Fire by Night

by Lynn Austin

  Phoebe tried to move, but the hand that had punched her held her down. She saw her rifle a few inches away and tried to reach for it, but her arm wouldn’t move. As the tingling shock of a million needles gradually died, the pain began—a white-hot fire that spread out from her shoulder and across her back. It was so agonizing that Phoebe thought she might faint. Someone was moving her, trying to roll her over, and she screamed for them to stop.

  It was Ted, crawling out from under her. His hair was dusted with gray and his eyes were very wide, staring at her. She saw his lips moving as he mouthed “Ike! Ike!” over and over again, but his voice sounded muffled.

  The sun seemed very bright, and she realized that the corn was gone, sheared away as if it had been harvested. The soldiers who had been marching alongside her a moment ago lay sprawled in the furrows in neat rows, as if they’d suddenly decided to lie down and take a nap. None of them moved. But Ted was all right. He was alive. That was all that mattered.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, but she wasn’t sure if Ted could hear her above the deafening explosions that still thundered all around them. She wasn’t even certain she had spoken out loud.

  He bent toward her. Tears washed two clean paths down his dusty face. He grabbed her beneath her lifeless arms and started moving her, dragging her across the uneven ground on her stomach. The unseen hand twisted a knife in her back. The pain was excruciating, unlike anything she’d ever known.

  Phoebe cried out, and the world went black.

  The earthshaking explosions jolted Julia awake. It took her a moment to recall where she was—in a canvas tent provided by the Sanitary Commission, camping in a farmer’s field outside Sharpsburg, Maryland. But she recognized the sounds of battle right away from her experience at Bull Run—the thunder of artillery, the scream of falling shells. The sun was barely up, but the battle had already begun. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and hurried outside to join the other nurses, doctors, and ambulance drivers, all waiting grimly for their work to begin.

  When the Union Army began moving into Maryland, the newly formed ambulance corps went along with it. Once again, Dr. McGrath had been called into field service. Julia had gone downstairs to his office as he’d packed up his surgical instruments and volunteered to join him. He had cut off her words before she’d even finished her sentence, waving her away like a fly.

  “I don’t want to hear it, Mrs. Hoffman. The answer is no.”

  “Why not?” she asked from the doorway. “You know I’m a good nurse. You trained me yourself.”

  “Women don’t belong near the battlefield—especially women who are as young and nai ve as you are.”

  “That’s what you said the last time, remember? And I volunteered on an evacuation ship.”

  He rested both hands on his desk and leaned toward her. “And do you remember how ugly those sights were? Well, it was a picnic compared to a field hospital. Stay here.”

  Of course she had ignored his orders. The fact that he had demanded she stay behind had made her even more determined to go. Who did he think he was to order her around? She had gone to the Sanitary Commission’s offices that same day and volunteered.

  The train of ambulances carrying medical supplies and volunteer surgeons and nurses had followed well to the rear of the army. Julia had seen Dr. McGrath on the first night they’d camped, standing near a fire, sipping from a tin cup. He had seen her, too. He had turned his back and walked away.

  But there was no sign of the doctor this morning as Julia stood in the chilly fog, waiting for instructions. By the time they moved several loads of medical supplies up to the barnyard and commandeered the farmhouse for an operating room, the casualties were already streaming in. The field hospital was very close to the battleground in a nearby cornfield, so close that Julia could hear the roar of gunfire and the screams of dying men. On top of a nearby hill, she could see Union artillerymen getting ready to fire their cannons.

  What began as a trickle of casualties quickly became a deluge. For the next few hours, Julia saw wave after wave of devastating injuries too horrible to comprehend—arms and legs blown off or shattered by Minie balls; chests and stomachs ripped open; faces mutilated beyond recognition. Bloodied, mangled soldiers flooded the barnyard outside the farmhouse, many of them crying out to God for mercy as they waited.

  As she struggled to cope with the devastation all around her, Julia knew that Dr. McGrath had been right once again. There was a world of difference between tending wounded men in the safety of White House Landing and trying to keep her wits about her with shells exploding nearby. She mumbled unending prayers as she tied tourniquets and bandaged wounds and offered medicinal brandy to weeping, dying soldiers. Some of the men grew hysterical when they learned they were about to have amputations, and she wept along with them as she tried to calm them, reassuring them that everything would be all right—though she couldn’t imagine the horror of having an arm or a leg sawn off. She gave the men food and water, listening to deathbed confessions and tender last words whispered to wives and sweethearts and children.

  All the while, Rebel shells continued to explode nearby, crashing in the cornfield and shaking the ground underfoot. The sheer number of casualties and the horrifying nature of their injuries testified to the appalling violence that raged all around her. Long before noon, a swirling cloud of dust and smoke had blotted out the sun. Then the battle shifted in a different direction, and they enjoyed a brief reprieve from the fearsome noise of bombardment. The screams and cries of the wounded quickly filled the void.

  Around four o’clock a barrage of artillery suddenly opened fire nearby. The furor of sound and smoke seemed like the end of the world to Julia. As the earth quaked and debris fell from the sky like hail, all the nurses and as many of the men as possible fled into the barn to escape the holocaust. But there was no escape from the fear. Julia cowered in the straw, trembling, wishing with all her heart that she had listened to Dr. McGrath. She was certain that she was about to die.

  A long hour later it finally stopped. The world felt strangely quiet. As she ventured outside again, the yard stank of sulfur and smoke. Some of the farmhouse windows had shattered, and there was a gaping hole in the roof, but a light still shone in the kitchen, where the doctors continued to operate. The ambulance drivers soothed their frightened horses, then quickly returned to their duties.

  Julia had worked without stopping, without thinking, all day. Now the sun was setting in the west, staining the sky blood red. She leaned against the doorframe of the barn and looked around as if for the first time, slowly comprehending the enormity of what she was witnessing. It wasn’t the horror of the scene that stunned her, as gruesome as it was, but the incomprehensible loss of life—all the vibrant young men who had been alive only this morning, laughing and sipping their coffee, now lying shattered and dead. The waste of it—the terrible waste. She slowly slid down the doorframe to the ground, then buried her face in her folded arms and cried.

  “Ike! Ike, where are you?” Ted wove in and out among the wounded men, searching for his friend, calling her name. Hundreds and hundreds of blue-uniformed men blanketed the ground around the barn and the farmhouse, and he searched every face in desperation. Some of the men looked up at him as he called out; others gazed sightlessly into the distance, their bodies already growing stiff.

  He made his way into the barn where there were more wounded, searching for a thatch of yellow hair, a pair of oversized feet. He saw nurses bending over their patients, tending them. None of the soldiers was as tall as Ike.

  He came out of the barn again, wondering if he had missed her somehow. A soldier reached out a hand to grab Ted’s pant leg.

  “Please, I need water,” the man begged. He had a huge hole in his side. His other hand was barely attached to his arm. Ted crouched beside him and gave him a drink from his canteen.

  “I’m trying to find my friend,” Ted told him. “He was wounded early this morning. Have you seen a big fellow with y
ellow hair? Ike saved my life. I-I didn’t thank him.”

  The man sighed gratefully when he’d drunk his fill, then licked his lips. “Maybe the ambulance took him.”

  Ted hurried over to two stretcher-bearers who were loading a man with one leg into the back of a covered wagon. “Do either of you remember a big, tall fellow with yellow hair? He was wounded this morning. In the shoulder.”

  One orderly shook his head and turned away. The other mumbled, “Needle in a haystack, pal.”

  Ted ran from wagon to wagon, asking the same question, getting the same weary responses. None of the men would look Ted in the eye, and he knew they weren’t looking too closely at the grisly cargo they carried, either.

  “Come on, one of you must remember him,” he begged. “Ike is very tall. His feet would have hung off the stretcher.”

  Ted remembered his frustration earlier that morning when he’d wished he were taller himself so he could carry Ike off the field instead of dragging her. He’d been surprised at how light she felt, how bony her ribs were beneath her wool uniform. She had lost a lot of weight while she was sick with malaria.

  He’d been so afraid that he would hurt her, dragging her that way. But then the stretcher-bearers had appeared out of nowhere, hurrying toward him, and he’d let them load Ike onto a litter and carry her away. He had wanted to go with them to make sure she was going to be all right. But he’d wanted revenge even more. Once the orderlies assured him that his friend would be taken care of, Ted had run back to where he’d dropped his rifle and charged forward into battle.

  “Where are the ambulances taking them?” he now asked one of the drivers. “Maybe my friend is there already.”

  “There’s a train depot not far from here,” the driver said, climbing onto the wagon seat. “They’ll go by train to a hospital in Washington or Baltimore.”

  “Have the trains taken anybody yet? Can I ride along with you and look for him on the platform?”

  “Sorry. We need every inch of space to transport the wounded. Why don’t you talk to the surgeons? Maybe one of them will remember.” He snapped the reins and drove away in a cloud of dust.

  Ted found three surgeons inside the farmhouse, covered to their elbows in blood. They were arguing as one of them gave chloroform to a man who was laid out on the kitchen table. “I can save this arm,” one of the doctors shouted. “Feel his hand. I’m telling you, there’s circulation.”

  “We don’t have time for that kind of surgery, James. There are two hundred more just like him out there. The arm’s coming off.”

  There was blood everywhere; the floor was slippery with it. Ted had to look up at the ceiling to keep from getting sick.

  “What are you doing in here?” one of the doctors shouted when he saw Ted. “Get out!”

  “I’m looking for my friend Ike—a tall fellow with yellow hair. Have you—”

  “We look at wounds, not faces. And we don’t ask names.”

  “He was wounded in the shoulder—”

  “Him and a hundred others. Out!” The doctor pointed his bloody finger at the door.

  Ted finally wandered around to the rear of the barn where the dead bodies were being stacked. Some of them were so badly shattered and bloated they hardly seemed human. He couldn’t take any more. This was too horrible. If Ike was among these pitiful souls, he didn’t want to know. He didn’t want this to be how he remembered his friend.

  He wished he could tell Ike how much he liked her, how lonely he’d felt the past few days without her, how sorry he was that he’d gotten mad at her. When he’d heard that shell whistling toward him today, he’d known it was going to hit him. He remembered thinking that he was about to die. Then Ike had flown at him from behind, tackling him the way he had—the way she had—on the day the sniper fired. She had covered his body with her own. Ted would have been the one lying here wounded or dead if Ike hadn’t saved his life.

  Why had she done it? Why had Ike jumped into the path of a shell that was meant for him? Ike—his funny, odd, faithful friend. All this time, Ike had been a girl. And Ted didn’t even know her real name. He sat down behind the woodpile where no one would see him and wept.

  “Mrs. Hoffman…” Julia looked up. The head nurse was standing over her. “Go back to your tent and rest for an hour.”

  Julia stood, supporting herself on the doorframe of the barn. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry—”

  “You’ve been working all day. You’re no good to us exhausted. People make mistakes when they’re exhausted. Go have a short rest and something to eat. Come back in an hour.”

  “But I’m fine. … ”

  “Rest, Mrs. Hoffman. That’s an order.”

  It seemed wrong to rest with so much work to be done, but Julia knew that the head nurse was right. She remembered being so tired on board the ship that she’d collapsed on top of a wounded man.

  Julia walked down the dusty road past the farmhouse, staying close to the side, out of the path of the rumbling ambulances. The nurses’ tents had been pitched in a field a short distance from the house.

  Julia lifted the tent flap to duck inside, then stopped. A Union soldier lay asleep on her bed. At first she thought she must have gone to the wrong tent. But no, her comb and brush were beside the bed, her carpetbag and shawl lay nearby. Had the man crept in here by mistake?

  She crawled inside for a closer look. The soldier was sound asleep. She saw by the fresh dressings that he had been badly wounded and that the surgeons had already operated. She went outside again and walked up the road to where the stretcher-bearers were loading the ambulances.

  “I think someone has made a mistake,” she said. “There’s a wounded soldier in my tent.”

  A burly, red-faced orderly stepped forward, mopping his brow with a bandanna. “No, ma’am. One of the doctors told us to put him in there.”

  “But why? Do you remember which doctor it was?”

  He chewed his cheek, thinking. “One of the contract surgeons, I think. He wasn’t wearing a uniform. And he had a reddish beard.”

  James McGrath.

  “He told you to put him in my tent?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I don’t know why, but I remember that he asked for you by name. He said, ‘Mrs. Hoffman needs to take care of this one,’ and he told us to put him in your tent.”

  She felt her anger boiling up like a kettle of water. “Where is the doctor now?”

  “Up at the farmhouse.”

  “Thank you.” Julia turned and began marching up the rise to the house.

  “Mrs. Hoffman, wait,” the orderly called, hurrying after her. “You don’t want to go up there. The doctors are still operating.”

  “I don’t care if Dr. McGrath is operating or napping or sunbathing in his union suit. He has no right to put a wounded soldier in my tent, and I intend to tell him so. This is just like him to play a nasty little trick to get rid of me. I’m very tired of his games.” She stormed up to the farmhouse in a temper.

  As she entered the yard, she noticed an open window on the side of the house and below it a reddish heap, buzzing with flies. At first it didn’t register in Julia’s mind what she was seeing, but then the grisly pile slowly slid into focus. She recognized a human hand lying on top, palm up. Then a bloody foot.

  Julia whirled around and ran, unheeding, in the opposite direction. She didn’t get far before she stumbled to her knees and was sick alongside the road. She knelt, too weak to stand, trembling with shock and anger. How could Dr. McGrath do that all day? How could he saw off parts of living, breathing people so callously and toss them out the window like that?

  “Are you all right, ma’am?”

  She turned at the sound of the orderly’s voice. “Yes. Thank you.” He helped her to her feet, and she wiped her mouth on her handkerchief, humiliated that he had seen her. He had tried to warn her. “I-I’ll still need to speak to Dr. McGrath,” she told him. “Will you please let me know when he’s finished?”

  “Sure, ma’
am.”

  “I’ll be in my tent.”

  She walked back, knees shaking, longing more than ever to lie down and rest in her tent for an hour. But the wounded soldier was still in her bed. She went inside and knelt beside him. He’d been wounded in the torso, which wasn’t good. Damage to a patient’s lungs and other internal organs usually meant a slow, certain death. He was already having trouble breathing. He was also filthy with crusted blood and dirt and leaves, but she didn’t want to wake him. She made sure his wound wasn’t bleeding, then went outside again and sat down on the ground. She drew her knees up to her chin, wrapped her arms around them, then lowered her head and closed her eyes.

  “Mrs. Hoffman?”

  Julia’s head jerked up. The orderly she’d spoken to earlier stood in front of her. The sun was gone and a star shone through the haze of smoke in the east. She hadn’t meant to sleep that long.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am …I didn’t know you were asleep.”

  “That’s all right. Did you need me for something?”

  “That doctor you wanted to talk to is taking a break. You said to let you know.”

  “Thank you.” Julia rose stiffly to her feet. She took a moment to stretch, to wipe the sleep from her eyes, and to comb her hair back with her hands. The air had turned cool now that the sun had set. She ducked inside her tent to get a shawl and heard the wounded man’s ragged breathing. He was still unconscious. Julia pulled her wrap around her shoulders and set off up the road to the farmhouse again.

  Dr. McGrath sat alone on the front step, his elbows on his thighs, his face in his hands. His white shirt and the front of his trousers were soaked with blood—most of it stiff and dried, but some still wet, making his shirt stick to his skin. He looked beaten, exhausted, every trace of his usual cockiness gone. She felt a wave of pity for him. This was the kind, dedicated physician she had spent hours working beside at Fairfield Hospital. Now he needed care. She decided she would find him some food, offer him a change of clothes and a basin of warm water to wash with.