Recovery Room Nurse

By Joan Garrison

“I’m not a kid intent upon storming any woman’s lips. Behave.”

Jane Kemp is in love with her former patient Stan Livermore, a 32-year-old real estate mogul, whom she met when she nursed him through an episode of appendicitis. But Stan thinks he can acquire her the way he does a hundred acres of prime acreage, and insists she quit her job and become a full-time wife. But Jane loves her job as a recovery room nurse as much as she loves Stan, and eventually breaks up with him. While she’s hoping Stan will grow up, she is assigned to special a mega-famous TV writer, Arthur Howard, who has a mortal fear of hospitals and is, it must be confessed, a crybaby. He’s in for a hip replacement, and, anticipating a tough recovery, is seeking “a voluptuous blonde nurse who will distract him from pain.” If Jane is neither voluptuous nor beautiful, she’s the best recovery room nurse at Buttrick Hospital, so she is assigned the job. But just as Arthur is waking from anesthesia, Jane is pulled out of his room by a student nurse whose patient is choking to death. Jane quickly saves the man’s life, but when she returns to Howard’s room, the man is hopelessly panicked, convinced that Jane “abandoned” him and that he’s barely survived without her. He calls the newspaper to give them a front-page hatchet job, and Jane is put on leave. She’s a competent, intelligent woman, but can she win her reputation back after the spoiled, rich genius has destroyed it? And even if she triumphs in that battle, will Stan ever come around—and does she want him to?