Miss Kerr and Miss Withers were classmates at Mass. General and it seemed only fair to tip her....
The bedroom of Miss Roenna Kerr was bare as an operating room. It was also a front line trench, but the enemy in this case was age. Upon one chair reposed a specially built corset to hide the collapsing stomach. Under the bed stood, like a pair of dachshunds, two large white shoes with built-in bunion-rests. Under her chin nestled a wrinkle strap and her hair was in “papers.” Kid papers, too. She snored with heavy precision.
For the first time since the fire in Ward M she was awakened by the insistent clamor of her telephone. She arose, put on her wool wrapper, loosened the chin strap, and walked over to the ’phone.
“Eeenie, the patient in Bed 11, Ward B, Medicine Clinic, is dead!”
As quickly as the voice had come it had gone and for the first time in all the years she had been a nurse Miss Kerr stood inefficiently looking into a silent telephone!
Then, in her highnecked nightgown, she assumed her military bearing and muttered:
“I don’t care whose son he is!”
As assistant to Dr. Merritt, Cub Sterling had occupied a series of rooms on the second floor of the Administration Building. Graduated to “golden oak,” the internes called it. The furniture had belonged to Elijah Wilson.
Sterling still used the rooms.
When his telephone began ringing, he lay caticornered in his golden oak double bed with a pillow nestled into his neck. He had reached that second sleep where even an insistent telephone cannot cut the purple mist.