They met at the Hudson Hotel, an all-female hotel their parents approved of. They spent the night in New York on Thursday night, giggling with excitement about the trip, and called Ellen to tell her that all was going smoothly so far. The next morning, on Friday, they took a bus to LaGuardia Airport, and boarded the United flight to San Francisco, for the first leg of their trip. They were going to spend the night at the Fairmont Hotel, and catch the plane to Honolulu the next day.

They both noticed the very attractive stewards on the United flight. They looked more like movie stars to the young nurses. And there was a stewardess on the flight, who told them she was a nurse when they chatted with her.

“We should have done that,” Lizzie said to Audrey in a whisper after the stewardess walked by in her trim uniform, with her matching hat. She looked like a model.

“Done what?” Audrey asked her.

“Become stewardesses. I heard recently that they have to be nurses. And I can tell you that she’s having a lot more fun than I am on the post-op ward, and their uniforms are way cuter.”

Audrey laughed. “I’d have to have a complete makeover. She looks like she came from a modeling agency. No one in our class at nursing school looked like that,” she reminded Lizzie.

“You’d look great in the hat and uniform. I don’t know why I never thought of that. This looks like a fun job.”

“It’s probably harder than it looks,” Audrey said practically. But it certainly did look glamorous. Audrey knew she couldn’t have left her mother and done it. This was the first time in six years she’d been away from Ellen for more than a day or two, and it had taken meticulous planning to make sure that she’d be cared for by a nurse for the entire time. Mrs. Beavis was taking no time off while Audrey was gone.

Audrey loved the sensation of flying, and looking down at the scenery below, even though the flight was turbulent for some of the time. Neither of the girls was afraid, although several passengers were. The service was impeccable, and the food delicious. Audrey and Lizzie chatted with the stewardess again during the flight, and said that they were nurses too. The United stewardess said how much she loved her job. She said she had never needed her nurse’s training in the year she’d worked for United. The medical issues she tended to were minor, like an infant with an earache, or helping someone who was airsick. But other than that, there had never been medical assistance required on her flights, although it could happen.