"Morning, matron."
"Up, Bob, up — they're here."
To confirm it, she stopped at a broken window. A little light showed in the bleak sky, revealing a long line of the two-wheeled horrors snaking through the narrow street to the main entrance. Surveying the hall again, she saw no surgeons. They were customarily the last to arrive, something to do with dramatizing their importance, she had decided.
Despite her dislike of the doctors, she realized that all who worked at the hospital had a common cause — succoring and healing men injured in battle with a detestable enemy. Those crying out from the ambulances had fought in behalf of poor dead Grady, against the vicious army of aristocrats and mudsills Virgilia hated more than anything except slavery itself. That was why she worked so hard to replace dirt with cleanliness, pain with ease, despair with contentment.
She had taken to the work. It was honorable. Favorite lines from the Shakespeare play set five centuries before Christ reinforced her view. Every day or so, she silently repeated Volumnia's scornful speech to Virgilia about the shedding of blood. It more becomes a man than gilt his trophy. The breasts of Hecuba, when she did suckle Hector, looked not lovelier than Hector's forehead when it spit forth blood.
Virgilia had the stomach for nursing. Many of the well-meaning volunteers didn't and quickly returned home. She had a person like that in her ward now. In Washington only three days, the young woman was clearly revolted by her duties. Still, Virgilia liked her.
She knocked loudly at the door of a parlor converted to a dormitory for the female nurses; the matrons had small separate rooms, no great blessing.
"Ladies? Get up, please. They've come. Hurry, you're needed immediately."
She heard bustling, soft talk in the parlor. She pivoted with a precision that was unconsciously military and, marched toward the flung-back doors of her ward. On one of them a sorry brass sign hung from a nail in its corner. Reading downward at a forty-five-degree angle, the engraved script said ball room.
The ward consisted of forty beds and a central stove into which Bob Pip was tossing kindling while another soldier nurse lit the mantles. Virgilia marched down the aisles, inspecting to the right and to the left, and when necessary straightening coverlets or the beds themselves. Miss Dix's experiment of employing women had been an unexpected success because the original plan — to place the soldier nurses in charge of the wards — had two flaws: convalescing men tired quickly, and they could not easily and naturally provide the one thing a battle-weary veteran wanted almost as much as he wanted to be well and free of pain — tenderness. Virgilia spent as much time sitting at bedsides, holding hands and listening, as she did changing dressings and assisting surgeons.
As she completed the inspection, her female assistant came in. She was a husky, plain woman, about thirty, with a pleasant face and a great amount of brown hair done up in braids and held by her hairnet. She had told Virgilia she had ambitions as a writer and had already published some articles and verse when patriotic fervor lured her to the volunteer nurses.
"Good morning, Miss Alcott. Please come along and help me bring in our wounded."
"Certainly, Miss Hazard."
With clear command, Virgilia gestured and called out, "Bob — Lloyd — Casey — to the lobby, please."
She marched at the head of her group. A bilious look spread over the face of Louisa Alcott. The lobby was not yet in sight, but they could smell its strong odors — familiar odors that had made Virgilia ill the first time she was exposed to them.
She did hope Miss Alcott would last; something told her the woman had the makings of a fine nurse. She came of a famous family. Her father, Bronson, the Concord educator and transcendentalism conducted experiments with model schools and communal living. But pedigree wouldn't help her here. Virgilia was dismayed when Miss Alcott gulped and said, "Oh, dear heaven," as the group from Ward One entered the lobby.
Similar groups were arriving from other wards to claim their charges. And there they were, walking unaided or on crutches or being carried, the young, brave boys from Fredericksburg, some so encrusted with mud and bloody bandages it was hard to see their uniforms. She heard Louisa Alcott choke and quickly said, "From now on carry a handkerchief soaked in ammonia or cologne, whichever you prefer. You'll soon find you don't need it."
"You mean you've gotten used to —?"
But Virgilia was off among the litter-bearers, pointing. "Take forty that way, to the ballroom."
Her heart broke as she watched them go. A youth with his right hand sawed off and the stump bandaged. A man about her age, wounded in the foot, struggling with his crutch and staring with eyes like panes of glass. A soldier on a litter, thrashing back and forth, tears trickling into his mud-caked beard while he repeated, "Mother. Mother." Virgilia picked up his hand and walked along beside the litter. He quieted; the anguished lines vanished from his face. She held his hand till they reached the ballroom entrance.
The soap and disinfectant sloshed everywhere last night might have been saved for all the good it did now. Very quickly, the wounded generated a reeking miasma of dirt, festering wounds, feces, vomit. As always, the stench had a strange effect on Virgilia. Rather than disgusting her, it sharpened her sense of being needed and her conviction that the struggle would and must end just one way — with the South reduced to a mudhole, as Congressman Stevens put it so splendidly.
The efficient Bob Pip set out towels, sponges, and blocks of brown soap. A black man brought a kettle from the kitchen and poured steaming water into basins. The ambulance drivers helped their charges to beds, then left. Virgilia saw one sleazy brute eying her. She feigned annoyance and turned her back. Men often noticed her, though it wasn't beauty to which they were responding, merely size. She didn't mind. Once, no one had noticed anything.
"What 'n the divil is this goddamn place?" The booming voice had an Irish lilt. Behind the stove, now radiating heat, Virgilia saw a broad-shouldered soldier in his twenties, red-haired and red-bearded, thrashing about on his cot. "Don't look like Erie, Pennsylvania — nor the old sod neither —"
Pip told the soldier he was in the Union Hotel Hospital. The man started to climb out of bed. Pip restrained him. The soldier cursed and made a second effort. We will begin with him, Virgilia thought. Others were watching, and establishing authority in the ward was important.
She strode to the Irishman's cot. "Stop that foul talk. We're here to help you."
The bearded soldier squinted at her. "Skip the help, woman, an' give me something to eat. Ain't had a thing but hardtack since Burny sent me up that damn hill to die." He wiggled his left foot, wrapped in stained bandages. "Feels like all I did was surrender me toes, or a bit more."
The movement had pained him; that caused anger. "Jasus, woman, don't stand there. I want food."
"You will get nothing until we remove those filthy clothes and wash you down. That is standard hospital procedure."
"An' who the fu — Who's gonna do the washing, might I ask?" The Irishman rolled his eyes around the room, clearly telling her he saw no one capable by sex or training.
"One of my nurses will do it. Miss Alcott."
"A woman bathe me? I should say to God not!"
Above his beard, his cheeks were red. Pip set a bowl of water beside the cot, then handed Miss Alcott two towels, sponge, and brown soap. The soldier attempted to roll away from the women. Virgilia gestured.
"Bob, help me."
She seized the Irishman's shoulders and with some effort kept him in bed. "We do not want to inflict more pain on you, Corporal, and we won't if you cooperate with us. We intend to remove everything except your undergarments and scrub you thoroughly."