Wedded to War (49 page)

Caleb grabbed her by the shoulders. “I got your letter,” he said, pinning her down with his eyes. “Right now, I need you to obey my order, as a doctor to a nurse. Help me. I know you can do it. I order you to do it.”

Charlotte was paralyzed.
I can’t. I’ll make mistakes. I don’t want this responsibility.

“Hang it all, Charlie!” He shouted at her, chest heaving, as if he could read her mind. The voice she’d always remembered as warm and comforting was now white-hot with conviction. “This isn’t about us, about how we feel, about the nightmares it will give us! It’s about them.
Them!
” He spread his arms wide above the fallen soldiers. “There are people here we can actually help, but they are mixed in with the lost causes. Find the ones we can help! Sort them out from the rest so they have a chance at a hospital! You have a brain, and I want you to use it! Will you do that?”

Cool drops of rain splattered on their bodies like drops of water sizzling in frying pan. They faced off, both of them pulsing with emotion, both of them aware that as they argued, more men died. There was no time for this, and Charlotte knew it.
Lord, give me strength and courage!
she prayed desperately.
Give me discernment!

Charlotte’s footsteps sounded distant to her as she trod the halls of Armory Square Hospital. It was an amazing place, constructed according to Sanitary Commission recommendations: one thousand beds in twelve pavilions. She had barely slept since arriving back in Washington.

After four days of loading the wounded onto the trains, they were
finally all off the field, except for the ones now at rest in shallow graves within a stone’s throw of the railroad station.
They would have died anyway
, Caleb had said.
We got all the rest home.
Anywhere not on the battlefield was home enough for the wounded, at least for now.

But of course, the work didn’t stop here. Charlotte’s hands hadn’t stopped bathing and feeding patients, changing dressings, and soaking bandages since they arrived here with the last load of wounded. And Caleb’s hands hadn’t stopped cutting off arms and legs.

The pile of limbs outside the surgery window grew ever higher as it baked in the sun. The nauseating stench drew hordes of buzzing flies that scattered only to make room for another deposit dropped out the window.

On her way to replenish her tray of bandages, Charlotte paused outside the surgery room to catch a glimpse of Caleb. His arms were stained with blood up to his elbows, his face haggard beneath a week’s worth of stubble. He had been standing at that surgery table for almost forty-eight hours, refusing a break until his knees refused to support him anymore. She watched helplessly as he collapsed from exhaustion.

Charlotte stepped away from the door as two men hauled him out and lowered him onto a cot to sleep. When they had shut themselves back into the operating room, Charlotte studied Caleb’s face in his near-catatonic sleep, wishing she could offer him some words of comfort and receive some in return.

Instead, she fetched a basin of water, a sponge, and a bristle brush, and sat by his side, washing his arms and hands. Every stroke of the sponge on his arms came away red—not from his own blood but from the carving away of men from their limbs. She scrubbed blood from his fingernails, just as he had once done for her after her father had died. Tears fell from her burning eyes, rippling the scarlet water in the basin, her heart aching for what this war required of Caleb. Of all of them.
Some wounds are invisible.

No wonder he had not responded to her letter. He was married to
his work, for the sake of the country. It was as it should be. She would not distract him from it.

The setting was perfect.

They may be able to keep me from their house of snobs on Sixteenth Street
, thought Phineas as he watched Charlotte from a safe distance,
but no one will look for me here.

Learning her whereabouts had proven easy enough from the rumors circulating about Charlotte Waverly’s latest exploits. Following the trail that led to her had been his driving force ever since that cretin, Jacob Carlisle, had driven him out of the Waverly brownstone.
Humiliating!
The idea that Phineas had played the coward had writhed in his belly ever since. It would not happen again. Next time he met any opposition, he’d be prepared.

Phineas felt the weight of his father’s revolver on his hip and took a deep breath. He’d never be a coward again. He’d show Charlotte, too, when the time was right.

If anyone questioned his presence at Armory Square Hospital, he had planned to say he was a civilian volunteering at the request made by the War Department. But when he found a Union uniform that fit his frame in one of the linen rooms, he rejoiced at his good fortune, and grabbed a cane for good measure. No one would question a convalescent soldier limping about a hospital complex of this size.

Phineas’s lips curled into a twisted smile beneath his mustache as he observed the scene unfolding before him now. He had been watching Charlotte care for patients for hours, but this one was different, he could tell immediately. The way she bathed that man with such tenderness and intimacy—it just wasn’t decent.

Phineas studied his face for a moment longer. He looked familiar
… It couldn’t be!
Could it? The man who waltzed with Charlotte at the ball right after the war started. The only man not wearing the proper black tie formal attire, as if he’d come at the last minute. The only partner
Charlotte had danced with that he hadn’t already known. An “old family friend, that’s all,” she had said, but she hadn’t introduced them to each other.
Why hadn’t she?

Suspicion bubbled into a boiling rage.
Had she harbored feelings for him the entire time?

He turned his attention back to Charlotte. She was filthy herself, smudged with locomotive soot, dirty, sweaty. Her hair was a tangled mass at her neck. No hint of breeding or refinement was about her. He was sure he didn’t love her anymore—but that was beside the point. She had humiliated him, and she would pay for it.

No
, Phineas corrected himself.
That man—the doctor she was caring for with obvious familiarity—would pay for it.
If she loved him, any pain he felt would be felt just as much by her.

With one hand holding his father’s pocket watch, and the other on the gun at his hip, Phineas spun on his heel and limped away, chanting silently to himself. Phineas Hastings is no coward.
Phineas Hastings will not be duped. Potter Hatch is dead. Phineas Hastings is in control.

Phineas scanned the rows of beds in the amputee ward until his eyes settled on the angry face of a young man whose legs had been amputated well above the knee. Both of them.

Just the man I’m looking for.

Striding up to his bedside, Phineas squatted on the floor beside him.

“What do you want?” said the boy.

“Hey now, I’m on your side, soldier,” said Phineas. “What’s your name?”

“Nathan.”

“Well, Nathan, I see you’ve come upon some tough times, haven’t you?”

Nathan glared at him.

“Have you got a girl back home?”

“Used to.” He snorted.

“What happened?”

“Just wrote her a letter breaking things off.”

“Oh, is that so? Did you tell her what happened?”

Nathan shook his head. “Nah. But I couldn’t let her wait around for just half a man, see? She needs to give me up and move along.”

“Such a shame.” Phineas clucked his tongue. “You’re a real good-looking young man. I’m sorry this happened to you.”

Nathan’s face glowered. “The doctor said if he didn’t take my legs, I would die. Something about the poisons from the wounds infecting my entire body until it killed me.” He gave a brave shrug. “I figured at least my mom would still want me, even without my lower half.”

“Yes, well. Do you remember the doctor who told you this? Can you tell me what he looks like?”

Nathan described the man Charlotte had been bathing. Phineas’s heart beat faster. This was going better than he expected.

“Oh no,” said Phineas. “Oh my heavens, oh no no no. It isn’t right.”

Nathan’s eyelids thinned. “What?”

“That doctor is notorious, I’m afraid. A butcher. Just for the fun of it, he will take off a leg or an arm, or two—” he nodded at the empty space on the cot where Nathan’s legs had once been. “I hate to say this son, but I overheard another doctor say your legs could have been saved—both of them.” Phineas shook his head in mock sympathy. Nathan’s face looked as if it had been set in stone. He didn’t move. “Such a needless tragedy. Absolutely senseless. Just think, you could have been a whole man yet, could have gone home to marry your girl, have children. And now you’re destined to be carried around by your mother like a baby for the rest of your life. Quite hard to feel like a man that way, I daresa—”

“Enough!” Nathan exploded.

“You have every right to be upset, my dear boy, but not at me. I am only the messenger.” Phineas leaned in and whispered. “Are you mad
enough to do something about it? To make sure it never happens again to any other soldier?”

Nathan’s chest heaved with rage, his eyes narrowed. A good sign.

Phineas reached into his jacket and grasped the cool barrel of a six-shot Walker revolver. “You’d be a hero, son,” he said, and pressed the handle into Nathan’s hand.

A
t six feet three inches tall, Surgeon General William Hammond cut an impressive figure walking down the halls of the Armory Square Hospital. Charlotte had seen him make his rounds before, checking on the casualties from Second Bull Run. Word had it he felt personally responsible for the men.
That’s only right
, Charlotte had responded.
He is.

Today, however, he came straight to her.

“Do I have the pleasure of addressing Miss Charlotte Waverly?” he asked, as if she were in hoops and silks and not matted down with grime.

“At your service.” She smiled.

“At last,” he said, exhaling. “I’ll make this brief. We’ve just opened up a new hospital for the sick and wounded at Portsmouth Grove, Rhode Island. It’s near Newport.”

“Very good,” said Charlotte, wondering what this had to do with her.

“The surgeon-in-charge there is in full favor of having ladies work there, even in positions of leadership.”

“That’s wonderful!”
Still waiting …

“What do you say?”

Charlotte blinked. “Pardon me?”

“Please, Miss Waverly. Miss Katharine Wormeley was asked to be director, but she refuses unless she has a co-director. From what Mr. Olmsted tells us, you are the perfect fit for the position. Resourceful, determined, highly adaptable, and trained in our own Sanitary Commission methods of nursing and administration—a major benefit. You and Miss Wormeley will hire your own nurses, matrons, special diet cooks, arrange everything to your liking. The only caveat is that we would need you to come at once. There is much work to be done.” She was speechless. A co-director of a hospital?