THE first day Abigail Dowling reported to work as a volunteer nurse at the Catholic hospital on St. Charles Avenue, she realized her experience with the treatment of yellow fever had not adequately prepared her for contrasts.
At first it was heartening to see the Union ironclads anchored on the river, plated and slope-sided, their turreted cannons an affirmation of the North's destructive potential, the American flag popping from the masts. But somehow the victory of her own people over the city of New Orleans rang hollow. She had anticipated seeing anger in the faces of the citizenry, perhaps feelings of loss and sorrow, but instead she saw only fear and she didn't know why.
The hospital was two stories, constructed of brick that was webbed with ivy, set far back under live oak trees, with a scrolled-iron veranda on the second story. Two wings extended out toward the street, creating a garden-like area in the center that was planted with pink and gray caladium, banks of philodendrons and elephant ears, climbing roses, banana trees, bamboo, crepe myrtle and azaleas, whose blooms puffed in the wind and tumbled on the grass.
She walked with a white-clad nun down a long wood hallway that glowed from hours of polishing done by women who prayed inside sweltering habits while they scrubbed floors on their hands and knees. The intermittent statues of the saints, daily dusted from the crowns of their heads to the soles of their feet, could have been the votive patrons of cleanliness and order. Then Abigail passed a Union sentry and entered the ward for Confederate prisoners who had survived surgery in field hospitals and had been shipped south from Shiloh on commandeered riverboats.
Abigail fought to keep her face empty of expression when she looked upon the men in the rows of beds, the covered ceramic slop jars set neatly in front of each bed. Field surgeons had often sawed the limb right at the trunk, offering no chance for a prosthesis. Some men had only sockets for eyes, a scooped-out hole for a nose, a mouth without a jaw, a tube of useless flesh for an arm or leg after the bone had been removed.
The lucky ones had stumps that ended in puckered scar tissue that was still pink with circulation. But some had been condemned to die the death of the damned twice, their limbs cut without benefit of ether or laudanum by a field surgeon using a saw he cleaned on an old shirt soaked in whiskey. Then, when they thought their ordeal was over, they discovered that gangrene had taken hold under their bandages and their swollen flesh had turned the color of an eggplant.
"Some of the nuns put rosewater on a handkerchief and pretend they have a cold," the sentry at the door told her. His accent was a distorted echo of her own, Boston or New York or Rhode Island, a man who had probably operated a dray or worked in a fish market or at the firehouse.
"I'm not bothered by it," she replied.
"Come back at night. When we have to close the windows because of the mosquitoes and they start pitching around in their sleep, knocking over slop jars and yelling out and such," he said.
The sentry was thin and nice-looking, with startling blue eyes, a fresh haircut and a trimmed mustache. A bayonet was fixed on the rifle that was popped butt-down between his feet.
"Yesterday, when I got off the boat, I heard a great commotion by the Mint," she said.
"The Rebs tore down our flag and ripped it up in the street. They're not gracious losers."
"I see," she said.
"One of them is about to get a taste of General Butler today. You know what the general said? 'They don't respect our stars, they'll feel our stripes.' Pretty clever, if you ask me," the sentry said.
"I don't quite follow you," she said.
"Go down to the Mint this evening and get an eyeful."
She started to walk away.
"Don't feel sorry for these Rebs, ma'am. They've lorded it over the darkies all their lives and never had to work like the rest of us. Now, they're going to get their comeuppance. If you want to see an example of His Southern Highness, check behind the screens at the end of the room," the sentry said.
Later, as she was carrying out slop jars to the lime pit in back, she glanced through an opening between two mobile partitions fashioned from mosquito netting. Propped up on pillows by the window was a bare-chested and handsome man wrapped with bandages across his rib cage and lower back and shoulder. The bandages on the rib cage were spotted with two dark red circles the size of quarters.
The shutters on the window were open, and the dappled light that filtered through the philodendron shifted across his face like gold leaves floating on water. His eyelids looked as thin as paper, traced with tiny blue veins. His breath was so shallow he seemed barely alive.
"Colonel Jamison?" she said.
He turned his head on the pillow and opened his eyes, his brow furrowed, like a man waking from an angry dream. His lips were dry and gray, and he seemed to rethink a troubling idea in his head, then correct the expression in his face, as though by choice he could manifest the personae he wanted to present to the world.
"Miss Abigail? You have a way of showing up in the most unexpected fashion," he said.
"You were taken prisoner at Shiloh?" she said.
"Truth be known, I don't remember it very well. For sure, they planted three balls in me. Would you mind putting a teaspoon of lemon water in my mouth?"
When she picked up the bowl from the nightstand his mouth opened and waited like a communicant's. She placed the teaspoon of
crushed ice and mint leaves and lemon on his tongue. His throat made
a dry, clicking sound when he swallowed and for just a moment color seemed to bloom in his cheeks. On the nightstand were a gilded leather-bound Bible and a saucer with three conically shaped.36 caliber pistol rounds on it.
She tried to remember the name of his regiment. Was it the Orleans Guards?
"Do you have news of a soldier named Willie Burke? He was with the 18th," she said.