Student nurse Stories

In the summer of 1970, an engaged, Jewish, student nurse and a wounded Vietnam vet from the south met in a New York VA hospital. This chapter marks the end of the beginning of their story. Mark Cahill’s body tensed at the familiar, rhythmic click of Gwen Kaplan’s footsteps approached his room. Not for the first time, he flashed back to their fight the day before he left town to spend Christmas with his family. He still co...

Minutes after her fiance’ stormed away, pouting over not getting his way during their time alone, she decided to test how a certain other man would act in a similar situation. Gwen Kaplan stood in the doorway of the familiar hospital room, studying the man who had so disrupted her once well-ordered life. Mark Cahill lay stretched out in bed with his eyes closed, using earphones to listen to a recording of, “A Farewell to...

She had two lovers: the fiance’ she’d loved for years and wanted to marry, and this new man, the one she couldn’t stop seeing... Gwen Kaplan sat in one of the small, doorless cubicles that lined the back wall of the lobby of her all-female dorm. It might be 1970, but these so-called ‘beau parlors were the only sanctioned spot for what the school conduct manual still referred to as, “entertaining gentleman callers.” As she...

It occurred to Mark Cahill that things could be one hell of a lot worse. He was out of his room at the nearby Manhattan veterans’ hospital, sitting in a coffee shop on Lexington Avenue and staring across the cluttered table of a two-person booth into the soft, brown eyes of a very attractive student nurse. At the moment, she seemed to be saying something about school. He’d nod at times, even mumble to show interest, while...

Blurb: She felt excited, nervous, maybe even a little scared. Most of all, her mind kept spinning trying to figure out just how she’d ever gotten herself into this room, at this moment and, most of all, with this man. ### In Mark Cahill’s considered opinion, things could have been one hell of a lot worse. He was out of his room at the nearby Manhattan veterans’ hospital, sitting in a coffee shop on Lexington Avenue and st...

“In other national news, a Defense Department spokesman said 18,000 of the 31,000 US troops ordered into Cambodia by President Nixon have been withdrawn.”Gwen Kaplan gave her bangs one last touch. Before this summer, news about the war in Vietnam had been background noise to her life. She cared, but had been hearing about the war since junior high. Now things were different. Now she knew someone who had fought over there,...