Nurse Julie and the Knight

By Jeanne Judson

“May changes her young men as often as she does her hairdo.”

Everyone in the hospital is talking about the beautiful and wealthy Alice Danver, who has just lost her baby—and any R.N. would trade her crisp, white cap to be chosen to nurse the devastated woman back to health in the Danvers’ luxurious home on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Anyone, that is, except Julie Sheridan, who prefers to keep working in the hospital, where she can learn all that she can about her chosen profession, which outside of her younger sister is the most important thing in her life.

But Julie lands the job, and soon finds out that life in the lap of luxury is not what the others had imagined: The household is presided over by an evil genius—housekeeper Hetty Brown, who dominates everyone there, including Alice and her husband Roger. Life in the Danver home would be unbearable for Julie if it were not for Leo Cross, Alice’s son by a previous marriage, the only one she can turn to for help defying the jealously interfering Hetty, who feeds Alice “pep pills” and insists, “You don’t need a nurse. You can always depend on me to protect you. No one loves you like I do.” If Julie hopes Leo might take an interest in her, in the meantime her friend Mary is on the lookout for the right kind of boyfriend for Julie: “You need a knight in armor to protect you," Mary tells her. "They don’t come riding on white horses anymore. They come in expensive cars.” She finds such a man in George Mitchell, who drives a Lincoln Continental, and when the dragon Hetty snarls a nasty lie about Julie’s relationship with George that Leo overhears, Julie is sure her real hero is lost forever …