oftentimes think that they fall in love with nurses, but it takes two people to make one
romance. Nurses do not fall in love with patients, because a man is never at his best
under hospitalization. In fact, the better a man is, the poorer a showing he is apt to
make.”
“And, as I forget who said, a long time ago, `no generalization is true, not even
this one’,” retorted the Port Admiral. “When it does hit him it will hit hard, and we’ll take
no chances. How about the black-haired one?”
“Well, I just told you that MacDougall has the only perfect skeleton I ever saw in
a woman. Brownies is very good, too, of course, but . . . .”
“But not good enough to rate Lensman’s Mate, eh?” Haynes completed the
thought. “Then take her out. Pick the best skeletons you’ve got for this job, and see that
no others come anywhere near him. Transfer them to some other hospital-to some
other floor of this one, at least. Any woman that he ever falls for will fall for him, in spite
of your ideas as to the one-wayness of hospital romance, and I don’t want him to have
such a good chance of making a dive at something that doesn’t rate up. Am I right or
wrong, and for how much?”
“Well, I haven’t had time yet to really study his skeleton, but . . . . .”
“Better take a week off and study it. I’ve studied a lot of people in the last sixty-
five years, and I’ll match my experience against your knowledge of bones, any time. Not
saying that he will fall this trip, you understand-just playing safe.”
CHAPTER 18
Advanced Training
Kinnison came to-or, rather, to say that he came half-to would be a more accurate
statement-with a yell directed at the blurrily-seen figure in white which he knew must be
a nurse.
“Nurse!” Then, as a searing stab of pain shot through him at the effort, he went
on, thinking at the figure in white through his Lens.
“My speedster! I must have landed her free! Get the space-port . . . . .”
“There, there, Lensman,” a low, rich voice crooned, and a red head bent over
him. “The speedster has been taken care of. Everything Is on the green, go to sleep
and rest’ “Never mind your ship,” the unctuous voice went on. “It was landed and put
away . . . .”
“Listen, dumb-bell!” snapped the patient, speaking aloud now, in spite of the
pain, the better to drive home his meaning. “Don’t try to soothe met What do you think I
am, delirious? Get this and get it straight I said I landed that speedster free. If you don’t
know what that means, tell somebody that does. Get the space-port-get Haynes get . . .
. .”
“We got them, Lensman, long ago.’ Although her voice was still creamily, sweetly
sofa, an angry color burned into the nurse’s face. “I said everything is on zero. Your
speedster was inserted, how else could you be here, inert? I helped do it myself, so I
know she’s inert’
“QX.” The patient relapsed instantly into unconsciousness and the nurse turned
to an interne standing by – wherever that nurse was, at least one doctor could almost
always be found.
“But my ship . . . .”
“Dumb-bell” she flared. “What a sweet mess he’s going to be to take care of I
Not even conscious yet, and he’s calling names and picking fights already!”
In a few days Kinnison was fully and alertly conscious. In a week most of the
pain had left him, and he was beginning to chafe under restraint In ten days he was “fit
to be tied,” and his acquaintance with his head nurse, so inauspiciously begun,
developed even more inauspiciously as time went on. For, as Haynes and Lacy had
each more than anticipated, the Lensman was by no means an ideal patient.
Nothing that could be done would satisfy him. All doctors were fat-heads, even
Lacy, the man who had put him together. All nurses were dumb-bells, even-or
especially? “Mac,” who with almost superhuman skill, tact, and patience had been
holding him together. Why, even fat-heads and dumb-bells, even high-grade morons,
ought to know that a man needed food!
Accustomed to eating everything he could reach, three or four or five times a
day, he did not realize-nor did his stomach-that his now quiescent body could no longer
use the five thousand or more calories that it had been wont to burn up, each twenty-
four hours, in intense effort He was always hungry, and he was forever demanding
food.
And food, to him, did not mean orange juice or grape juice or tomato juice or
milk. Nor did it mean weak tea and hard, dry toast and an occasional anemic soft-
boiled egg. If he ate eggs at all be wanted them fried, three or four of them,
accompanied by two or three thick slices of ham.
He wanted-and demanded in no uncertain terms, argumentatively and
persistently-a big, thick, rare beefsteak. He wanted baked beans, with plenty of fat pork.
He wanted bread in thick slices, piled high with butter, and not this quadruply-and-
unmentionably-qualified toast. He wanted roast beef, rare, in big, thick slabs. He
wanted potatoes and thick brown gravy. He wanted corned beef and cabbage. He
wanted pie-any kind of pie-in large, thick quarters. He wanted peas and corn and
asparagus and cucumbers, and also various other-worldly staples of diet which he often
and insistently mentioned by name.
But above all he wanted beefsteak. He thought about it days and dreamed about
it nights. One night in particular he dreamed about it-an especially luscious porterhouse,
fried in butter and smothered fn mushrooms-only to wake up, mouth watering, literally
starved, to face again the weak tea, dry toast, and, horror of horrors, this time a flabby,
pallid, flaccid poached egg! It was the last straw.
“Take it away,” he said, weakly, then, when the nurse did not obey, he reached
out and pushed the breakfast, tray and all, off the table. Then, as it crashed to the floor,
he turned away, and, in spite of all his efforts, two hot tears forced themselves between
his eyelids.
It was a particularly trying ordeal, and one requiring all of even Mac’s skill,
diplomacy, and forbearance, to male the recalcitrant patient eat the breakfast
prescribed for him. She was finally successful, however, and as she stepped out into
the corridor she met the ubiquitous interns.
“How’s your Lensman?” he asked, in the privacy of the diet kitchen.
“Don’t call him my Lensman!” she stormed. She was about to explode with the
pent-up feelings which she of course could not vent upon such a pitiful, helpless thing
as her star patient. “Beefsteak! I almost wish they would give him a beefsteak, and that
he’d choke on it-which of course he would. He’s worse than a baby. I never saw such a
. . . . such a brat in my life. I’d like to spank him-he needs it. I’d like to know how he ever
got to be a Lensman, the big cantankerous clunker! I’m going to spank him, too, one of
these days, see if I don’t!”
“Don’t take it so hard, Mac,” the interns urged. He was, however, very much
relieved that relations between the handsome young Lensman and the gorgeous red-
head were not upon a more cordial basis. “He won’t be here very long. But I never saw
a patient clog your jets before.”
“You probably never saw a patient like him before, either. I certainly hope he
never gets cracked up again.”
“Huh?”
“Do I have to draw you a chart?” she asked, sweetly. “Or, if he does get cracked
up again, I hope they send him to some other hospital,” and she flounced out.
Nurse MacDougall thought that when the Lensman could eat the meat he craved
her troubles would be over, but she was mistaken. Kinnison was nervous, moody,
brooding, by turns irritable, sullen, and pugnacious. Nor is it to be wondered at. He was
chained to that bed, and in his mind was the gnawing consciousness that he had failed.
And not only failed-he had made a complete fool of himself. He had underestimated an
enemy, and as a result of his own stupidity the whole Patrol had taken a setback. He
was anguished and tormented. Therefore.
“Listen, Mac,” he pleaded one day. `Bring me some clothes and let me. take a
walk. I need exercise.”
“Uh uh, Kim, not yet,” she denied him gently, but with her entrancing smile in full
evidence. `But pretty’ quick, when that leg looks a little less like a Chinese puzzle, you
and nursie go bye-bye.”
“Beautiful, but dumb!” the Lensman growled. “Can’t you and those cockeyed
croakers realize that I’ll never get any strength back if .you keep me in bed all the rest