Free To Honor You Call Us by Harvey G. Phillips, H. Paul Honsinger Page A

training.  I don’t want you banging up our new freighter.”
    “As you wish.”
    “Have you had a chance to check out your equipment, stores, and personnel yet?”
    “I have.  That was the first thing I did when I reported on board around 03:00 in response to Admiral Hornmeyer’s most exigent directive.”
    “Exigent directive?”
    “Indeed.  I was wakened from a sound sleep at 02:10 or so by the Admiral himself on voicecom.  He told me, rather loudly, to get my lazy, overeducated ass out of my bunk, and said that if I wasn’t on board the Cumberland with my duffel ready for an extended cruise as her Chief Medical Officer in less than an hour he was going to play table tennis with my testicles.”  He added confidentially, “I hasten to add that those were most decidedly not his exact words.  Twenty minutes later a Marine the size of a municipal sports arena arrived at my quarters, completed my packing for me in less than two minutes, marched me out the door, onto a transferpod, and onto the ship.  As soon as I arrived, Lieutenant Garcia greeted me with precise orders to check out my department to ‘make sure everything was shipshape’ and to provide a personal report to him by 07:00.  Then another Marine, even larger than the first, marched me to the Casualty Station where I immediately began my evaluation to determine the, how should I say, shipshape-ness of the department of which I was suddenly in command.”
    “Sounds like you were Shanghaied, Doctor.”
    “Indeed.”
    “So, is everything satisfactory?”
    “For a ship with a compliment of two hundred fifteen men and boys, I find the Casualty Station admirably well equipped and stocked, indeed, impressively so.  I have also met the personnel assigned to me and I find them to be reasonably well trained for their respective positions, although there appear to be some deficiencies in some specific areas of training, areas which I plan to remediate immediately.  I also note that the morale appears to be rather poor.  My understanding is that the previous Chief Medical Officer was less than stellar.”
    “He wasn’t the only one,” Max said.  “What about your Head Nurse, what’s his name?”
    “Church.  The Admiral reassigned him from the Nimitz and he came aboard ten minutes before I did.  When I got to the Casualty Station, he already had the Secured Pharmaceuticals Locker open, an armed Marine Sergeant standing by to guard the drugs, and was taking inventory with the Pharmacist’s Mate witnessing and performing a cross-check.  I am favorably impressed.  I could not ask for better.  There is only one thing more that one could wish for.”
    “And that would be?”
    “A female nurse.”
    Max smiled.  “Yes, that would have its advantages.”
    “I resent your implication, sir.  There are distinct therapeutic advantages to having a female nurse on board, especially if she is attractive.  In my experience, female nurses are more tender and sympathetic than the male ones and injured men seem to be more willing to submit without resistance or complaint to embarrassing and painful procedures administered by a female nurse.  Resistance and opposition seem to disappear as if by magic in the presence of an attractive young woman.  Whereas I might have to spend precious minutes, even hours, employing sophisticated reasoning and advanced psychological techniques to secure the patient’s cooperation, a lovely young nurse needs only to bat her eyes at the recalcitrant, cantankerous old Chief Petty Officer and the thing is done.  It also goes without saying that females are on the whole, by nature, more conscientious, more attentive to details, have better short-term memories, possess higher manual dexterity, and have a greater facility for understanding the speech of injured, infirm, or excited patients who may not be speaking clearly.  They employ problem solving techniques that are identifiably different from those employed by males.