Settlement Nurse

A mysterious, deranged vagrant in a coma. Isn’t that every young woman’s ideal?

Cindy anxiously watched her delirious patient. Kenneth Randall was a new experience for her. To the older nurses from the settlement house he was just another drifter–a vagrant who moved from one cheap hotel room to another, from one misery to the next

But Cindy saw only a man who needed her as no one ever had. It as her job to save him. But from what? His past was a mystery. And what of his future? Did it depend on the show girl who had left her green stockings in his room?

Suddenly Cindy was shocked to realize that she was actually jealous of a woman she had never seen. It was ridiculous–but it had happened. Cindy was falling in love with a strange man she hadn’t even spoken to!

A mysterious, deranged vagrant in a coma. Isn’t that every young woman’s ideal?

Later on in the book we learn that Mr. Right is really “a handsome but despondent young actor,” but that’s essentially the same thing, isn’t it? Except for the coma part, of course. But after a few dates with a sulking, self-absorbed thespian, she’ll probably look back on those early, speechless days with great fondness.

I love the two hoodlums standing in the background on the cover. They look like two extras from West Side Story waiting for the craft services truck to arrive. The waistline on the brunette’s jeans hits him a good three inches above the belly button, but he probably had to keep them hiked up like that or you couldn’t see his white socks. And that single light in the upstairs bedroom can’t be good. Surely all decent folk went to sleep hours ago…