Wedded to War (25 page)

“So then why don’t we just close down the hospitals? Since we’re not doing any good anyway, we can all go home! Just pray for the soldiers and leave them to God’s keeping. It’s all up to Him anyway, isn’t that right, Miss Waverly?”

Alice glanced at Charlotte expectantly.

“That’s not what I meant.” Charlotte sighed. “God is sovereign, yes, but He wants to use us in the process. And we need to be concerned about both the body and the spirit. That’s all I’m saying. We need doctors and chaplains both. Sometimes chaplains can provide hope when the doctor says there is none.”

“Soldiers die, Miss Waverly. It’s what they do. The sooner you can get that through your pretty little head, the better. Come with me.”

“Go write to Professor Smith,” Charlotte whispered to Alice as she followed on Dr. Murray’s heels.

Hot wind whipped up dust devils between and around the tents behind Columbian College Hospital, either stirring up the miasma of contagious diseases, or blowing them away. At the third row, Dr. Murray climbed the two steps up to the wooden platform that served as a floor to the tent and lifted a heavy flap of dirty canvas. “Are you coming?” he called over his shoulder to Charlotte, his face flushed with heat. He had been as unbearable as this scorching weather. Unrelenting and blistering.

At the bedside of the patient in the corner of the dark tent, he stopped. “This is Private Mitchell Nelson, of the Second Connecticut Volunteers.” He was drenched in sweat and delirious. If he had been well, he would be mustering out of military service at this very moment.

“Dr. Lansing’s patient,” said Charlotte.

“Used to be,” said Dr. Murray. “Now he’s yours.”

“Mine?”

“You said you wanted to nurse, and Dr. Lansing told me to take special care of this man. You’re perfect for each other.”

A thrill of excitement shuddered through Charlotte. Finally, a chance to put her nursing skills into practice!

“What ails him? Typical fever?”

Dr. Murray shook his head. “Bullet passed through him. Entered at the left abdomen, exited out the right buttock. Watch this.” He lifted Nelson’s hospital gown to chest level, revealing a severely distended
abdomen. After removing the blackened dressings from the abdomen wound, he pressed gently near the navel. Gas and feces exuded from the open wound.

Charlotte covered her mouth and nose with her hand, but the odor lodged stubbornly in the back of her throat.

“Same thing happened through the exit wound, too. The rifle ball cut through the bowel and the bladder. When he tries to urinate, feces and gas escape through the urethra.”

“What can we do for him?”

“It’s a mortal wound. Lucky for you, he’ll die soon enough. But in the meantime, change the dressings often. They are continuously dirtied by fecal matter. After last week, you should be used to that.”

“Is there nothing else to be done?”

“Cut away the dead material from the edges of the wounds.”

“Cutting away skin—isn’t that a surgeon’s job?”

“I don’t have time to waste on lost causes. If you think you do, then be my guest. As long as you mix and throw the disinfectant into the trench every day, he’s all yours. Irrigate the wounds frequently with green tea. Boil it, then cool it to lukewarm so you don’t scald him.”

“Will it help?”

He shrugged. “It will relieve some pain, but it won’t heal him. Nothing can. Not me. Not you.” He squinted up into the cloudless sky, his fists on his hips. “Not even God.”

Dr. Murray slipped out the tent flap and disappeared. The thud of his retreating footsteps on the parched earth faded as she looked down at Private Nelson. Caleb’s patient. Her patient.

She knelt down on the rough wooden floor beside his head. “Private Nelson,” she said, not knowing whether he could hear her, “I hope the fact that I’m a woman doesn’t bother you, but I’m going to be your nurse, and I’m going to try to make you as comfortable as possible.” She laid a gentle hand lightly on his shoulder. “Allow me a moment to go and fetch some fresh bandages for you. You won’t even know I’m gone.”

On her way to the storeroom, a woman’s laughter floated down the
stairwell. Surely a nurse would have no reason to cackle like that on duty. A polite laugh or restrained chuckle, perhaps—the patients enjoyed sharing jokes—but not that sort of squeal.

Charlotte lifted her skirts and quietly climbed the stairs toward the sound. Perhaps the poor soul needed comforting.

“Hello?” Charlotte called at the fourth floor. “Everything all right?”

Whispers hissed, then fell quiet all together.

Down the hall Charlotte walked, peeking in every room she passed along the way.

“Shhh! Quiet! Someone’s coming,” came a masculine voice.

Charlotte stopped, frozen. Whoever was down there was decidedly not a poor soul, and not in need of
her
comfort. She waited in the hall to see who would emerge.

She didn’t need to wait long.

Out tumbled the hospital steward, John Fitzburg, his normally slicked-back brown hair rumpled and falling down over his forehead.

“Why, if it isn’t Miss Waverly! Standing in line, are we? I must say I’m flattered.”

Charlotte was already hot from the August heat, but felt her temperature rise even higher at the insinuation. Before she had time to formulate a retort, Cora Carter appeared, smoothing her hair into place. Her skirt was crooked at the waist.

“Oh her.” Cora sneered. “What are you doing here, anyway, Miss Chamber Pots?”

Charlotte lifted her chin. “I should ask the same of you, Miss Carter. Another day, another conquest? Don’t you have some patients that need tending to?”

Cora shrugged, smiling, while she straightened her skirt. “They ain’t going anywhere.”

Charlotte turned to Mr. Fitzburg, then. “As much as I hate to admit it, I have need of your assistance. I need to get into the storeroom for bandages, if you please.”

He raised his eyebrows and made a quick bow to Cora behind him.
“Been a pleasure, my dear, and now if you’ll excuse me, this fine lady has
need
of me.” He jiggled his eyebrows up and down.

“Ha! Don’t bother with the likes of her, Johnny, she’s not as—accommodating of your needs as I am.”

Mr. Fitzburg threw up a hand to silence Cora without turning around and walked briskly down the hallway, Charlotte following close behind.

“Who ordered the bandages?” he asked as they made their way down the stairs.

“Dr. Murray.”

“Really? Doesn’t sound like him. I had pretty much given up on him ever wanting to put you to work as a real nurse.”

“Well, he’s making an exception this time.” Charlotte should have guessed this wouldn’t be an easy process.

“Did you fill out a form? Requesting the bandages?”

“Oh—and some scissors.”

“You’ll definitely need to fill out a form for those.”

“How long does it take to get the supplies after filling out a form?”

“That depends on how bad you want it.” He flashed a toothy grin and raked over her body with a half-lidded gaze.

Charlotte didn’t understand this game he was playing. There certainly had been no lectures at New York Hospital on how to manage lecherous hospital stewards. Maybe there should be.

Arriving at the storeroom, Mr. Fitzburg pulled a jangle of keys and turned one in the lock. The door opened to a hot, moist, room lined with shelves sagging with supplies for the soldiers. In addition to bandages and scraped lint were jars of peaches, knit socks, extra hospital gowns, mosquito netting, lead pencils, woolen mufflers, blankets, pillows, toothbrushes, and more—all mixed and scattered with no rhyme or reason.

“Mr. Fitzburg!” Charlotte gasped. “This place is a shambles! You’re bound to waste valuable supplies—not to mention time—if you just leave it all topsy-turvy like this.”

She stepped inside and pointed to a corner. “For one thing, you could separate by season. Mosquito netting and woolen mufflers would not go together. Separate the edibles from the inedibles, and put the things that will spoil in front of things that will keep.”

“If you’re so good at it, why don’t you do it yourself, genius?”

“I’m not a genius. But I can organize and manage a household, and a hospital is much like a home, however different the circumstances and occupants.”

Mr. Fitzburg rubbed his chin and narrowed his eyes at her. “You know, you’re right. I could use the help in here, and you’re just the lady to give it to me.” He shut the door behind him. “Now wouldn’t you just fancy that. You and me, alone in an empty room.” As he stepped toward her, she stepped back until her back was pressed up against a stack of pillowcases.

“Mr. Fitzburg, remember yourself!”

Ducking under his arm, Charlotte grabbed the bandages and a pair of scissors out of a wire basket near the door and dashed out of the room without looking back.

“You didn’t fill out a requisition form!” he yelled out after her.

But Charlotte was already out of the building, on her way to Private Nelson. The tea for his wounds would have to wait.

Edward Goodrich had never been in a more detestable place.

The air was thick with mosquitoes, and he couldn’t even open his mouth without a fly buzzing right into it. His cologned handkerchief was simply no defense against the odors that now assaulted his nose. Vapors from animal dung, overly ripe fruit, and sweaty bodies mixed with the distinctive smell of the pestilent Washington canals running warm and dirty through the city. Though it was already evening, he
could feel his clothing stick to his body and grow damp beneath his armpits and collar.

Just remember why you’re here
, he told himself as he climbed into a rickety hack and gave the driver the address. It was an opportunity like no other, and he had been especially chosen by Professor Smith out of all the Union Theological Seminary alumni for the express purpose. He was to be a hospital chaplain, without rank, but with full access to all the hospitals by the authority of Brigadier General Henry Van Rensselaer. And all because a pair of sisters saw a need and wrote some letters. Remarkable. The position seemed to mollify even his father. At least, for now.

Thanking the sisters who set the wheels in motion was item number one on his agenda. He imagined them to be very much like his own grandmother—huge hearts, trembling hands, quivering iron-grey curls, warbling voices. They would probably pinch his smooth, moderately chubby cheeks. They would tell him how charming he was. His token of gratitude thus paid, he would then be on his way to ministering to the souls of the great Union army. The harvest was plentiful.

Cracking his knuckles, he looked out from the hack and tried to take in the confusion of the capital around him. Outside bars and pubs, ragtag rabbles of regiments lingered in uniforms varying according to the state that sent them. Free blacks stood in clumps, as if they were waiting for … for what? Jobs? Shelter? Clothing? Edward had read only a bit about this in the New York papers. Contrabands, General Butler had called them at Fortress Monroe, property formerly of the Confederacy, now property of the North. Some contrabands were put to work for the Union army, but these—well, it didn’t look like they had any work to do at all. He held his handkerchief to his nose once again. Apparently the city’s latrines and sanitation systems were not keeping up with the swelling population.
Disgusting city.

On Newspaper Row, small boys pranced out of low buildings belonging to the
Western Union, New York Times, The Evening Star,
and
New York Herald
, hauling bundles of papers in their arms and shrieking the headlines now crackling on telegraph wires to all corners of the nation.
A lady spy, Rose O’Neal Greenhow, had been arrested in Washington for leaking intelligence of Yankee movements to the Confederacy just before Bull Run. Two days ago, the mayor of Washington was arrested for refusing to take the oath of loyalty to the Union and sent north for imprisonment. What kind of godless place had Edward just moved into?

Arriving at the Ebbitt House, he paid the driver the fifteen-cent fare and lugged his suitcase into the lobby.

“Miss Charlotte Waverly and Mrs. Alice Carlisle?” he inquired at the front desk.

The man behind the desk nodded in the direction of door 1B.

“Thank you kindly.”

He rapped loudly on the door and waited, hands clasped behind his back, a benign smile on his pale face.

“Yes, may I help you?” A petite young woman with honey-blonde hair and bright blue eyes, about his age, he guessed, was now staring into his confused face.

“I’m sorry, I must have the wrong—” Edward looked around. “Perhaps you can point me in the right direction. I’m looking for a—” He fumbled with a crumpled slip of paper, moist from being squeezed in the palm of his hand. “Mrs. Alice Carlisle and Miss Charlotte Waverly. Do you know them?”

She smiled. “Quite well, in fact. And you are?”

“How rude of me,” he muttered. “Edward Goodrich, New York City. Union Theological Seminary.” He gave a slight bow.

A spark of recognition lit her eyes. “Oh Mr. Goodrich, come in! We’ve been expecting you! I’m Alice Carlisle.”