Night Nurse, by Dora Macy (Grace Perkins) (1930)

Ad in the New York Times for Night Nurse. “Those who read my book, Ex-Mistress,” writes Dora Macy in the foreword to Night Nurse, “will remember that twice I was ill in a hospital — once when I had my baby, and once when I parted with my appendix. Upon this last occasion, I found a new and interesting friend in my night nurse (who has since attended me at home during my second accouchement!)” Night Nurse (1930), the second novel that Grace Perkins penned as Dora Macy, is drawn from interviews with this and other private nurses. It takes their horror cases and whips them into a melodramatic frappé, but one that comes served in a superficially objective container. Nurse Lora Hart, the narrator, purports to reveal the dirty truth of life inside “the world of sickness” — a “foreign world” with “different customs, rules, conventions, habits — an entirely different outlook on life.” For Lora, “the world is divided into three parts: the sick, the well, and those who take care of the sick.”…