by Debra Diaz
The huge bed was more than comfortable but she slept fitfully, her dreams strange and disturbing, fleeing like wisps of fog whenever she woke. There were sounds in the night, the clattering of hooves on the street, the breaking of glass, a muffled shout. A distant cannon detonated two or three times. Once the room flared with light; frightened, she ran to the window and saw several silent men standing around a huge fire on a street corner. They were burning mattresses and bed covers. She crept back to bed and slept again.
At dawn, she rose and put on one of her oldest dresses. She didn’t bother with a corset, and tucked her long hair into a black hairnet. She could see no use in ruining her good clothes while she went from hospital to hospital in search of her husband.
She found Tobe sitting outside the lobby, chewing ruminatively, a brass spittoon at his side. “Are you ready, Tobe? Have you had breakfast?”
“Yes’m. What about you, Miz Carey?”
“I’m not hungry. I want you to take me to the hospital.”
“Yes’m. Which hospital, ma’am?”
“It doesn’t matter. No wait, he said to check with the Howard Association. Do you know where it is?”
“Yes’m. Don’t mean to brag, but I know where everything is. In town, that is.”
Within minutes they reached the Howard office, where Genny was told that, though they had heard of Dr. Carey, he was not one of their doctors and therefore the clerks had no idea where he was. They would try to find out. However, when she mentioned Dr. Mitchell, the man who had written Ethan, they advised her to seek him at the city hospital.
They rattled slowly down the street, arriving at the hospital just as the sun rose up in the sky and promised a day of sizzling heat. Genny directed Tobe to find a spot in the shade of the immense lawn and wait there for her, and hurried up the stone steps of the building.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
As soon as she entered the front door, she stopped and stared.
Nothing in her life prepared her for what she saw. Never had she witnessed or imagined or conceived of such human suffering. This was some nightmare world…this was hell, peopled with the fiends of pain and misery and the shadow of death. Not even Geoff’s tales of the war had jolted her so sharply, or touched her so deeply. An overwhelming compassion, mixed with sheer horror, made tears start to her eyes and run unheeded down her cheeks.
They were lined from one end of the long hallway to the other, tight against the walls and even filling the center of the corridor. She could see into the wards next to her, and they, too, were full. Not enough beds had been found for them all, and many lay on pallets so close together they touched. Sounds came to her ears — moans wrenched from the depths of agony, people retching and vomiting, weeping, sobbing, feeble voices calling for the harried doctors.
Black and white, men, women and children…it was a scene of utter desolation. The smells here were worse than any she’d encountered. Unwashed bodies, human waste and vomit, combined with the odors of strong disinfectants. There was something else, too…a curious smell of something rotten. She would soon discover it was the smell of the disease itself.
Darting back and forth were doctors, nurses, priests, nuns, frantic relatives of the sick, crying children. Genny stood for a moment in indecision, then turned to another doorway and entered one of the wards. A man pressed by and thrust a towel into her hand.
“Come with me, Nurse, I may need you.”
She stared at him uncomprehendingly until he barked over his shoulder, “Come on!” She hurried after him.
He bent over an elderly man who seemed to be in a state of delirium, his head rolling from side to side, his limbs wildly thrashing. The doctor rubbed the man’s forehead and neck with a wet cloth.
“Put that on his chest,” he said, without looking at her.
She spread out the towel as she had been told, and no sooner had she done so than the man made a strange sound and black fluid spouted from his mouth, covering the towel, part of the bed and the wall beyond it. Genny swallowed hard and asked, “Why — why is it black?”
The doctor looked at her curiously. “It’s blood, caused by internal hemorrhaging. Say, you know what you’re doing, don’t you? I’ve not seen you around here before.”
“Yes. That is, I’ve had some experience.”
“Stupid nurse killed a patient yesterday,” the doctor said roughly. “Gave him carbolic acid instead of medicine.”
Genny made no reply. Instead, she asked, “I’m trying to find Dr. Carey. Do you know him?”
“I just got here,” he said distractedly, as someone called to him from across the room. “Came from Little Rock, so I don’t know anybody. Stay here and keep him cool. I’ll be back.”
Genny looked at her patient. A deep sorrow filled her, a deep pity. She rolled back her sleeves, dipped the rag in a basin of water, and washed his face. She folded back the towel, staining her hand, not pausing to wipe it off. She held down the weak, flailing arms and spoke soothingly to him, copying the other nurses who were scattered here and there.
She remained there all day. It was impossible simply to walk away when the need was so great. Soon she was moving among the sick with a swift silence and efficiency, washing them and cleaning up after them, mopping feverish brows, dispensing food and water and medicine, exchanging a few words with those who were able to talk. She had learned more than she’d realized, working for Ethan.
She didn’t know how late it was until someone began lighting the lamps. She also realized she was hungry and faint and tired to the bone. She left quietly, waited for Tobe who had gone to run an errand for someone, and they drove back to the hotel.
Genny asked one of the bellboys to send food to her room. When she questioned him about laundry services he told her that the regular laundress was sick but his mother would wash her gown and return it in the morning. She fell at once into an exhausted, dreamless sleep.
A soft tapping on the door awakened her. It was the youth with her clean and freshly ironed dress. She thanked him, gave him two dollars, and when he’d gone she pulled the dress hurriedly over her head and pushed her hair up into its net. She had breakfast before she left, noticing a man and several women in the restaurant, and was relieved to know she wasn’t the only guest at the hotel. Tobe waited outside the lobby.
She returned to the city hospital, but before she could speak to anyone hands came up from patients, voices begged for attention, asking for water, for medicine. Again she went among them, doing the best she could. At noon she ate soda crackers and drank tea in the dining room, at last finding a spare moment to ask others first about Ethan, then inquiring for Dr. Mitchell. After being directed to the second floor, she found the man bending over a form that lay ominously still.
“Dr. Mitchell?” she asked quietly.
He straightened and peered down at her, his eyes haunted and lined with fatigue above his bearded face.
“Yes, young lady, what is it?”
“I’m Mrs. Ethan Carey. I’m looking for my husband.”
The thick brows lifted, and he smiled faintly. “Mrs. Carey, I’m pleased to meet you, though I regret the circumstances. You will find Ethan at Madam Annie’s.”
“Madam Annie’s?”
“The Mansion — 34 Gayoso Street. One of the local madams turned it into a hospital. She is an excellent nurse, as it turns out. But she took sick soon after Ethan got here — so did Dr. Saunders, who had been supervising her. So I sent Ethan over there.” The doctor shook his head. His roving glance took in the room around them, and she’d never seen an expression so full of despair. “You must know I asked him not to come. Even if he wanted to leave now, he couldn’t. No trains, no transportation out of here. People in other cities are even patrolling their borders with shotguns to keep people out who have been here.”
“But how will we ever get home?”
“Home?” said Dr. Mitchell. “This must be your home now, my dear, at least until the epidemic is over…God willing.�
�
“But — ” The patient before him stirred, and he turned away.
Oh, surely she could not be expected to stay in this hellish, Godforsaken place, this city of death!
Somehow though, even as that thought went through her mind, she knew in her heart that she would stay. The need here went far beyond her personal feelings, beyond the need to find Ethan and heal the breach between them. It seemed to put everything, her whole life, into a new perspective. Nothing mattered just now except doing everything that could humanly be done to ease the suffering around her. It seemed selfish, even absurd, to think otherwise.
But now that she knew where he was, relief and excitement and an entire gamut of emotions ran through her body. First thing tomorrow morning, she would go to “Madam Annie’s”.
The remainder of the day went much as the day before, helping the doctors, learning from the nurses, until just after the noon hour when she found herself in a ward with only one other nurse and a dozen unruly patients.
The woman introduced herself to Genny as Vann; her parents were Russian, she said, and both her first and last names were unpronounceable, so everyone called her Vann. She was probably in her forties and about Genny’s height, with black hair that she wore wound up in braids on top of her head, and large blue eyes that drooped slightly at the corners, giving her a sad and somehow wise look, as though she had seen more of the world than she cared to see. She was from Natchez, she said, and had nursed through several epidemics. Genny helped her throughout the day; she was an excellent nurse and Genny learned a great deal from her.
When she learned that Genny had never had the fever, she simply shook her head and said, “It’s suicide for you to be here.”
Genny said nothing, though a stab of guilt went through her since Vann obviously believed she’d come to Memphis to be a nurse when her purpose hadn’t been quite that noble. And she was frightened, too, when she considered that she might contract the dread disease, but there was little time to dwell on such a possibility. Everywhere she turned there was someone pleading, someone violently sick, someone plucking at her skirt. Just as things began to grow quiet, one of the patients became agitated and unexpectedly grabbed Vann around the throat. His eyes were huge with terror and shot through with red, and blood was running out of his nose. Horrified, Genny pulled away one of his hands and called out for help.
Help was a while in coming. Luckily the patient was weak and could not maintain a tight grip with his other hand, but it did close around the high neck of Vann’s dress and refuse to be dislodged. Finally one of the doctors came running in with another nurse and the man was restrained. The other patients had been too sick to offer assistance. Genny was much disturbed by the occurrence but Vann seemed to take it in stride.
Later in the day, one of the Howard doctors approached them and said, “Miss Vann, I know you’re not of our Association but we have had a request and we simply don’t have anyone to go just now. There is a farmhouse out in the country with a sick family. They have a servant on the place who can help you, if you’re willing to go.”
“I should be glad to, but I have no way of getting there. I’ve been going everywhere on foot.”
“I have a horse and wagon,” Genny offered. “And a driver. We’ll take you.”
“Then I shall go, of course.”
“We’ll send food and provisions with you,” said the doctor. “Thank you both.”
Tobe and Genny drove her out to the farm, and Vann said, “Thank you so much, Genny. You have been kind to me. You wouldn’t think that people, even doctors and nurses, would be rude, not here, with all that is happening. But I’ve heard myself referred to as ‘that foreign nurse’ more times than I’d care to mention … and I’ve lived in Natchez all my life! I don’t mind at all leaving the hospital behind. I expect I’ll be at this house for weeks, since convalescence takes so long. If there’s ever anything I can do for you, do let me know.”
“Thank you, Vann. I wish I could stay here and help you, but there’s something I must do. And we must hurry back. It will be dark soon.”
Vann looked very wise. “I heard you talking to Dr. Mitchell. I hope you find your husband.”
* * * *
“Doctor Carey, you do know it’s morning, don’t you? They tell me you haven’t slept all night. Please go and lie down for a while.”
Ethan turned away from the patient he had been tending; the man had finally lapsed into what seemed to be a natural sleep. The nun standing next to Ethan touched his forearm and he looked down into her concerned eyes.
“I think I will, Sister Lucilla,” he answered, fighting a wave of dizziness. “Call me if you need me.”
“I will.”
He went, half stumbling, into the small, empty storeroom where he’d been staying. A leather couch had been placed there and covered with a sheet for him to sleep on. It was hot and airless in the room. He stripped off his shirt and lay down, and tried to force himself to forget all that was going on around him.
The death toll now stood at more than a hundred a day, and there weren’t enough workers to handle the number of dead that came out of the hospitals and homes, and were collected off the streets. Coffins piled up in the cemeteries, waiting for a hasty, often incomplete burial. The stench of decomposing flesh rose up to haunt men’s dreams. Elmwood Cemetery, with its magnificent grounds and its former atmosphere of peace and repose, had itself become the site of frenzied digging and burying … at least fifty graves a day, and one mass grave held over a thousand bodies. There were few funerals, for there was usually no one to attend them.
Ethan had seen entire families perish before his eyes; he had seen children dying and parents too sick to care. He’d witnessed men and women turn to alcohol and drugs in an attempt to escape the tragedy taking place before them. He’d felt his own sense of futility and anger at the utter waste, the ruin. Other cities had the fever, but none were as stricken as Memphis.
There’d been very little rain for over a week, he’d been told, and the Gayoso Bayou which meandered through the city was nothing but a looping, stagnant pool of putrefaction. Garbage and refuse lined the streets and alleys; there was no sewerage system and the resulting piles of offal one was likely to run into almost anywhere was something awful to behold, and inhale.
Filth bred disease; everyone knew it, and yet the city council members had done nothing to clean up despite the warnings of physicians and the badgering of the press … until it was too late. The councilmen had been among the first to flee when the fever struck.
Business owners had fled … the clothiers, the cotton merchants, the attorneys, the jewelers, the photographers, architects, plumbers, restaurateurs … butchers, bakers, candlestick makers…Literally hundreds of stores and businesses occupying the streets of downtown Memphis had closed their doors and most likely would never open them again.
The newspapers reported that of a population of some forty-five thousand, more than half had left the city. Most of those remaining were black, too poor to leave, but not many of them were sick; it was a known but unexplainable fact that blacks seemed to have some immunity to the disease. Of the nearly six thousand whites who had remained in the city, almost all were sick or already dead.
As usual, with catastrophe came the adventurers, the racketeers, the pickpockets, the men and women who came to nurse and disappeared, after divesting their “patients” of any cash or valuables he might have on his person, or in his home. There were the wealthy people who demanded special care for themselves, but refused to give a penny on behalf of their fellow victims. Some owners of the few remaining markets and drug stores took advantage of the situation by escalating their prices, and the cost of coffins had doubled.
Ethan had seen it all, he thought — disgusted, but not surprised. But then he saw, with a kind of awed incredulity, another side to this morass of human misery. There were other people, besides the doctors and nurses and clergy, who actually cared…people who were risking thei
r health and their lives to help complete strangers. Some lived here, some came from other cities, other states. People from far away sent food, money, supplies, medicines.
There were policemen who stayed on without pay, helping in any way they could. The force had been reduced from forty-one to seven; likewise the fire department had fallen to thirteen in number, but they had stayed. The telegraph operators, too, were continuing to work until they fell sick and others replaced them. A man from the Associated Press, Robert Catron, somehow kept printing all three daily newspapers with practically no staff, and at night attended to his suffering friends. J.M. Keating, editor of the Appeal, continued not only the editing of his paper but the reporting and typesetting as well, and managed to serve as an officer on the Citizen’s Relief Committee.
It would be impossible to exaggerate the good done by the Howard Association, which had divided the city into districts and assigned workers to each. They were doing everything from providing nurses and medicines to burying the victims. There were the Freemasons, the Odd Fellows, the Hebrew Hospital Association, and others, who were making heroic efforts to help and to serve. Pastors, priests, and nuns, and the few remaining members of their congregations, could also be found ministering to those in need.
Ethan had joined the Citizen’s Relief Committee, which besides providing and dispensing food was dealing with the looters and thieves, even murderers and rapists, who had invaded the city when the epidemic began. Men who had served in the army were asked to assist the beleaguered police force to route out the lawless bands … and this they did. Several military companies stood in readiness in the refugee camps outside the city, but were not called in. Crime had already been greatly reduced; Ethan had patrolled twice with the police and encountered no one but a large muscular man about to beat his wife. The man was himself black and blue by the time Ethan and a policeman wrestled him into a jail cell.