“I’ve been a nurse for forty years,” Milly interrupted. “There’s not much that can disturb me.”
With a disapproving look, Dr. Scott asked, “And where exactly where were you a nurse for all those years?”
“The Blackwell Asylum.”
“Ah, you were a matron to lunatics in the madhouse,” he said in a condescending tone.
“Well, I can tell you it was more than that,” an indignant Milly responded.
“Very well. Follow me ladies.”
They walked down a long corridor toward a set of double doors. As they approached, an eye-watering stench permeated the air. Martha faltered and Emily had to grab her by the arm. “It’ll be all right,” she whispered.
Dr. Scott threw the doors open and the full impact of the stench of putrefying flesh, blood, and moans struck them like a physical barrier. Lying in beds lining both sides of the long, rectangular room were the patients that Emily had come to help. As they followed the doctor, Emily was shaken by what she saw. Most of the patients were mere boys. Some had lost an arm, some had lost a leg, while others had lost a combination of both. One pale young man with a glassy-eyed stare had lost both his arms and his legs. Suddenly, Emily felt overwhelmed. What could she possibly do for them?
At the far end of the room, Dr. Scott explained the problems he was facing. “There are three deadly wound infections we are constantly fighting: tetanus, gangrene, and blood poisoning. We are finding that for every three soldiers wounded, two die of disease. These soldiers have come from battlefields in the south. Ambulances take them to field hospitals close to the battlefield. The field hospitals are strictly for emergency treatment, amputations and the like. From there they are moved by rail to hospitals such as these.”
“What do you want us to do?” Emily asked.
“Mostly help change their dressings, give them sponge baths, and whatever else you can do to make them comfortable.”
“Will we be assisting in the operating room?” Milly asked. “I am a trained nurse.”
From the expression on the doctor’s face, it was clear he was losing his patience with the irritating Mrs. Ambrose. “Have you ever assisted in an amputation?” he asked, pointedly.
“Well, no, but I’m sure I can do it.”
“That won’t be necessary. We have medically-trained personnel for that.” He glanced at his pocket watch. “The wagon will leave at five o’clock to return you to your homes. Oh, one more word of caution. Do not establish a personal relationship with any of these patients.”
“Why not?” Martha asked.
Dr. Scott’s weary, bloodshot eyes swept over the ward. “Because many of these men are going to die.”
Martha’s eyes filled with tears. Emily put her arm around the young girl. “Her husband is in the army,” she explained to the doctor.
“Young lady,” Scott said, not unsympathetically, “if this is too much for you, I can have a soldier take you to your home right now.”
Martha shook her head. “No. I’ll be all right. I want to do my part.”
“Very well.” Dr. Scott motioned to a young corporal who’d been standing to the side listening. “Corporal Berry will explain your duties.”
As the doctor hurried off, the corporal said, “Well, then, ladies, if you’ll follow me”
He led them to a table and a cabinet where a supply of bandages and towels were kept.
“Here is where you will find all necessary supplies.”
“Is that it?” Milly said with great disdain. “These are very meager supplies indeed.”
The corporal looked embarrassed. “There are shortages everywhere, ma’am. This is our procurement allotment and there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Just then a soldier thrashing in a bed near them cried out in terror. “Oh, God … they’re behind us … look to the trees ... Run … run … run …”
The unconcerned corporal waved a hand in dismissal. “That’s Private Feeney. Pay him no attention. He has these nightmares all the time.”
Emily turned to look at the young man who appeared to be no more than eighteen. There was a bloody stump where his right arm used to be. Emily grabbed a towel and, rushing to his side, held his hand. “There, there,” she said, soothingly. “It’s all right. You’re safe here.”
The private’s eyes snapped open wide with terror. “Run … run ….” He suddenly stopped screaming when he realized where he was.
Emily wiped the perspiration from the young man’s forehead. “You’re going to be all right.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”
“My name is Emily.”
He nodded. “Thank you, Miss Emily.”
Assuming that he hadn’t had a real conversation since he’d been removed from the battlefield, she wanted him to talk, but she wasn’t sure if he’d want to or not. Overcoming her hesitation, she whispered, “It must have been terrible for you, Private Feeney.”
“Please, call me Caleb. It was, Miss Emily. The battle of Thompson Station down there in Tennessee was the worst fight I’ve been in. We were whipping Johnny Reb real good, but then they surprised us by attacking our left flank. That was it. We broke and run and that’s when I got hit with shrapnel from a cannon ball. Knocked me out cold. When I woke up it was night. I had lost so much blood I didn’t have the strength to crawl toward our lines. My arm hurt real bad. I laid there for three days listening to our boys and them Johnny Reb boys moaning and dying. Finally, a burial party found me and carted me off to the field hospital. Lying out there in that field all that time didn’t do my arm no good. Gangrene set in and they sawed it off.”
Emily was astonished by the matter-of-fact way in which he told his story.
“The train ride up here was freezing cold,” he continued. “There was no water and nothing to kill the pain.” His eyes filled with tears.
Emily needed to change the subject. “Where are you from, Caleb?”
“Right here in New York City. You know where the Five Points is?”
“I know it all too well.”
“I wanted so bad to get out of that place I thought the army would be my best bet. I guess I was wrong there.”
She patted his hand. “When you’re well, they’ll let you out of the army. Please don’t go back there, Caleb. There are other places in the city for you.”
“Thank you, Miss Emily.”
While Emily was tending to Caleb, she’d been watching Martha. For a good while the young woman just stood there with her arms folded, seemingly overwhelmed by everything around her. Then a man at the other end of the ward cried out for water. Tentatively, she picked up a water bucket and went to him.
Milly Ambrose, on the other hand, wasted no time in making her presence known. She paced up and down the aisle with her hands behind her back inspecting her surroundings. At one point, she stopped to roughly pull a bed back into the proper alignment. The man in the bed cried out in pain.
The corporal rushed over. “Ma’am, please don’t do that. He’s just had his leg amputated this morning.”
“Order is important, corporal. An orderly ward is a happy ward,” she declared and continued on her inspection rounds.
By the time Emily got home that night, she was physically and mentally drained. It was just as well the children had already gone to bed because the sight of her would have frightened them. The front of her dress was covered in blood and gore from changing dressings all day and her hair was in a tangle.
Michael went to her. “My God, are you all right?”
“I’m fine. It looks worse than it is.” She went into the kitchen and slumped down on a chair.
“Can I get you something to eat?” Letta asked.
“No.” After what she’d been through all day, the mere thought of food made her nauseous.
“A tough day?”
“Michael, you wouldn’t believe what goes on in that place they dare call a hospital. The floors are slippery with blood. The bed clothing hasn’t be
en changed since God knows when. There are not enough dressings for their wounds. Those poor boys, they’re just not getting the attention they deserve. It’s horrible. Horrible.”
“Will you go back?” Letta asked.
Emily thought for a moment, remembering her dreadful experiences in the famine hospital. “I’ve made a commitment to go there three days a week. I’ll go for as long as I can.”
Two days later, the three women returned. Emily was surprised to see Martha in the back of the wagon. The poor girl had looked so unnerved at the end of that first day she didn’t think she’d be back. On the other hand, she wasn’t surprised to see Milly. The woman seemed to positively enjoy bossing the corporal and other aides around.
When they walked into the ward, Emily immediately noticed that there was another man in Caleb Feeney’s bed. A feeling of dread washed over her. With a voice shaking with emotion, she asked Corporal Berry, “Where’s Private Feeney?”
“Died yesterday morning. Blood poisoning.”
The room began to spin and Emily had to grab the railing of a bed to steady herself. For a moment, she thought she was going to faint, but the feeling passed. It was her own fault, she chided herself. Hadn’t Dr. Scott warned them not to get involved personally with the patients? She should have listened to his advice. But how could one not get personally attached to these poor frightened boys who were suffering so much?
Just then an orderly came rushing into the room. “Emergency on the second floor,” he yelled. “Dr. Scott says he needs everyone up there right now.”
Corporal Berry looked at the three women. They were all he had. “Come on, ladies. We’re needed upstairs.”
The frightful room that served as an operating room was even worse than the ward they’d just come from. New blood and copper-colored old blood stained the wooden floor. The sickening smell of blood and a sweet-smelling chemical permeated the air.
Dr. Scott was standing over a man stretched out on the table. Even though he was being held down by two orderlies, he was still thrashing about and screaming incoherently. He looked up at the three frightened women and wiped his hands on his blood-splattered apron. “I’m short staffed. I’ll need your help. You two,” he said, pointing to Emily and Martha. “Each of you grab an arm and hold him down. And you,” he said to a wide-eyed Milly, “you’re a nurse. You will assist me. Stand beside me and be ready to hand my instruments when I call for them.”
As Emily grabbed the man’s arm, she could see that the lower part of his leg had already been amputated. But the flesh just above the wound had turned a putrid black. It was gangrene.
The doctor nodded to an aide. “Administer the chloroform.”
Emily breathed a sigh of relief. She’d heard that these operations were conducted without anesthetic. At least the poor man would be sedated.
The aide dripped the chloroform onto a piece of cloth that didn’t look all that clean. At a nod from the doctor, he held it over the patient’s nose. After a while, the man stopped thrashing.
Dr. Scott picked up a large single-edged knife. Without hesitation, he began to cut away the flesh four inches about the blacked skin. Using a circular motion, he deftly made a cut all around the circumference of the leg, cutting away muscle and skin, leaving a flap of skin on one side.
“Bone saw.” A glassy-eyed Milly stared at him as though she were in a trance. “I said, bone saw.” When she didn’t react, he snatched up an ebony-handled saw that looked to Emily very much like the kind of saw Michael used in his work.
“Even with chloroform,” the doctor said calmly, “he’s going to start thrashing about when I begin to saw. This part of the procedure must be done as quickly as possible. Any delay may cost him his life.”
He paused for a just a moment as though rehearsing in his mind what he must do. Then he began to saw. With the first pass of the blade, the man let out a howl and began to buck. “Hold him, hold him.”
“Jasus, Mary, and Joseph …” Milly shrieked. “Sweet Jesus …”
Without looking up, the doctor said, “Corporal, get this woman out of here.”
The corporal took the dazed Milly by the arm and led her out the door.
As he continued to saw, Dr. Scott looked up at Emily. “You will assist me. Come stand by my side. Quickly now.”
A frightened but determined Emily did as she was told. By the time she got to his side of the table, the doctor was done. He flung the severed piece of leg onto the floor.
Emily was too astonished at how fast he had sawed through the bone to be sickened by the sight.
“Sponge.”
Emily looked down and saw a filthy sponge on the table. “This?”
“Yes.”
As she handed it to him, it fell to the floor.
“Pick it up, quickly. Rinse it and give it here.”
There was only a bucket with water stained red from someone else’s blood. Without hesitating, she plunged the sponge into the murky water, squeezed it, and gave it to the doctor. After sponging the wound, he said, “Tenaculum.”
Emily stared at an assortment of strange instruments on the table. “Tenaculum…?”
“The instrument with the hook.”
Emily handed it to him wondering what in the world he would do with a large hook.
He shoved the hook into the open wound and pulled out a pulsating, bleeding artery. As he tied it off, he explained to the orderlies, “Notice, I’ve pulled the artery way out. When I tie it off, it will disappear up into the man’s leg. When he gets his artificial leg, it won’t press on the artery and there’ll be less pain and discomfort. File”
Emily quickly handed him a long metal file. Aghast, she watched him scrape the end and edges of the bone smooth. Then he pulled the flap of skin he’d left across the open wound and sewed it up. Finally, he wrapped the stump with a bandage.
He looked up and for the first time Emily saw that his forehead was bathed in perpetration. Apparently, in spite of his calm demeanor, this operation was as nerve-wracking for him as it was for her.
“That’s it. Thank you, ladies. You’ve done very well. I hope you never have to witness something like this again.”
Emily and Martha wordlessly stumbled downstairs in a state of shock at what they had just taken part in. Corporal Berry was waiting for them with a sympathetic expression on his face.
“I suspect you both could use a strong cup of coffee. There’s a pot in the backroom. Why don’t you take a break before you begin tending the patients?”
Emily and Martha retired to the backroom and drank their coffee in silence, trying to absorb all that they had seen.
Finally, Martha broke the uneasy silence. “Emily, you were wonderful up there. I don’t think I could have done that.”
“Of course you could. I was watching you. You were very brave.”
“The only thing that kept me from running out of the room in sheer terror was the thought of my William being operated on. I kept thinking—hoping—that some woman would be there to help him if necessary.”
“I just hope we never have to take part in anything like that again.” Emily put her tin mug down. “I guess we should get out to the patients.”
When they came onto the ward, Martha asked Corporal Berry where Milly was.
“Gone. Dr. Scott said she’s never to come here again. It happens. Some people just can’t deal with what we do. That’s understandable, but she did say she’d been a nurse for forty years. I don’t understand that.”
“She worked in a lunatic asylum,” Martha said in defense of Milly. “I’m sure she’s never witnessed anything like that. I feel sorry for her.”
The corporal shrugged. “In any event, she won’t be back here. The patient in bed four needs his dressing replaced.”
For the rest of the afternoon Emily welcomed the ordinary routine of changing dressings and tending to the needs of the patients. Towards the end of the day, she sat down next to a man who had lost his left leg. He was much older t
han most of the others in the ward. She looked at his chart. “Sergeant Daily, is it?”
“‘Tis ma’am,” he said with a thick brogue. “Ordinance Sergeant with the Sixty-Ninth Regiment, now called the Irish Brigade.”
“Where were you wounded?” She had stopped worrying about asking questions because she found that most of the men wanted to talk about what had happened to them or just to have a conversation with a woman.
“Chancellorsville. That was a dark and bloody battle, I can tell ya. We fought hard, but we was whipped by the rebs. I got hit by a mini-ball as we was movin’ out. It tore up my leg pretty bad. When they got me to the field hospital, the doctors said the leg had to go and they cut it off.” After a moment’s pause, he said, “Funny thing, my leg has been gone for over three weeks now, but I still have pain. How can that be? Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I feel the pain, and I think my leg is still there. I put my hand down there, but there’s nothing there.” He chuckled. “Funny thing, that.”
Emily still couldn’t get used to the matter-of-fact way these men talked about their horrific wounds. Hoping to make him feel better, she said, “I understand the army provides soldiers like you with prosthetic limbs and a pension of eight dollars a month.”
He waved a hand in dismissal. “I’ll have none of that,” he said, disgustedly.
“But why not?”
“‘Tis charity. That’s all it is. I sacrificed my leg for the union. ‘Tis an honorable scar I’ll proudly wear. When people see me empty trouser leg, they’ll know I fought for the Union.”
Emily didn’t know what to say. One would think that an amputee would jump at the chance for a wooden leg. But these weren’t ordinary men. These were brave men who had gone through an ordeal Emily could only imagine.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Manhattan Page 25