Widow of Gettysburg

by Jocelyn Green

  Liberty could not let that happen. She could not hesitate like she had before. This time, she could not fail.

  “What do you do when someone is sick?” Liberty looked from Dr. Stephens to Isaac. “You go for a doctor. … Another doctor.”

  “I’ll go at once.” It was Bella. “You’d best see to the boys outside.”

  Liberty flew to the window. Water flooded the dooryard, overflowing wagon ruts and holes, rushing in tiny streams under and around the bodies of the men too weak to sit up. Willoughby Run had escaped its banks. The ground had been so churned up yesterday with men, horses, and wagons tearing up the earth, it was an absolute quagmire in the deluge. The men would drown.

  She rounded on Isaac. “Quickly. Go to every man in the house and find the ones who have passed in the night, just stack their bodies in the hallway for now. Make note of how many spaces we now have inside, then fill them with men from outside. Fill the porch next. I’ll go to the barn. Can you do it? Isaac! Can you do it?”

  Isaac nodded and she flew down the stairs, slammed open the screen door and plunged into the mud in front of the porch.

  “Help is coming,” she called out, though she sank in the sludge past her ankles, and her skirts swirled and swam around her legs.

  It had been hours since Bella had left, and though the sun now shined in a crisp blue sky, Liberty’s mood did not match it. Muscles aching from this morning’s emergency, she stooped over Dr. Stephen’s cool, clammy body. He was awake, but weak and confused.

  She sat on her heels in her ruined dress, on her ruined floor, in her ruined house, too tired to care about any of it.

  Amelia remained sequestered, busy with needlework. Isaac was next to Liberty, mercifully silent. He had risen to meet the need, and she was grateful. Not a man had drowned. Johnny was still alive, but slipping out of wakefulness for longer intervals. His skin was bright and moist with the poison of his shattered leg.

  At long last, the screen door downstairs slammed. Two sets of footsteps grew louder on the stairs until two breathless, shining faces appeared.

  “Owen O’Leary, United States Christian Commission, at your service.” A young man in his thirties with short brown hair that curled over the tops of his ears and a neatly trimmed mustache shook Libbie’s hand. Her gaze travelled to the bag in his hand.

  “Liberty Holloway. I hope that’s a medical kit.”

  “Indeed it is, and here we have a patient. Perfect fit, wouldn’t you say?” He bent to examine Dr. Stephens and Bella leaned in to Liberty.

  “He’s a physician from Philadelphia, and a delegate of the Christian Commission. It’s similar to the Sanitary Commission, but they care for the spirit as well as the physical body. Came here on his own to offer his services free of charge for the wounded. He says wagonloads of supplies are on their way for the wounded, he just got here ahead of them.”

  “Thank God.”

  Dr. O’Leary pulled back Dr. Stephen’s eyelids then let them fall closed again. “Tell me what you know.”

  As Isaac recited his story once more, Dr. O’Leary pushed down Dr. Stephens’s chin, opening his mouth, and smelled his breath.

  “Opium overdose.”

  “What?” Liberty fumed. “He told me we were out of opium!”

  “No, he didn’t.” Isaac’s gap-tooth grin grated on her. “He said it wasn’t for the Union boy. Big difference.”

  “I don’t understand. He said opium was the most essential drug in battlefield medicine. To stop bleeding, to relieve pain. We still have hundreds who need it! Why would he take it himself?”

  Dr. O’Leary rummaged through his leather bag and extracted a bottle of watery white liquid labeled zinc sulfate solution. “A number of reasons. Doesn’t surprise me at all. In fact, doctors are quite susceptible to overdose because of the access they have to the wonder drug. It not only relieves physical pain, but emotional pain as well. Reduces nerves, helps one sleep. But ironically, taking opium can cause a depressed spirit, prompting the user to take more of the drug—and so on, in an endless cycle.”

  He drew some solution into a glass dropper, then carefully squeezed it into Dr. Stephens’s mouth. He swallowed. “I’ll need four pints of water, please, and an empty bowl or chamber pot.” Bella went to fetch them.

  Five minutes later, Dr. O’Leary dosed Dr. Stephens again, and again at the same interval until ten doses had been given. The minutes between each seemed to drag on for Liberty as she thought of Johnny in the barn.

  Fifteen minutes after the last dose had been given, Dr. Stephens vomited into the bowl.

  “Just as I thought.” Dr. O’Leary sniffed the air. “Opium. Funny thing about drugs. They can heal, and they can kill. You must only use them as they are intended.” He snaked a tube down Dr. Stephens’s throat and flushed his stomach with the water.

  “That should do nicely. But he’s in no condition to see patients for some time yet. The drug impairs mental capacity and interferes with physical coordination. No, he needs to rest. Fine way to spend a Sunday.”

  “Oh! Is it?” Liberty hadn’t thought of church once today.

  “It is. But there is no place I’d rather be than right here, at the seat of the emergency. If Jesus healed on the Sabbath—which He most certainly did—then so can I. Now. I imagine there are others you’d like me to attend?”

  “Yes!” Liberty’s answer burst out of her. “We have a soldier who desperately needs a doctor’s attention. Wounded days ago, I believe, and suffering with fever from his injured leg.”

  “After you.” He extended a hand.

  Liberty paused. “Is it true that the Christian Commission is sending supplies into Gettysburg for the wounded?”

  “It is. Medical equipment, tents, clothing, stimulating drinks, food—”

  “When will they arrive?”

  “This very evening, before dark.”

  “I’ll go again,” Bella volunteered. “I’ll be there when the wagons arrive, Miss Liberty, and bring back whatever I can.”

  “Isaac, you’ll go with her. She could use an extra pair of hands.” Liberty crossed her arms. “If you give Mrs. Jamison one lick of trouble, I’ll banish you from the property. Understood? These patients are counting on the two of you for supplies. Cooperate.” She turned back to Dr. O’Leary and led him to the barn.

  “He needs an amputation,” Liberty heard herself say. “Please, Dr. O’Leary, as quickly as possible. I’ll help.”

  Color drained from the doctor’s face. “Where do the operations take place?”

  “Outside on the barn door.” She cringed, aware of how ridiculous it all seemed. But the rains, at least, had washed the improvised table fairly clean.

  “Do you have your own kit? Or shall I fetch Dr. Stephens’s supplies?”

  Dr. O’Leary shook his head. It looked more like a twitch. “I have my own. Let’s bring him to the table. Have you a stretcher?”

  “All the stretchers retreated along with Lee’s army.”

  “Now, before we do anything else, I hope you don’t mind if we get rid of those maggots. They are distracting me.” He reached into his large leather bag and pulled out a tin of turpentine.

  Once Johnny was centered on the barn door, Dr. O’Leary pulled from his bag a rectangular mahogany box about fifteen inches long and only five inches wide. An oval brass plate clearly read G. Tiemann & Co. Manufacturer of Surgical Instruments, 63 Chatham St., NY. When he opened the case with the sliding brass latch, sunlight bounced off the perfectly polished silver saw blade.

  “Please, tell me you’ve done this before.”

  “Fortunately for my patients … no.” His lips slanted, but his eyes were serious. “But you have an immediate need, do you not? And I have—a book.” He produced a book labeled The Practice of Surgery and slapped it upon the door.

  “Did they not teach you this in medical school?” Liberty was stunned. Terrified.

  “In my six months of lectures, not one person volunteered for us to practice our amp
utation skills upon them. Can you imagine that?”

  She closed her eyes and remembered the speed at which Dr. Stephens had cut through his patients with a dull blade. On a good day, he could amputate a limb in five minutes, have the man stitched and bandaged by the end of eight.

  Liberty expelled a breath of air. “You don’t know what you can do until it’s required of you.”

  He nodded. “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”

  “Yes, you can. Now let’s get to work.”

  Since there was no brandy, Liberty did not tell him the stimulating drink should be poured into Johnny’s mouth. Since she did not see a flask of chloroform, she did not mention it was too late to use anesthesia.

  “Would you please turn to the section called ‘Amputation of the Thigh’?” He picked up each tool from his kit, hefted the weight of it in his hand.

  “Secure the tourniquet.” She did not need to open the book to know the first step by now. “Place the pad directly on the femoral artery and tighten.”

  “Of course. I know that.”

  As he did, she flipped through the book until she landed on the page Dr. O’Leary requested.

  “Read please.”

  She read down, turned the page, went to the next. On and on, the author droned about the benefits and dangers of various methods and philosophies of incision. Aha. There in the last paragraph of this section. “It says do it as quickly as you can, with one sweep of the knife—yes, that’s right the long knife, not the saw—with one sweep of the knife or two, but for heaven’s sake get it done quickly for it is the most painful part of the operation.”

  His mouth twitched. “So that’s what it says.”

  “Yes.”

  Perspiration glittered on Dr. O’Leary’s forehead as he grasped the knife’s handle and nodded at the injured leg. “I’d be much obliged if …”

  She laid the book on the table and her hands on Johnny’s leg. “Like this?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Just say yes.”

  “Yes.”

  Liberty closed her eyes and turned her head, praying with all her might that God would help her forget whose leg she gripped, and that he would allow Johnny to remain unconscious to protect him from the pain. It is only a leg under my hands. It is only another patient.

  Finally, a puff of air from the doctor’s mouth. Then, “What next?”

  Releasing the thigh, she picked up the book and once again scanned dense blocks of text. Exposed bone … create a groove … backward sweep of the saw … They are mere letters on the page, a spelling list, she told herself, and heard herself read with unshaking voice.

  Dr. O’Leary nodded, and with steady hand, followed her every direction. Her recitation complete, Liberty kept an even pressure on Johnny’s leg and lifted her gaze to the vanilla clouds drifting above Seminary Ridge like sails through the deep blue sea. I will lift mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth. Psalm 121 sprang to her mind, a blessed relief. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber. The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.

  By the end of the sixth verse in the chapter, Dr. O’Leary had accomplished his task. “Thank God,” he breathed, then delicately tied up the ligatures. Johnny stirred. He was waking up. Liberty’s heart lurched as a faint moan rumbled up through his chest.

  They were nearly through. There was no bone file in Dr. O’Leary’s field amputation kit, but with such a clean slice, maybe all was well without it. The edges of Dr. Stephens’s patients’ bones were surely serrated and jagged from the dull blade.

  “Cover the stump,” she urged, and told him to let the ends of the ligature threads hang out the seam. “Do you have adhesive bandages?”

  “In my bag.” He did not look up as he tugged the skin back in place.

  Before he had to ask for them, Liberty placed the adhesive strips over the stump until Dr. O’Leary’s hands were free to help as well. Once secured, he asked for lint and unguent.

  Lint she had, but, “Unguent?” Dr. Stephens had never asked for this. Perhaps he did not have it.

  “Yes of course, the ointment to place between the lint and the stump. Otherwise, when it comes time to change the dressing, the lint will stick to the skin between the adhesive strips. This much I do know. Very unpleasant for the patient, which in turn, is quite unpleasant for you.”

  Oh no. Hundreds of amputee patients had been dressed without any unguent. Many of them were still here, waiting for their dressings to be changed for the first time. The dressings should all be changed by the fourth or fifth day. That meant today or tomorrow. She kept reading.

  The favorable healing of a stump will depend very much upon the skill and tenderness with which the dressings are changed, more especially the first dressings.

  Her heart rate double-timed. The favorable healing of a stump depended on—her. Unless … “Dr. O’Leary, will you stay?”

  “My dear,” said he, upon finishing, “I would like nothing better in this world. To be right where one is needed most, at precisely the time one is needed—” He flung a glance around her desolated property. “And to be able to relieve the suffering of mankind … What could possibly be better than that?”

  Liberty looked at Johnny’s body on the barn door and was filled not with sadness for his losing a limb, but with joy that he may yet still live. What could be better than that, indeed?

  From somewhere on the other side of the barn, the distinct, twangy voice of Fitz drifted on the breeze to her, followed by a chorus of masculine laughter. All was not darkness and gloom here. There was healing, and life. And though she could not deny the presence of suffering, neither could she deny the presence of God as the last two verses of Psalm 121 rang out clearly in her heart. The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.

  Tuesday, July 7, 1863

  Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  Outside the office of the Philadelphia Inquirer, South Third Street teemed with life. Carriages trundled over cobblestones taking stockbrokers to the Merchant Exchange and ladies to do their shopping, while newsboys hawked papers between the gaslights that lined the street. The U.S. flag flying just outside the Inquirer’s sixth-story window snapped and shuddered in the wind, a blur of red, white, and blue.

  Harrison Caldwell felt like a blur himself. Hands quivering from too much caffeine, he held his breath as his editor, Boris Trent, read the story he had just submitted on the battle of Gettysburg. No, on the people of Gettysburg and how they were affected. He was done writing about shot and shell.

  Boris slammed the paper down on his mahogany desk, and Harrison jolted.

  “OK, Caldwell.” Boris folded his arms across his paper-strewn, coffee-stained desk, jutting his head forward like a bulldog, bottom lip protruding. “I’m waiting.”

  Harrison coughed as cloying scents of musk and vanilla from the nearby perfumery floated in through the window. “Sir?”

  “For your story. Because surely, this is just a joke.” His small black eyes sparked over the top of his spectacles.

  Shifting in his chair, Harrison braced himself for the coming tirade.

  “Hang it all, Caldwell!” Boris slammed a beefy fist on his desk. “Gettysburg was the greatest battle in the history of the war! Wouldn’t it be logical, then, for my war correspondent to produce the greatest story of his career from it? Why on earth would you be talking about the people of Gettysburg?”

  “There’s a story there, Mr. Trent. If you’ll give me time to revise, I’ll do it, but—”

  “No Caldwell, there’s a story in the wounded! The maimed! The dead!” Harrison knew. The twenty-five wagonloads of medical supplies he’d seen at Fredericksburg had been ordered to the rear, in favor of
ammunition. They only reached the field on July 4—days after they were needed. Yes, there was a story here. But not the one Harrison had the stomach to write.

  “This—” he rattled Harrison’s paper in front of his face. “This is drivel. If you’re going to tell me about the people of Gettysburg, then tell me something shocking! Make me mad!” He rifled through a stack and shoved a copy of the New York Times at him. “Read it!”

  Harrison picked it up and cleared his throat. “‘Let me make it a matter of undeniable history that the actions of the people of Gettysburg are so sordidly mean and unpatriotic as to engender the belief that they were indifferent as to which party was whipped.’” He stopped. “Mr. Trent, this is shoddy reporting, absolute balderdash. Mean and unpatriotic? Indifferent as to which party was whipped? How dare he call this undeniable history. He does not get to rewrite what happened!” Heat prickled his skin.

  “Careful, Caldwell. Your Irish is showing.”

  He did not care if his cheeks flamed red with anger. “The people there went hungry for days. They gave all their food, their farms were destroyed, and a twenty-year-old girl was killed by sniper fire while she baked bread for the soldiers.”

  “Killed you say?”

  “Yes, Jennie Wade. It’s in the story. And there is a Union widow, quite young, who was forced to let her farm be used for a Confederate field hospital. Completely ruined the place. Another woman with three children and currently with child is running the local cemetery in her husband’s place while he guards Washington. The cemetery was virtually destroyed, and she is left to pick up the pieces.”

  Boris grunted. “Keep reading.” He pointed his cigar at the Times, sprinkling ash on the newsprint.

  Harrison raked a hand through his hair and tugged at the cravat at his neck. Then he read:

  ON THE STREETS THE BURDEN OF THEIR TALK IS THEIR LOSSES—AND SPECULATIONS AS TO WHETHER THE GOVERNMENT CAN BE COMPELLED TO PAY FOR THIS OR THAT. ALMOST ENTIRELY THEY ARE UNCOURTEOUS—BUT THIS IS PLAINLY FROM LACK OF INTELLIGENCE AND REFINEMENT. THEIR CHARGES, TOO, WERE EXORBITANT— HOTELS, $2.50 PER DAY; MILK, 10 AND 15 CENTS PER QUART; BREAD, $1 AND EVEN 1.50 PER LOAF; TWENTY CENTS FOR A BANDAGE FOR A WOUNDED SOLDIER! AND THESE ARE ONLY A FEW SPECIMENS OF THE SORDID MEANNESS AND UNPATRIOTIC SPIRIT MANIFESTED BY THESE PEOPLE FROM WHOSE DOORS OUR NOBLE ARMY HAD DRIVEN A HATED ENEMY. … THIS IS ADAMS COUNTY— A NEIGHBOR TO COPPERHEAD YORK, WHICH IS STILL NEARER TO THE STUPID AND STINGY BERKS.