You did it! We figured this one out! It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me for certain) that the Bitchery pretty much knows everything, and really, it's true. Scroll down to see the solution for this HaBO - and many thanks!
Sash is loooking for a YA novella she read years ago. This one sounds very tough… which means someone will identify it within .04 seconds, obviously.
I've posted this a few places on the internet, but no luck, so I'm hoping all you classy ladies can solve my dilemma! This was part of an anthology that I found in the YA section of the public library in the late 90s, although it looked pretty dated then too.
The short story is about a nurse and a soldier. IN SPACE!!!
He is an intergalactic warrior who is “healed”/regenerated with some form of technology after each battle, and she is his nurse. She patches him up after he is injured, noticing how good looking he is while comatose. Then, she is shipped off aboard a smaller ship (where they sleep in hammocks?) to her next job.
He is also on-board. She knows who he is, and although it is totally against the rules for her to hook up with him, she does.
He also remembers her from when he was unconscious, calling her his angel and totally as into her as she is.
I can't remember if they live happily ever after, but there is a steamy-to-my-12-year-old-brain scene. Any help out there? Googling for this yields strange results, and I don't want to subject myself to that again…
Do you recognize this story?
This might not be the correct answer, but the mention of hammocks made me think about the Lensman books (because in EE Doc Smith land, OF COURSE you sleep in hammocks aboard spaceships… :p
Kimball Kinnison is a Lensman – a super-duper brave, couragaous and talented spy/soldier/cop who does get banged up quite alot in the course of his adventures – and there is one particular nurse Clarissa MacDougall – who gets assigned to him. There is instant hate at first, but over the course of the books they do end up together. And at one point Kim does need quite a lot of regeneration.
No sexytimes – this is really OLD Space Opera – the books were written between 1948 and 1954. Fairly fun light reading, if you can stand the very dated style.
I don’t remember hammocks in this, but it sounds like the short story “A Sleeping Humpty Dumpty Beauty” by Anne McCaffrey.
I’m currently re-listening to the Lensman stories – they’re great fun if you don’t mind whole-scale genocide in the name of “civilization” – everyone from Boscone is EEEEE-vile, and every one in Civilization is *good* – planets get destroyed fairly casually.
They’re the books I hate that I love so much.
I second the Anne McCaffrey short story. It’s in the book “The Girl Who Heard Dragons”. I loved this story as a teenager as well!
Hah, love how he’s nicknamed Sleeping Beauty! Cute story, “The Girl Who Heard Dragons.”
I read an Anne McCaffrey anthology back in the day – I thought it might have been this one, but after looking at it on Amazon, I’m pretty sure I read Get Off the Unicorn instead (not sure how I managed to forget a title like that!)
Have you tried BookSleuth? Our booksellers solve problems like these all the time.
http://forums.abebooks.com/discussions/AbeBookscom_BookSleuthreg/abesleuthcom?
Sash,
You have made me curious about this short story. Was the suggestion of A Sleeping Humpty Dumpty Beauty correct? I may try to scrounge up a copy if it is.
You wonderful citizens of SBTB!!! I was a huge Pern-nerd for about 3 months and I’m a bazillion percent sure it was, in fact, Anne McCaffrey’s book.
Also, I’ve been internet-less for the last week, so my apologies for not realizing this was already up and solved. I
I’d like to thank all of you for keeping me from sketchier corners of the internet and having to bleach my laptop’s history. Happy Wednesday everyone!