In the Shadow of the Lamp (11 page)

After that everyone took up needles and thread and did their sewing, quiet as mice.

“I sure didn’t bargain on this kind of work,” Emma whispered to me as she made stitches too big to keep the stuffing inside the stump pillow she was sewing. “Ruin my hands, I will.”

“And nursing won’t? What about all those bandages, and the laundry and such?”

“Laundry? Will we be doing laundry?”

I shrugged. I decided it would do no good to tell Emma I’d overheard Mrs. Bracebridge talking earlier with some of the sisters about getting a building for a laundry, if it was needed.

That’s all we did for near a week. We sewed and fought battles with the returning lice and rats. None of us set foot in the wards—except Miss Nightingale. Yet the wounded were so near, it was a pity. Right on the other side of the wall from us we could hear men groaning of a night. It was like no sound I’d ever heard before. Soft and pitiful, like a wind blowing from the grave. I wished we could just look in on them, maybe mop their faces or fix their pillows. But we’d been told we weren’t to leave our quarters without permission.

Emma put her sewing down, stood, and stretched. “I can’t stand it in here. Can’t we go outside, walk in the courtyard or something?”

“Miss Nightingale told us not to,” I said.

“And if she told you to climb on the sill and jump out the window would you do it?” Emma said. A few of the others chuckled. Emma went to the window and stared out for a bit but soon came back to her halfhearted needlework.

That evening Miss Nightingale called us all together, partly to let us know why we were still kept from the wards, but also I think because she wanted to tell us some things about nursing—nursing the way she thought it ought to be done. She said things at the start that got some of the older nurses’ backs up, about nursing not having to do with giving medicines or bandaging wounds.

“First, and most importantly, it is essential for us to let the bodies of the sick and wounded heal themselves. And to do this they must have fresh air, warmth, and food.”

“Fresh air and warmth! In this climate it’s not possible. Would you have us go opening windows everywhere?” It was one of the nuns.

“Would you have the sick and wounded breathe only the air in a ward full of other sick and wounded men? It is possible to let in fresh air without giving patients a chill. Warming bottles, blankets—do we not have these tools at our disposal?”

What she said made sense to me, who didn’t know anything about proper nursing, but I could see the looks some of the others gave her. They weren’t likely to take what she said without a grain of salt.

“And food—what of food for them that can’t stomach it?” Mrs. Drake asked.

“Of course they would not eat what a healthy man eats,” said Miss Nightingale, “but without nourishment how can a body have the strength to heal itself? Light beef broths, softened bread—these must be fed to those not capable of a proper meal.”

The more she spoke, the more unbelieving the nurses looked, as if she were speaking blasphemy against the gospel truth. Only the Sellonites and the St. John’s nurses took it all in without doubting.

For me, I knew I’d rather be warm, fed, and breathing fresh air if I were sick. But so far we hadn’t any chance to put Miss Nightingale’s methods to the test, and there was little sign we would very soon, so what was the point?

For three more days our lives were the same. Everyone got cross. I began two more letters to Will but couldn’t make out what to say. I wrote one letter to my mum, short and easy, so she wouldn’t have to pay to get it read. Not that I could’ve made it very long anyway.

On the fourth day Miss Nightingale let us walk into town for exercise.

“Let’s go together to the market!” Emma was like a bird let out of a cage, she flapped about so.

I didn’t much care where we went, so long as it was out. Even the cold didn’t bother me. Scutari was so different from London. There were people everywhere in colorful striped costumes. Every so often, chanting rang out through the air, and all around us people put down little rugs and bowed toward the east.

We wandered through the market, looking at the fruits and sundries. Sellers thrust their wares at us and followed us when we didn’t buy them. I spent no money, in spite of the fact I could have spared a penny or two. I was saving my first week’s wages to pay Will back.

When time came to return to the barracks, I was a little sorry. Emma was so disappointed she looked like she’d burst out crying any minute and went straight to her bunk without a word to anyone.

The next day an awful smell came in through the gaps in the windows.

“Ugh! What is that?” Emma said, pinching her nose.

The smell was so bad it made me retch. One nurse started sprinkling eau de cologne everywhere, but all it did was add a sweetness to the bad smell. We couldn’t go out, and we were trapped inside with the odor. Mr. Bracebridge went off to find out the cause.

“It’s the sewers,” he said when he came back. “The latrines aren’t deep enough, and they drain directly into the Bosporus.”

“Why didn’t we smell it before?” Mrs. Drake asked.

“That’s because of the wind. The direction shifted and now carries the smell back inside.”

“Even Miss Nightingale wouldn’t want the windows open to this stink!” Mrs. Drake said, and everyone laughed.

I went over to close the one window we’d opened, hoping it would make the awful smell go away. As I fastened the latch, I stopped and stared. Our windows looked out over the Bosporus, and when it was clear we could see all the way over to Istanbul. It wasn’t clear that day, but in the distance I could just make out two ships coming into port, not from the direction of the Sea of Marmara, but from the Black Sea. “Look!” I said. The others all crowded round.

“They’re the ships carrying wounded from Balaclava,” Mr. Bracebridge said.

We didn’t move, but watched the slow dance of docking and then the horrible parade of men, some walking but wrapped in dirty, bloodied bandages, most being carried out by Turkish workers who hoisted them like meat carcasses and dropped them on the ground near the hospital. I wanted so to go out and do something, but we were caged up like a flock of black rooks, only able to squabble amongst ourselves.

The rest of the afternoon and evening we sat silently at our sewing, listening to the shouting and running about outside. When Mrs. Clarke came in with our dinner I couldn’t eat a bite. But it wasn’t the smell this time. It was wanting to help and feeling completely useless.

Just as we were about to get ready for bed, Miss Nightingale walked in, looking smart and purposeful. Her eyes were bright. I’d never seen her so well.

“I have good news in all this tragedy,” she said. “Dr. Menzies and I have agreed on the disposition of nurses, and we are to commence our duties at dawn.”

I could’ve whooped aloud, although why the beginning of hard, sad work should seem so exciting I didn’t know. At least we’d be doing something. And getting out of those rooms that had begun to feel more like a prison than a hospital.

That night I could hardly sleep. I tossed and turned more even than when I was hiding on the docks in Folkestone. We were going to do what we’d come here for at last. Would I be able to manage? I didn’t know much.
Just follow directions
, Emma said once when we were talking. I had watched a man get his leg cut off in Paris. Would this be worse? I couldn’t imagine.
Give them air, keep them warm, give them nourishment.
Surely that wouldn’t be too difficult?

I must have fallen asleep at some point but I felt as though I’d hardly closed my eyes when a bell woke me up. Miss Nightingale stood in the common room, dressed in a uniform just like ours—only hers was made of silk and fit her proper and without the sash—banging on a bell with a wooden spoon. I think everyone was so dazed that no one complained about the early hour.

“Sisters Sarah Anne and Elizabeth, you’re to go to the sick wards and help the doctors there since you are the most experienced nurses. As to the other wards, we shall have a rotation, which I have planned. Fraser, Bigelow, Erskine, Kelly, Sharpe—come with me. Sisters Margaret, Ethelreda, and de Chantal and Mrs. Drake, Mrs. Lundy, and Mrs. Hawkins, I’ll show you to the ward you will work in today as well. The rotation will be posted this evening.”

It felt like freedom to walk out into the corridor that went all the way around the building, sun slanting in through windows that faced the parade ground in the middle. We didn’t go into the ward right next to our room, though. Instead we went down the stairs to the ground floor where Dr. Menzies waited for us.

At first when we entered that dark, lowest floor of the hospital it was hard to make out what was there. The smell was so bad that we all covered our mouths at the same time and more than a few of us stifled retches. The stink was ten times worse than what came into our rooms up above. I didn’t know it right then, but it turned out that we were very close to where the latrines emptied, right underneath the floorboards. And here that awful smell blended with other odors. Blood. Rotting flesh. Sweat. A trace of gunpowder.

“These are the men who were just admitted last night,” Dr. Menzies said.

As my eyes become accustomed to the half light, I could make out shapes writhing on the floor. “Shapes” was all I could think to call them. Human bodies so mixed together and covered with blood and gore it seemed I was looking at a single creature.

“The wards are above. If you’ll follow me.”

We picked our way gingerly through the men on the floor to a staircase. Maybe upstairs in a proper ward there would be more order. My hopes didn’t last long. I heard Miss Nightingale exclaim before I reached the top of the staircase, “But there are no beds! And the linens are filthy. The stink is abominable. What is that surgeon over there doing?”

I hardly noticed that Emma had put her arm through mine and was clinging tightly to me as we entered the ward. It wasn’t much better than the scene below, except that more of the men had bandages wrapped around them. Otherwise, their faces were just as covered in battlefield filth and they still lay on the floor or on the infested divans that lined the walls—the floor was at least cushioned with straw. We were all too horrified to move. I looked toward where Miss Nightingale pointed and saw that a surgeon and three orderlies had a man pinned down and were setting up to amputate his arm.

“Have you no operating table? No chloroform? Not even a curtain to shield the other patients from the sight?” Miss Nightingale’s voice rose.