Nurse in White by Lucy Agnes Hancock Page B

whirred up past their floor. Someone was to have an operation—a major one, evidently. She wished she could be up there if MacGowan was operating.
    What a waste for Cy Dent to work under Mac! Catering to a lot of silly women nursing imaginary ailments! He made her sick.
    The night wore on. At two o’clock the elevator stopped at the fourth floor and a patient was wheeled down the corridor. Ellen went to meet it.
    “A new guest for you, Gaylord,” Dr. Dent said as he stood aside for the orderly to wheel the stretcher through the door of L. “Emergency appendectomy and just in time. Fortunately, nothing happened—scarcely an inch incision. She’ll be all right. Out in ten days. Right here, Joe. Okay?” He turned to Ellen and grinned boyishly. “I still get a big kick out of being on my own.”
    He walked away and Burns, who was on call that week, said when he was out of hearing, “Mac couldn’t beat that job, Gaylord. Swift and sure and perfectly calm—that’s Dent. Too bad he’ll throw it all away for a passel of white-livered blue bloods—I mean, his knack of using a knife. Her name is Levin—from down by the tracks somewhere.”
    Burns departed and Ellen went in to look at Mrs. Levin. So Cy was a good surgeon! She thought he would be from his hands. He had the hands of a surgeon. Boston! He’d get mighty little chance to perform any operations in Boston. He would be working with people’s minds, if any. He’d be asking about their dreams and digging inquisitively into their past lives. Oh, what a waste! Cy Dent made her absolutely sick!
    Fanny Brown drew Ellen aside as she scanned the mystery girl’s chart a few minutes after she came on duty the next day. Still no change.
    “Our mystery patient has had a caller.”
    Ellen looked up sharply. “A caller? What sort of a caller?”
    “She said she was Nancy Langham—Mrs. Peter Langham from Boston. She insists Lady X is Violet Terrill—her English cousin or second cousin. But although extremely attractive, young, beautiful and smartly gowned, our mystery girl never batted an eye when she saw her. It certainly took the wind out of the lady’s sails, but she continued to insist the girl is her cousin. Forsyth was with her and was the old girl oily! What a snob Agatha is!”
    Ellen ignored the last. “Is she staying here—in town, I mean? Will she come again?”
    “Sure. She’s coining tonight. That’s why I wanted to see you. Forsyth told her you had sort of taken charge of Lady X and that you might be able to give her some information. I don’t know what information you have to give. Lady X is still the same enigma she was when she landed here as far as I can see. I know you and Mac and Dent have been sort of holding prayer meetings over her—”
    “Don’t be silly. It’s an unusual case. Of course we have been, and still are, interested in her,” Ellen interrupted.
    “Well, so are the rest of us, but not to the same extent. After all, Gaylord, you don’t actually know anything about her. She may not tum out to be the angelic visitant you three think she is. What was she doing with that gang in the first place? You know molls sometimes come from pretty decent families.”
    “So I’ve heard, but Lady X is no moll, Brown,” Ellen assured her.
    “No? Well, here’s wishing you luck!”
    Ellen went to the end of the long ward where Lady X lay staring at the ceiling, a frown of perplexity and concentration making her brows a straight, dark line above her big violet eyes.
    “So you had a visitor?” Ellen smiled down at the sober face on the pillow.
    “Yes.” Only that.
    “And she didn’t mean anything to you? You don’t remember ever seeing her before?”
    “No.”
    “Well,” Ellen tried to make her voice reassuring, “don’t worry about it. It will all come back—soon.”
    “Oh, I hope so!” It was a wail of despair.
    A tall slender young woman in her middle twenties paused just inside the door. Dent was with her, his manner