Hilda Baker: School Nurse — Dorothy Deming

An eventual year in the professional and private life of a high school nurse.

“Tell me,” Hilda asked her friend, “what's the matter? Here three fine men have proposed to me, and I don't love any one of them. I don't understand why they fall in love with me.”

But it wasn't really hard to understand. For Hilda, during her first years as the nurse for all of Haddonfield's high schools, was “just herself,” sweet and charming and attractive, and completely devoted to her exciting job and the people whose health was her concern.

There were times, Hilda sighed wearily, when her job seemed much too big for her, for she was “prodder, planner, interpreter, explainer, sharer, adviser and nurse.” Yet between coping with chicken pox, epidemics, conferring with teachers, giving first aid and unsnarling the tangled lives of others, she somehow managed to get caught up in her own romantic complications, and to resolve them with the same wisdom that endeared her to the community.