A Night of Horrors: A Historical Thriller about the 24 Hours of Lincoln's Assassination (21 page)

“Stop pushing! There is a wedge on this side that will not allow you in and you must stop pushing so I can remove it!” Charles Rathbone stood on the opposite side of the door and was trying to remove the wooden wedge with his good arm. The plank that Booth had set against the door functioned so that the more pressure that was applied to get inside only worked to set the plank in more securely.

“Stop your pushing, damn you!” Rathbone yelled again through the door. On the other side of the door, the men stopped their pushing. In the moment of calm as they waited for the door to open, Leale stepped forward.

“Okay. It is open,” he heard Rathbone say from inside. The door flung open. Rathbone stood there with a pale face, his left arm hanging at his side.

“I am an Army Surgeon and I can help if the President has been shot,” Leale said to the Major.

Rathbone pointed past Leale to a Captain standing behind him in uniform. “You, keep the room clear of anyone who isn’t a doctor.” He turned and walked away. Leale followed him quickly into the small vestibule that led to the box with many men pushing in behind him. Leale was about to rush into the box when he felt a strong sense to ‘Halt!’ It was as if an order had been issued. He paused in the threshold of the box and surveyed the scene.

Major Rathbone was standing just inside the door looking from Leale to the President slumped in the rocking chair. His left arm, hanging limp at his side, had dribbled a bloody trail from the box to the door and back again. Next to the slumping figure of President Lincoln sat Mrs. Lincoln, her hand still on her husband’s chest. Next to Mrs. Lincoln sat Clara Harris, stroking the First Lady’s shoulder, speaking softly to her. Leale did not know what he was about to encounter, but he reminded himself that he was an Army Surgeon and he was about to serve a man who had been shot. He had done this hundreds of times in the past few years. He focused his energies onto this moment and this patient and stepped into the box.

“Help me, please! I’ve been terribly wounded,” Major Rathbone pleaded with Dr. Leale holding his left arm up to him with his good right hand. Leale stopped and pulled open the rip in Rathbone’s coat and examined the wound. It was a small cut of just an inch or two. The amount of blood that was oozing from the wound indicated that the knife had plunged deeply into the Major’s arm. It wasn’t mortal and the President of the United States sat unconscious and possibly dead just a few feet away.

“Sir, you are deeply wounded, but it is not life threatening. I must tend to the President.” He turned away from Leale and stepped over to Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln.

“Oh, someone help him. Someone help my husband. Are you a doctor?” Mrs. Lincoln called out to Leale, whimpering and blubbering. Her uncontrolled grief deeply affected the young surgeon. Leale looked down to Mrs. Lincoln and took her outstretched hand. He glanced and saw that Abraham Lincoln’s head was slumped over on his chest and his face was extraordinarily pale.

“I am an Army Surgeon, ma’am. Would you like me to treat your husband?” He asked her.

“Oh, Doctor! Is he dead? Can he recover? Will you take charge of him? Do what you can for him. Oh, my dear husband! He’s been shot. Will he recover?” Tears streamed down her face and her pitiful cries coursed from her mouth without pause. The young doctor quickly realized that her pleas were directed to him.

“Mrs. Lincoln, I will do all that can be done for him.” As Leale stepped over to the President slumped in the chair, he bent over to look more closely at him. His training and instincts kicked in and he swung into action.

“You there,” he pointed to a man hovering in the doorway, “Go and get some brandy. And you,” he pointed to another man, “go and get some water in a basin and cloths.” Leale returned to the President and began to examine him. The great leader appeared to be dead. His eyes were closed and his head was fallen forward onto his chest. He did not appear to be breathing. If Mrs. Lincoln did not have her hand on his chest, he would fall to the floor.

Leale took up Lincoln’s hand and checked the right radial pulse, but he couldn’t perceive any movement in the artery. He felt his own pulse pounding. He knew that he would need to get the President onto the floor so he could resuscitate him. He called out for help in moving him to the floor. The doctor made sure that he took the President’s head and shoulders and allowed others to take his long legs. They cleared the chairs back and stretched him out onto the floor. Leale then cleared the box of all visitors except Rathbone, Clara Harris, and Mrs. Lincoln. As he gently laid Lincoln’s head and shoulders onto the floor, he pulled a clean kerchief from his pocket and laid it out to ensure that Lincoln’s head wasn’t on the floor. Leale also realized that his own hand was bloody. As he moved the President, he had come into contact with a great clot of blood near his left shoulder.

Dr. Leale looked up and asked if anyone had a small knife. Leale, thinking of Rathbone’s wound and recalling that the assassin had waved a knife about on the stage, thought that Lincoln might have been stabbed. A man stepped forward and held up a dirk knife. “Please cut away his shirt and coat from the neck to the elbow,” Leale commanded. The surgeon kept his eyes continually on Lincoln’s face. “Please check his shoulder and arm for a hemorrhage or wound.” The man did as he was instructed. Leale still saw no movement on the President’s face and had no sense that the man was breathing on his own.

“There is no bleeding or wound, Doctor,” the man responded.

“Then it must be his head,” Leale murmured, more to himself than to anyone present. He gently lifted the President’s great head in his hands and felt along the back of his head with his fingers, gently feeling through his hair. His hands paused when his fingers had worked to the back of Lincoln’s head behind the left ear. The surgeon’s right hand found a warm wet mat in his hair. He probed gently into the mat with his finger and found a wound clotted with blood and coagulants. He worked his ring finger gently into the clot and felt a ragged hole in the President’s skull. He eased the clot out of the wound and felt warm blood begin to ooze onto his hand. The surgeon knew that he needed to release the pressure that was building on the President’s brain. Leale pushed the tip of his finger into the base of Lincoln’s skull and realized that the wound was mortal. He knew of no man who could survive an hour after receiving a gunshot to that part of the head at such close range. He blinked his eyes with the realization that Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated. But he could do his best to resuscitate him and keep him alive for as long as possible.

“Thank you,” Leale said to the man who had cut the President’s shirt and coat away. “Please step back so I can try to revive him.” Mrs. Lincoln whimpered and clung to Clara Harris at the word ‘revive.’ Charles Leale knelt on the floor facing the President with a knee on each side of his pelvis. He leaned forward and spread open Lincoln’s mouth and used his extended middle finger and forefinger to push open the mouth and press down his tongue to move the larynx and open the President’s breathing passage.

“You there, with the knife, come over here,” Leale motioned to Lincoln’s left arm with his head. “You, come to this arm,” he called to another man who had helped place the great man on the floor. “Take his arms and lift them, at the same time, over his head. When I give you the signal, push them back down to the floor. You
must
keep his arms straight and you
must
do it at the same speed. Is that clear?” He looked each man in the eye and they nodded, holding onto Lincoln’s huge hands. They almost looked like children holding their father’s hands his were so much larger than theirs.

“Now!” Leale called. As they lifted the arms, Leale placed his hands on the upper part of Lincoln’s abdomen and pushed the diaphragm upwards. “Wait for me,” he urged as they began to move Lincoln’s arms again without awaiting his cue. “Okay, now.” The three men fell into a rhythm and the process caused air to be drawn in and out of Lincoln’s lungs. When the two men would bring the arms down to his side, Leale would quickly push the thumb and fingers of his stronger right hand under the ribs and stimulate the apex of the dying President’s heart. The men repeated this several times. All eyes in the box and the vestibule were on the young surgeon and the strange movements they were making with the President of the United States.

Leale once again checked Lincoln’s right radial pulse and felt a small movement of blood. He checked for other signs and sensed that though the President was responding, something more must be done to restore the great man’s life. Leale gestured for the two men to leave Lincoln’s arms on the ground. He leaned forward with his weight on his hands, his chest hovering directly over the prostrate man’s chest. Leale tilted the President’s head back and drew in a deep breath and then blew a long and hard breath into Lincoln’s mouth and nostrils. The young surgeon did this again and again. Each time, he could feel Lincoln’s chest expand slightly beneath him, so he knew that he was getting air into the man’s lungs. After waiting a moment, Leale placed his ear to Lincoln’s thorax and found the heart beating more strongly. Since the heartbeat was improving, Leale knelt upright and looked down at the President, studying his breathing. It was weak, but the surgeon was convinced that he’d breathe on his own for the time being and the chance of his immediate death had been avoided. Leale took one of the cloths and used it to clean his hands. He stepped over to Mrs. Lincoln and knelt down next to her. He took her hand into his, looking into her eyes.

“Mrs. Lincoln, his wound is mortal. It is impossible for him to recover,” he gently but firmly said to her. He had delivered similar news to officers’ wives and parents hundreds of times at the Army Hospital. But this news was different and Leale felt his own chest tighten beneath his suit coat. Mrs. Lincoln looked up at him and paused, blinking her teary eyes. Her eyes were oddly vacant for a moment and then they became clear and fixed as she understood the news that was just delivered to her.

“No, no, no, no,” she moaned and turned to cling to Clara Harris. As she did so, she looked down and saw that Miss Harris’ dress was splashed with blood from when Major Rathbone had been cut so deeply by Booth. She screamed out at the sight of the blood, thinking it her husband’s and pushed poor Clara Harris away. “No! It cannot be! Why him? Why did they not shoot me? Why him? Save him doctor, you must save my husband.” She then collapsed onto his shoulder. Leale allowed her but a moment before he said that he couldn’t sit there, but must return to her husband if he was to help him at all.

Behind him, the word was spreading from the vestibule out into the dressing circle and the entire theater that the President of the United States would die from the gunshot wound. Finally, the man came back with the brandy and Dr. Leale took it and gingerly tipped the bottle into Lincoln’s mouth. The brandy was taken and retained and this pleased Leale. He gently rearranged the cut shirt and coat so they covered his bare chest and stomach so that the President had as much dignity as possible. The white handkerchief was turning red and pink from the oozing wound in the back of his head. Lincoln’s breath came irregularly and his chest lifted slowly and slightly under the labor. His eyes remained closed. If Leale just looked at his face, ignoring the bloody handkerchief and ripped shirt, he almost appeared to be sleeping.

On the stage below, Dr. Charles Taft, a surgeon at the Army’s Signal Camp of Instruction at Georgetown, was climbing to the stage, trying to gain access to provide aid to the wounded Commander in Chief. Once onto the stage, he was lifted up to the railing of the President’s Box where he struggled to grasp and then climb over the railing to see if he could be of assistance. When he climbed into the box, he saw Charles Leale leaning over Lincoln, lifting the eyelids to check his pupils. Lincoln’s right eye was fully dilated and beginning to distend. The brain trauma was worsening and Leale’s prognosis was confirmed in his own mind. Leale stood up and bumped into Dr. Taft.

“I am a surgeon, young man, and can take care of things now,” Taft said and began to push past Leale to bend over the prostrate President.

“Sir, I am Dr. Charles Leale of the United States Army General Hospital at Armory Square. Mrs. Lincoln has put the President into my charge. I am afraid that he has been shot in the back of the head and the wound is mortal.” Dr. Taft ran his eyes over the young man before him and took in the news of the prognosis. Taft was bound to allow Leale to continue as the doctor in charge of the executive patient, though he was the senior physician, because Mrs. Lincoln had placed him in charge of her husband. They conferred with one another and Taft could find no fault with the steps that the young Dr. Leale had taken to preserve the President’s life. While they were standing there conferring, another man pushed his way through the crowd and stepped into the box.

“I am a doctor, may I be of assistance?” The man was Dr. Albert F. A. King, a Washington doctor who had been sitting in the dress circle. It had taken him all this time to work his way through the crowd and convince the officer standing at the entrance to the box to grant him entrance.

“I believe that we should move the President out of this box and to a place that is more suitable for him,” Leale said glancing from Taft to King.

“The Executive Mansion is a short ride away from here,” King answered.

“No. The ride over the cobble stones on Pennsylvania Avenue will certainly kill him,” Leale pronounced.

“There is a saloon next door. We could lay him on the bar,” a man in the vestibule called out.

“The President of the United States cannot die in a saloon!” Leale refused. As they talked about their options, Laura Keene, the starring actress of
Our American Cousin
appeared in the box carrying a basin of water. Leale barely noticed her, but she approached him holding the water out. He realized the woman was wearing very heavy make-up and only then recognized her as Laura Keene, the leading actress in the play.