“They won’t let me see her, but the end is close.”
“They are protecting you, Miz Eliza.”
“Soon there will be no one left in this city to protect.”
“Go be with the sisters.”
Sister Constance drew her last breath at ten. So many would have liked to give her the farewell she deserved, but in the midst of an epidemic she could have little more recognition than any of the others who perished. Mrs. Bullock insisted on cleaning her body, and Sister Clare helped robe her in her habit. Sister Ruth came from Canfield as soon as she got word. The little group of nuns carried her to their small chapel, roses resting on her bosom, and Father Dalzell read the brief commendatory prayer.
“Sister Hughetta, are you all right?” Eliza caught the nun’s elbow at the close of the service.
“I feel faint.”
“Sit down.”
Sister Hughetta did faint. And though she roused, she fainted again before the nuns had organized a wagon to carry Sister Constance’s coffin to Elmwood Cemetery, and she had to stay behind. It was only Sisters Frances, Clare, and Ruth, along with Mrs. Bullock and Eliza who followed to the hastily dug grave.
Two days later the bells rang again, this time for Sister Thecla, who had lingered and suffered longer. She had never even known of her Mother Superior’s illness and loss. On this same day, Father Schuyler fell ill. And Dr. Armstrong was too ill to see patients. With proper nursing, many did recover, but Sister Clare did not believe Dr. Armstrong would be one of them, nor Father Schuyler.
Mrs. Bullock, for all her love and devotion to the sisters, paid the price and fell ill.
Sister Ruth, perhaps because she had come into town from the safety of Canfield, fell ill. She was only twenty-six and had served well and kindly but could serve no more.
Sister Hughetta’s fainting was not heartbreak but fever.
Sister Clare was down.
The death toll at St. Mary’s became a daily horror.
Yet the lines at the pantry continued, and the illness sweeping through the streets was unforgiving of the grief and loss within the walls of the cathedral or the Sisters House. Miss Murdock kept making broth and tea. Mrs. Haskins kept arriving at the pantry. Nursing volunteers kept asking where they should make their calls.
Someone had to make decisions.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Memphis, September 20, 1878
Eliza paid dearly for Harry’s agreement to transport her trunk to the Sisters House, and even then she had to wait until he circled back through her nearly empty neighborhood after picking up three coffins and had to consent to having her trunk wedged in among the deceased in the wagon while she rode on the bench beside Harry.
“I heard you had the fever, Harry.” Eliza pulled the front door of her house closed tight and checked that it locked. She would not be back anytime soon.
“Yes, ma’am.” Harry hefted the trunk toward the wagon.
Was it possible he’d gone grayer in the last month? Certainly he was thinner.
“And your wife?”
He said nothing but only shoved the trunk into a space where it barely fit, even though Eliza had packed her smallest trunk with only a few dresses and personal items.
“I’m sorry, Harry,” she said softly when he offered his hand to assist her up to the bench. “I hadn’t heard.”
“A week ago.” He picked up the reins and nudged the horse forward.
Eliza raised her handkerchief to her face as she did now whenever she was out. The sight of coffins stacked on corners or rolling through streets on wagons might be common, but her stomach had not acclimated to the stench of the epidemic, nor her lungs to the constant dust of lime and gunpowder in the air.
“You are doing valuable work,” Eliza said. “You are a brave soul to carry on as you have.”
“Still got rent to pay. Ain’t exactly too many of my usual customers around anymore.”
“They’ll be back when this is all over.”
“Mebbe. The ones that left and ain’t dead. But Memphis won’t never be the same.”
“Never is a long time, Harry.”
“Longer than I got left.” Harry reached under his hat and scratched the left side of his head. “Dang mosquitos. All the livelong day.”
“I know what you mean. Some days I do believe my only salvation is I don’t see the light of day.”
“Worse after sunset.”
“Some days I don’t see the night sky either.”
Harry scratched another mosquito bite. Eliza quelled another rebellious roll of her stomach. They fell into silence for the remaining blocks to the St. Mary’s complex. Harry offered assistance as Eliza gathered her skirts to climb out of the wagon.
“Thank you for the detour,” she said.
“Dese folks ain’t in no hurry.”
Harry carried the trunk inside the Sisters House and looked at her, his face a question.
“I’ve chosen a small room at the back,” Eliza said. “Straight down that hall.”
It was convenient to the main activity. She would hear the cries from the infirmary if one of the nurses there called her name. No one else had used the room to infect it with illness. It seemed too much trouble to ask Harry to bring a mattress from home, and she would not use the only one in the entire Sisters House when one after another the nuns refused to use it when stricken. It might still go to a patient. Eliza would sleep on a wooden bed the way the nuns had, with a thin pallet of hay the only comfort.
Harry carried the trunk through and tipped his hat before leaving.
In the kitchen, three vats of broth simmered and two of tea. Miss Murdock was keeping up. How, Eliza did not know. Nearly every day in the last week Eliza had sent Miss Murdock to the Howard Association offices at the Peabody Hotel to plead for nurses. The sisters had always been doing too much, and now with all of them gone or ill, it was impossible to keep up.
On the table, a telegram leaned against the saltshaker. Last week Eliza had instructed the telegraph office to simply deliver her messages here. She had no time to write proper letters to her mother. She had no time to even craft replies and send a messenger down to the telegraph office. There was no messenger to send.
Eliza opened the telegram.
FRIGHTENED FOR YOU Stop EVERY DAY NEWS IS WORSE Stop I PRAY CALLIE IS CARING FOR YOUR EVERY NEED Stop IF YOU WILL NOT COME SEND WORD OF YOUR HEALTH Stop LOVE MOTHER
Eliza dropped the message on the table. If she could scrounge up a spare moment and a message, she could assure her mother she was well. She would say nothing of Callie. She’d heard nothing for three weeks, and her mother would only be distressed at the thought of losing a favored house servant. The greater question was, how much longer could she truthfully say she was only running the pantry and not caring for the sick?
Miss Murdock entered the room. “I have not overboiled the broth, have I?”
“Peacefully simmering.” Eliza hadn’t looked, but she’d heard no alarming noises from the stove. “The others should be here soon for the meeting.”
“I made some sweet tea last night, and we have plenty of extra ice.”
“You precious dear. Such a treat in all this sweltering weather.”
Miss Murdock opened the icebox and removed two glass pitchers.
“I’ll take one of those.” Eliza led the way to the modest dining room, which on this morning would also serve as a meeting room assembling Father Dalzell, who was the only priest on hand, a pair of volunteer nurses not on duty—and no doubt exhausted—and with God’s favor a representative of the Howard Association who might be persuaded of the need to cease making them waste time sending someone with daily pleas.
Faces around the table a few minutes later were drawn. Though they met at the Sisters House, no nun was present. Sister Ruth had died only three days ago. Sister Frances could not be spared from Church Home, where orphans passed every day despite her efforts, and while Sister Hughetta was going to recover, she was far
too frail to attend a meeting.
After Father Dalzell prayed to acknowledge God’s presence and invite the Holy Spirit’s wisdom, a few hands reached for sweet tea but all faces turned toward Eliza.
“We are in a wretched state,” she said. “We all know this. We have lost some of the dearest people God has ever fashioned from the dust of this earth, and I don’t believe I shall ever understand why He has called them home when they were serving Him so faithfully and selflessly. But they are gone from us, and we wish to carry on and honor them as well as God by serving just as they did. We fumble to know how, and that is why we are here together. Perhaps reports from the nurses among us will help us chart our way forward. Miss Beeson, may I ask you to begin?”
“I could tell so many stories.” Miss Beeson straightened her shoulders. “Only this week I found three children in a small cottage with their mother. I was passing by and thought to see how she was doing and found her dead. The children are so young. They thought she was only sleeping. I had to send one of them to the infirmary on Market Street and the others to Canfield. I don’t know if they shall ever see one another again. But with no family to ready the mother, the undertaker refused to pick her up. It took me another day before I could get the police to insist someone take her away.”
“The police department have very few officers still on their feet.” Mr. Skorman from the Howard Association spoke. “Perhaps eight or ten for all of Memphis.”
“We are not without sympathy,” Eliza said, “and we realize you are not unaware. Nevertheless, we must hear the stories lest we simply throw up our hands against the immensity of the need.”
Father Dalzell spoke. “I have been here but ten days, and in my endeavors to provide pastoral care to those who are clearly dying, I see that they pass away or fall into unconsciousness before we reach them. I drove out to a family where a father and two daughters were all sick. As I arrived, they were bringing out the remains of one child and inside the other was gone as well and the father was breathing his last. It is a heartsickness like no other to see such a scene and know that you have come too late to offer comfort or spiritual care even when there can be no cure. Yet I understand why the sisters have made such a valiant effort to reach as many as they could. In each sick and dying person, every sister beheld her suffering Lord. How could they turn away?”
“Thank you, Father.” Eliza swallowed hard. How indeed? It was for this reason that the sisters had made more promises than they could keep and worked themselves to death. “Miss Newell, have you a word for us?”
“Yesterday I had to persuade a devoted husband to leave the sofa in the room where his wife lay ill and go to the bed in the next room,” Miss Newell said. “While another nurse I was training attended him—for he was also ill—I put their little girl to bed in her own crib. I believe we reached them in time in this case. We arranged someone to stay and care for them. If we can get there in time, we can save some people. But we must have more nurses, Mr. Skorman.”
“I well understand this,” Mr. Skorman said. “We are indeed in a wretched state, because we can obtain no more nurses for any amount of money. We do our best to raise money and increase our offer of payment for those who come, but there is also rising fear that doctors and nurses are taking trains into a death trap. It is difficult to make an argument otherwise.”
A pall cast across the room with this truth. Eliza caught Father Dalzell’s eye.
“Mr. Skorman,” Eliza said, “by Father Dalzell’s gracious kindness, we have some pastoral care, despite great personal risk. However, St. Mary’s has lost its Mother Superior and all but two nuns. One of the remaining nuns is bedridden still, and I cannot advocate sending her out on calls among the sick until we are certain she is healthy. The other has survived an illness but is working herself to the bone at Church Home with orphans dying from the fever every single day—and a struggle to get coffins or an undertaker on some of those days. I fear for her well-being. At the request of the relief committee, St. Mary’s undertook to care for dozens of orphans at the Canfield Asylum, and now we have lost Sister Ruth, on loan from New York. Sister Clare, also on loan, is down. Sister Helen, on loan, is doing all she can to fill in the gaps and thus is not with us this morning. Surely you can see that St. Mary’s is stretched far beyond the limited resources it had even a few weeks ago.”
“I do see this,” Mr. Skorman said. “I also see that we have in our midst someone quite capable to be the individual with whom the Howards should continue to communicate.”
“May I have this person’s name, please?”
“You bear the name.”
“Do you mean me?” Eliza said.
“I do.”
“Father Dalzell would be appropriate,” Eliza said. “I am only here to assist as a member of St. Mary’s Church.”
“Father Dalzell is doing the needful work of many priests, and you have proven yourself a fine administrator. If I promise to bear down on trying to find you more nurses to assign to your calls, will you promise to administer their assignments out of St. Mary’s?”
“We need a doctor, as well. We lost Dr. Armstrong. We are running an infirmary and two orphanages, remember.”
“I remember. Do we have an agreement?”
Eliza gave a slow nod. “I too behold my suffering Lord.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
If I go to the Inn now,” Nolan said, “I’m pretty sure I can score some leftover breakfast french toast cream cheese casserole.”
“Possibly. That’s what Nia makes on Saturdays.” Jillian didn’t look up from her computer. “I’m only going to work a few hours this morning, Dad. There were quite a few interruptions this week.”
“Right. I could stay and whisk you up some pancakes.”
“Nope. Go check on Meri while I wrap up these client reports.”
“Maybe Nia can spare her this afternoon and we can do something.”
Jillian nodded and kept clicking the keyboard.
Nolan grabbed a light flannel-lined jacket off the hook in the kitchen and went out the back door. It was late enough that he didn’t expect to find breakfast still under way with guests at the polished long oak dining room table, and he would roll up his sleeves to help clean up the kitchen sooner than be underfoot. All that mattered was getting a read on Meri. At the last minute, Nolan strode around the side of the Inn to the rear parking area.
Meri’s car was there. Her five percent was still fighting back.
On the back porch, Nolan raised his knuckles to rap on the back door, but voices stilled the arc of his hand. Thick walls of the Victorian house and the more modern double-pane windows the Dunstons had installed for energy efficiency muffled the words, but the tone was indisputably irritable, bordering on angry.
Nolan knocked, reinforced his movement with a convivial “Hello!” and pressed the brass handle to poke his head into the kitchen.
The exchange stopped, mid-dispute. Sitting at the round table, Nia aimed her scowl in Nolan’s direction, though he was certain it had ensconced itself on her face before his arrival. Meri’s shoulders slumped, and she twisted away from him toward a pile of dishes stacked beside the sink. Leo hustled through from the dining room, his features scrunched in confusion that matched Nolan’s.
“Sounds like the team needs to come together in here,” Leo said.
“Then I’ve arrived just in time.” Nolan closed the door behind him.
“Don’t patronize me.” Nia planted her hands on the table on either side of her open laptop and pushed her weight upward. “There’s too much work to do.”
Leo lurched toward her. “Sweetheart, we’ve talked about this. You’re not ready to be standing up on your own as much as you’re used to. Meri is right here to help you, and I closed my workshop for the day. You just have to tell us what you need.”
At the counter, Meri dropped a mixing bowl, and it clattered around the industrial-size stainless cavern.
“Hey!”
Leo�
��s hand on Nia’s shoulder held her down.
“Sorry,” Meri muttered, picking up the bowl and a sponge to scrub it with.
“Nia, do you need some ice for your leg?” Leo said.
“No, I do not need some ice for my leg. I can walk just fine, if a bit slowly.”
“Your knee swells when you stand for too long.”
“Meri,” Nia snapped, “make sure you get everything scrubbed out of that bowl. It should never have sat all night without being cleaned. Now everything is dried on.”
“That was my fault,” Leo said. “Don’t take it out on Meri. She’s doing her job.”
“She didn’t this morning.” Nia glared at Nolan. “What do you need?”
He hesitated to answer.
“I’m very sorry about this morning.” Meri spoke as she scrubbed dried egg mixture without turning around.
“I don’t understand,” Nia said. “You made the french toast casseroles perfectly last night, doing everything I said. They looked as good as any I’ve put together. Leo got them in the oven this morning right on time.”
“She said she was sorry,” Leo said. “Do you want some coffee? I’m sure Nolan does.”
“Coffee would be grand.” Nolan nodded. His choice was to walk away from whatever the morning’s disaster had been or stay and see what it had to do with Meri. He would stay.
“Burning french toast casserole,” Nia muttered. “You both promised me you could handle the morning. All she had to do was take them out on time and set them on the sidebar with fresh fruit and pastries.”
“It wasn’t as bad as all that,” Leo said. “The guests hardly knew the difference.”
Nia scoffed. “You say that because you don’t read Yelp reviews. This is a bed-and-breakfast. We have a reputation to maintain. You think people don’t notice when the bottom layer of breakfast is burned to the pan?”
Meri put the cleaned bowl in the rack to dry and started in on the stack of dishes to rinse and load in the dishwasher. Beside the plates, soapy water filled two large glass rectangular baking dishes. If Meri’s shoulders sloped any further, they’d be hanging at her waist. Nolan had known Nia when she was a teenager, when her moody spells had been at their height. An independent personality running a business sidelined by even a minor injury wasn’t a great mix, but if she chased Meri off now with her bad mood, she’d be undoing a lot of painstaking work accomplished over the last few days.
The Inn at Hidden Run Page 17
