Signed,
Drs. Elizabeth Blackwell,
Edward Delafield,
J. R. Wood, and Elisha Harris.
She read the notice again.
Are they crazy?
As the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States, Dr. Blackwell could be expected to come up with such an outrageous plan to insert women into the men’s sphere of work. But there were three other doctors names attached, all highly distinguished men.
Wincing from being in the same position for too long, Charlotte unfolded her legs from under her, sending Dickens to the floor, and began to pace the room, the ribboned hem of her skirt skimming the French rug beneath her feet. Just imagine. Women serving their country so close to the action! She had read all about England’s Florence Nightingale and her work in the Crimean War, but never dreamed such a thing would be possible in this country. They must be desperate for help.
But she was too young, according to the requirements printed in the paper. And even if she were old enough, she would be useless as a nurse. She could scarcely stand the mention of blood, let alone the sight of it, ever since her father’s death. And besides, her mother, Caroline, would never allow it. Well-bred women had no business getting their hands dirty, she could almost hear her say. It was the reason Caroline had discouraged her from continuing her work at the House of Industry.
Thunder grumbled outside, and the clouds, finally ripped open from beneath, released their cargo. Raindrops fell fat and heavy on the cobblestones, the rooftops, the carriages out for a Sunday ride, like a drummer boy’s steady tapping, calling the men to war.
And the women to opportunity.
Like a bolt of lightning, the call to nurse jolted through her. Her eyes darted around the room, surveying the evidence of affluence to which she was accustomed. Crystal and candlesticks. Heavy velvet draperies. A black marble fireplace veined with gold. Tufted chairs the color of fine wine, a cream and gold chaise lounge, claw-footed tables topped with delicately scented orchids. Gilt-edged paintings on the wall, Roman busts on mahogany pedestals. As a nurse, she would surely trade it all in for the most Spartan of lifestyles. Could she still be a true lady without all of the trappings? Without her hoops and jewelry?
Her fingertips resting on the windowsill, Charlotte stared at the bleary world beyond her parlor as her own desires came into focus. A smile tugged at the corner of her lips as energy coursed through her body like the electric charge in the air outside.
Am I crazy?
She had no loved ones fighting in the war—no husband, no brother, no father. So why did she feel compelled to give of herself in such a personal way to strangers?
Charlotte reached into the writing desk for paper and pen so she could sort out her thoughts in front of her. Instead, she pulled out a small black leather Bible—her father’s Bible. It fell open where it was bookmarked, and a single underlined verse jumped out at her. Luke 6:36: “Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.”
Yes, her heavenly Father was merciful, and so had been her earthly father. Until it killed him.
Hugging the well-worn Bible to her chest, she rocked back and forth on the edge of her chair, trying desperately to fill her mind with something—anything—other than the memories that came unbidden now.
She was sixteen years old when the cholera epidemic ravaged New York City. The worst breakouts were in the slums. Most wealthy people were in no danger, as long as they avoided the contaminated areas of the city. Ensconced in their brownstone, the Waverly women believed they were safe. Charles Waverly, for whom Charlotte had been named, went to his work as a bank executive on Wall Street at the same time every day, and came straight home. The disease would never touch them if they just stayed away.
Then Charles Waverly didn’t go to work one day. Or the next day, or the next. He couldn’t even get out of bed, but stayed near the bathroom day and night. Diarrhea and vomiting that sometimes lasted hours at a time sucked the life from his body. Dr. Shaw was summoned and pronounced it cholera.
“How can that be?”
He was barely strong enough to answer his wife. “The new hospital for cholera patients on Orange Street, above the tavern. I visited them to read to them, pray with them.”
“You what! But Charles, that’s in Five Points!”
“You know as well as I do that New York wouldn’t stand for a cholera hospital being built anywhere else. Of course it’s in Five Points.”
“Those people led harsh lives. Everyone says the disease is God’s judgment on them; they got what they deserved. Why would you visit them?”
“We don’t get to choose who deserves to hear God’s Word, Caroline, or who deserves comfort in their last days. Aren’t we to love our neighbors? Aren’t these people our neighbors?”
“You called this down upon yourself, then, Charles, and now you have brought it into our home.”
“Take the girls to your aunt Mabel’s house outside the city. You’ll be safe there.”
But Charlotte, her daddy’s girl, refused to leave her father’s side. Someone had to stay with him and care for him. Her mother’s pride would not allow him to go to the cholera hospital along with all the slum’s worst cases. Charlotte remained and followed the doctor’s orders for his care the best she could.
Soon his face was sunken, his teeth and eyes appearing too large for his face. She sat by his side as they bled him, first with leeches, then with a lancet. Time after time, she watched the scarlet ribbon flow out from his veins. The doctor wouldn’t stop until her father fainted. Sometimes the bleeding ended after only ten ounces of blood had been drawn, sometimes it went on until twenty-four.
Nausea plagued her nearly every moment, from the stench of disease, from the sight of his blood escaping his veins, from the palpable fear that all of this misery would not be redeemed, but would end only in death.
Their family friend Caleb Lansing was the only other person who ventured inside the Waverly home during that time, for ever since Caleb’s mother had died, making him an orphan, Charles had been like a father to him as well. He helped Charlotte clean up after her father, disposed of the soiled sheets, and scrubbed the floors, since the servants had all deserted the house. He brought food for Charlotte and urged her to eat. He insisted she sleep while he took watch with Charles.
Nothing worked.
Charles continued to decline until his bones pushed against his skin like twigs ready to poke through parchment. His skin turned an unearthly shade of blue, and still they bled him. And bled him.
And still Charlotte watched, with nothing to distract her from her morbid vigil save Caleb’s regular visits. Her world shrunk down to the size of her father’s bedroom and the bathroom that joined, and it was colored with only a few shades of nature’s kaleidoscope. Black: the long nights of watching. Yellow: her father’s eyes and teeth. Blue: the tint of his skin. And red: the blood the doctor felt sure was the problem, the blood that had to flee his body, the blood that fell in a ragged crimson stream. The blood that stained her hands, her clothes. Her heart.
Until one day, Charles never woke up from his faint. His agony was at an end, and all that was left was his shriveled-up shell.
The next time Caleb arrived, he had to pull Charlotte off her father’s disease-ridden body. Gently, tenderly, he led her to the kitchen, heated water on the stove, and sponged clean her face and hands. He scrubbed the blood and filth from beneath her fingernails and brushed her hair. Her hands trembled as she accepted a cup of tea, sloshing it over the cup’s edge and onto her hands. She barely felt the burn.
“What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?” Her mind could form no other thought, and like a child, she repeated herself over and over and over.
“You breathe in. Now breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out, Charlie,” he said, using her father’s pet name for her. “You put a bite of food in your mouth. You chew it up, and you swallow it. Even though you won’t be hungry, even though you won’t be ab
le to taste a thing. You go to bed when it’s dark, you wake up when it’s light. You clean yourself up and get dressed. These are the things that living people do. And you are still alive.”
His words were firm, but tears spilled down his cheeks. “A part of you will be buried with your father. But not all of you has died. You live.”
Charlotte did not feel alive. She was numb to everything but grief.
He took her hand. “You live. You live…. You live.”
She looked at him and realized he had felt this pain before.
“You have to help me,” she pleaded.
He engulfed her in an embrace then, and the full force of her grief exploded against his shoulder. Racking sobs shook them both. He didn’t let go, even though her dress was stained with a dead man’s filth and she hadn’t taken the time to bathe in days. Still, he held her, stroked her greasy hair as if it was the softest down.
“I miss him,” she choked out.
“I know what he would say to you if he could,” Caleb told her. “This is what he said to me when my own mother died: ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.… My flesh and my heart faileth; but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.’”
Finally, Charlotte’s shoulders had stopped heaving. She had fallen asleep on Caleb’s shoulder to the whispered lullaby of God’s Word.
That was twelve years ago.
The room flashed brighter for an instant as lightning cracked the sky, bringing Charlotte back to the present. She focused again on the open Bible on the desk.
Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.
By now her tea was cold, but her heart was on fire. Dickens sat like a sphinx on the writing desk in front of her, watching her with unblinking eyes, as if waiting for her decision.
She couldn’t please her mother, but maybe she could please her father. She had to try.
By morning, the sky was clear, but a new storm was brewing in the Waverly brownstone on Sixteenth Street.
“Why Charlotte, you can’t be considering it.”
Charlotte glanced at her mother through a cloud of pale fuzz suspended in the air between them, her hands pausing for only a moment from scraping lint for the wounded soldiers. Maybe someday soon, she would be the one to pack lint into some poor soldier’s wound. “Yes, Mother, I thought I would at least try.”
“But, my dear girl, nursing is a man’s job.” Caroline’s knitting needles clicked to a rhythm of their own.
“I’m hardly a girl anymore.”
“Indeed. Twenty-eight—you’re a spinster, my dear, and you even have the cat to prove it.”
Charlotte’s eyelids thinned to a glare as she focused on the lint gathering in her lap. “That’s unfair. Dickens was the runt of the litter from our childhood pet. Father said I should keep him.”
Caroline waved the rebuttal aside. “You are only lucky that you’ve kept your youthful complexion and figure. But if you pursue this nursing nonsense, you will degrade your respectability. What manner of man would marry a nurse?”
Frustration wrinkled Charlotte’s brow. “Mr. Hastings is known for his strong support of abolitionism, a pillar of the Union cause. I have no reason to believe he will not be supportive of me doing what I can to aid our troops as well.”
“You are not married yet. Don’t jeopardize your future.”
Charlotte sighed. “This isn’t about my future, Mother.” All of her life, she had been trained and groomed for one purpose—to increase her value as a prospective wife of an upstanding, wealthy man. At Rutgers Female Institute, she had studied mathematics, French, natural philosophy, painting, needlework, drawing, and sacred vocal music. She and Alice had completed courses at a finishing school for young ladies in Philadelphia and had attended classes on church history and biblical literature at New York City’s Union Theological Seminary, their father’s wish. While she genuinely enjoyed her education, she knew it was intended to increase her chances for a good match. Now it was time to do something for a greater cause.
“Is it too much to think I might have some value for our country aside from marriage and childbearing?” She knew the question would shock her mother, and almost regretted saying it. Truthfully, she did want to have a family of her own someday, to manage a home, support a husband, and raise God-fearing children. But there was something else inside her she knew couldn’t be fulfilled by that alone.
Charlotte set her work aside and swept a fine layer of lint from the braided tunic and full olive skirt of her at-home dress. Rising, she paced the back parlor and fanned herself with her long, piano-trained fingers. Though the weather outside was only a crisp sixty-four degrees, heat crawled up her neck.
The back parlor she circled was hardly recognizable from its previous days. Formerly used by the Waverlys for checkers and singing around the piano, it now resembled a clearinghouse for hospital supplies. The smells of ladies at leisure—rosewater, coffee, almond pastries—had given way to the stronger odors of packing supplies for war: crates of cologne, jams, pickles, tobacco, lemons, and cocoa. A bandage roller screwed into the top of a mahogany table was the centerpiece of the room, and the walls were lined with bundles of shirts, drawers, socks, and handkerchiefs. This parlor was now one of the most popular places for members of the Women’s Central Association of Relief to share news while organizing and preparing supplies.
“Charlotte, stop.” Caroline set down her knitting and crossed the distance to reach her daughter. She gripped her hands in her own. “You would exhaust yourself. That training program would make a tiresome schedule for you, and I will not allow you to give up your regular French and voice lessons. You know people call you a songbird.”
Charlotte’s heart squeezed. “I’d rather be a Nightingale. I want to do something useful. I want to make a difference.”
“Yes, Florence Nightingale did amazing things for the British army in the Crimean War,” conceded Caroline. “But she didn’t do it alone. She couldn’t have done anything without help from the home front, in fact. Organizing and distributing supplies for the armies is essential! What do you think would happen to our boys if they had no bandages, no clothing, no clean shirts, or soft places to lay their weary heads at night? Isn’t the work we do here in this parlor making a difference?”
“Of course it is.” Alice stepped in, bearing bolts of flannel. “Who says it isn’t?”
Caroline turned, dropping her daughter’s hands. “Charlotte wants to be a nurse.”
Alice raised her eyebrows. “A nurse.”
Isn’t it about time for you to go back home? Charlotte clenched her teeth before the unkind thought escaped her lips. Inhaling a deep breath, she tried again. “I really don’t see what all the fuss is about. Elizabeth Blackwell, as you well know, is a doctor. And a prominent, well-respected member of society, I might add. She spearheaded the entire Women’s Central Association of Relief to make up for the men’s lack of services to our nation’s soldiers. And the New York Infirmary for Women and Children she started has had great success.”
A lopsided smile curved on Alice’s lips. “It’s a charity, Charlotte. It’s busy because it’s free, and poor people are always sick. Especially in the slums near her infirmary.”
Charlotte spun on her heel, turning her back on her sister while she mastered her tongue and the very unrefined expression of anger on her face.
Slowly swiveling back around, she modulated her tone. “All I’m trying to say is this. In the person of Elizabeth Blackwell, we have a prime example of a woman fulfilling a job—no, a calling—that has previously been strictly relegated to the male sphere. She does her work competently. She makes a difference in the world.”
“She is the only woman with an American medical degree in the entire country, Charlotte,” Caroline said. “Word has it that she used her profession as a barrier to matrimony.”
“Oh fiddlestic
ks!” Charlotte was exasperated now. “Pure mean-spirited gossip! Even if it were true, it’s beside the point, anyway.”
“You are mistaken, daughter. It is the entire point, precisely. A woman should be married, as Alice is, and have children and manage her household. If your husband agrees it is fitting for you to do charity work as well, so long as it does not interfere with your duties at home, so be it. But charity work, or pursuing men’s work, is not the primary aim of a young woman.”
The silence between the three women reverberated the rumble of marching feet and martial music blocks away.
“Charlotte,” her mother began again. “You are swimming upstream with this new-fangled idea of women nurses. You are going the wrong direction.”
“I can help,” she whispered. “I know I can.”
“Child.” The quaver in Caroline’s voice betrayed her. “That’s what your father said when he went to visit that cholera hospital on Orange Street. That’s what you said when you stayed behind to nurse him. You were both wrong! Don’t you see? You’re wrong!”
Charlotte’s deep breath was constricted by the corseted bodice of her dress. “I feel like I’m suffocating in here. I’m going to get some air.” With a fistful of skirts in her hand, she swept toward the door, leaving a wake of swirling lint behind her.
Before she reached the door, however, Jane stepped into the fray, her starched white apron a flag of forced truce between mother and daughter, at least for the moment. Pale blonde hair crowned her head in a thick braid under her cap, and the roses in her cheeks bloomed bright whenever she sensed tension in a room.
Right now, they were flaming red.
“Telegram, mum,” she said, her Nottingham, England, accent flavoring her words. Jane had only arrived in New York two years ago, at the age of seventeen, and had been at the Waverly home ever since. “It’s from Albany.”
The women looked at each other in confusion before understanding registered on Alice’s face. “It must be Jacob. He’s there on business, but I don’t know what could be so important …” She snatched the envelope from its silver tray and ripped it open. No sooner had her eyes scanned the telegram than the paper fluttered to the floor. Her hands shook as she covered her trembling lips. Wide-eyed, Jane quietly left the room.
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