Hellfire

by Jeff Provine

Ozzie pursed her lips. It was most likely another case of Stoker’s Madness. She hoped he was one of the lucky ones who hadn’t listened too long and let the voices get too deep.

  Gloriana had the most cases of Stoker’s Madness in the nation. New York and all those men from foundries in Ohio and Pennsylvania jockeyed for second place, but the huge plants and the railroads throughout Gloriana’s progress came at an unfortunate price. In days past, the madmen had been locked away in the old hospital or hanged, considered casualties of progress.

  The famous Dorothea Dix had come through the state five years before and found conditions deplorable, dank holes with mold and little light. Like most of the girls of society, Ozzie had gone to listen to her speeches calling for care and comfort for the afflicted. Unlike most girls, Ozzie wasn’t satisfied only raising a few dollars with tea cakes and raffle tickets.

  “Pliers,” the doctor said.

  Ozzie placed them in his hand and took the scissors from him. The blades had muddy stains from where they had cut the dirty stitches. She would wash them. People might think it was a waste of good well water since they hadn’t gotten any blood on them, but Ozzie didn’t care. The patients deserved clean instruments. Even Galen the Greek physician in ancient Rome boiled his tools.

  The thought made Ozzie wince. She could already hear people tell her, “You read too much.”

  Reading too much, as if there was such a thing. Benjamin Franklin endorsed it, and so did Mrs. Andrew Jackson when she taught her husband, the president. Still, people said it distracted her from things a young lady should be thinking about: managing a home, snagging a husband, raising up children. Maybe reading could help her with that. Or maybe she didn’t want that at all.

  “There,” Dr. Sims said. He stood back and took a deep breath. “Bandage him, nurse.”

  Ozzie nodded and stepped forward. There were a few drops of blood from there the stitches had been pulled, but the shoulder looked well enough. She probably wouldn’t even need to put on a new one when it came time to change the bandage.

  The patient groaned softly. Ozzie froze. The orderlies stepped forward.

  They hadn’t used enough ether. It was such a tricky thing. Too much, and they could have killed him, but too little wouldn’t have much of an effect.

  “He’s waking up,” Ozzie said.

  “Let him,” Dr. Sims told her.

  Ozzie frowned. Bandaging a sore shoulder wasn’t going to be a delightful thing even with a haze of ether over his mind.

  “Perhaps a little more might ease—,” she began.

  “Nonsense,” Dr. Sims interrupted. He took the glass ether bottle and put it into the wooden supply cabinet. A little, metal skeleton key latched the door shut, and he tucked it into his pocket.

  A fire boiled up inside Ozzie, but she pursed her lips and quenched it. There was no use arguing. She was just a nurse. All arguing would do was let the patient wake up further from his stupor and make bandaging his wound all the more painful.

  She set to work with her steady hands. They were calloused, and the nails were short. They were the hands of a girl who was willing to work, not one whose only additions to the household were a few needlepoint trinkets. Ozzie wore gloves at home. Her mother always swooned when she saw how rough her hands were.

  Ozzie set a pad of clean cotton against the red spots on either side of the healed-up cut. She wasn’t quite certain what could have made it. It was not deep enough for a machinery accident, yet it wasn’t ragged like an animal bite. Whatever it was, it would make an impressive scar, one that even dwarfed the marks spitting fires had left on his arms.

  She lifted the patient’s arm and wound bindings underneath, over his shoulder, and around his neck to hold the pad. He groaned again.

  Ozzie bit her lower lip. She worked fast and gently.

  She tucked his arm back next to him on the surgery bed. He shifted. His eyes opened briefly. They were soft and brown, nothing like his rugged face.

  “Take him to the empty room beside the last one,” Dr. Sims ordered. “We’ll keep him as long as we have the room for charity.”

  Without another word, he walked out of the room. Ozzie watched him go. The orderlies lifted the man from the table and laid him into one of the wheeled chairs that sat along the wall. The patient’s head rocked back and forth as he came out of the ether-coma.

  When she was certain Dr. Sims was out of earshot, Ozzie called to the orderlies. “Jim, Mike, do either of you have a key to chemical cabinet?”

  “No, ma’am,” the taller of the two orderlies, Jim, told her. “The doctors keep those keys. And Mrs. Netter for when she has to count them at the end of the month.”

  Ozzie nodded. “Hm.”

  “This about the missing ether?” Mike asked, his voice deeper than Jim’s.

  Ozzie nodded again. “Yes.” She thought a moment. “When was the last time we saw it?”

  “Two days ago,” Mike told her. “When that patient was gardening and cut her finger up.”

  “And has anyone been in the surgery room since the last time it was out?”

  “No, ma’am,” Jim said again. “The last time I saw it was Dr. Sims consoling that patient with a little before he stitched her finger. I watched him put it back in the cabinet when he was done.”

  “So it should have been in the cabinet,” Ozzie said. “Nothing was broken, and nothing else was stolen. Whoever went after it meant to get it.”

  She hummed again as the orderlies buckled the patient around the waist with a cloth belt that would keep him from falling out. Then they buckled leather straps over his wrists.

  “Is that necessary?” Ozzie asked.

  Jim nodded. Mike shook his head and grunted.

  “This one’s a fighter,” Jim said. “Those farmers what brought him in, when he saw this was the loony bin—”

  “Don’t call it that, Jim,” Ozzie said. “These are sick people, just like at any hospital.”

  Jim winced. “Sorry, Miss Ozzie.”

  Ozzie smiled. “Thank you, Jim. What about the farmers?”

  “He tried making a break for it,” Mike said. “Gave one a black eye and nearly beat the wind out of the other. If me and George hadn’t gotten out there to take him down, he probably would have broke free and run all the way to Lake Providence. We had to shackle him to the floor to get him cleaned up.”

  Ozzie looked down at the redheaded fireman. As his head lolled in the ether-nap, it was hard to imagine him hurting anyone. “What did they say his name was?”

  “He didn’t,” Mike told her. “All he’s been doing is ranting about monsters eating us all up.”

  Jim shivered. “Let’s get him back to his room before he wakes up and talks about that anymore. It’s too much for me.”

  The taller black man pushed the wheelchair, and Mike settled into line behind him. Ozzie hurried two steps after them. “I’ll go with you.”

  “Don’t you need to clean the surgery?” Mike asked.

  Ozzie clenched her teeth and glanced back over her shoulder. It was her duty to toss out the old stitches, and she wanted to make certain the tools were scrubbed. Yet, the mysterious fireman seemed to call to her.

  “I’ll come back to it,” Ozzie said. “I want to make sure he settles in all right.” She then added, “And maybe he’ll wake up and tell us a little about himself.”

  Mike shrugged and turned back to follow after Jim. Ozzie picked up her skirts and hurried after them.

  The corridor was long and dim. While each of the patients’ rooms on either side had large, barred windows to let in plenty of light while keeping them safely inside, only a little of that light slipped under the locked doors into the center. Things were noisier in the violent ward, where many of the rooms had iron rings built into the floor for chains and shackles. Footsteps pounded from early rising patients pacing in their rooms. Someone murmured loudly to himself. Unintelligible words leaked into the hallway.

  Ozzie wanted to tremble, but she wouldn’t
let herself. She was a nurse.

  Suddenly one of the doors banged beside her. She let out a soft scream and dove to the opposite side of the hall.

  Mike stepped in front of her with his arm out. “Take it easy in there, Rodney!”

  Ozzie peeked up from behind her fingers. She hadn’t realized she’d thrown her hands over her face. She put her arms to her sides and tried to stand tall.

  The man behind the door was Rodney Flipp. He had been brought into the state hospital by the Rail Agency after being caught trying to steal mail from a train out west. The courts were still trying to discern whether he was part of a larger gang, so they had delivered him along with an order he be held quietly. Flipp had concocted a whole, lying backstory and fought tooth and nail with any of the doctors who tried to question him. It had taken days of stern talking and a few doses of sedatives to finally calm him down.

  Ozzie had wondered why they hadn’t put him in a jail cell. When she had a good look at him, she understood. The man had no hair: not on his head, not on his brow, nowhere. He spent most of his days now sitting on his bed in a tight ball, mumbling to himself and sniffing. Clearly, something had agitated his mind.

  Flipp’s face was pressed against the little, barred window that stood at eye-level in the door. He had been quiet enough that the orderlies had left it open.

  Now Flipp’s voice was strained, almost wheezing. “I can smell it on him!”

  Ozzie’s skin crawled.

  “Stop that!” Jim called. He didn’t wait for a reply and hurried down the hall toward the new patient’s empty room.

  Mike remained rigidly in his place in front of Ozzie. She cleared her throat and looked over his shoulder. “What can we do for you, Rodney?”

  His wide eyes had been following the new patient, and they flicked back toward her. “My name’s not Rodney.”

  “Rodney, please,” Ozzie said in a firm voice. “We’ve been over that. You don’t remember things correctly.”

  Flipp furiously banged his head against the thick wooden door. It made dull thuds. “Oh, I remember! I remember all too much! I just want to be rid of it, and then you bring…that…on him! You bring him in here with that stink all over him!”

  “What stink?” Ozzie asked calmly. “He should smell just fine. The orderlies gave him a bath not an hour ago.”

  “You can’t wash it off,” Flipp said. He held a thin-fingered hand up next to his face. “I can smell it on my own skin…” He gagged and pulled his hand away.

  “What smell?” Ozzie repeated.

  “The smell of death!” Flipp shouted. “The foulest devils! Hell itself!”

  Other patients in the hall began shouting. The ones already awake started bellowing, waking up the rest. Howls and wails rang down the hallway.

  “I’ll calm him down,” Mike announced. He cracked his knuckles and then pulled a master key off his belt.

  Flipp retreated from the doorway. Mike gruffly opened the door and went inside.

  Ozzie watched after him a moment. Mike’s curt voice barked several times. Flipp replied in a squeal to the first two, but then he went quiet.

  Ozzie turned away and rushed down the hall. Jim was already inside the new patient’s room. She doubted she could help Flipp, and she did not want to see Mike restrain him. Some things had to be done.

  She tried not to think about it and turned the corner into the new patient’s room. Jim had undone the straps at the patient’s wrists and fiddled with the belt.

  The patient looked around. His mouth opened and closed as if he were almost to speak.

  “You’re in the hospital,” Ozzie told him, hoping it would help.

  He turned toward her. His brown eyes were full of mist. “Where?”

  “Gloriana State Mental Hospital,” Ozzie said.

  He looked confused a moment and then shook his head. “No, that’s not right. I shouldn’t be here.”

  Jim stood up. He held a hand out to the redheaded patient. “Come on, boy, I’ll help you into bed. You’ve got a lot of resting to catch up on.”

  “I can’t rest,” the man said softly. “I’ve got to do something.”

  “What is it?” Ozzie asked. “Maybe I can help?”

  The patient stared blankly at her.

  Jim took his hand and pulled. “Up you go.”

  The patient sleepily stood up from the wheelchair and then sat back down on the bed next to it. He cradled his head.

  It was a quaint room, with walls painted a soft white. All that was in it was the thin straw mattress and a tin chamber pot that rested in one corner. The rooms in the wings for hysterics and addicts had furniture in them, but it was agreed the violent patients had as little as possible to get into trouble with. At least they shared the same wide view of the lush hospital grounds through their barred windows.

  The patient stood up. “I have to get out of here.”

  Jim stopped him with a hand at his chest.

  “Where are you going?” Ozzie asked him.

  “I have to go,” the patient said. “To the lake.”

  “Why do you need to go to the lake?”

  The patient furrowed up his brow. “It’s all going to be destroyed. I have to try to stop it.”

  Jim looked up at Ozzie with stern, dark eyes. She pursed her lips. He didn’t like her humoring the patients like this, especially when they predicted horrible things.

  “We’ll talk about it after you’ve had some rest,” Ozzie said.

  “No, I can’t rest. My mother. My sister. They’re in the city.”

  “We can contact them,” Ozzie told him. “What are their names?”

  “Martha Kemp. My sister’s Ann. They have to get out of the city.”

  “I’ll let them know,” Ozzie assured him. “What’s your name?”

  The man seemed to struggle a moment. “Nate. I’m Nate Kemp.” His eyes suddenly went wide. His jaw dropped. “The train wreck, the thing in the fire! I remember now!”

  He leaned on Jim, trying to push past him. Jim held him back.

  “Calm down!” Ozzie called.

  “No, not now!” the patient, Nate, cried. “We have to hurry! The fire! Everyone’s in danger!”

  Ozzie tried to make her voice as soothing as she could. “No one is in any danger.”

  Nate’s eyes flashed. “We are all in danger. Grave danger.”

  “That’s enough!” Jim cried. He pushed the patient back onto the bed. Nate tried to struggle, but he was still moving slowly.

  Jim grabbed a leather strap at the edge of the mattress and pulled it across Nate’s chest. “Help me with this!”

  Ozzie hurried forward. She buckled the bronze clasp through the other end of the strap.

  Nate tried to push against it. “You don’t understand!”

  “You’re not well,” Ozzie told him. “Have some rest, and we’ll talk about this with the doctor later.”

  Nate struggled again, but Jim had finished strapping down his legs. Ozzie stood back from the bed. The redhaired patient tried to push against the straps a few more times before dropping back and taking deep, slow breaths.

  “That’s all right, you’ve worn yourself out,” Jim told the patient coolly. “Take a nice rest, now.”

  Nate breathed heavily through gritted teeth. “Don’t do this.”

  Ozzie bit her lower lip. “You’re not well.”

  Nate went back to struggling, and Ozzie took a step backward. Jim walked out of the room. With a final look down at the patient, Ozzie turned and followed Jim.

  There was something about the way he spoke. Most of the patients she had witnessed were livid like Nate, but they seemed to lose clarity as they fell into their madness. Nate seemed strangely certain, if muddled from the ether she’d gotten from the quieter ward.

  Jim closed the door after Ozzie and locked it. Muffled grunts came through the thick oak.

  Mike was in the hallway, carrying a glass bottle.

  Ozzie’s eyes went wide. “The missing ether!”<
br />
  “Yes, ma’am,” Mike confirmed. “I found it tucked between the mattress and the wall in Rodney’s cell. Still some of it left.”

  Ozzie narrowed her eyes to think. Flipp had been as wild as the new patient when he was brought in, but he did seem to settle down, gradually. They hadn’t heard a peep out of him for a couple of days now.

  “Just after the ether was last seen two days ago,” Ozzie muttered.

  Mike held it up. Clear liquid sloshed at the bottom of the bottle. “He must have been huffing on it since it disappeared.”

  “It’s amazing he can still stand up,” Ozzie said. “Where did he get it?”

  Mike shrugged and shook his head.

  She stamped her foot and marched down the hallway. Most of the patients had quieted down by now, but a few were still cackling in their rooms. Flipp’s room was quiet.

  Ozzie pulled back the hatch that covered the little window into his room. He had lost the privilege of being able to see into the hallway.

  Flipp sat next to his bed, his foot resting in a shackle that led to the iron loop bolted to the middle of the floor. The shackle had been off for days now, but now he’d lost that privilege, too. His chin tucked into his chest.

  There was a red spot on the side of his face darkening into a bruise. Ozzie winced for him. It had seemed as if he were making a recovery.

  She remembered the ether. It wasn’t recovery; it was being covered up by medicine. “Rodney.”

  He looked up at her. After a long sigh, he asked, “What?”

  “Where did you get the ether?”

  He shrugged.

  Ozzie cleared her throat and said more loudly, “Where did you get the ether?”

  Flipp sat still.

  “I don’t want to have to call Mike back in there,” Ozzie told him. The threat made her own heart ache.

  Flipp held up his hands. “No, no… Fine. The doctor gave it to me.”

  Ozzie wrinkled her eyebrows. “Which doctor was that?”

  “Doctor…,” Flipp began. After a long mumble, he said, “I don’t remember.”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “I’ve had a lot of ether,” he said. His tongue stuck out and licked his lips. “I could use some more, too. It helps me forget.”