Ozark Nurse Read Online Free Page A

charge here, so I guess you'll all have to put up with me." And he grinned, a charmingly shy grin, while he walked down the long room shaking hands with the nurses. He stopped beside several of the single beds to reassure one or another of the small patients, who were all eyes, some of them frightened eyes, at the sight of this tall, white-coated stranger whom they had never seen before.
    "Hi, fella. How're you doing? Feeling lousy? Well, don't you worry. Old Doc Anderson is on the job."
    The words seemed to come easily enough, as did his cheerful, outgoing manner. But Nora sensed immediately that it was a carefully thought out approach, that basically he was a shy man who had to work to put himself over.
    A basic lack of self-confidence? Perhaps.
    But one thing was certain. There was no lack of self-confidence when Paul Anderson picked up the scalpel and one of his brilliant operations got under way. Some of his surgery demonstrated nothing short of genius, and before he had been at Summitsville many months, everyone said so.
    "Of course I think you're a wonderful surgeon," Nora told him. "I also think you're a very, very wonderful guy. And if you really mean what you say about wanting to marry me—" Close in his arms, she sighed blissfully. "Well—"
    "Well, what, honey?"
    Another ecstatic sigh. "I'm only the luckiest girl in the world, that's what."
    By that time they had been dating off and on for weeks, whenever Paul could get away from the hospital, where he seemed to think he should spend twenty-five hours out of every twenty-four.
    His occasional evenings with Nora were almost the only relaxation he allowed himself. Very often, as on that very special evening, they met in the house where Paul had his room. They had been taken to their hearts by Mr. and Mrs. Lodge, the elderly couple who owned the house.
    They were lovely people, warm and friendly, and they begged Nora to feel free to use their living room for her dates. "We're just two lonely old people who are only too glad to have a little youth and life around us. So you come right on over whenever you feel like it, Nora."
    It was a wonderful arrangement. For one thing, it solved the TV problem which, at home, complicated everything. The television set was in the living room, and Caroline had her special evening programs which were a
must
. After Jerry's return, with his family, there were even more complications.
    Everybody had to look at TV; each had his or her own pet programs. This left Paul and Nora as much privacy, or chance to be alone together, as a hotel lounge would have.
    It was maddening.
    With Mr. and Mrs. Lodge it was altogether different. They didn't even like TV, or pretended that they didn't. "We'll just skip up to our room," Martha Lodge would say cheerfully, "which is where old folks belong after the sun goes down. You two young things get on with your courting."
    With a smile and a wave of her hand, she would say good night, order her "old man" to get along upstairs, and follow right after him. She never forgot to leave a little treat on the dining room table—a steaming hot apple pie, or perhaps freshly baked doughnuts.
    So that was where and how Nora and Paul had done most of their "courting."
    The wonderfully good, companionable evenings spent getting acquainted came first, of course. Usually they sat on the divan in front of the open hearth, where a huge pine log burned lazily.
    At first Paul was reluctant to talk much about himself. There was that basic shyness which was part of his nature. In addition, as he told her, with that crooked grin which she thought so charming: "I'm one hundred percent Swede, and you know how Swedes are: great ones to dummy up about themselves."
    But with Nora he got over that. She learned that he had been born and brought up in Minnesota, where his dad owned vast acres of farm land. Since he was an only son, the father had expected Paul to stay on the land which would be his some day. When Paul announced his