart-strings.
Suddenly she was remembering
the magic of those early stolen
minutes of theirs rocking to
jether in smothered laughter that
day in here before the instrument
sues; dancing in the deserted
lervice room of G-6 one Intoxicat
ing spring morning to the music of
a hurdy-gurdy outside; the puffs
matched from his cigaret be
nind protecting screens; his little
finger crooked momentarily
through hers as they met by
chance in a quiet corridor that
day In the steam of the sterilizing
room when he had practically
ordered her to marry him.
rmiAT a blind little Idiot she
" had been, all these months!
. . . Why, all those high-handed
things she had said to Miss Miller
if Bob were right, she ought to
have been saying them to herself.
. . . Well it's a wise woman who
knows enough to take her own
good advice, she thought.
"Of course I got off with the
wrong foot," he was going on with
his funny, twisted grin. "I should
have played Old Sarge's system,
and put you in your place with a
few verbal brickbats in the be
ginning. But no I had to lead
with my chin. . . . Well, I could
cut off both my arms, and not a
tear out of anyone."
"Bob," Tran said in a small
frightened voice, "I you don't
suppose we could pretend we were
beginning all over do you? . . .
Way back at that first day in
Emergency, I mean. . . . When
you asked for a 'probe remem
ber? And I thought you meant a
probationer. I said " she sobbed
'"Wouldn't I do? I'm one a
probationer, I mean.' "
"And I said although maybe
you didn't hear it 'You bet you'll
do.' . . . Honey, I'd like awfully
to kiss you if I could only find a
dry spot."
And as they clung together,
laughing partly to mask their
desperate seriousness, and partly
because it was spring and they
were young this time, mercifully,
no one opened the door.
(THE END)
By Sylvia
OUT OUR WAY
COM. 1Mt BY NtA StRVtCe. tHC
MYRA NORTH, SPECIAL
r AM I HEARING STRAIGHT i
yOU ARE OUR.MUM8ER.
ONE" BUT WHY DIDM'T
VOU TELL US BEFORE J
LITTLE ORPHAN ANNIE
OK- JACK
POOR ACE IS
SICK - HE JUST
COULDN'T SETUP-
HE TRIED -HE'S
NOT WSED
TO SUCH HARD
WORK-
THKTS g
TPO A
BAD- Tl
FRECKLES AND HIS FRIENDS
Is
June certainly
CAME THROU6H
FOR ME J IF
THAT LETTER.
HADN'T ARRIVED,
X WOULDA
HEY J WHO'S
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NURSE
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BEAUTY!
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SLEEPING
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AND I'M TOO BIG
FOR That I'M over
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TUBBS. JUST MAKE YOURSELF AT
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BY HAVING
BREAKFAST WITH ,
YOU IF YOU
KEEP VOUR MOUTH
SHUT
BY BLOSSER
PEEWEE XT
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BY CRANE
BY MARTIN
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