Review: "Aerospace Nurse" by Virginia McDonnell

Aerospace Nurse by Virginia McDonnell
First published 1968
★★★

Ah, the delights of 1960s YA. In Aerospace Nurse, Terry becomes—you guessed it—a nurse to astronauts. Very little of the book is actually about astronaut nursing life, though, as first Terry has to get her bachelor's of nursing, join the Air Force, get some experience, become a flight nurse, and eventually apply to be an aerospace nurse. (It is, as you might expect, quite the ride!)

Some nice things here: Terry has a boy-next-door waiting for her, and—it's the 60s, remember—he's convinced that the thing to do is for Terry to give up her silly career aspirations, marry him, and live a nice dull life. When Terry questions her nursing skills, Johnny's answer is simple: "Take my fraternity pin," he said. "That should prove what you're worth and where you belong in this life" (37). Terry sticks to her guns—she's just told him that "Before I can be a wife, I have to be a person in my own right" (37)—but she's told over and over, by numerous characters, that Johnny won't wait around forever, he's been terribly generous to "let" her pursue her education/career before making a decision about marriage (note that she hasn't even committed to going steady with him), et cetera. (The sixties, man.) Johnny's ultimately a decent guy, to be clear, and this is not unusual for YA/romance books of the time. It's just...still kind of wild to me.

Meanwhile, the nursing: it's a thing in YA nurse books of the era for the book to be really, really enthusiastic about girls taking up nursing—it seems there was something of a nursing shortage, so the characters in these books all wax rhapsodic about the amazing opportunities they have, and the friends they make, and what a wonderful chance it is to do something for their country, et cetera et cetera. In this case, because Terry joins the Air Force, we also hear about the amazing things that nurses were doing in World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. What's that? No, no. Those are the only wars. Definitely no chance of Terry being sent off to some...other war. Oh—wait—you mean Vietnam? No, no, nothing going on—oh, okay, Terry pops over to Vietnam for five minutes when she's on holiday in Japan, as a favor when another nurse gets sick and can't do some sort of murky medevac flight, because that's definitely how it works in the Air Force. But the only thing Terry ever has to be worried about in Vietnam is whether her skills will hold up. That's it. Nothing else to worry about, no guns no blood no guts no gore, and if you join the Air Force as a nurse in the 60s you're definitely more likely to be selected to train as a space nurse than to be sent...somewhere...else.

Ahem.

Shall we talk about romance? Let's talk about romance.

I won't say too much except that Terry ends up with two options—Johnny, the boy next door who wants her to quit work and start popping out babies stat, and the mystery man with whom she has an instant sizzle of connection. And why can I not say too much? Because Terry has approximately one conversation with the mystery man—we learn his name and his job and that he's the precursor to the alpha male that runs amok in contemporary romance—before they decide that they're made for each other, baby, and if she doesn't say yes when he proposes then as her Air Force superior he'll order her to do so.

And really, what more could a girl want in a space-doctor-cowboy?