In the days following Patrick’s death, Ellen was turmoiled beyond any previous grief. Thoughts, tears, terrible questions, crowded each other in unending sequence, crushing all impulse for living. Mary and Louisa tried to force her to rest; Dr Sawyer, solicitous for her state, brought morphine. Both she resisted, knowing somewhere deep down that if she succumbed to any outside influence, passed over control for her functioning, that she would cease to function and be a drain on all their resources.
She continued to do her rounds, comforting, healing, assisting Dr Sawyer. Those who were there when Patrick had been brought to her at first avoided any contact with her. Unable to express to her what she had so often expressed to them. With the new admissions it was different. Their needs so pressing, many so close to their own demise that all thought was blocked, save of loved ones back home and their own flimsy mortality. Out of their fear and pain they called to her for comfort but the others would whisper roughly to the new patients, of how ‘the woman had tended her own son’s corpse’. Then, those, even at death’s door themselves would shrink from any further demand upon her.
She came to marvel at Mary and Louisa, how they respected her wishes, sublimating their own natural instinct to shepherd her through those awful days. Only at night kneeling down together with her to pray for Patrick. Occasionally a slipped word from one of them, betraying her own internal struggle with the inexpressible.
‘God wills this contest – permits it for some wise purpose,’ was Mary’s supreme act of Faith. Quietly said, quietly left there. In those dark days Mary came to be their rock, their font of all wisdom.
Louisa too was stoic in her steadfastness … but at times would suddenly disappear. Neither Ellen nor Mary ever asked her, understanding her flawed humanity, along with their own. Loving Louisa the more for it.
And the days came and went in one unending cycle of suffering and hope; misery and joy; and of unending goodbyes. Now, more than ever in each of the wounded she dealt with, Ellen saw Patrick – some mother’s son … her son.