Before Adrienne could argue, a man entered from the back door of the barn. Adrienne caught glimpses of a wool suit underneath his blood-spattered apron. The man bowed curtly at the nurse and glanced curiously at Adrienne.
“Another volunteer,” the woman told him.
“Just one, Nurse?”
“That’s all we have.”
The man showed no interest in further discussing the matter. Adrienne watched him remove the wet saw from the bucket and wipe the blade on his soiled apron. “This will be my third amputation of the day,” he complained.
“Mine, too,” the nurse muttered under her breath.
Adrienne began to feel dizzy. “I can’t help with an amputation,” she whined, her voice small and brittle.
“You will,” the surgeon replied. “You’re a sturdy girl. Tall as a chimney, too.”
“I wouldn’t know what to do . . .”
“We are all doing what we didn’t think we could.”
The nurse looked at her sternly. “You’ll hold him down and keep him down. We’ve run out of chloroform and ether, so you’ve got to be strong about it. Some men take the pain better than others.”
“What if I can’t?”
“Enough,” the nurse snapped. “It’s not you who’s losing an arm today.”
Adrienne shrank as much as a six-foot girl could. She watched the surgeon take off his wire-rimmed spectacles and attempt, unsuccessfully, to clean the lenses on his grimy apron. She watched him dip a stained sponge into the bucket and squeeze out the excess water. From a plush-lined case, he removed a dirty scalpel and wiped that, too, on his apron. Adrienne was appalled. She couldn’t believe any surgeon could care so little about cleanliness.
“He’s in a tent,” the nurse said.
“Let’s bring him in,” the man replied, glancing with annoyance at Adrienne. She wondered what she’d done wrong.
They disappeared, returning a minute later with an injured man. His head hung low. His arms were slung around the doctor’s and nurse’s shoulders, and he leaned so heavily on them that they sagged under his weight. Adrienne couldn’t take her eyes off the blood that soaked his sleeve, crusted over the shiny brass buttons of his jacket, and almost obscured his face.
His face.
It was him, she realized. The boy in the daguerreotype. The boy with the needle-sharp stare and cleft chin. Her boy.
After the surgeon and nurse laid him down, the surgeon gave Adrienne another reproachful look, guilting her into helping. But Adrienne’s hands were shaking. Now that she’d seen the boy’s face, she couldn’t look away from it. Under the blood, it was white as the belly of a fish. His eyelids flagged. He seemed to be stuck in an unbearable purgatory between consciousness, sleep, and death.
“Miss,” the nurse said sharply. Adrienne moved without thinking, her hands suddenly on his body as she adjusted him on the table. Her muscles tensed. The nurse hacked off his bloody sleeve with a pair of scissors. The surgeon examined the large wound on the boy’s arm. It was a dreadful sight, but Adrienne thought the surgeon’s grubby fingers were just as bad.
To her horror, he soon plunged those same fingers deep inside the wound. The boy began to writhe and shriek. Grasping him firmly, Adrienne and the nurse held him down.
“Shouldn’t you wash your hands?” Adrienne cried out.
“What?” the surgeon replied. He probed distractedly.
“Wash your hands!”
The nurse glared at her, but she didn’t care. She thought about her mother in the phlebotomy lab, about the strict rules that all the clinicians followed: frequent hand-washing with soap and warm water, disposable gloves, special containers for contaminated items, frequently bleached floors and countertops, nonstop Purell, face masks when necessary. Never in a million years would her mother think of touching a patient’s open wound with her bare hands.
At last the surgeon extracted something. A bullet, Adrienne observed. A large, conical bullet with grooves on one side. He wiped this, too, on his apron.
“Another Minié ball,” the nurse murmured.
The surgeon nodded. “Shattered the humerus. Tore the tissue and muscle, too.”
“Here, give it to me.”
The doctor handed the bullet to the nurse. She dropped it with a clink into a large glass jar beneath the table. A jar filled with identical bullets, Adrienne saw. The nurse turned her attention back to the young man on the table, whose body had gone still.
Adrienne shivered, fearing the worst. “Is he alive?” she whispered.
“Of course he is,” the nurse snapped. To the doctor, she asked, “Whiskey?”
“Not in this case,” the doctor said. “Better to save it for someone who’s worse off.”
Adrienne couldn’t imagine anyone worse off than the boy in front of her.
“Take his shoulders,” the surgeon instructed her. “Press down hard. The pain will be bad.”
“Like hell on earth,” added the nurse.
“This whole place is hell on earth. God save us.”
Sweating, nauseated, and as close as she’d ever been to fainting, Adrienne did as told. She stood over the boy’s head and clamped her hands firmly on his shoulders. Briefly, she gazed at his pallid face, admiring the contour of his jaw, the shape of his lips. The nurse twisted a soiled white tourniquet tightly around the boy’s upper arm. Adrienne averted her eyes. When she looked again, a bright, ruby-red spurt of blood shot up like a geyser.
The doctor had made his first incision.
Adrienne winced, but did not let go. She watched the surgeon make several more cuts. Deep cuts, right to the bone. The boy jerked and flailed, but miraculously, did not rouse.
The surgeon put down the scalpel and took the saw from the bloody bucket.
“No!” Adrienne exclaimed.
“Hush!” the nurse rebuked.
“You have to use clean water! Don’t you have clean water?”
“Stop it. Have you no sense, girl?”
Adrienne wanted to ask the nurse and surgeon the same question. Unfortunately, it was too late to argue. Already, she heard the terrible sound of the saw grinding against bone.
More blood spurted. A tremendous amount of blood. It ran in sticky scarlet rivulets off the table, puddling on the ground. Before she knew it, the boy was a madman: screaming, thrashing, buckling, struggling with all his might to resist. His eyes were the petrified eyes of a man being tortured—which was exactly the case, Adrienne thought. A sharp splinter of bone ricocheted off her hand. The nurse’s scornful scolding added to the noise. Adrienne pushed him back down. Using all her weight, she leaned onto him, pinning him to the table. In his current state, he was no match for her strength. Little by little, he gave up protesting. Little by little, he seemed to give up on life.
“Stay with me,” she whispered. Her face was inches from his. His delirious eyes found hers. She had stared at his daguerreotype a hundred times, but black-and-white photography only revealed so much. It hadn’t revealed, for instance, that his eyes were palest green, like grass seedlings in early spring. It didn’t reveal that they were kind eyes. She bent closer, until her lips brushed his ear. He would be all right, she promised. He would get better, she would stay by his side, and the pain would go away. She stroked his hair, which was matted with dirt and dried blood.
With almost casual disregard, the surgeon tossed the boy’s arm out an open window. Using a piece of string, the nurse tied off the blood-spraying artery. Then the surgeon used another tool from the bucket to buff the jagged edges of what was left of the boy’s protruding bone. Finally, the nurse licked the end of a thread and teased it through a needle. The surgeon went to work sewing the loose flaps of skin back together into a stump, leaving a portion open.
“For the wound to drain,” he told Adrienne as she gaped. When he was through, he took a step back, surv
eyed his work, and sighed. The whole process had taken no more than ten minutes.
“What now?” Adrienne croaked. She could hardly find her voice.
“Well, he made it this far,” replied the nurse. “A quarter of them die once the limb is off. ’Course, we lose even more to surgical fever.”
“Surgical fever?”
“It happens sometimes after the amputation. The men become all possessed-like. They get a fever so high they boil in it.” The nurse sighed, too, and dipped her hands into that cesspool of a bucket. “Even worse, though, is hospital gangrene. That’s truly the devil’s work. A black blight spreads over the body, leaving a smell so bad it would drive a saint away.”
This information only stoked Adrienne’s fears.
“Any others, Nurse?” the surgeon asked.
“One more, but I doubt he’ll last till dusk.”
“Injuries?”
“Legs. Both of them.”
“Give him two hours. If he’s still alive, I’ll do it,” he replied briskly. He placed the scalpel, still wet with the boy’s blood, back into its plush case. Then, without further ado, he disappeared the same way he’d come, out the back of the barn.
“You’ll be staying, I presume?” the nurse asked Adrienne when he’d gone.
She could feel the nurse’s stare grow heavier as she stroked the boy’s face. “Yes.”
The nurse cleared her throat. “A few rules, then. My name is Sally Reynolds. You are to refer to me as ‘Miss Reynolds’ or ‘Nurse Reynolds.’ As for attire, what you’re wearing is prohibited. From now on, it’s black or brown. No bright colors. No ornaments, bows, curls, jewelry, or hoops, either. We strive for modesty here.”
Adrienne looked down at herself. “I don’t have anything like that.”
“Public women usually don’t.” Nurse Reynolds sniffed. “Well, Eliza left a second dress. It will be too short, of course—you are a tall one. But it should be serviceable. Air it out first, though, on account of the dysentery.”
Adrienne’s eyes widened.
“She’s in the nurses’ quarters—Eliza,” Nurse Reynolds continued. “Follow the stream north. It will bring you to our cabin. We take turns sleeping and changing there. Mind you don’t walk south. The fighting’s still close.”
Adrienne nodded, already worried she’d walk in the wrong direction.
“You never told me your name.”
“Adrienne. Adrienne Arch.”
“Well, Miss Arch, the work is tremendously hard, as you’ve witnessed. But you’ll find it’s not without fulfillment. Every hour of every day is a gift you are bestowing upon the Union. As for compensation, you’ll receive forty cents a day plus rations and housing. Transportation to and from the camp is by foot, of course. All the horses have gone to our soldiers.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.” Adrienne gazed again at the boy, relieved to see his chest subtly rising and falling.
“When he wakes, he’ll be frightened beyond belief. And in agony,” Nurse Reynolds said. She didn’t appear moved by this, although her tone was not uncharitable. The horrors of this place must have hardened her, Adrienne reasoned, or else she’d be heartbroken by now.
“I’ll be there for him.”
The nurse raised her chin. “Miss Arch, you must understand something: we nurses are like mothers and sisters. We care for the patients. But nurses and patients may not associate . . . socially.”
Adrienne straightened her back. She realized suddenly that she was head and shoulders above Nurse Reynolds. She realized, too, that she was not quite as cowed by her. Nor was she quite as terrified by the extreme circumstances into which she’d been thrown. It was clear now why getting to the barn had felt so urgent. It was her fate to be here. To be with him. Whatever Nurse Reynolds had to say about it didn’t matter much.
“In other words,” Nurse Reynolds continued, “Union nurses and patients are forbidden to form close attachments.”
But Adrienne had stopped listening. She was too busy thinking about the boy and wondering what she’d say to him when he woke up.
If he woke up.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Go on,” said Paige eagerly.
“I can’t,” said Adrienne.
“Why?”
“Because that’s it.”
“No! Need. More. Info.”
Adrienne looked down apologetically. “That’s all I have.”
“Well, what you have was crazy town,” said Sara Beth. “And I mean that in the best way.”
“Yeah, we need the next installment,” said Paige. “Pronto.”
“I need it, too,” Adrienne admitted. “Because now I’m worried he didn’t make it. Or maybe he never was there in the first place. I don’t know! It’s all so confusing. Was this in my head? Or did it actually happen?”
“What do you think?” Saskia asked.
Adrienne took a deep breath. “I’d say it was all a crazy dream, except that when I woke up, my arms ached. From holding him down! And I smelled like vomit. How could I make that stuff up?”
“You couldn’t,” said Paige.
“But now I have so many questions. Can I get back there—to wherever I was? And if I do make it back, could I get stuck? I’m scared I’ll, like, be trapped in some other dimension. But I’m also scared I won’t be.” Adrienne went back to knotting and unknotting her fingers.
Paige and Sara Beth looked at her, and then exchanged a look of their own. Seeing them, Saskia suddenly wished she had a sister. Someone who could understand what she was thinking with just a glance.
“Don’t try to analyze it,” said Sara Beth. “Not everything in life makes sense.”
Paige nodded emphatically. “But maybe there’s a greater logic to it—something out of our reach. Maybe you were meant to meet that soldier! Maybe you were meant to be the one who helps him.”
“Do you really think so?” Adrienne asked.
“I do,” said Paige.
“That makes me feel a little better.”
“Well, at least someone’s feeling a little better,” said Sara Beth.
“What do you mean?” asked Adrienne, confused.
“Not to sound selfish or anything, but you, Saskia, and my sister met your Mercury Boys. Meanwhile, I tried, and nothing happened.”
“Did you take all the steps—with the mercury and the daguerreotype?” Saskia asked.
“All of them.”
“How long did you hold the mercury?”
“I don’t know—ten seconds?”
“I hold it at least a minute.”
“I didn’t hold it that long,” said Adrienne, “and it worked for me.”
“I guess it’s not an exact science,” Saskia conceded.
“I’m still not sure if it’s science at all,” said Lila.
Paige shot Lila a contemptuous look. “Why are you so convinced you’re right and the rest of us are wrong?”
“It’s a little thing called common sense.”
“I call it fear,” said Paige curtly.
“I’m with my sister,” said Sara Beth. “You’re too scared to try something new, so you hide behind sarcasm.”
“It’s your shield.”
“Your crutch.”
“Your Achilles heel.”
Lila’s cheeks colored. The sisters had obviously gotten under her skin. “You guys really believe you went back in time and saw a bunch of guys who died in a different century? What did they do, rise from their graves? I mean, think about it!”
“Look, you haven’t tried what we have,” said Paige. “You don’t even have a daguerreotype. So who are you to doubt us? You’re all talk, no action.”
Saskia expected Lila to one up Paige with a fierce, clever retort. Her friend wasn’t one to back down. But for once Lila seemed all out of steam. The
only thing she gave Paige was a stony look. The exchange seemed to alter the mood of the group, and even the night itself. Once again, the hideout started to feel like a bad place—or at least a place where bad things could happen.
Goose bumps rising on her skin, Saskia suddenly remembered a particularly horrible murder she’d once read about. The death of a teenage girl named Martha Moxley, who had also lived in Connecticut. She’d been found bludgeoned to death underneath a tree. Had it been a tree like this one?
“Guys, guys, please, let’s get back to business,” said Adrienne. “When’s our next meeting?”
Paige took a deep breath and regrouped. “How about tomorrow. Same time, same place?”
“I’ll be here,” said Adrienne.
“What about you, Saskia?” asked Paige.
Sheepishly, Saskia glanced at Lila, her de facto ride.
“Yeah, we’ll be here, too,” Lila mumbled.
“Guess if it’s my own yard I have to be there,” added Sara Beth. “But I better meet my man before then, or there’ll be trouble tomorrow.”
She smiled slyly. Then, with a reptilian flick of pink tongue, she licked her fingertips and began to snuff out the candles. The blackness seemed to snuff out conversation, too. Saskia thought Sara Beth would turn on the flashlight, but she didn’t. Blindly, the girls pushed aside branches and scrabbled out of the canopy.
When she emerged, discombobulated, Saskia wasn’t sure which was darker: their new hideout or the world beyond.
An uncomfortable silence extended from the moment Saskia and Lila got into the car until they arrived at McDonald’s. Saskia waited.
“The usual?” Lila asked, veering in the direction of the drive-through.
“Yup.”
“So I thought about what Paige said.”
Saskia held her breath nervously. “Yeah?”
“Don’t get me wrong—I don’t agree with her. But maybe she has a point. Maybe I’ll give the mercury thing a try.”
Finally, Saskia thought. She’d hoped that Lila had already tried to meet her boy, but better late than never.
Mercury Boys Page 14
