Jana and Leanne struggled to transfer the heaviest of the wounded from the ambulance to stretchers until they accepted help from the steward, but only after he’d apologized to Clara for his unkindness toward her. He claimed he was cranky from lack of sleep, but he’d spit his odiously discriminatory words out so easily that Jana surmised he represented a foreshadowing of the obstacles women had ahead of them in pioneering their way into professions up to now reserved for men.
While Mary assessed each case for surgical priority, Clara decided their placement and, once all eight patients were situated, Mary turned to Jana and Leanne and said, “One of you boys help me in surgery, the other help Clara inside.”
Leanne volunteered to assist Mary and was right on her heels when they disappeared into the surgical quarters.
Jana was glad. She’d rather go inside and hold a hand than go back into surgery to help hack one off.
“Feel free to finish your breakfast and rest a spell, Johnnie,” Clara said, blowing a wisp of her fallen hair away from her face.
Jana gobbled up the rest of her biscuit and gulped down her coffee. “I’m at your disposal and, as soon as you show me what to do, you must rest,” she said and hustled after Clara.
Inside the sick ward, Clara armed Jana with instructions, soap, salve, cloth bandages, and wash pans to treat the wounded. Away she went, never resting that day as far as Jana saw.
The hours melted away fast for Jana as she cleaned and wrapped wounds. At first, she nearly fainted from the smell of pus-oozing wounds, made more rancid by the heat of the fires blazing away in each of the rooms where she worked. She was able to quickly smother it beneath the rewards of her work and gratitude of the wounded in the form of a wink, nod, or kind word. Even so, with each pitiful whimper or gut-wrenching cry from the sufferers, Jana became more spiteful of war.
Around mid-afternoon, Keeley ambled into the dining room, emptied of all furniture, where Jana bustled about. He whistled an Irish tune as he transferred the cherry logs stacked in his arms to the grate and then stoked up a blaze. On his way out, he collected the soiled bandages that Jana had heaped in a basket by the door and returned minutes later with a mop and bucket of sudsy water. “Ye look dead, Johnnie.” He looked around with a grimace and said, “I hope no one heard meself say that.”
“Even if they did, they’d understand. We’re all tired and bound to say whatever pops into our heads. Furthermore, I doubt anyone would take issue with you, given all of your hard work. Is there anything you haven’t done?” Pointing at his mop and bucket, she said, “Besides cleaning the floors, you’ve stoked up the chimneys with the wood you’ve chopped, collected bandages, and delivered trays of broth and biscuits all around.” She arched her eyebrows in jest. “Since when did you learn how to bake bread?”
“Clara taught me. I suppose the best comes out in a person when they know they have others depending upon them.” With playful eyes, he said, “Although I’ve come to regard meself a good kneader, ye better taste me biscuits before ye judge me baking.” He sobered. “I’ve seen too how the wounded respond to yar womanly touch.” He slapped his head. “I did it again—said the first idiotic thing come to me mind. I didn’t mean to call ye a woman, Johnnie; I only meant ye were born for nursing.”
“Don’t worry, Keeley, I took your meaning as a compliment,” Jana said, truly believing this time he wasn’t trying to bait her into giving up her secret.
Gazing at the floor spattered with mud and blood, Keeley said, “I better get back to minding me task.”
Laughter erupted from the room opposite.
“Let’s go see what that’s all about. We could use some good cheer,” Jana said.
They hurried over to the former sitting room where the healthiest of amputees were kept. Crowded around Charlie, soldiers were crying with glee, and Charlie was giggling.
“What’s funny, lads?” Keeley asked.
With a painful grunt behind his hoot, the soldier closest to Charlie rubbed his leg stump and said, “Charlie here was writin’ a letter home to my folks to tell ’em about my wound. I was actin’ real down about it when he asked what my least-liked chore was. I told him plowin’, and he said, ‘Well, you’ve gotten yourself out that, haven’t you?’”
Jana and Keeley shared in the hysterics erupting all over again.
It feels good to laugh, no matter how short-lived, Jana thought.
When the merriment waned, Charlie went off to feed a soldier who’d had both of his arms amputated; one at the shoulder, the other to the elbow. And, as Jana and Keeley left the room, they heard Charlie telling the young man that he’d just have to learn how to use his toes to pitch for his baseball team back home. That brought on more laughter.
Jana realized that what Keeley had said minutes before hit the nail on the head: Knowing others depended upon you, brought out the best in you. Obviously, this applied to Charlie, who’d always been more introverted but now found a way to spread joy through joking. Jana grew even more proud of him when, all day long, she could hear him lifting the spirits of his patients and convincing them that one day they’d learn to use their weak hand in the absence of their dominant one or to walk again with a wooden leg. Charlie’s kind of medicine is better than any soothing salve or morphine, Jana decided.
Later that evening, Jana tended to a boy she recalled holding down the night before while a surgeon amputated his left leg from the knee down. Without a balk, he’d said goodbye to his limb before bravely accepting the chloroform. She judged him to be no older than twelve. Although he’d walk again with a wooden leg, he’d never climb a tree or run the bases in baseball or ice skate or do whatever else he liked to do that depended upon two good legs. Jana did her best to be optimistic as she dropped down beside him on the hardwood floor. “I’ve got to change your bandage,” she said.
Too weak to lift his head, the boy groped around with his icy hand until he found Jana’s and gave it a frail squeeze. In a feeble voice, he begged, “Write me a letter instead?”
Jana recollected that same desperate expression on the dying groom’s face. She gulped back her tears, suspecting death was summoning him from a nearby summit.
Sensing her concern, the boy summoned up enough strength to give Jana’s hand a heartier squeeze while he said in a voice growing feebler, “I’m not scared of dying, only of my ma and pa never knowing what happened to me.”
That lit a fire under Jana. “I’ll go fetch a paper and pen,” she said, scooting off in search of Mr. Walt Whitman, a poet sure to have writing implements. Ma had bought his Leaves of Grass when it was first published in 1855; she loved his collection of poems. Jana wished she had that copy with her now. Wouldn’t Ma be tickled to have his autograph on it? She found Mr. Whitman in one of the upstairs bedrooms. All of the soldiers around him were under the spell of his deep, melodic voice as he read one of his earlier poems. His soft, white hair and beard and ruddy cheeks reminded her of Saint Nick. He spread his own brand of joy, encouraging the soldiers to reminisce of their homes, reading his own poetry to them, helping them to write letters to their loved ones, or just sitting quietly by their sides. He’d first come to Chatham Manor in search of his wounded brother. When he’d discovered him elsewhere and not seriously wounded, he returned here to help.
As Jana moved deeper into the room, she eclipsed the sun’s glow through the window behind her, and her shadow enveloped the poet, who looked up to the change in light.
Her eyes must’ve telegraphed her urgency because he asked, “What’s the matter, son?” After she explained, he drew a pencil and stationery from his knapsack faster than she could draw her pistol.
Jana thanked him with the promise to return his pencil, and then she hurried back to honor her patient’s last request. Quietly, she asked his name and where to send his letter.
Isaac told her and then dictated the details of his enlistment, major battles, wound, and amputation for his record.
Jana wrote quickly and neatly, stumbling only once when she heard a gurgling in the boy’s throat that garbled his speech and signaled his imminent death. She choked back her tears, trying to be as brave as him.
In a whisper, Isaac uttered his last words. He begged his parents not to mourn him because he didn’t regret serving his country. Then his eyes fluttered shut, his chest heaved and settled, and his face grew peaceful.
As Jana felt the heartache she’d been holding back for Isaac’s sake come pouring out, she turned toward the wall to hide her sobbing. Isaac’s story paralleled hers in that both had run away and enlisted with only a paper goodbye. He’d never see his family again, whereas that hope lived on for Jana, and it made her miss her family more than ever since she’d left home. Even if she were to secure a furlough right now, she couldn’t go home looking like a boy. Ma and Pa would know her ruse and forbid her from returning to her friends. In the midst of her tearful ponderings, she felt a light tap on her arm. She used a clean bandage that she had draped over her shoulder to wipe her soggy face before circling around to greet her interloper.
A soldier, who appeared much older than her pa by the crackly skin on his face and who wore a different uniform than Isaac’s, propped himself up off the floor on the arm he had left. Nodding at the letter in Jana’s hand, he said, “Tell his ma and pa he died with honor, making a charge with his regiment’s colors.” He lay back down and stared up at the ceiling, tears streaming past his temples and disappearing into the hairline above each ear.
Jana did as he asked. Any young boy brave enough to serve his country deserved to be memorialized with honor. Penning in the older soldier’s suggestion, she added her own entreaty for Isaac’s parents to be proud of their heroic son who had matured well beyond his years. She folded the letter and tucked it into her pocket to mail as soon as possible. Then she went to find Keeley, who was in the kitchen scrubbing cloth bandages for reuse. She recruited his help to carry Isaac outside to his temporary resting place in the garden.
As she draped Isaac’s woolen blanket over him, she gazed upon the rows of dead and prayed for the dying and destruction to end. If they must go on, though, she’d rather heal than kill. The glory in women’s work had touched her soul. And she’d seen how men, such as Keeley, Charlie, and Mr. Whitman, had found glory in it too. Ma and Pa were right—glory could be had without a single gunshot and in being a woman. The trick was: How could she shed her uniform to become a full-time nurse without abandoning her friends?