Wedded to War (27 page)

“Next,” said a large woman with black hair pulled tightly into a bun. Ruby stood and followed her into a small white room with an anatomical poster on the wall and chrysanthemums in a vase on the windowsill. “The doctor will be with you shortly,” the woman said, and closed the door behind her.

Ruby’s restless fingers played in and out of the pleats darting out from the waist of her plain blue muslin dress. It was not showy in any way, but modest and humble, the way Ruby saw herself.

The door opened, and in walked a demure older woman in a black dress and white pointe-lace collar. She was exactly the same as Ruby had remembered her that day in Five Points.

“Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell.” Her British accent was crisp as she extended her hand to Ruby.

“Ruby O’Flannery. I don’t expect you remember me, but I met you last summer in Five Points. You gave me your card, and here I am.”

“Really! I don’t believe I have seen you there since then. Where have you been hiding yourself?”

A wave of heat washed over Ruby’s face. “Oh, I’m not in Five Points any longer and I’ll never be going back. Took a domestic job straight away after I saw you, I did.” She hoped no further explanation would be necessary.

“Well Ruby, tell me what the trouble is. How can I help you?”

“For the last week or so, I’ve been sick every day. Can’t keep my breakfast where it belongs, if you get my meaning. I get so I’m afraid to eat anything at all. Utterly worn out, I am, and I don’t understand it. I’m not working overly hard. I’m just tired.”

“Mmm hmmmm.” Dr. Blackwell pressed her stethoscope to Ruby’s chest. “Breathe in please. And out. Again.” She dropped the stethoscope around her neck and reached for a thin wooden stick. “Stick out your tongue and say ‘ah.’ That’s a good girl.” She withdrew the tongue depressor and folded her hands in her lap.

“Have you eaten anything unusual lately?”

Ruby shook her head.

“Are your breasts tender? When was your last menses?”

“My what?”

“Your monthly flow of blood? Your female cycle?”

Slowly, painfully, the haze of confusion lifted.

“I’m late.” She clutched her middle.

“How late?”

Ruby leaned forward, arms crossed over her stomach, and began rocking back and forth.

“Too late,” she groaned. “Too late, I’m too late, it’s too late!”

Hard rain drummed against the window, blurring the view outside. Dr. Blackwell leaned back in her chair and sighed. “I take it a baby is not good news for you.”

Ruby pressed her fingers to her eyelids. She had been a mother twice, and lost her babies twice. Motherhood was the sweetest sorrow she had ever known. For years, she had half hoped she would conceive another child, but at least her empty womb meant she would have no more mouths to feed and bodies to clothe and keep warm. She had considered herself a barren woman. To conceive now was the cruelest trick yet played on her.

“What about the father?” Dr. Blackwell asked. “Won’t your husband be pleased?”

Ruby’s laugh sounded faraway and crazy even to herself. She wasn’t sure which question to dodge first. “It’s a long story.” She looked out the window. “You wouldn’t understand.”

“I bet I would. You’re not the only woman with an unplanned pregnancy I’ve ever seen. Your husband isn’t the father, is he?”

Ruby shook her head. “I don’t even know where my husband is. He’s been with the Sixty-Ninth Regiment, never sent a penny to me as he promised, left me here to support myself.” Her gaze was fixed, unblinking, on the chrysanthemums on the windowsill past Dr. Blackwell’s shoulder. “I did my best, Doctor, but surely you know how it is in Five Points. Impossible. It was impossible.”

“So you turned to prostitution.”

“I was driven to it.”

“My dear Mrs. O’Flannery Are you familiar with the name William Sanger? No, not likely. He was commissioned about six years ago to conduct a study on the surging prostitution industry in New York City, and has updated the findings since then. You must not think your
position is rare. There were nearly eight thousand prostitutes in 1855, and I cannot think the number has changed much since that time. Almost three thousand of them Irish.”

Ruby’s fingers curled into claws and dug into her waist.

“I tell you this as your doctor. Most prostitutes are not long for this world. They die within four years either from venereal disease or alcoholism, which your race, for some reason, is particularly prone to.”

The hackles raised on Ruby’s neck, even though she could not deny the evidence of Irish drunkenness she had seen. Dr. Blackwell’s accent gave her away. She was English—the race that dominated the Irish even worse than the way Southern plantation owners dominated their Negro slaves. “What do you know about
my race?
”

Dr. Blackwell’s eyes softened. “Don’t misunderstand me, Mrs. O’Flannery. I mean no insult. I harbor no ill will toward you or your race.” She paused. “My daughter is Irish.”

“What?”

“I adopted Kitty when she was seven, and I was in England. She’s twelve now. She looks a bit like you—your hair.” She smiled. “And I’m telling you what I would tell my own daughter. You must find another way to survive.”

Cold raindrops pelted themselves against the window now. Ruby would be drenched as soon as she left the infirmary.

“And what should I do instead?” She searched Dr. Blackwell’s eyes for an answer she knew was not there. “You’re just like the rest of them, you are. Saying ‘Be good and moral and don’t sell your body, don’t sell your soul,’ but you don’t understand. I used to be a clean and decent woman, and in my heart I still am. I hate the way I make my money. You see? Telling me to leave this sort of life is like telling a man with no legs to get up and walk. I have no legs. Do you see? I have no legs.”

Dr. Blackwell nodded slowly, leaned back in her chair, and drummed her fingers on the papers in her lap. She leaned forward. “What would you say if I offered you a pair?”

“What?”

“A pair of legs. A way to get out, and far away from here—to Washington. Ruby, how would you like to get paid by the government for doing laundry? With a roof over your head, and food every day.”

“I don’t understand.”

The older woman pulled a piece of paper from her pocket. A letter. “I just so happen to know of a military hospital in dire need of a laundress. It’s a difficult job. The linens are soiled with blood and filth, and the stink would be enough to curl the hair on your head. But if you could handle Five Points, you could handle this. Here is your way out.”

Ruby could not have been more surprised if Matthew himself had showed up in this room.
Matthew …
If he found out she was pregnant with another man’s child, he would surely kill her. But if she could find him soon, and if they could have relations, it may not be too late. He was never very good at math. If Matthew was still with the Sixty-Ninth around Washington City, she just might be able to salvage the situation.

Ruby looked Dr. Blackwell in the eyes and took a deep breath. “When do I start?”

C
harlotte Waverly dug her fingernails between the grooves of her cherry wood bedpost and braced herself for another sharp yank from behind. For Alice and Jacob, a weeklong furlough in New York meant resting at their estate in Fishkill. For Charlotte, it meant only performance.

“Tighter,” said Caroline, straining with the corset. “Did I tell you even Jane has a beau now? You really must look your best for Mr. Hastings tonight. That he should call on you after you spent the entire courting season nursing strange men—well, it speaks volumes for his character. You really do know how to put a man’s head into a lemon squeezer.”

Charlotte couldn’t argue the point. Caleb’s face surged before her, and she wondered where and how he was. After he mustered out of Connecticut’s Second Regiment, he had mustered right back in with the Seventh. In his last letter, sent from Annapolis, Maryland, he had told her they were about to embark to Port Royal, South Carolina. Before
the ship left port, she had sent Maurice to him with a basket of food, extra medicines, and a volume of Tennyson. That was the last they knew of his whereabouts.

Another tug on her waist.

Charlotte sucked in her breath. She was right back where she had started. Caleb was not here. He had his own life to live. The freedom she had flexed as a nurse in Washington was clearly meant to stay there. This was the life she had left behind, and the life that would always be waiting for her.

She had forgotten how many layers a woman’s wardrobe was supposed to have. Stockings, long-legged muslin drawers, a linen shift, the whalebone corset, two lace-trimmed petticoats, steel hoop skirt, and then, finally, a gown to top it all, measuring a fashionable fifteen inches in diameter at the waist, and six feet wide at the skirt.

Caroline inspected Charlotte’s reflection in the three-way mirror in her dressing room. The layered flounces of golden silk and blonde lace trim shimmered in the kerosene lamp’s amber glow.

“Well, it fits you better since you lost some weight.” Caroline looked pleased.

“Odd. It still feels tight.”

“Charlotte, what’s that?” Caroline jabbed a finger toward a faint line on her neck, a demarcation between the white skin that had been hidden under the nursing uniform all summer, and the slightly darker shade of her neck and face, a souvenir of the scorching southern sun. The difference was barely discernible now, but it still smacked of outdoor labor. Caroline was horrified.

“The opera cloak will cover it.” Charlotte reached for the orange-and-gold striped wrapper. The gold tassels on the hood and edging of silk fringe complemented the skirt peeking out from beneath.

“Make your lips into pretty shapes when you talk! Prunes and prisms!” Caroline instructed.

Her dressing and toilette complete, Charlotte stared out her bedroom window at a smoky autumn sunset, and waited. For the first time in months, the hands which had flown about making beds and beef tea,
writing letters, dispensing medicine, and dressing wounds, were now idle. They looked listless in her lap.
Probably in need of stimulants
, she mused.

A knock sounded on the door below. For a moment, Charlotte listened to Jane greeting Phineas and Phineas greeting Caroline before she rose and swept down the stairs.

Her pulse quickened the moment her eyes met his. She had forgotten how handsome a man could be. He was perfectly whole, perfectly polished, and perfectly dressed, as always. Beneath his black wool frock coat, he wore a grey silk waistcoat with satin stripes, pleated shirt and bow-tied cravat, both of gleaming white. Doffing his top hat, he bowed low to her, and pressed her hand to his lips in a warm, lingering kiss that left her just the slightest off balance.

“At last,” he said, still holding her hands. “My heart has come home to me.” He held her in his gaze, and her breath caught in her throat. The scent of musk was both comforting and exhilarating. Good gracious! How long had it been since she’d been around a man who smelled not of beef tea or filth, but of cologne! She breathed it in again. Heavenly.

“Are you well?” His eyes swept from the russet leaves in her hair to the lace-trimmed petticoat peeking out beneath her flounces. “I’ve never seen a more beautiful sight. Please say you’ll let me take care of you now.”

Charlotte matched his smile with one of her own. “Yes, please,” she whispered, overwhelmed at the height of her emotion. She had forgotten, utterly and completely, what it was like to be cherished. To be noticed and cared for, rather than always caring for the needs of others. And now here was a man who saw her beauty and did not try to soil it, like some of those she had met in the hospitals in Washington. He wanted to nurture her, and she could not help but warm to him, like a flower turns her face toward the sun.

Phineas held her hand in his as he helped her into his carriage, and she did not chafe. Before the war, such a gesture made her flighty hand feel like a bird trapped in a cage. But now, Phineas’s hand around hers felt warm and solid. She enjoyed it.

Strange, how such fulfilling work as a nurse could drain her until
she was so empty. She needed to be restored, to remember a world without moans, pain, and death. She needed Phineas.

The opera they attended that evening was like stepping into another world—one in which things made sense. The music was beautiful and orderly, all the instruments keeping time to the rhythm of a single conductor. Not a note was out of tune with the rest. Any pain portrayed in the characters was temporary, and served a greater purpose. By the conclusion, all problems had been resolved, and the audience was satisfied. It was the antithesis of the war.

When the doors opened, a heavily perfumed tide of fur, silk, and top hats washed around her, carrying her on its current as the crowd spilled out of the opera house. The sweeping crush of elegance around her seemed as unreal as the opera she had just watched.

It bothered her.

She wanted to enjoy herself, but wherever she looked, she saw faces of her patients—some of them surviving, some of them dying. Her mind’s eye played tricks on her under the gas lights until the ravages of war mingled hideously within this mass of silk and jewels. A crimson rose in a gentleman’s lapel was a bloody wound. A lady’s fluttering fan chased buzzing flies off a gangrenous limb. A white-tipped cane in the hand of a gentleman was a walking stick for an amputee.

Corset pressing on her lungs, Charlotte’s breath came in shallow sips. She squeezed Phineas’s arm but kept silent about her hallucinations. She did not want to admit, even to herself, that images of war were lodged within her spirit like fragments of bone shattered by a minié ball—hidden, painful, and impossible to remove.