Washington Infirmary

July 22, 1861

Little Benjamin clung to Samuel’s neck and wailed, refusing to let the nun take him. He smelled of damp hair, fresh linen, and childhood. Samuel turned his body and removed the boy from the scowling nun’s reach.

“Mr. Flynn! We have to get these orphans out of the beds. They are coming!” The desperation in the elderly woman’s voice matched that in her faded brown eyes.

Benjamin sobbed against his shoulder, and Samuel clutched him tightly. “I shall take them, Sister. I do not mind.”

She grabbed Samuel’s arm, the tips of her bony fingers digging through the cloth as she leaned closer. “You’re needed here. Saints preserve us! They say more than a thousand are coming.”

Samuel tried to ignore the dryness that crept up the back of his throat and robbed his mouth of moisture. A battle at Bull Run had ended in disaster for Federal troops. The broken and battered were on their way.

“Don’t send me back!” Benjamin wailed, his drops of sorrow wetting Samuel’s shirt.

The nun huffed. “Two weeks ago this boy grumbled over everything in this infirmary. If you stop coddling him, he’ll give up on these theatrics.”

The muscle in Samuel’s jaw ticked, and he turned his back on the impatient tap of her leather shoe. Amid the chaos of the scrambling nuns, physicians, and medical students, Samuel knelt and eased Benjamin’s head from where he buried it against Samuel’s neck. Grasping his shoulders, he stared earnestly into the boy’s eyes. “Benjamin. I need you to be strong for me now. We must think of Emily, mustn’t we?”

Benjamin blinked, his deep green eyes shimmering. “Emily doesn’t want to go. She was crying all morning.”

The nun skirted around him and put a hand to her hip. “What nonsense is this?” She clicked her tongue. “Children wanting to stay in a hospital. We need to go.” She hooked Benjamin’s elbow and pulled.

Benjamin screamed and tried to snatch his arm away. Samuel set his teeth and prayed God would grant him patience. “A moment, please, Sister. It will be easier for you if I can calm him.”

The nun hesitated for a moment and then, apparently seeing his logic, released the child and turned to usher the other urchins out of their sick gowns and into threadbare clothing.

“Please, Mr. Flynn,” Benjamin whimpered. “We don’t want to go yet.”

A strange tightness coiled around his chest and squeezed. Children muttered under the nun’s instructions, some sniffling and others stoically following command, their eyes dim. The joy that had permeated this ward during the past weeks dissipated. Soon this place would be filled not with children’s laughter but with the screams of the wounded.

Samuel focused on Benjamin. One issue at a time. “Why?”

Benjamin chewed his lip. He tried to bury the toe of his cracked shoe into the floor. “We like it here.”

Samuel cocked his head and attempted a smile. “In the hospital where you must lie about in bed in your infant’s gown?” He tried for humor, hoping the memory of one of their first days together might bring a smile to the boy’s tightly pinched lips. When more tears gathered instead, Samuel gave him a small squeeze. “We haven’t much time. Please, tell me what’s the matter.”

He sniffled and lowered his voice. “The children ain’t kind to her. They poke fun because she don’t talk much, and they say her eyes are too big. They call her mouse face.”

Samuel sat back on his heels, knowing full well children could be relentlessly unkind. “But she has you to look after her.” He patted Benjamin’s shoulder, hoping that somehow the inadequate gesture would give him the strength a child so small shouldn’t need. “She will listen to your words more than theirs.”

Benjamin’s eyes searched Samuel’s as though he would find answers there. “The nun said we was getting too big. They’ll send us to a girls’ home and a boys’ home now.”

Sorrow twisted Samuel’s stomach. Fear and uncertainty laced the boy’s quiet words, speaking volumes in naught but a few syllables. He looked frail, his eyes too full of sorrow and understanding for one so young. Samuel’s mind scrambled. Then, in a moment of irrational emotion, he scooped the boy from the floor and turned to the nun. He couldn’t let them be separated. Didn’t she see the children needed each other?

The sister held Emily by the wrist, and the little girl stared at the floor. Dressed in a faded blue skirt and blouse with her hair hanging limp about her shoulders, she seemed more like a worn doll than a child.

Samuel glared at the elderly nun. “Are you sending these two to different orphanages?”

The sister eyed him. Then her gaze darted to Benjamin clinging to his arm. “I trust the boy is ready now?”

Samuel clenched him tighter. “You didn’t answer my question. Is it your intention to separate these children from the only family they have?”

She glanced between the siblings and gave a small dip of her head. “It is the way of things.”

A way Samuel did not want to accept. “But they have only each other.”

Compassion filled her eyes, replacing the impatience that had swarmed there ever since Samuel had insisted on helping in the children’s ward until the wounded arrived. “As the children get older, it’s better they are separated.” Her tone pleaded with him to understand, to think about all the issues that could arise with housing restless youths together. “It’s best they each learn to be respectable men and women without the complications of joint living quarters.” A gentle smile tempered her angular features. “They’ll see each other again.”

Samuel pressed his lips together. It made sense. They would be cared for. The nuns may seem prickly, but they tended to the people no one else wanted. The Washington Infirmary gave proof of their persistent, if not always tender, care. The children would be safe, fed, and clothed. It would be for the best.

He set Benjamin on the floor, and a great emptiness enveloped him.

Lord, what is this feeling? Help it to pass. This is for the best.

Benjamin turned from him, defeat etched in his countenance and in every tremble of his small shoulders. He took his sister’s hand, squeezing it gently. Emily’s large brown eyes skewered Samuel’s heart. She took a small step forward.

“Thank you, sir,” she said softly, one of the handful of times she’d offered more than a smile. “I liked your tales.”

“Come now. We must be going.” The nun tugged on Emily’s arm, and she dropped her gaze to the floor.

Samuel struggled for words, but inexplicable emotion pasted his tongue to his pallet.

Benjamin wouldn’t look at him. The pressure that had squeezed Samuel sprouted thorns and pricked at him until he could barely breathe. A wild thought seized him and he tried to toss it aside.

Wisdom, please, Father. Remove these feelings as I have asked you to remove the smells.

Emily looked up at him one last time, and a glimmer of tears coated her eyes. Those large, expressive eyes that took in too much and let out too little. What would life be for this little one, separated from the only person who would guard such a tender heart?

Samuel’s stomach twisted, and this time, it had nothing to do with the smells filling the room.

The children gathered together, and without a glance back, the nun shooed them toward the door.

“Wait!”

The nun turned to him, questions in her eyes.

He rubbed the back of his neck. “If someone were to claim the children, would they be allowed to return to the orphanage together for a short time while arrangements could be made?”

The nun’s eyebrows lifted, widening her eyes. Samuel didn’t look down at the children, afraid of what he might see in their eyes. His pulse beat too rapidly as it was. What was he thinking?

The sister must have thought the same. She studied him. “Sir, unless a family has been found”—she shook her head—“we cannot foster false hopes.”

Movement shifted around the nun’s simple skirts, and Samuel glanced down. Two small faces peered up at him. Emily’s eyes filled with a guarded wonder, Benjamin’s with disbelief. Precious little ones, already wounded. Had he not sworn to heal wounds to the best of his ability? Had he not promised to do all in his power to care for those who needed aid? Samuel’s pulse slowed. Peace gurgled through him, easing his heart’s gallop.

He smiled. The nun frowned. The children stared.

“I cannot say that I have any experience with children, but I promise I will provide for them and care for them to the best of my ability.” He spoke to the nun, but kept his eyes on Benjamin. “I’ll need a lot of help becoming a guardian, but I am willing to learn.”

Benjamin’s eyes widened, and he swallowed hard, looking away as tears fell down his softly rounded cheeks. He’d been well for more than a week now but had managed to fool the nuns into thinking he had to stay. Now, Samuel better understood why. Emily still suffered a slight cough, and little Benjamin had done what he had to in order to stay by her side.

“You…are you certain?” the nun asked, drawing his gaze back to her face.

Strange as it seemed, he was. He reached down to ruffle Benjamin’s hair. “Of course. Why, I must speak now for such fine children, or surely someone else will soon whisk them away.”

The nun stared at him for several moments, then finally gave a small nod. “Very well, then. I will take them back to St. Nicholas Orphanage for one week. But only one. If they are not retrieved by then—”

Samuel lifted his hand to stay her words. “I will be along to fetch them as soon as we tend the incoming soldiers and I secure a nanny.”

A light sprung up in her eyes, and the nun turned to gather the other children, shooing them toward the door. Samuel dropped to his knee and stared at his two new charges. Were they as nervous as he?

Emily slowly stepped closer, lifted a tiny hand, and placed it on his cheek. She cocked her head and blinked at him.

Benjamin shifted his weight, his little hands shoved deep into his trouser pockets. “She wants to know if you mean it.”

Knowing the question came from both of them, Samuel nodded against her tiny hand. “I do, Emily. A night or two at the orphanage, and then I’ll be along to fetch you both. You have my word.”

“Why?”

Benjamin’s question hung on the air as heavily as that same word spoken from Samuel had earlier. His entire life had shifted in mere moments. He decided on simple honesty. “I couldn’t watch you go. Not knowing that you would be separated and I would never see you again.”

Benjamin sniffled and then squared his shoulders. “We will be good for you. I promise. We won’t make you want to send us back.”

Sorrow twisted him to think a boy so young would consider such things, but he offered Benjamin a smile. “I could never send you back. Then who would listen to my tales? I look rather foolish reading to the furniture. You are saving me the trouble of my neighbors thinking me mad.”

Benjamin stared at him, but little Emily giggled. Then the children were ushered out, leaving him for the briefest of moments in the silence of the empty children’s ward.

No sooner had they gone than shouts rang out through the building, heralding the arrival of those unfortunate boys who’d found more action at the hands of the Confederates than they truly wanted. Reports had reached the hospital yesterday evening about a shattered army, a defeat, and endless scores of injured men heading home to Washington.

They’d spent a hurried morning trying to prepare, moving the poor out and readying beds for the hundreds—some said more than a thousand—wounded soldiers who would arrive on wagons, buggies, and blistered feet.

Girding his courage for what he would face, Samuel breathed a prayer for strength and, for what seemed the millionth time, that he would not be able to smell. He stepped from the room that would no longer be the children’s ward and into the chaos of the hallway. Soldiers stumbled in, some shouting orders, others slumping against the wall.

For a moment, Samuel could only stare. Covered in mud, they sullied the halls and scrubbed floors, their scent a wall of sweat, blood, and filth that slammed into him and made his head spin. He placed his hand on the doorframe to steady himself.

“Flynn!”

Samuel turned to see Dr. Porter shouting at him, his face red above his neatly trimmed beard. Cold blue eyes bore into Samuel, assessing his every failure. Of all the students under his guidance, Dr. Porter liked Samuel least.

Samuel pulled himself away from the steadying fortitude of the door. “Yes, doctor?”

Dr. Porter flung his arm toward the mass of men. “Have you not eyes, man? We have work to do! Gather the rest of the bandages.”

“I already placed adequate supplies in each ward, ready for the nuns.”

Dr. Porter pushed past him, aiming for an officer at the end of the hall who half dragged a man with blood caked in his hair. “However much you placed, it will not be enough!”

Samuel hurried the other way. He slipped a key from his pocket and thrust it into the supply closet door. Sister Mary Abigail had warned that with this many men about, they may think to help themselves rather than wait for proper care and advised the room always remain locked. The key turned and Samuel ducked inside.

Merely two crates of clean cloth strips remained. He stacked one on top of the other and heaved them from the room, glad for his father’s insistence he always chop his own cords of wood to keep strong. After pausing only to be certain to lock the door behind him, Samuel lifted the crates once more and made his way through the throng pressing in the hallway.

Physicians shouted to officers and tried to separate the men into groups based on the varying degrees of their conditions. Samuel picked his way through the men ordered into the main wing and located Sister Mary Abigail.

She tucked a graying lock under her wimple and calmly motioned him to the bed of a man clutching his gut and moaning. Samuel stepped over the leg of a man who’d dropped to the floor when he could drag himself no farther.

“Set them over here, Mr. Flynn. The sisters and I will clean wounds and wrap them. All the physicians are to go to the western ward.”

She hurried away, the last clean scent trailing behind her. He reached down to haul the man from the floor onto the nearest bed, taking care to position him on the mattress. The man never stirred, though from injury or exhaustion, Samuel couldn’t tell. Sour musk clung to him like a shroud, and Samuel had to hold his breath until he finished removing the man’s boots and tucking them under the cot.

In the western ward, the metallic scent of blood clung to patients and doctors alike, the latter gathering those who would need sutures or amputations.

Taking a place by Dr. Porter, Samuel waited for instructions.

“You! What’s your condition,” Dr. Porter asked one dirty fellow with three missing buttons and the distinct smell of a man who had been struggling with dysentery.

He held up a hand that had been wrapped in a cloth. Crimson and black stains caked the wrap. “Lost two fingers.”

Without a word, Dr. Porter waved him to the left. The man shot a look at Samuel, then cradled his hand in his other arm and turned away. Knowing his duty must take precedence over his heaving insides, Samuel decided this soldier would be his first. He took a step closer, the smell of something putrid rising in the air and sticking to his nostrils.

Forcing himself not to recoil, he placed a hand on the soldier’s upper back and guided him over to an open bed.

The man sank, his wide shoulders slumping.

Samuel instructed one of the nuns to fetch him a pan of water.

“I am Mr. Flynn.” Best to get right to business and keep himself focused. “If you’ll allow me, I’ll see to your hand.”

The soldier glanced up at him, wary eyes set in a sweat and dirt stained face. “You’re not a physician?”

“Nearly. I’m in the final days of completing my studies.”

The man hesitated and then shrugged, holding out the hand. Samuel unwrapped it, holding his breath against what he found inside.

Torn flesh hung around the snapped bones of the man’s trigger and middle finger, the first of which still had mud caked onto the white bone.

Samuel breathed through his mouth, though it did little good. “You did not wash this?”

“No time. Grabbed a cloth and wrapped it up, then did my best to get out of there.”

He rotated the soldier’s wrist. “And you had no time for washing at any point during your march back to Washington?”

The man shifted. “Didn’t want to see it.”

The nun returned with water and clean bandages, left them next to the bed, and hurried off on another mission. Samuel turned the soldier’s hand over, noting most of the bleeding had been stemmed by caked dirt and blood. “I’ll have to clean it, remove the broken bone fragments, and then stitch the skin back together.”

“Will I be able to shoot again?”

“That I cannot say. You’ll lose both fingers. The first at the center knuckle, and the second at the base of your hand.”

He seemed to accept this and waited as Samuel ignored the screams and moans of the other men filling the room. One patient at a time. He shut off his nose and breathed through his mouth, but still the overpowering thickness gagged him.

He swallowed the shame and bile and gathered the supplies he would need. The soldier inhaled the chloroform Samuel waved under his nose, and then relaxed back against the mattress. He grunted in pain a few times, but mostly remained still as Samuel removed the dirt, blood, and broken bone from his hand.

Some minutes later, Samuel stitched flaps of skin together over the stubs of the missing digits and then wrapped the hand in a clean cloth. As long as he kept his gaze narrowed on his task and breathed slowly, his head remained clear enough to perform a single duty. Perhaps that would be the key to success.

With bolstered confidence, he gathered his supplies and left the man to rest, keeping his gaze on the floor as he turned to the man on the next bed. Before he could lift his eyes to assess his needs, the soldier rolled to his side and retched.

Blood and stomach contents spilled over Samuel’s shoes. The smell exploded on his senses, his own stomach violently rebelling. Samuel stumbled backward, and an involuntary quick intake of air sent fetid vapors down his throat and caused his head to swim.

His stomach lurched.

No. Samuel clenched his arm across his midsection as sweat popped out on his brow and slid down the side of his face. This couldn’t happen. Not now.

He forced leaden feet forward, past the heaving man, down the center of the aisle, and past doctors scrambling for supplies. Dr. Porter reached for him, then called his name.

The edges of his vision became fringed in black, and heat clawed up his spine. Somehow, he managed to push past groaning soldiers in the hall and to the rear door of the hospital. He gulped for fresh air, praying it would soothe the roaring storm within.

Rather than a sweetened breeze, only the bouquet of damp earth, horse manure, and waste greeted him.

Help me.

He doubled over, and shame consumed him as his stomach emptied.