A Place in Your Heart

by Kathy Otten

  Charles shrugged into his coat. Gathering his patience, he pushed each of his nine brass buttons through their corresponding holes.

  His grandfather extended one hand in greeting. In the other he held both his hat and that damned walking stick. “Good morning, Charles.” His shrewd gaze roamed from the top of Charles’ head to the toes of his scuffed boots. A frown turned down the corners of Grandfather’s mouth. “This slovenly appearance is how you present yourself to me?” He gave his head a slow shake. “Your mother would have never approved.”

  Charles didn’t attempt to apologize or explain. He only knew he was not having this conversation in front of the sergeant, the office clerk, or the officer-of-the-day.

  He hastily finger combed his pillow-mussed hair. “It’s good to see you, sir. May I show you my quarters?” With a sweep of his arm, he gestured toward the hall.

  As his grandfather passed by, Charles clearly heard a soft, derisive, “Harrumph.” Ignoring it, he led the way to his small room toward the back of the building.

  Tap. Step. His grandfather followed with his walking stick.

  Just inside the doorway, his grandfather stopped. His disapproving gaze roamed from the mountain of medical reports, which Charles needed to finish and organize, to the stack of notes and medical books being used to write his paper on Pymeia and Surgical Fevers, to the Quartermaster’s ledger and the supply requisitions for Doctor Bliss.

  “You always did accumulate clutter.”

  There was no point in trying to explain that this was all work. His grandfather never understood. Books were to be kept neatly on the library shelves, not stacked in piles around a bedroom.

  “Now when your mother was a girl, her room was immaculate. Nary a hair brush out of place. Extremely organized.”

  “Why are you here?”

  The one blessing to being in the army was that he didn’t have to listen to his grandfather’s veiled criticisms any longer.

  “Do I need a reason to come see my favorite grandson?”

  “You shouldn’t, but I expect you have one.”

  His grandfather raised his walking stick and poked Charles in the center of his chest. “You are still too much the smart aleck. I should have taken you over my knee a few times. I don’t know where such disrespect comes from. Your father was too meek and your mother too much a lady.”

  Charles moved toward his desk and pulled the chair around. “May I offer you a seat?” he asked, dropping his gaze to his grandfather.

  The older man stepped beside the bed, and reaching down, lifted the book Charles had been reading. “Jokes and Jests?” With his walking stick, he gave the room a haphazard wave. “This is what comes from reading such frivolous nonsense.”

  In one quick stride, Charles was across the room. He snatched the book from the old man’s hands. “’Tis for research,” he said, and took it to his desk, shifting the piles of books and papers around until the volume was buried.

  “’Tis?” his grandfather repeated with slow, appalled distaste. “Has your diction also lapsed?”

  Staring at the floor, Charles tried to replay in his head the words he’d just uttered. Had he actually said ’tis? He closed his eyes and clenched his teeth as his grandfather continued to rant.

  “Here it is eleven o’clock in the morning, and your bed is a mess. I believed the regulation of army life would be good for you. That is why I encouraged you to enlist, but from what I’ve seen, this place lacks both structure and accountability.”

  Remaining in this room for a polite visit was no longer an option. He was thirty-two years old, yet he felt as if he were ten, called into his grandfather’s study to be disciplined for spilling milk or receiving a ninety-three percent on his report from school. What was the old man’s motto? Ah, yes, spare the walking stick and spoil the child.

  “Would you like a tour of the hospital?”

  “I suppose I ought to see what you do all day.”

  Quickly, Charles ushered his grandfather out the back door of the building onto the covered plank walkway which connected all the wards.

  To accommodate the shorter man and his walking stick, Charles held his hands behind his back and curtailed his normal stride into tiny, mincing steps.

  Tap, step. Tap, step.

  “I hope this negligent attitude of yours doesn’t carry over into the hospital and your duties there.”

  Charles tightly squeezed three of his own fingers. “This is a new hospital, built specifically to meet the guidelines of the U.S. Sanitary Commission for optimal ventilation and hygienic behaviors.”

  “Then why is the death rate so high?”

  “Excuse me?” Charles turned to face the man who raised him, the man whose gray eyes lit with challenge.

  “My friend in the Senate shared some interesting statistics last night over dinner.” His grandfather continued up the walk. “Of all the hospitals in Washington, and I believe he said there were over fifty facilities being used right now, Armory Square Hospital has the highest number of deaths. Is this a reflection of the attitude I see from you here today?”

  Fury roiled inside Charles like water in a whistling tea kettle. For a moment, he literally saw red. His fingers ached to wrap around the old man’s throat.

  Nothing he did was ever good enough.

  Charles had graduated from Jefferson Medical College when he was just twenty-one, then gone to Europe for three years, continuing his studies in Edinburg, London, Paris, and Vienna. He’d even started his own small practice before enlisting. Yet, not one accomplishment rose high enough to meet his grandfather’s standard of perfection. Charles clenched his teeth against all the vicious words rising in his throat, things he longed to scream right into his grandfather’s face.

  He drew several deep breaths until he was certain he could speak in a concise, level-headed manner.

  “What your friend in the Senate neglected to take into account when he spouted those facts is that this hospital is the closest, both to the steamboat landing at the end of Seventh Street, and to the line of the Washington and Alexandria Railroad.”

  Tap, step. His grandfather ambled slowly along.

  “Because of this,” Charles continued. “We receive the worst cases of wounded, the men who won’t make it to any other hospital. And we receive the soldiers who die en route.”

  At the entrance to Ward E, he turned to his grandfather. “The staff in these wards work hard to provide the best care they know how to these wounded men. I will thank you to address any disparaging remarks you may feel compelled to utter, only to me.”

  “Disparaging remarks?”

  Whack!

  His grandfather’s walking stick slammed against Charles’ shin. He gritted his teeth against the pain which radiated up to his knee and down to his ankle. Thank God he at least had on leather boots.

  “How dare you disrespect your elder in such a manner? I can see this whole military idea of mine has been a mistake. You’ve been here two years and instead of creating a future political candidate, the army has corrupted you.”

  “I have not been corrupted.”

  “You say not, yet you deserted your duty as a physician on the battlefield and assaulted a superior officer, which resulted in a demotion from major to captain. Without me you would have spent the war rotting in Old Capitol Prison. Military life is obviously not for you. I will see what I can do to get you relieved of your duties and you can move back home to Philadelphia.”

  “Grandfather, the army has no plans to discharge me. They need all the surgeons they can get. In two days I’ll be going back to my regiment to resume my duties as a field surgeon with the 69th Pennsylvania.”

  His grandfather emitted a soft grunt then tugged thoughtfully on his snowy beard. “Going back into battle?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  His grandfather’s narrow shoulders hunched as his head slowly moved up and down. “That might be the best thing for you. Get you away from this place. Give you some discipline. The
n if you don’t have another breakdown, we’ll explore your political possibilities when this rebellion nonsense is over.”

  Charles closed his eyes and drew deep calming breaths, quelling the urge to bang his forehead against the wall of the building. If he had his way, he’d never go home again.

  He turned the knob and pushed open the door. “Welcome to Ward E.”

  For a few minutes, his grandfather amicably strolled along as Charles explained rounds and medication passes, the jobs of the nurses, attendants, stewards, and orderlies. For a few minutes, Charles warmed toward the older man, who seemed eager to learn everything Charles had to share.

  As they approached the nurses’ table, Gracie looked up, pen in hand, from one of the many sheets of paper spread before her. She gave his grandfather a puzzled glance then switched her attention to meet his gaze.

  “Doctor Ellard, if ye have a minute, could ye check the wound in Private Bragg’s lower back? When Harvey changed the private’s dressings, he be noticing gray around the wound and a discharge thicker than normal.”

  Charles nearly asked her which patient was Bragg, then remembered that Bragg was the new admission from whom he’d removed two bullets the other night.

  He started down the aisle then glanced back to see if his grandfather followed, but the man seemed content to wander on his own.

  At bed twenty-three, Charles pulled the chair close then lowered his rangy body so he was nearly level with the patient.

  Bragg opened his eyes for a moment then closed them.

  Carefully, Charles rolled the man onto his side, lifted his shirt, and peeled back the bandage.

  His nostrils flared at the sour smell which wafted from the wound. He studied the heavy yellow substance on the pad then poked at the necrosis creeping around the edges of the wound. A steady, clear, even slight yellow discharge was expected, but when it crossed into pymeia paired with a high fever, he believed things had taken a turn for the worst.

  He pulled a pencil and note pad from his pocket, focused on recording every detail of the patient’s condition for his paper. Both doctors and medical texts encouraged laudable pus as a sign the wound was healing. But Charles found it to be the antecedent for pymeia and gangrene, which is why he’d needed further data to complete his paper and see it published. He wished he knew how to use photography equipment to visually document the progression of the septicemia.

  After easing the man onto his back, Charles reached for the patient card and began to write. Change dressing every two hours. Report all discharge. For fever, cold compresses.

  “Cap’n Ellard!”

  Charles glanced up frowning at the disruption.

  Corporal Reid hurried toward him, waving his arm in an urgent, come-here manner.

  Baffled, Charles stood and immediately recognized the raised voices of Gracie McBride and his grandfather. As he stepped into the aisle, he saw the two of them in front of his tracheotomy patient.

  His grandfather held fast to the silver head of the walking stick and Gracie, swearing at him in Gaelic, had hold of the opposite end, each trying to wrest the stick away from the other, with the pull-tug motion of loggers using a two-man saw.

  Extending his stride, Charles was there in moments.

  In what had become a familiar maneuver, he wrapped his arm around Gracie’s waist and lifted her off her feet. With his free hand, he pried her fingers from the walking stick.

  His grandfather staggered backward, but young Reid and one of the attendants each grabbed an arm to keep old man from falling.

  Despite the way Gracie squirmed and pulled at his arm, Charles still managed to point toward the nurses’ table and chair. “Grandfather, please wait for me over there.”

  If his grandfather argued, Charles didn’t wait to hear it. He swung on his heels and marched from the ward, a squirming, swearing Gracie held tight in front of him.

  “Stop kicking,” he whispered harshly, “or I swear to God I’ll throw you over my shoulder.”

  She stilled in his arms. “Put me down, Charles Ellard.”

  “No.”

  “That old goat be hitting me with his cane, and by the saints he’s going to know the feel of it.”

  While he could certainly understand her sentiment, hitting an old man in the middle of a hospital ward was not the way to handle it.

  Once outside, he lowered her to her feet.

  She tried to dodge past him.

  He sidestepped to block her from reaching the door.

  She feigned to the left and rushed to the right, forcing him to continue the game through several more attempts.

  With a frustrated cry, she whirled on her heels and marched off down the walk.

  He glanced over his shoulder, wondering what additional havoc his grandfather had wrought. He should check. Gracie seemed fine—angry, but fine.

  “Oh hell,” he muttered and started after her. Several moments passed before his long stride caught up to her double-time quick march, the heels of her shoes sounding click, click, click against the wooden planks.

  “Go away,” she said as he came up behind her.

  Was that a catch in her voice? “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  “No.” She stepped off the walk onto a gravel path.

  He stepped off right behind her. “Tell me.”

  “Then will ye go away?”

  “Perhaps.”

  She stopped abruptly in front of the chapel.

  He tried to move in front of her, but she turned, keeping her back to him.

  Her shoulders heaved as she exhaled a loud sigh. “He was bothering the patients, walking up close and staring at them, like they be here for his entertainment. Then he asked Sergeant Baker what was wrong with his neck. The poor man cannot even talk.”

  She sniffed and raised her hand to her face for a moment.

  Was she crying? His chest tightened, and his stomach gave a tiny flip. “Did he hurt you?”

  She sniffed again, and her hand moved up to her face even as she shook her head. “’Tis fine. I’ve hit me shin harder on the end o’ me own bed.”

  There was a distinctive catch in her breath. “You are crying.”

  “Go away.”

  He couldn’t just walk off. He had to fix this somehow. “Don’t cry.”

  “I’m—not,” hiccup, “crying.”

  “Of course you’re crying.”

  “Doctor Ellard, just leave me be.”

  “He hurt you, and I need to see the wound.”

  There were a few more sniffs. “’Tis not a wound that ye can see. Now go away.”

  A chill washed over him. God, where had his grandfather hit her? He never should have brought the old man to the ward. Charles had behaved like the coward he was purported to be, using the tour to avoid facing the litany of his grandfather’s criticisms back in his quarters. And maybe some small part of him hoped that when his grandfather saw how fine a hospital Armory Square was and saw what good work they did here, that maybe, just for once Grandfather would be proud of him. He should have known better.

  He tried again to see her face, but she neatly turned away.

  “Gracie, you must tell me what he did.” He couldn’t believe his grandfather would strike a woman, then remembered that in his grandfather’s world, Irish weren’t good enough to be servants. “I need to see. I am a doctor and even if it might be embar—”

  She whirled around. “Ye great oaf, he called me a whore.”

  Tears streamed down her flushed cheeks from brown eyes all red and puffy.

  His shoulders sagged with relief. The tightness in his chest eased so he could breathe normally again. At least his grandfather hadn’t hurt her. Not really. For a moment he had visions of the old man poking her with his walking stick and leaving bruises on her breasts, or lower, on her abdomen, or lower.

  Stop! He ordered himself. He shouldn’t be thinking of Gracie McBride naked, of roaming his hands over her body as he checked for injuries. He gave his head a sh
ake. “At least you’re not hurt.”

  “I be not a whore,” she declared as more tears slid down her cheeks. She swung around to face the steps of the small white building.

  “No, of course not.” All this crying couldn’t be healthy. The last time he tried to comfort her, she accused him of having ice in his veins and had thrown his coat on the ground. Hands behind his back, he stared through the branches of a small tree planted at the corner of the chapel. There must be something he could say, something that would distract her from her tears…

  “Two neighbors,” he began, “having gone shares on the purchase of a pig disagreed as to the time when it should be killed. ‘Well,’ said the one of them, ‘you may kill your half when you like; I shall kill mine now.’”

  She whirled around, her face blotchy. “A joke!” She stepped toward him, planted both hands on the center of his chest and shoved.

  His boot heels skidded on the gravel, forcing him to step back into the grass.

  “Ye stand there and think to tell me a joke?”

  “I thought to make you laugh.”

  “That old goat called me an Irish wench, he said I be nothing more than a camp-follower, no better than a whore…right in front of the patients…the men I’ve come to tend and care for.

  “I loved me husband. ’Twas never a finer man than William McBride. All I learned o’medicine and nursing come as I stood equal by his side. He’d not want me to stay in Boston scrubbing floors and polishing silver. I come here to honor his memory, to share what he taught me, and that devil’s spawn…

  “And ye? Ye stand there and tell me a joke?”

  “My intention was for you to stop crying.”

  “Ye don’t tell me a foolish joke, ye give me a hug!”

  A hug? That was rather a simple solution. His arms already ached to wrap around her, to hold her close, to kiss her. He stepped forward. His fingers brushed her shoulders.

  She stiffened and shoved him away. “Do not touch me.”

  Baffled, he stared at her. “You said…

  She heaved a weighted sigh. “Not like that. Have ye never hugged a woman? Ye stand right where ye are, hold out yer arms and say, ‘Ah, Gracie-lass…c-come h-here.’ ”