“What is it you want me to do, Miss Dix?”
“Some of the surgeons want to discharge these men at once because we need the beds.” Miss Dix was not a woman who begged, but now she was appealing with her whole heart. “But to do that would be a terrible injustice to these poor souls. Will you do what you can, Dr. Hammond, to let me keep this one ward for this kind of problem?”
Hammond nodded firmly. “Yes, I’ll see to it.” He looked over the men once more, then turned to go. When they were outside, he said, “Do any of them ever recover?”
“Oh yes, some of them.”
“How do you account for it?”
“I can’t, really.” Miss Dix thought about his question as they walked along, and finally said, “I think all we can do is to be kind—and wait. They’re locked inside some sort of grim prison. The only thing they seem to respond to is kindness.”
After Miss Dix had said good-bye to Dr. Hammond, she sat at her desk for some time staring at the wall blankly. The pressures of her task were tremendous, and her nerves were strained. She thought of the men in Ward K, searching for some way to help them. It was so hopeless! So few of them ever came out of the darkness that clouded their benighted minds.
She was thankful for Dr. Hammond’s willingness to help, and that made her feel a little better. Then she thought about her response to his question regarding the men’s recovery: The only thing they seem to respond to is kindness.
Long she sat there, struggling with the problem. Then, suddenly, something came to her. She was not an impulsive woman, but the idea persisted with such force that she finally rose and moved out of her office, going to find Grace Swenson. “Nurse Swenson, come to my office, please.”
Grace looked up in surprise but made no comment. She followed the superintendent through the halls, and when they were inside the small office, she took the seat Miss Dix offered her.
“I have something to ask you.”
“Yes?”
Miss Dix plunged at once into the problem of the men in Ward K and ended by saying, “It’s a thankless service, I’m afraid. So few of them ever recover. But I think you could be of help to some of them.”
Grace agreed instantly. “I’ll do what I can, Miss Dix.”
“I’m so shorthanded,” Miss Dix warned. “It will have to be extra duty, I’m afraid. I’ll take you off of Ward C, but it will still be more work. And you’ll have to be strict with the male nurses. Some of them aren’t much! They know these men can’t report them, so they mistreat the patients.”
“How do they do that?”
“Steal their food or the whiskey used for treatment, let them go dirty, become careless about changing dressings—there are far too many ways.” Miss Dix gave the young woman a direct glance. “You can’t be soft on them or your patients will suffer.”
“I’ll do the best I can, Miss Dix.”
Pleasure came into Dorothea’s thin face, and she took a deep breath. “I was hoping you would, Grace.” It was the first time she’d called Grace by her given name, for she was not given to informality. “I’ll see that your supervisors are informed. When would you like to begin?”
“I’ll start first thing in the morning,” Grace said.
Miss Dix hesitated, then said gently, “You won’t be able to do much with your religious convictions, I’m afraid. They’re all too far gone to understand you.”
But the superintendent’s words didn’t seem to trouble the young woman. “God is able to minister to a troubled mind as well as to a maimed body,” she said softly, then rose and left the room.
Miss Dix—who was not considered a praying woman—stared at the door, then whispered, “God be with her!”
“Are you going to be nursin’ loonies?”
It was breakfast time at the Johnson house, and Willie had listened with increasing interest as Grace spoke of her new assignment at the hospital. He blurted out his question, his eyes big as half-dollars.
“Willie, that’s no way to talk!” Ida Johnson rebuked her son sharply, but there was doubt in her own expression. Turning back to face Grace, she said, “I never thought about such a thing—men losing their minds from the war.”
Grace sipped her coffee thoughtfully before answering. “It’s not too surprising when thee thinks about it. People go insane over less than what these men have gone through.”
“Are they dangerous, Grace?” Lettie asked breathlessly.
“Oh, not at all, Lettie!” Grace spoke up quickly. “Most of them are wounded so badly they couldn’t hurt anyone.”
“I’d be afraid to stick my nose in the door,” Mrs. Johnson announced, shaking her head. “There’s something about a person losing his mind that’s worse than losing an arm or a leg.”
“I agree with thee, Mrs. Johnson,” Grace said. “But the scripture enjoins us to comfort the feebleminded, doesn’t it?” She glanced at the old clock on the mantel, then exclaimed, “I’ve got to hurry. Do you mind if I don’t help thee with the dishes, Mrs. Johnson?”
“No, Lettie can help.”
Grace grabbed her coat, put her hat on, and raced out the door just as Ryan Callihan arrived in his cab. Grace scrambled up on the seat with him, greeting him cheerfully. As he drove along, she inquired about his family. He had a grandson in the Army of the Potomac and another in the Union Navy under Farragut. When he finished his report, she spoke of her new assignment, and Callihan stared at her in astonishment. “Faith! Is it crazy men ye’ll be nursin’?”
Grace was discouraged at the response from the Johnsons and from her old friend, but she shook it off. “They’re God’s children, and I’m thankful He’s allowing me to help them.”
Callihan shook his head, mystified by all of this. He had become very fond of Grace, despite her efforts to wean him from the bottle. His sharp blue eyes cut around more than once to watch her as she sat beside him, and finally when he stopped in front of Armory Square Hospital, he took her arm just as she prepared to step down.
“Lassie, you be on your guard!”
Grace patted his hand, gnarled with arthritis, and smiled fondly into his seamed face. “God will take care of me, Friend Callihan, and thee stay away from that saloon today!”
She stepped to the ground, waved at him, then turned and entered the hospital. She went at once to her locker, a wooden closet she shared with Ada Clower, and found the older woman putting on an apron. Ada was forty-two years old and built along the lines of a garden rake. She had been married twice but widowed that same number of times. Grace had heard one of Ada’s patients mutter, “Her husbands must have soured to death! She’d curdle milk with that face of hers!”
But Ada was capable enough, if somewhat bitter. “I heard you wuz goin’ to Ward K,” she grunted as she tied her bonnet in place, giving the strings a firm yank. She peered at Grace, then shook her head. “None of the rest of us would do it. Did you know that when you told Miss Dix you’d take the job?”
“No, but it’s all right, Ada. I don’t mind.”
“Humph!” Ada sniffed, then nodded sharply. “Ain’t no picnic, waitin’ on crazy men!”
Grace shook her head, saying cheerfully, “God is in Ward K, just as He’s in the other wards.” Turning away from the other nurse, she made her way down the hall, left the main building, and followed the raised wooden sidewalks that led to Ward K.
When she stepped inside, she stopped instantly, assaulted by the foul air. The waste cans haven’t been changed lately, she thought, and when she moved to the first bed, she discovered that the helpless man was lying in his own filth. Anger swept through her like a fire, but she let nothing show on her face. “Now then, let’s get you cleaned up,” she said cheerfully.
The patient was a middle-aged man with a full crop of salt-and-pepper whiskers. He stared up at her with frightened eyes and began to flop about on the bed, crying out, “I’m all right! I’m all right!” His eyes were bright with fever, and when she touched him, she knew that it was dangerously high. Qu
ickly she cleaned him and changed the dressing on his stomach, then put him down on the clean sheets, which she had expertly changed.
Placing her hand on his head, she stood there praying silently, and presently the wild eyes grew more calm. “I’m all right,” he muttered over and over, until he finally seemed to go to sleep.
Grace left the ward at once. She prayed for a quiet spirit, but it took all the power she could summon to keep from letting her anger spill over. Going at once to the mess room, she saw Nurse Sawyer eating breakfast. Going to her, she asked directly, “Who is the night nurse in charge of Ward K?”
“Why, Jesse Ormstead,” Nurse Sawyer said with surprise. She pointed at a group of the male nurses who were drinking coffee at a table near the wall. “He’s the one with the brown beard.”
Grace nodded, then walked to the table. The men looked up, and one of them winked at the others, saying something that made them laugh. Ignoring their behavior, Grace spoke firmly. “Jesse Ormstead, come with me.”
Ormstead was a sharp-faced man with a brown scraggly beard and a pair of sharp, hard brown eyes. He looked up at Grace, leaned back indolently, then said, “Why, you must be the new nurse in Ward K, I reckon.”
“That’s correct.”
“Well, you hustle on down to the ward,” Ormstead said with a sneer in his tone. “I’ll be along directly, soon as I finish this coffee.” He winked at the men and settled back in his chair.
Grace’s expression never altered, but she knew that if she allowed the man to get by with his insolence, she would never be able to maintain order in the ward. She stood there watching him, and it came to her what she must do.
“I understand General McClellan is in need of fifty thousand new men for his army,” she remarked pleasantly.
“Little Mac always needs men.” Ormstead shrugged. “What’s that got to do with me?”
Grace smiled easily. “It has this to do with thee, Jesse—” Grace’s voice took on a steely edge as she pinned the man with her eyes. “Thee will be one of those men if thee does not come with me right now. I can see that thee is a sloppy man, afraid of work. But thee will work…or thee will go to face the Rebels!”
“Hey! Now wait just—”
“Either come with me right now and do the work you left undone, or I will go at once to Dr. William Hammond, the surgeon general. When I tell him what a poor excuse for a nurse you are, he will have thee transferred this morning to the infantry. Make up thy mind, Jesse, which it shall be.”
Ormstead had always been a bully—it had served him well with other nurses—and he fell back on that now. His face grew red with anger, and he rose to his feet ominously. “I’ll see you in Hades before—”
“Fine!” Grace whirled and walked purposefully away. She had no idea if she could carry out her threat, but she was hoping that Ormstead would think so.
One of the men with Ormstead whispered, “That General Hammond, he’s a hard nut, Jesse! And that female looks like she means business! You’d better eat crow—and fast!”
Ormstead looked wildly after Grace, then dropped his coffee cup on the table. “Nurse!” he called out, and when she exited without a backward look, he grew pale and scurried after her.
Nurse Sawyer laughed and said to an assistant surgeon sitting across from her, “I think Ormstead’s met his match! He’s an arrogant fellow, and I hope Grace works him until he drops!”
Her words were almost prophetic, for after Ormstead’s abject apology and promise to reform, Grace forced him to work for four hours. She saw to it that he emptied all the pails, then mopped the floor.
While he was working, she moved around the ward, meeting the patients. Some of them were badly wounded, and she spoke with them calmly, changing dressings and feeding them when the breakfast was sent in from the kitchen.
Despite her resolution to keep a warm, pleasant expression, there was something chilling about the work. It was, she recognized, the blankness in the patients’ eyes that made it so. Most of the time they made no reply at all to her chatter. Some of them spoke only obscenities; others rattled off words with no meaning at all.
Grace spoke to them all the same, noting that some seemed fairly normal. But when she mentioned this to Miss Dix, who came to visit her just before noon, Miss Dix said, “Yes, some of them seem very normal—but those same men in five minutes might be raving, or they might go into that dreadful silence, just staring at the walls with poor, mad eyes.”
The two women talked for fifteen minutes, and then Miss Dix asked, “Have you met John Smith yet?”
“No, I haven’t. Which one is he?”
“The tall one, standing by the window.”
Grace had noticed the man, for he was, to say the least, eye-catching. He was very tall, with darkly handsome features, and he seemed to have no serious wound. In fact, compared to the others in the ward, he seemed quite healthy.
“You’ll be surprised when you talk to him, Nurse Swenson,” Miss Dix said, watching the tall man. “He’s the mystery man of our hospital.”
“Mystery man?” Grace asked, her curiosity quickened.
“He’s been here for nearly a month, but in all that time he’s never spoken once. He had some serious wounds, but they’ve healed—or almost so. But the mystery is that we can’t find out who he is.”
“What does thee mean by that?” Grace asked, puzzled.
“Just what I said.” Miss Dix shrugged. “We can’t find out his name. He can’t speak—or won’t—and there was nothing on him to identify him when he was brought in from the battlefield.”
“But surely some of his fellow soldiers—!”
“We don’t know which unit he was with. The battle scattered the troops terribly, and though we’ve tried, nobody has been able to identify him. We gave him the name John Smith to make bookkeeping easier.”
“How strange!”
“Yes, it is. But many men were taken prisoner in the battle— or simply blown to bits. Others were buried in unmarked graves, so there are many whose identification has been lost. It’s not really so surprising that we haven’t been able to identify Mr. Smith as of yet.”
“What will happen to him?”
“If he doesn’t get better, I suppose we’ll have to put him in an institution.”
“The insane asylum?”
“Yes.”
Grace looked again across the big room. The sunlight came in through the high windows, falling in a tapering bar across the face of the man who stood there. “What a terrible thing!” she whispered.
“War is terrible,” Miss Dix said with pain in her voice and in her eyes. “Do the best you can for these men,” she said, then left the room.
Grace moved about the room, stopping to speak to first one, then another, and finally came to stand beside John Smith.
“Well, Mr. Smith, you’re looking very well.”
For one moment she didn’t think the man heard her, but then he turned and looked at her. He had the darkest eyes she’d ever seen, so black it was almost impossible to see the pupils. He regarded her carefully but said nothing, and when she saw that he was not going to speak, she said cheerfully, “Well now, my name is Nurse Swenson, Mr. Smith. I’m going to take care of you for a while.”
The black eyes did not change, and finally Grace grew uncomfortable. She had the strange feeling that somewhere behind the blank stare that this tall man laid on her was a mind screaming and clawing to get out.
Sadly, she had no idea how to set that part of him free, but as she went about her work that day, it was John Smith who occupied her thoughts the most. When she left that evening, she was still thinking of him, troubled more by his opaque black eyes than by any of the other patients.
And when she lay down beside Lettie that night, the last prayer she prayed was for life to come into those dark, suffering eyes.
CHAPTER 11
THE AWAKENING
From the first, Ward K had a special place in Grace’s heart. Perhaps it was s
imilar to the inexplicable love a mother or father has for an afflicted child born in the midst of healthy children—but however it came about, she found herself spending more and more energy and time in that ward.
Certainly it was not because she saw more progress in Ward K than in other wards. On the contrary, she saw much less! The physical cures of the patients were about the same as those in the rest of the hospital, but only rarely did she see any of the men come out of the fog that shrouded their minds.
As winter came on, with October coming in like a lion with icy breezes, she found herself paying a price for her long hours. She began to lose weight and could not sleep. Miss Dix came to notice this and asked her to have tea in her office. This was fairly common, for the superintendent liked to keep personal contact with her nurses. When Grace arrived, Miss Dix indicated one of the chairs and began to pour the tea from a brass teakettle, which was singing a merry little tune.
“Now tell me all your problems,” Miss Dix said when they were sipping the tea. A thin smile touched her lips, and she shrugged. “Not that I can solve any of them—but it does one good to let them be said once in a while.”
Grace returned her smile. As she waited for an answer, the older woman noticed there was a thinness in her young associate’s face that had not been there in the fall, a hollowing of her cheeks and a more deep-set look about her eyes. Her color was not as good, and she seemed honed down to a thin fine edge.
“I have no complaints,” Grace said. She paused and sipped the tea from her cup, then added, “Whenever I get tired or upset, I think of some of our poor patients. Those without legs or arms. It makes my problems seem so small.”
“Yes, I do the same.” The older woman leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes for a moment. “They keep coming in, don’t they? Sometimes I think there’ll never be any end to it.”
The two women sat there enjoying the quiet moment. Such times were rare, for the hospital ran night and day, and new casualties kept arriving. Finally Miss Dix asked, “How are conditions in Ward K? I understand you built a fire under Jesse Ormstead.”
Appomattox Saga Omnibus 2: Three Books In One (Appomatox Saga) Page 45