Helen Wells
Grosset & Dunlap, 1943
Genre:
Realistic, Mystery
Description
Cherry Ames is 18
years old and on her way to the Spencer
School—one of the best nursing
colleges in the United
States. She is super nervous as she has
always wanted to be a nurse but worries if she will have what it takes to
succeed. She’ll start off on a probationary period and if she fails her first
semester she won’t be allowed to continue. She’s done her research because she
didn't want to go to a second-rate school and come out a second-rate nurse.
Spencer has everything including recognized staff doctors, a sufficient staff
of resident nurses, complete laboratories and hospital equipment and libraries,
and a course of training that touched on every branch of nursing.
Cherry wants to be a nurse all because of her
neighbor, Dr. Joe Fortune. He ushered Cherry and Charlie into the world and Cherry
has always loved him. During high school his wife died leaving him alone to
battle with a doctor's poverty, an unmanageable daughter, and a dwindling private
practice. He spends more time doing experiments. We learn that “Singlehanded,
with quiet courage, with endless patience, Dr. Joe was finding new ways to help
and save human lives. After the night Dr. Joe explained to her what his
precious drug was, Cherry for the first time took a deep interest in her
biology and chemistry courses at school. And to her amazement, she was good at
them, once she really tried. And after the long golden Sunday when Dr. Joe
performed the miracle of the drug on Tookie the cat, Cherry knew she, too, must
play some role in the world of miracles and life.” The drug he is working on is
an anesthetic that would numb just the area being worked on allowing the
patient to remain conscious during surgeries. Cherry realizes this drug would
be a miracle especially in the battlefield at hospitals on the sidelines.
Cherry quickly makes some new friends. At dinner
her first night at Spencer she notices that there are about 60 student nurses
there—“tall girls, short girls, thin, fat, but all of them radiating eagerness
and expectancy.” Cherry's attention is caught by one girl in particular whose “cold
eyes and over-rouged mouth” did not seem to belong at Spenser. This girl is
Vivian Warren—she will be Cherry’s nemesis.
Cherry enjoys her classes and her first assignment
to the woman’s ward. However, Cherry does have a playful nature and she almost
gets in trouble for a prank. As she is wandering down some halls she hears a
British voice of an elderly woman call out for a nurse. However, there appears
to be no one on the ward. Fearing an emergency, Cherry decides to go into the
room and is shocked to see not an old woman but a tiny girl no more than six or
seven years old. She has her leg bandaged and a cast and the girl asks if her mommy
has come. She says she was asleep in their shelter and she got hurt and she
doesn't know where her mommy is. Cherry realizes that this girl must be a
victim of some bombings that have occurred in London. She could be waiting for mother who
was killed. The narration tells us that “Cherry had read to children and
wounded people being evacuated from the Allied countries. But the reality she
saw before her now was so cruel it was almost unbearable.” The poor little girl
says that she wishes she had a doll to keep her company and Cherry promises to
get her one. Having no idea where she's going to procure a doll, Cherry
suddenly get inspiration to borrow Sally Chase, the medical dummy.
Cherry tells her plan to Ann and Gwen. Ann is
scared that they will get expelled for “kidnapping” Sally Chase whereas Gwen is
totally open to the plan. Ann gets a housecoat, slippers, and a scarf and Cherry
and Gwen go visit Sally. They dress her up in Ann's clothes, put her in a
wheelchair, and take her to the private pavilion. They wheel Sally into the
room and the little girl is super excited. Cherry tells the girl that the doll
is special and that she can't tell anyone about her. She can play with her for
a little while but then she has to go away and Cherry will bring the girl a new
doll that she can keep permanently the next day. The little girl spends a few
minutes trying to cuddle Sally and whispers confidential things to her. The
narration reads, “Cherry had known there was a war raging on the other side of
the world, but she had not thought much about it. Now it occurred to her that
it was very much her business—her personal business and her business as a nurse
to be.”
The girls hear Ann, who is keeping watch, talking
to someone. She then tells them that it was the floor supervisor and that they
better get out of there. That is when the little girl decides to mention that
her doctor is Dr. Wylie. They begin to pack up Sally when the door opens
suddenly. A horrified masculine voice demands, “What are you idiots doing?”
Luckily the voice belongs to James Clayton. He informs them that the little
girl is in the private pavilion because she's very nervous and is not supposed
to have visitors. The little girl's name is Pamela and James also lets them
know that they could be expelled for this little prank especially since her
doctor is due there in less than five minutes and surely would have caught
them. James calls for a wheeled table and he and Cherry pretend to turn Sally
into a corpse to return her without anyone noticing. James warns her not to
pull any more practical jokes at least not until she's off probation. Cherry
thinks he's pretty dreamy.
Cherry gets on the bad side of Vivian. One day
during class, Cherry asks what she should do if she has a very unruly and
difficult patient. Vivian takes a stab at Cherry by saying that a patient's
attitude usually has a lot to do with their nurse and also that dealing with an
unruly patient is where the nurse's skill comes in to play. Cherry is furious
at Vivian for trying to make her look like she's not a good nurse. Ann thinks
that Vivian is afraid of something and that is why she’s so mean and distant
toward everyone. Cherry wonders what it is she's afraid of. She just seems so
desperate about not failing. Cherry ponders that “she acts as if failure would
be a death sentence. She's willing to do anything to win her cap, as if—as if,
should she get tossed out of here, she wouldn't dare go back to where she came
from.”
Cherry knowing that she and Vivian are going to
butt heads at some point designs to circumvent it by conducting a surprise
attack on Vivian. Cherry goes to Vivian's room and proceeds to tell her that
she does not appreciate the tactics she's using against her in class and that
if she does not stop she's going to find herself in trouble. She also asks her
why she's always alone. Soon Vivian is telling her own story. She came from a desperately
poor and wretched family, her father is a horrible alcoholic, and her mother
has given up hope. At school she'd been despised as a member of that “awful Warren family.” She'd
grown up believing that she was not as bright as everyone around her and that
she couldn't trust anyone. She worked for two years in a laundry to save enough
money to enter nursing school. If she doesn't make it a nursing school she has
nowhere to go. Cherry invites Vivian to come see a movie with the rest of the
girls but Vivian is hesitant. Cherry tells her where they're meeting and leaves
the room. After dinner as the girls are getting ready to head out to the movie Cherry
notices Vivian awkwardly hanging around the elevator. Cherry openly welcomes
her and the other girls follow suit.
During Cherry’s third, and final, month of her
probationary period she is transferred to Ward 27 which is men’s surgical and
happens to be the ward that Dr. Wylie is in charge of. One day, on a Thursday
that would become known as Ames's
Folly, Cherry is singled out by Wylie to help change a bandage on a patient in
front of everyone and everything goes wrong. She's not ready with the surgical
cart, she doesn't wash her hands quickly enough, she uses the wrong type of
forceps, and she drops the soiled bandage on the bed. She gets so nervous she
picks up the wrong forceps again and the doctor goes off on her calling her
careless and saying that she should know such a simple elementary procedure.
Cherry is pretty sure she's just failed. Dr. Clayton comes and finds her to
tell her that he's pretty sure the doctor won't report her and that he himself can
tell that she's going to be a good nurse.
Soon it is time for the caps to be awarded. The
first probationer to pass is Vivian. Ann comes next followed by Gwen, and a
dozen other girls. Cherry is getting nervous and she feels like everyone else
was wondering about her. As the day wears on and more and more girls get
called, two drop out, and Cherry still hasn't been called. She knows that she
will never receive her cap. At 4:45 Dr. Clayton comes in and speaks with Ms.
Craig who then tells Cherry to report to the student office. Ms. Reamer asks Cherry
where her cap is and she has to tell her that she's not received it. Cherry
feels horrible because she is now a failure. Ms. Reamer tells her there is been
a terrible mistake and that she has passed second highest in her entire class.
She learns that Dr. Wylie reported that she takes criticism well and Ms. Craig
says that she makes a real effort to learn. Cherry is now officially a student
nurse!
The girls get their first student nurse assignments.
Gwen is assigned to skin, Ann has night duty, and Cherry is to go into the
emergency ward. The girls notice that now that they have their caps the doctors
and older nurses appear to trust them and no longer think they are nitwits. Dr.
Clayton is coming down to cherry's Ward to treat a tuberculosis case. The lady
is elderly and distrustful of hospitals. The narration says that Cherry “was
acquainted by now with this ignorant attitude. She knew, too, that only as far
back as the 1860s hospitals really had been terrible places, where patients
were lucky to come out alive, and resorted to only by the helpless poor. But
that was before antiseptics and sterilization had been discovered, and before
Florence Nightingale had founded the first training school for nurses.” It
turns out the elderly woman was literally carrying her life savings sewn into
her clothes.
Her next case is of third-degree burns from a hot
water boiler that exploded in the patient's face. They have to act quickly or
he will have no face for the rest of his life. It is a boy who is only seven
years old. The boy is named Winky and Cherry tries to calm him down to let him
know that he will be all right and that he will look the same because the
doctors will help him. It doesn't help that his father comes barging in yelling
that he'll be a freak and no one will want to look at him and that he'd be
better off dead.
Cherry was only on the emergency ward for three
weeks when a nurse was needed for the bone deformities ward and Cherry was
given the transfer because the TSO considered her good enough to meet the
duties. While Winky is getting better, he is distraught at the thought of Cherry
not being his nurse anymore. He is so distraught that his doctor reluctantly
agrees to place him in a private room in Cherry's new ward. Unfortunately, Cherry
has to deal with the wrath of Dr. Wylie when he discovers that his plastic
surgery case has been moved to the orthopedic ward. The doctor is not surprised
that Cherry is to blame and it is her fault. She decides to stand up for
herself and she says yes she is to blame and that it is her fault if making a
patient like her is a fault.
Four days before Christmas, Dr. Joe arrives for a
visit. Dr. Joe says that he is there to have a hearing hopefully for his new
anesthetic drug. He's gotten to the point where it needs to be tested and his
lab isn't equipped enough to do it. Spencer has already turned him down but he
is there hopefully to get them to change their mind. The next day she finds out
that the hospital refused him again.
In April Cherry is transferred to men's
orthopedic. This is the first time that she experiences relief duty and gets to
work from three in the afternoon until eleven at night. After a week or so of
relief duty she will then move on to night duty. Relief duty is supposed to
prepare her for staying up all night. One night at about 10 p.m. one of the
patients starts yelling that he is in terrible pain. He is on morphine but he's
had his quotient for that day. She calls the supervisor who doesn't know what
they can do to help him. It is at that point that Cherry thinks of the new drug
Dr. Joe created stored in the laboratory downstairs. Unfortunately, the doctor
says they can't use it because it hasn't been approved yet and they give him
another dose of morphine. Before she goes off duty she reports back to the
doctor that the extra morphine has not helped the patient. She later runs into
Ms. McIntyre who tells her that the chemical laboratory tested Dr. Joe’s drug
and it worked but they can't use it until it is accepted by the medical board.
Unfortunately they don't meet until July and this is only April.
Cherry has her first night of night duty. The one
poor patient is still in extreme pain. Around four in the morning Cherry hears
the service elevator and muffled voices. Someone is being brought in on a
stretcher alongside two orderlies and two men in business suits, one of which
was Dr. Wylie. She sees the doctor unlock a door marked “broom closet” which
opens up to reveal a fully equipped hospital room with bed and bathroom. The
doctor calls for her and the men he's with hide in the shadows. He asks her to
go into the room and remake the bed. He asks if she has seen Ms. Hall but
Cherry tells him she's never even heard of Ms. Hall. He also warns Cherry to
not say a word of this to anyone. After she's done he tells her that if the
number three rings on the call board to ignore it and to not let anyone in the
room. He will stay with the patient. If Ms. Hall shows up she's to wait in his
office. He warns her once more not to tell anyone or else she will get
expelled.
Cherry thinks about the clues she has gathered
about the mysterious patient. He clearly came from outside the hospital as
evident from the secrecy and the luggage. She still has not seen this Ms. Hall.
She also hasn't seen the doctor go in the room so there must be another
entrance. Since there was a second room beyond the bathroom she is guessing
that Ms. Hall is now living there. Every night around midnight she hears a
number of masculine voices coming from that room and once she saw a man
wandering around the corridor as if he were lost. That had to mean that the
patient was receiving visitors. Later that night a flash came from number three
on the call board. The doctor had not had it disconnected. Occasionally over
the past few nights it would flash a few times but tonight it was so persistent
it worried her. When the night supervisor comes to check on her and she asks if
the call board is broken the nurse tells her that the number three is just an
error is it only connects to the broom closet.
Cherry finds the elevator operator who tells her
of helping a strange nurse go down to the lab. She clearly didn't find what she
was looking for and insisted he take her to the lobby for her to possibly go to
another hospital for what she needed. She attempts to get a hold of the Dr. Wylie
but does not succeed. The room’s light has been flashing for 15 minutes now.
She goes to the supervisor again who admits that there used to be a suite of
rooms there but the private pavilion never used it because it was expensive and
inconvenient so it was closed up about a year ago.
She tries to get Jim to help that he doesn't
believe her either. So she decides that the patient must be saved at all costs
and this is where she will get herself expelled. She slips out onto the fire
stairs and finds the secret door that she knew must be there. She tries it and
it is unlocked. It leads into the room that must be Ms. Hall's bedroom. Inside
the patient's room all the curtains are drawn and all over the walls are large
maps. There is a special outside telephone. There is also shortwave radio,
which Cherry knows from Charlie's military manual is used to receive messages
in code. There is also a briefcase and revolver. She realizes suddenly that the
man in the bed is a soldier and must be an important one. She takes his vitals
and knows that she has to help him.
She leaves the room and tries to call the doctor
again. She is a calling Jim and convinces him to come up to her ward. She takes
Jim to the room where he examines the man's wound and says that he is
experiencing an internal hemorrhage and needs an operation at once. Jim knows
that he is no authority to operate but he feels that he has to but
unfortunately they need a local anesthetic and this is one of those rare cases
where they can't use novocaine. He's heard of some new Russian anesthetics that
are over at City Hospital and they realize that that must
be where Ms. Hall has gone. Cherry tells him about Dr. Joe's drug and says that
it has been tested and that it is the man's only chance.
Dr. Wylie finally shows up and Cherry fills him in
on everything that she knows. The doctor tells her to go get the drug, get the
equipment, and be prepared to operate. As they get ready to operate the doctor
tells them, “'Do you know who this man is? He is General –,” and “he spoke a
name which Cherry and Jim heard with the profoundest respect, one of the
greatest names of their time. He had been wounded and had been flown to the United States.”
Once they finish the operation, Ms. Hall arrives with the three other
businessmen. One of the uniformed men starts yelling about Cherry and Jim being
in the room but the weak general says that “the little girl saved his life.” Dr.
Wylie warns them not to talk about the room because if his army knew that he was
temporarily not in command it would do their courage no good and if the enemy
found out it would be a signal for attack.
The next morning Cherry awakens to find a note
asking her to report to the TSO. Ms. Reamer had known about the patient from
the beginning and has just been informed by the doctor of Cherry's involvement.
He called her a spunky young woman even if she was impertinent but he does say
that she is to be congratulated on her courage and initiative. Ms. Reamer
decides that because of all her excitement she should take her month's vacation
a little bit earlier.
Later as Cherry and her friends are walking the
halls she sees a maid approach the broom closet. When she opens it the room is
full of pails and brooms and ironing boards and the secret suite of rooms is gone.
A little while later Cherry is told to report to
the TSO again where she sees Dr. Joe. Dr. Joe is going to come to the hospital
and work in their laboratories. Ms. Reamer tells Cherry that it has been
arranged for her to take her month-long vacation by going back to Hilton with
Dr. Joe.
The book ends with, “Yes, she would always go back—to
the vast busy fortress of a hospital, to her friends, to her patients who
needed her, to the nursing work that was the most exciting and important thing
in her life. Cherry thought back fleetingly over the last year. Any last
lingering doubts had been erased now, she had proven herself worthy, and she
felt joyous and confident. Cherry knew, finally, that she was truly a nurse.”
Thoughts
and Nuggets of Wisdom for Research
For an early series book series, Cherry Ames was pretty
well-written. It is probably one of the more literary titles I have read thus
far.
Early on readers will pick up on the not so subtle
message of the Cherry Ames series—that a girl’s highest aspiration (besides
being a wife and a mother) is only to be, if she desires to work, a nurse. The copy
on the dust jacket states: “It is every girl's ambition at one time or another
to wear the crisp uniform of the nurse. The many opportunities for service, for
adventure, for romance make a nurses' career a glamorous one. Certainly, girls
everywhere love to read stories in which a nurse is the heroine. At least 1
million girls already know and admire Cherry Ames, and have laughed over her
pranks and thrilled over her gay adventures and wept over her problems.”
Cherry’s whole family is pretty 1940s typical
American, white, middle class. Cherry is described as “slender and healthy and
well built; she moved with the proud erect posture that made her seem
beautifully tall and slim. Her eyes and her short curly hair were very dark,
almost black—the clear-cut black that glistens. . . . Cherry was as vivid as a
poster in her red wool sport suit. And her face fairly sparkled with warmth and
humor.” She often has super rosy cheeks that get so red when she’s embarrassed
that the evil surgeon, Dr. Wylie, who everyone fears at Spenser, constantly is
yelling at her and telling her to remove the rouge on her face!
Cherry has a twin brother, Charlie: “Strangers
found it hard to believe that Charlie was Cherry's twin, for he was as fair as
she was dark. He was a tall athletic boy with ruffled white hair and alert blue
eyes. Charlie was entering the State
Engineering College
this fall.” Supposedly Charlie’s room is full of models and photographs and
blueprints of airplanes. At one point in her studies, Cherry receives a letter
from Charlie saying he was leaving the university to study flying and hoped
eventually to join the Air Force. The narration says, “His letter was full of
strange words like 'ferrying' and 'bomber command' and 'B-17s' and 'P-38s' and
'logistics.' Those words made Charlie seem very grown-up, rather far away, in a
strange new world of his own choosing.”
Her brother calls her “Nurse Ames” and she laughs:
“She had no right to title yet—but a little thrill shivered down her back just
the same.” Readers are told that “she did not feel 18 and through with high
school and almost a student nurse. For all her dreams and hopes, she still was
not entirely sure nursing was for her. All the tales she had ever heard flashed
through her mind—you see so much suffering, the scrubbed floors, you might give
the patient the wrong medicine, and all other nightmares. Probably nonsense,
the whole lot to them. Cherry wanted a profession of her own. More than that,
she wanted to do vital work, work that the world urgently needs. She
honest-to-goodness cared about people and she wanted to help them on a grand
and practical scale. But did she have all that it takes to be a nurse? Could
her dream survive three straight years of training? Well, she would learn the
answer very soon.”
Her mother, before Cherry leaves for school, asks
her, “If you—if you find you don't like nursing or if it's too hard for you,
you won't be too proud to come home? . . . I feel you have chosen just about
the finest profession there is. And just about the most necessary one in
wartime. We're mighty proud about it. And we are both sure that you'll do good
work and win your cap.”
It’s clear early on in this series that the gender
roles are pretty straightforward. Charlie gets to be a pilot while Cherry has
only has aspirations to be a nurse. It’s also shocking how many times
throughout the story that people constantly discuss how noble it is to be a
nurse—sometimes it borders on a propaganda advertisement!
Ms. Reamer is the superintendent of nurses. During
student orientation, she “started by telling them that from now on, they were
professional women, and that their personal behavior must reflect the dignity
of their profession,” and that “Spencer nurses were scattered in all far places
of the world, doing their life bringing work, sometimes in the fire of the
battlefields, blazing a path around the globe against pain and death.” She
continues that “as nurses, they would rise in the presence of doctors and
graduate nurses, in respect to their profession. Nurses relations with interns
were to be purely professional. Nurses were not to wander around the hospital
but go only to the wards assigned. Nurses must not wear the uniforms or caps on
the street, nor wear street clothes on the ward. . . . No jewelry, no high
heels.” If the girls can pass a three month probationary period they will win
their cap and become full-fledged student nurses. She ends by saying, “Let me
remind you that you are going to need good health, intelligence, unselfishness,
patience, tact, humor, sympathy, efficiency, neatness, plus plenty of energy
for hard work. But let me remind you, too, that nursing is the most rewarding
of all professions for women. And frequently the most romantic and exciting.”
Whoo-hoo! Nursing is not the only career choice
for girls outside the home but it is also exciting and romantic—so let’s teach
our young female readers to aspire to be nothing but nurses, maybe work as a
nurse for a few years, and then find her proper spot in society as a wife and
mother because surely, since nursing has romance to it, she’ll find a nice
doctor to marry!
During the girls’ first class, the teacher, Miss
McIntyre, asks a few girls why they want to be nurses. Josie says that she just
always wanted to be a nurse. When she was young she played with dolls and it
was always in a hospital setting and she always liked helping people. Gwen says
she comes from a medical family so the choice of nurse was a no brainer.
Another girl says, “I want to do something useful. I found out that if you
don't, you're bored and discontented and even lonesome. And I can't think of
anything more useful than nursing.” Ann says her father was maimed in the last
war and wouldn't have been so if there were enough nurses on the battlefield.
Her two older brothers and fiancé have enlisted so she is determined to be an
Army nurse. Lastly, everyone is touched by the shy Mai Lee’s story. She wants
to be an Army nurse too as two years ago when she went back home to her tiny
Chinese village she'd been there five days when Japanese planes bombed it. Her
family was killed and the village is no more.
These stories show girl readers the proper and
acceptable reasons for wanting to be a nurse. Also, since this book was written
around the time of World War II, it is one of the most important series to
focus on the War and how series books showed boys going to fight for their
country and girls becoming nurses to take care of the men.
At one point, Vivian is happy that she got her
government scholarship and can continue her nursing studies. She tells the
girls that a number of new students coming in are also on scholarships provided
by the US
Cadet Nurse Corps. She says, “They sure must need nurses to give training and
maintenance free!” and that they “always need more nurses in wartime. Not only
on the battlefronts either. Look at the shortage right here in Spencer, with
nurses leaving for war fronts.” She also says, “No, no, not only because of the
war! We'll be needed just as much after the war. Nursing isn't just a temporary
war job. There's an awful shortage of nurses. It's a war job with a future.”
Minorities are briefly touched on in passing
comments. During her first time working in a ward, Cherry notices an assortment
of patients: “It is a Jewish grandmother, an Italian woman with a smile like a sunburst,
a tiny little Irish girl not much older than herself, a Slavic woman who spoke
no English. What an assorted lot they were! And each patient's personality was
so different, too; for each one, Cherry had to find a different approach. It
was challenging, it was fun.”
When she moves into the outpatient ward we learn
that “she was learning about medicine, but she was also learning about people.
Cherry picked up enough pidgin Italian to soothe the worried little dark eyed
mother, she persuaded a crotchety old man to walk without his habitual crutch,
she calmed the terrified Jewish woman who was sure she was dying because the
doctor had prescribed a dreaded medicine called Castor oil.”
The romance for Cherry comes in the form of intern
doctor, James Clayton. She meets him on the first day of school when he helps
her find the student office. She is shocked a month later to find him in charge
of the first ward she’s been assigned to. We learn that “Dr. Clayton looked
very tall and young and handsome, in spite of his matter-of-fact professional
air as he glanced over the charts.” Ms. Baker, the nurse in charge of the ward,
introduces Cherry and Josie to Jim with whom Cherry feels a current of recognition
and friendliness run between them. Cherry at one point attends the fall term
dance were Dr. Clayton spends half his time dancing with Ms. Baker and half
this time dancing with Cherry. A lot of other young doctors and interns also pay
her a lot of attention.
One night Cherry tells Jim about Dr. Joe's drug.
She says that Dr. Joe discovered it because of the war and how the quinine
supply was cut off because the area where it grew fell into enemy hands and so
many researchers set about looking for a substitute. Dr. Joe found one but his
substitute also had a byproduct and it was that byproduct that makes his new
anesthetic work. Instead of paying attention to her, Jim blatantly flirts with
her calling her pretty and saying that he might be in love. Cherry is pretty
sure that he has to be referring to Ms. Baker. She goes to talk to Ms. Baker
and learns that Jim has confided in her including the story about Sally Chase.
Ms. Baker implies that he's in love with Cherry.
At one point Cherry thinks to herself, “Jim . . .
She really ought to stop thinking about Jim Clayton. Mooning around when she
ought to be studying. And Jim would not have any use for her if she were not a
good nurse. Cherry still had plenty of doubts about herself. There is over two
years to go—would she make it? Would her dream of nursing hold up under the
strain of such things as Dr. Wylie and cranky patients and that tough surgical
clinic?”
After
Jim and Cherry save the life of the General, Cherry returns to her ward
exhausted. As she is making the rounds she is shocked to see Jim and Ms. Baker
in each other's arms. Cherry realizes that the two of them are deeply in love
but she is okay with it as she knows she and Jim will be good friends.
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