"Well?"
"Sir, I don’t know what-what did you say, Wasser Test?- is."
"Wassermann," Doctor Nettleton corrected him idly. "It’s an integral part of your physical."
"Sir, I don’t know. I went everywhere they sent me."
Commander Nettleton looked at him intently, and decided he didn’t really know if he was looking at Innocence Personified or a skilled liar.
He reached for the telephone, found the number he was looking for on a typewritten sheet of paper under the glass on his desk, and dialed it quickly.
"Venereal, Lieutenant Gower."
"This is Commander Nettleton, Gower. How are you?"
"No complaints, Sir. How about you?"
"You don’t want to hear them, Lieutenant. I need a favor. How are you fixed for favors?"
"If I’ve got it, Commander, you’ve got it."
"You got somebody around there who can draw blood for a Wassermann for me? And then do it in a hurry?"
"Yes, Sir. I’ll take it to the lab myself. They owe me a couple of favors up there."
"It has to be official. I need the form and an MD to sign off on it."
"No problem."
"I’m sending a Staff Sergeant Howard to see you. Make him wait. If it comes back negative, send him and the report back to me. If it’s positive, put him in a bathrobe and find something unpleasant for him to do. Call me and I’ll see that he’s admitted."
"Aye, aye, Sir," Lieutenant Gower said.
"Appreciate it, Gower," Commander Nettleton said, hung up, and turned to Staff Sergeant Howard. "You heard that, Sergeant. The Venereal Disease Ward is on the third floor. Report to Lieutenant Gower."
"Aye, aye, Sir," Staff Sergeant Howard said.
Like Commander Nettleton, Lieutenant Gower was a career naval officer, with nearly as much commissioned service as he had. She had entered the Naval Service immediately upon graduation from Nursing School, and, in the fourteen years since, had served at naval hospitals in Philadelphia; Cavite (in the Philippines); Pearl Harbor; and San Diego. She had just learned that she was to be promoted to lieutenant commander, Nurse Corps, USN.
While on the one hand Lieutenant Hazel Gower did not consider herself above the mundane routine of the VD ward, of which she was Nurse-in-Charge, on the other hand, Rank Did Have Its Privileges.
She rapped on the plate-glass window surrounding the Nurses’ Station with her Saint Anthony’s High School graduation ring, and caught the attention of Ensign Barbara T. Cotter, NC, USNR. Ensign Cotter had just reported aboard, fresh from the Nurses’ Orientation Course at Philadelphia.
Lieutenant Gower gestured to Ensign Cotter to come into the nurses’ station.
"Yes?" Ensign Cotter asked.
"The way we do that in the Navy, Miss Cotter," Lieutenant Gower said, "is ‘Yes, Ma’am?’ "
"Yes, Ma’am," Ensign Cotter said, her face tightening.
"This is not the University of Pennsylvania, you know."
"Yes, Ma’am," Ensign Cotter said, just a little bitchily.
That remark made reference to Ensign Cotter’s nursing education. Ensign Cotter, unlike most of her peers, had a college degree. She had graduated with a bachelor of science degree in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania Medical School, and had earned, from the same institution, the right to append "RN" to her name. She’d been trained as a psychiatric nurse. And she had been lied to by the recruiter, who told her the Navy really had need of her special skills. In fact, the Navy used medical doctors with psychiatric training and large male medical corpsmen to deal with its mentally ill.
When Ensign Cotter reported aboard Naval Hospital, San Diego, the Chief of Nursing Services told her that since they had no need for a female psychiatric nurse, she wondered how she would feel about working in obstetrics. An unpleasant scene followed, during which it was pointed out to Ensign Cotter that she was now in the Navy, and that the Navy decided where its people could make the greatest contribution. Following that, Lieutenant Gower in Venereal received a telephone call from the Chief of Nursing Services, a longtime friend, telling her she was getting a new ensign who was an uppity little bitch who thought her college degree made her better than other people. The little bitch needed to be put in her place.
"There’s a syphilitic Marine sergeant on his way up here," Lieutenant Gower said to Ensign Cotter. "Draw some blood for a Wassermann."
"He’s not on the ward?"
"I’m getting tired of telling you this, Cotter. When you speak to a superior female officer, you use ‘ma’am.’ "
Ensign Cotter exhaled audibly.
"He’s not on the ward, Ma’am?"
"No."
"Then how, Ma’am, do we know he’s syphilitic?"
"The Wassermann will tell us that, won’t it, Miss Cotter?"
"Only if he is syphilitic, Ma’am," Ensign Cotter said.
"Commander Nettleton wouldn’t have sent him up here unless he was," Lieutenant Gower flared. And then she remembered that Nettleton had said to send the sergeant back if the Wassermann was negative. She was going to look like a horse’s ass in front of this uppity little bitch if it did come back negative.
"Just do what you’re ordered to do, Miss Cotter," she said icily.
"Yes, Ma’am."
Barbara Cotter saw Staff Sergeant Joseph L. Howard the moment she walked out of the glass-walled nurses’ station, and she reacted to him precisely the same way most other men and women did when they first saw him. God, that fellow looks like what a Marine should look like!
"Excuse me, Ma’am," Joe Howard said, "I’m looking for Lieutenant Gower."
"You’re here for a Wassermann, Sergeant?" Barbara asked, telling herself that she had sounded professionally distant.
This beautiful man has syphilis?
"Yes, Ma’am. I was told to report to Lieutenant Gower."
"I’ll take care of you, Sergeant. Come with me, please."
"Yes, Ma’am."
She led him to an examination room.
"Take off your jacket, please, and roll up your shirt sleeve."
When he took his uniform jacket off, Barbara saw that his shirt was tailored; it fit his body like a thin glove, which allowed her to clearly make out the firm muscles of his chest and upper arms inside it.
What’s going on with me? He’s not only an enlisted man- and there is a regulation against involvement between officers and enlisted men- but he’ssyphilitic/
She wrapped a length of red rubber tubing around his upper arm, drew it tight, and told him to pump his hand open and closed. He winced when she slipped the needle into his vein.
"Have you had any symptoms?" she heard herself asking, as his blood began to fill the chamber.
"Ma’am?"
"Lesions . . . sores? Anything like that."
"No, Ma’am."
"Then what makes you think you’ve contracted . . . ?"
"I don’t think I’ve contracted anything," Joe Howard said, unable to take his eyes from Ensign Cotter’s white brassiere, which had come into view when she had leaned over his arm to stick him with the needle.
"Then why are we giving you a Wassermann?" Barbara blurted, looking up at him and noticing that he quickly averted his eyes. God, he’s been looking down my dress! "You know what a Wassermann is for, don’t you?"
"For syphilis," he said. "I just figured that out."