PROJECT NURSEMAID
by Judith Merril
1
The girl in the waiting room was very young, and very ill at ease. She closed the magazine in her lap, which she had not been reading, and leaned back in the chair, determined to relax. It was an interview, nothing more. If they asked too many questions or if anything happened that looked like trouble, she could just leave and not come back.
And then what...? They wouldn't, anyhow. The nurse had told her. She didn't even have to give her right name. It didn't matter. And they wouldn't check up. All they cared about was if you could pass the physical.
That's what the nurse had said, but she didn't
like the nurse, and she wished now that she had bought a wedding ring after all. Thirty-nine cents in the five-and-ten, and she had stood there looking at them, and gone away again. Partly it was knowing the salesgirl would think she was going to use it for a hotel, or something like that. Mostly, it was just—wrong. A ring on your finger was supposed to mean something, even for thirty-nine cents. If she had to lie with words, she could, but not with... That was silly. She should have bought it. Only what a ring meant was one thing, and what Charlie had meant was something else.
. . .
