“Private Rivers, are you okay?”
I jerked back to the present to find Nurse Davis peering up at me with concern.
“Um, yeah, I’m fine.” I tried to shake off the feeling of doom creeping into my bones.
Miss Davis looked unconvinced. “Can I get you a glass of water, or a bite to eat?”
I quickly shook my head. “No, I’m okay, really. Thanks.”
She nodded. “Well, if you’re sure, we have another man approaching. Could you give me a hand?”
“Of course.” I took a deep breath and pushed off the tent pole.
I grabbed a stretcher as we passed the diminishing stack and went out to meet yet another wounded soldier. How many have passed through the tent flaps today? Fifteen? One hundred and fifteen? Too many, and this battle was just one small scuffle in the middle of a huge war. I stumbled after Nurse Davis with growing hopelessness.
Two beat up looking soldiers supported a third. As they lowered him to the stretcher, I noticed his arm. A bloody, mangled mess, almost unrecognizable. I quickly sought out Nurse Davis’s eyes and found a quickly fading hope as she examined him. She uttered a soft dejected sigh as she shook her head.
“It’s too late to save his arm, but if we work fast, we might be able to save his life. Come on boys, let’s get him inside quickly.”
The two soldiers and I hoisted his moaning and writhing body, while Miss Davis cleared a path.
The now crowded tent buzzed with barked orders, haggard breaths, murmuring voices, and subdued sobs. Overpowering odors of stale sweat and fresh blood assaulted my nose. We located an unoccupied corner, carefully setting down the stretcher with the half-conscious soldier. I turned to go back outside, but Nurse Davis stopped me with a hand on my arm.
“If you don’t object, Private Rivers, we will need your assistance with this patient.”
I nodded, though clearly her statement had been an order, not a request. She motioned that I move to the soldier’s head and I complied. Nurse Davis positioned the lesser done in of the two soldiers at his feet, and led the other away to be patched up with bandages. The moaning patient with the demolished arm appeared so deep in pain and anguish that permanent lines etched deeply into his grimy face. Feeling awkward standing there and not doing anything in the mist of constant noise and activity, I looked around for something to do. By my elbow stood a small portable table with a pile of bandages and a basin of water left over from a previous patient. I leaned over for a closer inspection, decided the water appeared clean enough, and grabbed a handful of the cotton bandages. I dipped them into the slightly soiled water, and then gently began wiping away some of the grime from his sooty eyes and blood-encrusted mouth. I glanced around to see if anyone objected to my clumsy attempts to help, but no one paid me any mind. Not even the soldier waiting at the patient’s feet. His eyes stared unfocused off into nowhere.
“Good work, Rivers.” Nurse Davis appeared at my side with a loaded tray, which she shoved it into my hands. “Here, hold this.”
I quickly dropped the rags to grab the tray while Nurse Davis cleared room on the portable table. Then she reclaimed the tray, set it down and began sorting through its contents. I stared in horror at the piles of bandages, the tourniquet, the compact knives, the larger saw, the needle and silk thread. My stomach heaved, and I desperately swallowed to keep down its meager contents.
“Are we ready, Nurse Davis?”
Thankful for the distraction, I turned to find that Dr. Davis had joined us. Somewhere in the part of my brain that hadn’t frozen in horror, I wondered why her own pa called her ‘Nurse Davis’. Again, my sarcastic brain reminded me that my own pa had practically called me a whore. Maybe the Davis family communications weren’t quite so strange after all. At least they used common curtsey.
“Almost, Doctor.” Nurse Davis picked up a bottle and a handful of clean bandages, turning to me. “Private Rivers, we need you to administer some chloroform to keep him quiet. Though sometimes we also need good, old fashioned muscle,” she directed to the soldier positioned at the patient’s feet, “which is where you come in. Keep him still at all costs.”
The soldier seemed to understand, getting a good hold on the soldier’s legs, though he still appeared lost in a fog.
Nurse Davis dribbled a few drops of chloroform onto the rag and held it over the patient’s nose and mouth. “Lift it up every now and again to give him fresh air, understand? We don’t need to be killing off any of our own boys with chloroform poisoning.”
I opened my mouth to ask how much and how often, but she had already turned back to the patient. Great, I guess I‘m winging it.
Nurse Davis wrapped a cord around the patient’s injured arm at the spot Dr. Davis indicated, just below the shoulder. Placing a sturdy stick against the cord, she proceeded to tightly twist the tourniquet, cutting off the blood supply to the damaged arm. I noticed the blood flowing from the wounds slowed and then stopped, as if his heart had ceased beating. The man’s face, burned and scarred, appeared lifeless. Reminded of my role, I lifted the chloroform-soaked rag from his face so that he could get some fresh air, that and double check that he still breathed.
“Scalpel.”
Nurse Davis handed the smaller knife to her father who proceeded to slice through the man’s flesh as casually as if carving a turkey dinner. It suddenly occurred to me exactly what I stood there to assist with, but time had long since passed to be running and screaming from the scene. I quickly averted my eyes, trying to focus instead on the patient’s face. His smoke-singed eyelashes fluttered, and a pain-filled moan mumbled from his throat.
“Private,” Nurse Davis reminded in a hushed voice, “more chloroform.”
Without looking back towards the procedure, I nodded and returned the damp cloth to his nose and mouth. I counted slowly to ten, forcing myself to take breaths through my mouth with each count, then removed the drug again. I counted again, shouting the numbers in my mind to drown out the slicing and cutting sounds, and then reapplied the cloth. Whether or not I did this correctly, I had no idea, but this thin barrier kept reality at bay, barely.
“Saw, Nurse Davis.”
The grinding of the saw blade against bone gnashed on my eardrums and the room tilt dizzily to the side. I grabbed onto the edges of the stretcher to steady myself, and clamped my eyes tightly closed.
Steady, Bobbi, steady. You’ve never once in your life fainted before, and you’re not going to start now!
“Private!”
I jerked my eyes open to find the patient thrashing on the stretcher. Maddening shrieks of pain tore from his throat. Nurse Davis had thrown herself down on his chest and the other soldier clung to his kicking feet in an effort to keep him still. I shook my head clear and quickly grabbed his flailing arm, his only arm, and pushed my weight down on his head and shoulders.
An orderly appeared at my side, grabbed the chloroform cloth out of my hand and pressed it to the patient’s mouth. Soon, the patient fell quiet, and Dr. Davis sewed the arteries closed with the silk thread. I slowly relaxed my grip while trying to catch my breath. Dr. Davis took the time to aim a loaded glare in my direction, before tossing the mangled arm onto a pile of bloody severed limbs in the corner. I turned and ran from the tent.
I barely reached the bushes before throwing up. Coughing and gagging, I fell to the ground, the world once again spinning around me. The cool evening air brushed my sweating skin in a comforting touch, and I blinked back the tears that seemed determined to flow. I couldn’t get the fellow’s screams out of my ears, his bloody stump out of my head.
I don’t know how long I sat hidden in the bushes. The watery sun disappeared behind the trees and the clammy wet air chilled. Activity slowed slightly in the hospital tent with no more incoming soldiers. I watched as two covered wagons pulled up and loaded men on stretchers. One wagon carried off the wounded, one carted off the dead. The gun shots and cannon fire had ceased from Campbell’s Station, but the smoke hung heavy in the air li
ke a thick fog, burning my eyes and nose. I numbly wondered at the outcome. Had the Blue’s won? What about Woody and Kenny? What about Toby? I hadn’t seen them since noon. I wondered if I would ever see them again.
So, this is what soldiers did, this is what Robert endured for months. Worse than anything I could have imagined, my heart ached for my brother, and for whatever he continued to suffer through right then.
“Hang on, Robert,” I whispered. “I’m coming.”
“Private Rivers?”
Annoyed at the intrusion, I glanced up to find Nurse Davis standing at the edge of my brush hideaway. I didn’t answer her.
Undaunted by my rudeness, she continued. “Feel up for a walk, Soldier?”
I snorted in disbelief, then shrugged. “Sure, why not.”
She waited patiently while I disentangled myself from the shrubs. I stuffed my frozen fingers deep in my pockets and fell in step beside her.
After a few moments, I broke the silence by mumbling that I needed to get back to my unit.
She nodded and motioned that we head in the direction toward the troops.
“So,” she began after a few moments of silence, “how are you holding out?”
I shrugged, not quite sure how to express the storm inside of me, and ninety-nine percent sure that I didn’t feel like discussing it anyway. But she waited expectantly for an answer.
“Sorry about messing up back there.”
She looked at me with her slanted green eyes, a slight smile touching her lips. “You did better than most at a first amputation. I’m embarrassed to admit that I vomited at my first.”
I stole a sideways glance at her to see if she told the truth.
“Honest,” she added, nodding.
We walked on, occasionally passing a group of battered soldiers on their way to the hospital to get minor wounds examined. Neither of us said anything else until we reached a deserted stretch of road. There, she abruptly stopped, and taking a seat on a log, she studied me expectantly.
“What?” I asked, nerves on end with suspicion.
“So, what’s your real name, Private Bobbi Rivers?”
A cold chill moved up my spine. “I don’t know what you mean.”
She smiled confidently. “I bet it’s Roberta.”
Shock delayed my denial which just reinforced her suspicion.
“It is Roberta, isn’t it? You know you’re doing an amazing job portraying a soldier. You even had me convinced at first. May I ask why you’re pretending to be a man?”
Too late, I found my tongue for a protest. “Nurse Davis, I don’t understand. My name is Bobbi, and I am a soldier—”
“Oh, but of course. I apologize. People have accused me of playing at my father’s feet in the medical field, not believing a girl, a woman, can be a medical professional. So I can understand your point of view. Of course, you are a soldier—”
“Nurse Davis,” I interrupted, my heart sticking painfully in my throat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, really. I’d better get back to my unit.” I stood up and turned to leave.
“You’re very confident to just walk away from someone who knows such a personal and dangerous secret, and not know if you can trust that person.”
That stopped me mid stride. “Is that a threat?”
“No! No, of course not,” she quickly renounced. Then she added with a slightly hesitant offer, “It’s an invitation to be friends.”
My shoulders slumped in exhaustion, not sure of anything anymore. I sunk to the ground, heedless of the damp soaking through my trousers. Everything suddenly seemed to weigh a hundred times more, my clothes, the air, my choices. The weight bore down on my shoulders and I didn’t think I could carry it anymore. Exhaustion dragged at my soul. I thought of my warm, safe bed at home, in the loft next to Robby, covered with the colorful quilt that Gram made with cloth scraps and lots of love. It all seemed so far away, so unreal, so much a wistful dream. I didn’t think I had the energy left to breathe.
I felt a warm insistent hand on my elbow, urging me to my feet. Nurse Davis led me back over to the log where we both sat and watched the stars emerge as the clouds danced away in the chilly breeze.
“I won’t tell anyone your secret,” she whispered. “I promise.”
My spirits had sunk so low that nothing seemed possible anymore. “Why should I believe you? Besides, what does it matter anyway. If you can guess, then so can others. And they have.”
“Others know? I’m surprised. In the short time I’ve known you, I thought you did an amazing job of being a fellow. Who else knows? Oh, I bet your tent mate found out the truth. It would be next to impossible to keep a secret from him.”
“Toby? No, he doesn’t suspect, nor do any of his friends. Even the captain seems to have accepted me.” Then I told her about the blind girl on the train. To my surprise and annoyance, Nurse Davis laughed.
“Listen Bobbi, when a person loses one sense, the others seem to take over, become more intense. That little girl’s sense of touch and smell, her overall awareness of the world around her is far more sensitized than the average person. In fact, I’m a bit doubtful that most people are even aware of anything that happens outside a three foot circle around themselves.”
I turned to face her. “If that’s true, then how did you find out?”
She smiled. “I’ve been trained to study those around me, to look into their eyes, to imagine what’s going on in their hearts, to figure out what they can’t or won’t tell me. It wasn’t until our patient started screaming and thrashing when I saw a fear in your eyes, a fear and compassion and horror and helplessness all together in tear-filled eyes, then I guessed. Trust me, no one else knows what you’re doing.”
“But how do I know if I can trust you, Nurse Davis? How do I know you won’t rat me out? How do I know if I even want to continue?”
“First of all, please call me Cora, okay? That’s what friends do. Second, friends also don’t rat out each other. And I would like to be your friend, if you’ll let me. I happen to find you very intriguing. As for your third question, I don’t know your reasons for this masquerade, so I can’t give you my opinions on whether or not you should continue. But it seems if this quest is important enough to have come this far, it may be imperative to see it through to the end.”
Her serene, matter-of-fact tone calmed my frazzled nerves considerably. Her steady grip on the world reminded me a bit of Robert. Oh, Robert. For a few incredibly long hours, I had lost a grip on why I had come here. Had Robert gone through a similar validation in his first days as a soldier? Had he lost his composure at the first signs of war? Somehow I doubted it. Robert always handled whatever life threw at him with grace and pride. Then a thought knifed its way into my head. Had Robert suffered a similar fate as one of the patients I’d hauled into the hospital tent today? The thought of Robert writhing in pain and fear as a surgeon sawed off a limb cut through my own heart. I gagged and almost threw up again. No, no I can’t think that way or I will go crazy with worry. Robert is okay, he has to be; he’s okay and in one piece… I felt Cora’s eyes studying me. I’d almost forgotten her sitting next to me.
She shook her head slightly in amazement. “I’m sitting here watching this parade of emotions flood across your face: distress, pride, surprise, horror, determination… May I ask what you’re thinking?”
Her polite request differed so greatly than that of society’s usual demanding ‘tell me’, that I actually told her.
“Robert. I’m thinking about Robert.”
“Is he your beau? Did you follow him into battle?”
I burst into a bawdy laugh. Her questions stood so far off the mark that I couldn’t help myself. Imagine, me chasing after some guy! But the look of confused hurt silenced the laugh immediately. This Cora’s heart might be as tender as my good friend Emma’s. I had to be a little more sensitive.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have laughed. It’s just that the idea of me coming all the way down here
just for some drippy guy is a bit, well, funny.”
“So, Robert isn’t a guy?”
“Yes, Robert is a guy, but he’s not just some beau that I’ve lost my senses over. Robert is my older brother.”
“Oh, I always wished I’d had a brother. Or a sister. So, where is this brother of yours, I’d love to meet him.”
I studied her sincere green eyes, wondering how much to tell her. I couldn’t stand to see the sympathetic look people gave me when I told them. But somehow I had the feeling that Cora might be different.
“Robert is missing and presumed dead,” I said, watching her closely. “But I know he’s not dead, so I’ve come down here to find him.” I held my breath, waiting for the seed of doubt, the look of pity, the utter disbelief. But it didn’t come.
Cora nodded solemnly. “You have to follow your heart.”
“So you don’t think I’m off my rocker?”
She laughed. “Well, I won’t vote either way on that just yet, but as for your brother, I think you are being very honorable. Maybe there’s even something I can do to help. I do have contact with quite a few soldiers and officers, too. Maybe someone has seen him.”
“Are you serious? That would be great! I could use any help I can get. I’m finding that my job is turning out a bit harder than I’d expected.”
“Try not to get discouraged, Bobbi. Practically half of this country’s male population is down here fighting. It is going to take time to find your brother.”
The hope in her eyes glowed with contagious enthusiasm, and I started feeling my own fire start to rekindle. I hesitated a moment, then decided to plunge. “Thanks Cora, I needed that.”
Echoes of Dark and Light Page 11