Helen Wells (1910–1986)

One of the strangest cases of Cherry Ames' absorbing career comes her way while working as a staff nurse at Hilton Hospital in her home town. A young man, victim of a car accident, is brought to Emergency with a broken leg. Shortly after he is admitted to the hospital, the doctors discover that "Bob Smith" has been suffering from amnesia for several months.

Who is he? Where is his home? What tragic happening caused such distress that his memory is a blank? Answers to these questions must be found if "Bob" is to be cured.

Working under the direction of the medical and psychiatric doctors, Cherry plays a crucial role in helping the patient to get well and to find a solution to the dilemma that caused his "flight from memory." Clues develop as the psychiatrist uses various techniques to help the patient recapture his lost memory. "Bob Smith" insists that he is guilty--but of what he cannot recall. During her free time, Cherry follows up obscure clues and encounters suspiciously difficult people and an alarmingly tangled situation.… (mehr)

After the successful conclusion of the tropical disease case in Panama, Cherry is sent to the Pacific, ostensibly to bring the new serum to doctors there. She lands on the fictitious Janeway Island and is promptly promoted. She is tasked with setting up an evacuation hospital near enough to the fighting that she can hear the gunfire on an adjacent island. Then a pilot is brought in who has an unusual bullet wound to the shoulder and who is unable to speak.

I enjoyed this one more than the last couple mainly because of the descriptions of life in a WWII evacuation hospital in the Pacific and the construction and use of a portable runway (a development that was very useful for the Americans as they took islands). One thing grated, however, the casual use of the derogatory "Jap". Not unusual at the time, but unpalatable to modern sensibilities.… (mehr)