City Nurse

By Jeanne Judson

“She walks as if she had joints all the way down.”

When a cargo ship in the New York City harbor explodes into flames, Nurse Dora Tracy is pulled from the surgical floor to work over the shattered sailors in Emergency alongside driven, intense Dr. Thomas Terry. One handsome, well-dressed young victim who is clearly not one of the crew is lingering in a coma, and Dora is assigned to nurse him—soon finding that she cares in more ways than one for the mysterious stranger. Meanwhile, Dr. Terry is finding that he can care, too, for the beautiful, devoted Dora, paying for training at Columbia and offering her a position in his new neurosurgery clinic upstate. When he recommends a new brain surgery he’s perfecting to try to cure the sick young man, Dora is torn. Which man best deserves her talents as a nurse—and which one does her heart need most?

“Nurse Dora Tracy was pleased to get an assignment to Manhattan Memorial Hospital but shortly after her arrival, the S.S. Argyle Castle blew up nearby and the hospital was filled with the victims. Then the doctors and the nurses began to fight to save as many as possible and there was no time to think. The book gives an excellent idea of the workings of a large hospital.” Wasau Daily Herald, July 1959