Wedded to War

by Jocelyn Green

  Columbian College Hospital, Washington City

  Thursday, August 1, 1861

  Charlotte dabbed a violet-scented handkerchief against her damp forehead and neck and stepped out of the scorching sun into the shade of the Columbian College Hospital—still hot inside, but at least it wasn’t as bright. After she had spent a full week laboring over the laundry at the Union Hotel Hospital, Mrs. Moore had hired some Negroes to do the job, and Miss Dix had sent Charlotte here to nurse instead. It was about time.

  “And you are?” A stout man with red hair and beard looked down at her.

  “Charlotte Waverly, sir. Miss Dix sent me. I am at your service, trained in New York Hospital.”

  “Is that so?” His bushy eyebrows raised, looking more amused than impressed. “I’m Dr. Murray, and I don’t need your help.”

  “Oh no, no, I’m sure you are very capable, Dr. Murray. I don’t mean that you personally need help, but what about the patients? In a hospital of this size, couldn’t you use another set of hands for dressing wounds, changing bandages, washing the men, feeding them, that sort of thing?”

  Dr. Murray was walking away now. “Not interested, lady. Go knit some socks.”

  “If it’s socks you need, then socks you shall have, along with anything else you request from the Sanitary Commission stores.” Charlotte trotted alongside him to keep up.

  “Splendid. We’ll take three hundred pairs of socks, then, as much morphia powder as you can give us and—one other thing, what was it now? Coffins. Yes, we would like five dozen coffins as soon as possible, if you please.”

  “Coffins?”

  “Or did you expect me to put the bodies in the ground in blankets? India rubber would probably be best. Waterproof, you know. Yes, if you have no coffins, send me blankets. You can help roll up the bodies.”

  “Dr. Murray, I don’t understand you.”

  “Of course you don’t.” He stopped and turned to face her. “Here’s the thing—the army does not give me what I really need. Like coffins. Like a dead-house. Like running water and water closets. But what I emphatically do not need, that it sends me.” He looked at her pointedly, and she felt her cheeks grow warm.

  “Perhaps you didn’t ask for me, Dr. Murray, but I am willing to prove my usefulness to you.”

  “I told you already, I’m not interested. I don’t need a woman to take care of when I’ve got two hundred fifty-eight patients to look after.”

  “I can take care of myself.”

  Dr. Murray shook his head.

  “I’ll do anything you need.” Charlotte stood her ground.

  Dr. Murray looked her over from head to toe, while Charlotte hid her broken nails and red, chafed hands behind her back. Finally, light sparked in his eyes and he nodded.

  “All right, I’ve got a job for you then. As I mentioned, we have two hundred fifty-eight patients in the hospital presently, which includes the wards inside as well as the tents outside—for patients with typhoid fever, dysentery, erysipelas. Nasty stuff. As I also mentioned, we have no water closets. Zero. Which means, these men are continually filling up the chamber pots in their close stools. It’s becoming a real problem for us, as you can imagine. Contagious disease emanating into the air from the vapors and all of that. You want to help? Empty the chamber pots. There’s a trench in the rear. Just don’t fall in.”

  “You’re trying to force me out, aren’t you?”

  “Not at all!” He smiled. “The army has decided for me—without even asking my opinion—that I should have women nurses. I can’t do anything about that. If you should decide to leave on your own, however, that would be entirely up to you.”

  “I have been assigned here, and I’m not leaving.”

  “Well, that’s a relief.” Charlotte ignored his sarcasm. The doctor pointed to the staircase. “You can start up there. The third and fourth floors haven’t been emptied in a while. Too many stairs for the convalescent nurses, you know.” He sighed. “It’s going to be so nice having you here, Miss Waverly, especially with your New York education. We’ll put it to good use.”

  As she turned to go, he called out after her. “But don’t trip! It would be such a shame to get your snowy white apron dirty.”

  Up the stairs she marched, with a fistful of skirts in one hand and her handkerchief pressed to her nose with the other. When she reached the top and entered the first room she came to, she almost gagged on the stench. The rooms were barely large enough to hold a bed and a single chair. The patient, a large, dark bearded man with his leg in a fracture box, colored in shame when he saw her.

  “Don’t come in here, miss, the air ain’t fit for a lady such as yerself,” he said.

  “Well, let’s see if we can take care of that, shall we?” Charlotte bent down to the close stool to slide the pewter chamber pot from beneath it.

  “Lord a’mighty, why on earth are you doing that awful job?” He looked so mortified on her behalf that her heart ached with a desire to restore this man to some sense of dignity. But there she was, standing in front of him holding in her bare hands a bowl nearly brimming with his own urine and feces. The fact that the situation was no fault of his own made it no less humiliating.

  A feeble, “Let’s just get this out of here and I’m sure you’ll breathe much easier,” was all she could manage before slowly, carefully, making her way down the hall and down the staircase. All her concentration was required to keep the bowl steady as she climbed down the stairs. She held her breath for as long as she could before gasping for another supply of air. Her nose tingled and her eyes watered. And I thought laundry duty was bad. She carried in her hands a perfect cesspool of contamination, its wretched vapors spreading in the air with every step.

  “Whoosh!” A woman stepped into the stairwell and waved a hand frantically in front of her face. “What on earth are you doing?” she asked Charlotte.

  “Somebody needed to empty these chamber pots.” She barely looked up. “I’m Charlotte Waverly, a new nurse here. And you are?”

  “Cora Carter.” She pinch her nose closed. Ruffles and bows on her fuchsia-colored dress flapped with every step she took downstairs.

  “Not a nurse, I take it,” Charlotte said slowly, still concentrating on her bowl. “What’s your business at the hospital?”

  “Why, I’m a nurse, same as you!”

  But Cora didn’t look like any nurse Miss Dix would have approved. Maybe she was attending a brother or sweetheart herself. “You have a loved one among our patients?”

  “Oh yes.” Cora giggled. “Heaps of them.” And with a flash of gleaming white teeth under unusually pink cheeks, she glided down the rest of the stairs, leaving Charlotte alone with the foul-smelling chamber pot and her own suspicions.

  At the bottom of the stairs, another voice started her from behind.

  “Goodness me, dearie! Bless you for doing that!”

  Turning, slowly, Charlotte saw a pleasantly plump woman with greying brown hair, black dress, and white apron. The only adornment was her warm smile and bright eyes. Now this was a Dix nurse if she had ever seen one.

  “I’m Hannah Stevenson, of Boston. Just got here a few weeks ago, myself.”

  Charlotte nodded. “Charlotte Waverly, pleased to meet you. Today’s my first day.”

  Hannah bobbed her head up and down, her double chin quivering with each nod. “I can see that. Dr. Murray doesn’t quite appreciate what we do here but the men are unspeakably grateful.”

  “Are there many? Nurses?”

  “If you stay, you’ll make five. There are three other physicians besides Dr. Murray, each of them younger-looking than you, no offense.”

  “I haven’t met anyone besides Dr. Murray and Cora.”

  “Cora. Cora Carter? Did she tell you she’s a nurse?”

  Charlotte nodded.

  Hannah pursed her lips. “Well dearie, I wouldn’t swear on a Bible on that one. She goes in and out of the rooms all right, but never carries a roll of bandages in her hand or
any hint of grief for their suffering on her face. That one’s trouble, that’s what. Whew! I’ll let you be now.”

  Charlotte nodded and smiled, grateful for at least one friend in this place, and carefully conveyed her stinking cargo out the rear of the hospital. Outside, the earth beneath her feet had hardened into sun-baked ruts and ridges, threatening to throw off her balance. Her poise and posture training came back to her from her old refining school in Philadelphia, and she deftly navigated the terrain without spilling a drop of the waste. Wouldn’t my teachers go into apoplexy if they knew how I put their training into use today? She chuckled to herself in spite of the appalling work.

  Charlotte found a water pump, rinsed the bowl, threw the rinse water back into the trench, and climbed the four stories to return the bowl to its rightful owner. From start to finish, it had taken her almost ten minutes to empty one chamber pot. How many patients left to go? Two hundred fifty-seven? It would take her all day and she still wouldn’t be done!

  Fine. She lifted her chin. She would manage somehow, just as she had managed the laundry. At least the patients were grateful. It really was too much to ask anyone to be in the same room with those pots day after day. At least she could do her duty and be done with it.

  After twelve hours of the same tedious, stinking labor, Charlotte had emptied most of the chamber pots in the four-story building, but none in the tents. Tomorrow would be easier, since the tents were already outside and on the same level as the trench.

  “So you’ve decided to leave us after all.” Dr. Murray stopped her just before she could walk out the door.

  “I’ll be back in the morning to do the rest.” Charlotte stifled a yawn.

  “I don’t think you will.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “If you walk out that door, you’re clearly not committed to nursing. What nurse leaves her patients?” His eyes were as cold as his voice.

  “I’m leaving the chamber pots, that’s all. And I told you I’ll be back.”

  “A deal is a deal. I can’t force you out, but if you leave on your own accord, I must allow it. You just won’t ever come back, that’s all.”

  “Fine. I’ll sleep here.”

  “Admirable. But I’m afraid we don’t have suitable accommodations for a woman of your station.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Then what sort of accommodations do you have?”

  “The army sort. You’re working for the army, you should live like the army.”

  “Speak plainly, Dr. Murray. I’m tired.”

  “Then why don’t I just use pictures instead. Follow me.”

  Charlotte followed him outside, around to the rear of the building. Between the tents of patients with communicable diseases and the trench, itself full of communicable disease, he pointed to a patch of earth and said, “There.”

  She looked down at the ground. “There what?”

  “You really are exceedingly simple, aren’t you? This is your army-style accommodation for the night.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I assure you I am.”

  “I understand a bed would be far too much to ask for, but even those men have cots.” She pointed to the tents. “Are you saying there is not one extra cot to be had?”

  Dr. Murray shrugged. “Moot point. You’re not sick, are you, that you should need a cot? No, perfectly healthy. As such, you will sleep like a soldier who is perfectly healthy.”

  “Even soldiers have blankets to lie upon.”

  “The lucky ones. You’re not so lucky tonight, it seems. Oh, and, if you need to relieve yourself, help yourself to the trench like the rest of us.”

  The two stood facing each other, opposing each other, neither of them willing to give in.

  “Well then.” It was Charlotte who broke the silence. “I’ll just need to send my sister a message so she doesn’t wonder where I am.”

  “Sorry. Soldiers don’t have access to telegraphs, messengers, or even to a very good post system either, for that matter. Hard to find stamps and a postman when you’re in camp, you know. So no, soldier, I’m afraid a message would be impossible.”

  Though the night dew cast a chill upon her, the heat of anger kept her body warm long after Dr. Murray locked himself inside the small house on campus where the physicians slept. No one had ever treated her this way. Men had always fallen over themselves trying to flatter her. But that was a lifetime ago, and she had surely been a different person then. These army doctors did not see her beauty and charm—if she had any left. What they saw was a threat to order and male superiority. Dr. Blackwell had tried to warn her that their path would be thorny, but Charlotte didn’t think even Dr. Blackwell realized what the women nurses would be up against. Charlotte seethed. Before today, if anyone told her this would happen to her, she would not have believed it.

  But neither could she believe that she had lasted this long. She could last another night, and another day, and then do it again. And again.

  The steady rhythm of the crickets’ song pulsed in her ears to the faint beat of martial music. Columbian College Hospital was surrounded by encampments. The orange glow of their campfires dotting the horizon as the stars above the pine trees studded the black velvet sky. Had she really been in a feather bed in New York City only one month ago?

  As dark grey clouds swirled in front of a sliver of moon, she untied her apron, turned it inside out and folded it into the shape of a crude pillow. What do soldiers do in camp when they have no blanket or pillow? Charlotte laid her weary body down on the cool, hard earth as a breeze of damp night air swept over her, bringing the eye-watering stench of the trench with it. She pulled the apron string out from her new pillow and covered her nose with it. If I were ever to contract a contagious disease, this would be a remarkably opportune time.

  Washington City

  Friday, August 2, 1861

  When the first red streaks of dawn warmed the grey sky in the east, Charlotte pushed herself off the dewy ground with a groan. Her thighs were stiff from yesterday’s climbing, her back ached, and her shoulders were sore from being hunched up to her ears during the night, trying to keep warm. If she hadn’t been so completely exhausted, she wouldn’t have been able to sleep a wink.

  She needed to find a water closet, and quickly. She could endure many things in the name of nursing the dear soldiers, but relieving herself over a filthy trench in plain sight was not one of them. She hurried—as much as her sore muscles would allow—to the hospital entrance and breathed a sigh of relief when she found it unlocked.

  But now where? If this had been a normal hospital, there would be a water closet in the lobby. But this was completely abnormal, and there wasn’t a single water closet on the property. She’d have to use a close stool. And fast. She had been holding out all night, plus several hours before that. The need was becoming urgent.

  She walked down the hallway, looking for a vacant room, but they had filled the ground level first. Footsteps sounded behind her—she ducked into a room and found the patient sleeping.

  Please Lord, let him stay asleep!

  She pushed the door closed, lifted her skirts and squatted over the stool. A faint trickling sound registered in her ears.

  Oh no. This was one of the pots I hadn’t had time to empty yesterday. Now it was overflowing the bowl, seeping into the wood floor beneath it.

  Charlotte glanced at the still form on the bed next to her. Mercifully, he still slept. She held her breath as she bent down to dislodge the pot from the stool. She watched it carefully as she worked—the last thing she needed was to get this waste all over her dress.

  Noiselessly she opened the door with her foot and began her slow journey out to the trench.

  Dr. Murray stood in the hall talking with another surgeon, judging by the gold medical insignia on his armband. Charlotte kept her chin tucked to her chest and focused her eyes on the rim of the bowl she carried, wishing she could go faster, praying she would go unnoticed.

  “I
’d watch over his care myself, but I’ve got to get back to New Haven to muster out by the seventh,” the surgeon was saying. “Please keep an eye on him. His wife has already passed and he has three small children waiting for him at home with an uncle.”

  “I keep an eye on all my patients, despite what few resources I have to work with,” she heard Dr. Murray say. “Oh nurse!” She had passed them by a few paces, but he came trotting up to her. “Pardon me a moment, doctor,” he called over his shoulder.

  “So how did you enjoy camp life last night?”

  “That’s neither here nor there, doctor. The point is I remained here, and I have returned to my duty.” Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the other surgeon approaching them. She must look a fright, her hair wild with humidity, slipping out of its pins. Her dress was rumpled, wet and soiled.

  “You don’t mean you made her sleep outside last night, Dr. Murray?”

  Charlotte kept her back to him, unwilling for him to see her cheeks blooming with heat.

  “Says she wants to be a nurse, like a man. I don’t suppose you have to deal with these strong-minded women as a regimental surgeon, do you? No, they’re just in the general hospitals. They’re swarming around Washington, like flies. Don’t know when to leave. This one is the most stubborn girl I’ve seen yet.”

  Charlotte smiled without thinking.

  It was the wrong decision.

  Before she even realized what had happened, the front of her dress was dripping with urine and blood-tinged liquid feces, the rancid fluid soaking through her dress and into her corset.

  “Are you mad, man? What do you think you’re doing?” The visiting surgeon stepped between them, took the bowl from Charlotte’s shaking hands and set it on the floor on the side of the hallway. He gave her his own embroidered handkerchief, and though she took it, wordlessly, she could not tear her eyes away from the dark filth spreading its misshapen stain like gangrene on her chest.

  “She’s clumsy.” Dr. Murray shrugged. “You should be more careful, Miss Waverly.”