Lucilla Andrews Vintage Hospital Medical Doctor Nurse Romance: The First Year
Nursing & Romance: Can They Ever Mix?
This is a sweet vintage romance of the doctor-nurse hospital variety, which used to be massively popular back in the day. Lucilla Andrews may not have actually invented the genre but she pretty much mastered it: and this particular novel is pretty much the exemplar of the type, if perhaps not the best of her work.
Her heroine here, Rose Standing, is a twenty year old ‘probationer’ nurse at St. Martha’s Hospital in London. She is hopelessly scatty (and why does this begin to sound familiar), genuinely enthusiastic about nursing and rather brighter than her total lack of common sense would suggest. She is, however, aware that her lack of maturity constitutes something of an obstacle to a successful nursing career. Her friends continually point this out, and so do her nursing tutors.
Nursing in the 50s & 60s
Well, What Do You Think? Enter The Handsome Doctor Hero
And when she encounters (da-da dah!) senior surgical officer Jake Waring, it’s rubbed even further into her consciousness. (Did you hear that? The ominous music? That was the first entry into the plot of the hero!) Jake is an Older Man, an icy Scandinavian blond, and clearly extremely unimpressed with our girl Rose. In fact to say he is unimpressed is to understate the case. He is so very far above her in status that it would be an affront to his dignity to even acknowledge her existence so far as to despise her.
And it really doesn’t help matters when she somehow gets swept away on a runaway surgical trolley, rounds a corner on it and knocks over Jake and a bunch of hilariously amused medical students. (How? Well, are you saying it’s never happened to you? Personally I get carried away by surgical trolleys all the time.
All the time. Seriously.)
Buy Classic Romance Novels On Amazon
Medical Romance Links For Romance Novel Enthusiasts
Doctor Nurse Romance: A Prescription For Love
This is yet another low spot in her fledgling career. There is an upside, though: one of the medical students, Bill, is a cheery, clubbable bloke who takes a mild fancy to her and at least improves her social life. (Which helps to take her mind off the mess that is her career.) Still, Rose perseveres, and at last feels she's beginning to make some progress on her course, especially when she does very well on the academic side of it.
However, Jake Waring still evidently considers her far below his notice and loses no opportunity to rub this in. Why should it bother her so (as it clearly does)? After all, he's an old codger of thirty-six to her twenty. Shouldn't she be having fun hanging out with lightweight Bill? It's not as if Jake doesn't clearly have a girlfriend already: a sophisticated brunette (and dedicated Sister) at the hospital. How could Rose possibly compete?
How on earth will they get together? Is it meant to be? Will she melt Jake's frosty proto-consultant heart? Will an asteroid hit earth and strand them together in a burning building?
I guess you'll just have to read it and find out...