W: Walker to Wylie

Walker, Dr.
Cherry is surprised to discover that the obstetrician on her first Delivery Room assigment is a woman. But "it seemed to Cherry an appropriate and sympathetic arrangement" (Senior Nurse, p. 66). Cherry wishes that Dr. Walker will offer some comment after the baby is born, but the obstetrician is too busy. This is one of two female doctors who appear in Senior Nurse, the other being surgeon Dr. Mary Vinson.

Wardi, Joe
Rough-hewn and stern, Joe Wardi is a skilled mountaineer who rescues lost skiers and mountain climbers in the forbidding Swiss Alps. He is disgusted by Toni Peter's poor judgment in skiing alone, especially when he must rescue Toni after a skiing mishap. Joe finds a sick kidnapped man and leads Cherry and the rescuers to him (Ski Nurse Mystery).

Warren, Vivian
From a poor and despised family, Vivian Warren is initially hard-bitten and suspicious, and Cherry's rival in nursing school. Cherry's friendship helps her blossom into a much nicer person, and Cherry helps her through her first romance, with shallow and vain Captain Paul Endicott. A member of the Spencer Club, she later marries a Wall Street clerk named Tod and goes to South America (Night Supervisor, Mountaineer Nurse), but she seems to be unmarried again in the later books (for example, Boarding School Nurse, Department Store Nurse), probably a discontinuity that resulted from the change in authorship. She later works for a surgeon out West (Companion Nurse, The Mystery in the Doctor's Office, "The Trouble with Sarah"). She and Marie Swift are working in Texas as staff nurses in "Christmas in New York," and Cherry visits them in "Frontier Week."

Wiegand, Elsie
When Cherry is a flight nurse, Elsie is one of the five other nurses who make up Flight Three. Tall and fair, Elsie is from Minnesota; before she volunteered for air duty, she had been in Brazil with the Army Nurse Corps (Flight Nurse).

Wilcox, Dr. Alan
Dr. Alan Wilcox and his father are the school doctors for the Jamestown School for Girls. He is "young and vigorous," with "sparks of mischief in his eyes" (Boarding School Nurse, p. 37). After he casually offers to take care of any heavy work she needs done, Cherry convinces him to secretly rip out a wall in the school infirmary in a quest for a hidden perfume formula.

Wilkinson, Dr. Rogers
Wilk Wilkinson assists Dr. Joseph Fortune at the Hilton Group Medical Practice Clinic. He is "a tall, athletic young man with alert blue eyes that twinkled merrily whenever he did anything to make Cherry's red cheeks flame." Cherry teasingly tells him, "You're not human enough to have any emotions. Why, you're nothing but a walking medical degree!" (Clinic Nurse, p. 12). He thinks Cherry is hallucinating when she tells him a wild story about being kidnapped.

Wilson, Captain
The mess officer for Island 14, Captain Wilson, a tall young Texan, provides the ice cream for the island's big party in a rather unorthodox manner: by loading a stranded fighter plane with the ingredients. "Fighter planes go up almost into the stratosphere, thirty thousand feet up, where the temperature is far below zero. Why, up there, you can freeze ice cream in half an hour!" (Chief Nurse, p. 55). Killed in a Japanese bombing attack, he is notable as the only character we meet who actually dies in the entire series.

Winky
Winky is a motherless seven-year-old boy brought into the emergency room, where Cherry is assigned as a student nurse, after a hot water boiler explodes in his face. Cherry helps him overcome his fear by reassuring him that plastic surgery will restore his face. He becomes very attached to her and insists on accompanying her when she's assigned to a different ward: "Why can't they fix my face just as good in one room as in another? ... I don't want anybody to take care of me but Miss Cherry! ... I'm going with Miss Cherry!" (Student Nurse, p. 141).

Wylie, Dr. Lewis
Dr. Wylie is Cherry's first nemesis. The head resident surgeon and an administrator of Spencer Hospital, he notices Cherry and her classmates as they are leaving a session with Miss Reamer on their first evening in nursing school. He focuses on Cherry, staring at her naturally red cheeks "for a long terrible minute of absolute silence." Then: "Wipe that rouge off your face! ... Soap and water. Good Lord, what is this hospital coming to?" (Student Nurse, p. 34). Dr. Wylie is "short but imperious," and has a "sharply intelligent face, with a hawk nose, a jutting square jaw, and a thin mouth tightly clamped shut" (p. 33). When Cherry is a probationer on the Men's Surgical Ward, he orders her to help him change a dressing--with disastrous results. She has another run-in with Dr. Wylie when he discovers Winky on the wrong ward. Later, against his specific orders, she enters a secret room where a wounded general needs aid (Student Nurse).

Dr. Wylie joins the army with the rank of lieutenant colonel, but returns to Spencer briefly during Cherry's senior year, and performs the first operation she sees. He also contributes to the collection Cherry takes up for the indigent Mom, and gets the elderly woman a job at the hospital, showing a heart of gold beneath his crusty exterior (Senior Nurse). To Cherry's dismay, Dr. Wylie becomes the chief surgeon and director of the Spencer unit when her graduating class joins the army (Army Nurse), and she is happy to leave him behind in Panama when she and the other nurses are transferred to the Pacific jungle (Chief Nurse). Dr. Wylie is back at Spencer when Cherry returns to work in the new children's wing, telling her--but now with a smile--"will you please wipe off that rouge, Miss Ames?" (At Spencer, p. 14).

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