In the Shadow of the Lamp (15 page)

He caught me staring at him and turned. “You must be tired, Molly. Why don’t you go and get a cup of tea?” So he knew my first name too.

“Would you like me to bring you a cuppa?”

“No. I can’t seem to eat or drink in this kind of situation,” he said, nodding his head toward a group of doctors who were biting chunks off of loaves of bread and swigging something out of flasks. “I guess I’m just not very used to it yet.”

Not used to it? He was a doctor.

“Where are you from, Molly?”

I cast a quick look round to see where Miss Nightingale was. I couldn’t find her and figured she’d gone inside to help with getting the ones who’d been admitted to the hospital settled and cared for. “I’m from London. The East End.”

“Where did you nurse before you came here?”

I’d been wondering when one of the doctors or patients would ask me that. I looked down at my hands, which I saw were sheathed in blood. “I never nursed anywhere before this,” I said.

“Really?” He sounded almost glad. “But you’re so calm and good at it. And I thought Miss Nightingale only brought out experienced nurses.”

“It’s a long tale,” I said, “and I’m none too proud of it. But I’m here, doing what I can.”

He nodded. “My parents didn’t want me to become a doctor. Someone from an old Scottish family should be in politics, or work the land, or become one of the fearsome Highland Dragoons.”

“Oh, so you’re Scotch!”

He smiled. “We prefer Scots, but yes.”

“I like the way you talk.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“Is that why you look at me sometimes?”

My face and neck went hot and tingly. “I … I …”

Dr. Maclean laughed. “You see, Molly, you seem to have this talent for making me laugh. And with those auburn curls I can see peeking out from your cap I think perhaps you may have some Scottish blood in you too.”

I quickly tried to tuck the ends of my hair back under my cap, wondering how much had strayed out and what a sight I must appear. “Molly! We’re wanted in the hospital.” I jumped at the sound of Emma’s voice. I hadn’t heard her coming. She gave me a curious look that said,
What do you think you’re doing?

“I’ll be along. Thank you, Dr. Maclean.” I don’t quite know what I thanked him for, but I felt grateful to him. Grateful for treating me like I knew what I was doing, and letting me prove myself, perhaps. Grateful for talking to me. Grateful for knowing my name.

“Cor, I’m not half done in,” Emma said as we walked to the hospital door.

“You have circles like coal smudges under your eyes,” I said.

“And you have twinkly stars in yours.” She pinched me, but I could feel her hands shaking and knew she had no more strength left than I did. “Be careful, miss. I have my eye on that one.”

“What about your wounded soldier?” I asked, nudging her in the ribs.

She turned all serious. “Don’t you say a word, Moll. He was one of them what we discharged today. Or rather, yesterday. He says he’s going to find a way to see me.”

That would be a mistake, I knew. But after that night, seeing how short life could be and how uncertain everything was, I understood why she’d risk it. I felt a tug in the center of me when I thought about the way Dr. Maclean looked into my eyes. There was an answer inside him that wasn’t like anything I’d ever felt before. There was something in what we had done together that night, something terrible and important. I don’t know how many of the men that passed through our hands died, if not right then, after they went to the ward. For some it was obvious they wouldn’t live out the night. For others chances were they’d heal. Heal to fight again.

“You’re awful quiet, Moll. What did that Dr. Maclean do to you?”

I didn’t have time to answer because we’d entered the ward. Two or three Sisters of Mercy walked calmly amongst the beds, bending down now and again to straighten a sheet or give a drink of water. Mrs. Drake stood at the foot of the stairs to the upper wards. When she saw us she called us over. “Miss Nightingale wants to see you two.” She cocked her thumb toward the stairs.

“This is it,” I said to Emma. “We’ll get the sack. Or a drubbing at least.” If Miss Nightingale had made one thing clear, it was that her orders were to be strictly obeyed, whatever we thought of them. We had most definitely disobeyed by coming out to nurse last night, when we’d never really been allowed to do it before. We’d be back to stuffing mattresses at the very least.

I saw her standing in the middle of the ward. The sun streamed in through the rows of windows in a pattern that showed floating specks of dust and made the dingy linens look almost white. Miss Nightingale, dressed all in black silk, was like a statue there, her eyes traveling up and down the rows, looking for anyone in need, watching her nurses mop brows and hold basins while men who were just coming to realize they no longer had an arm or a leg, or they’d lost the sight of an eye, choked out their despair.

We stood quiet and still, waiting for her to notice us. She did at last. She came toward us not quickly, but with purpose, the way she did everything.

“Fraser, Bigelow,” she said, in a tone that I knew spelled business. “You know I have not wanted you to mix with the men in the wards. Had things been otherwise, I would not have brought either of you to this place. But somehow in the rush to get here, you managed to come along.

“I have been informed that the doctors you worked with last night have expressed their satisfaction. It seems you are both natural nurses, whatever your lack of training. But this lack can be dangerous—even with talent as a substitute.”

Miss Nightingale stared at us, one after the other. Standing there, I couldn’t tell what she was going to do. When she reached her arms out for us, I started to shrink backward at first, expecting a cuff on the ear. But instead, she held us close for just an instant.

“You’ve done well,” she murmured. “Don’t disappoint me.” Then as quickly as she’d done it, she let us go. “Go eat and rest. Come back when I send others for their turn. We’ll have to work round the clock today.”

No one had held me close like that since my mother, the last time I saw her before I was let go from my parlormaid position. I tried not to think about that—there was no point. She couldn’t put her arms around me when I was on the other side of the world, and she wouldn’t want to until I came back and showed her that I had made something of myself. Still, I was unaccountably happy that Miss Nightingale was pleased.

Whatever happened next, I felt that I’d finally accomplished something. I was a nurse. Or, if not exactly a nurse, I had a natural talent for nursing. None other than Miss Nightingale herself told me so.

That was the beginning of my real life, that night. And it was the beginning of something else, too, something far more important in the end. I felt safe, for a minute at least. But soon the war came closer to me than I could have imagined, and the days and hours raced on so that I could hardly see my life passing as they went.

C
hapter 16

We all soon learned to cope with the unpredictable schedule of battle casualties. Sometimes things would seem quiet as peacetime and there wouldn’t be enough to keep us busy. Then the older nurses would get wool from the market and start knitting socks, and we’d all roll bandages and help with washing linens. Mrs. Drake told us stories, most of them funny, about her grandchildren and about nursing in London. She’d sometimes do it in a way that was meant to teach me things, without making it too obvious. In turn I’d sit patiently while she wound a ball of wool from the skein on my outstretched hands. I never knew my grandmas, but Mrs. Drake was what I always imagined they’d be like.

We took turns in the laundry, set up as I’d heard it would be in a hut outside the hospital. There was another hospital about half a mile away that we didn’t know about when we first came. It was called the General Hospital, and had mostly convalescents. Only the Sisters of Mercy were sent over to work there. They didn’t want more than one female nurse per ward because the men were getting healthy.

Every day it seemed Miss Nightingale found some other almost impossible challenge to overcome. The first one, after the wards were cleaned up and real beds brought in, was the food the wounded and sick were given.

“Half the time the meat is raw and the other half it is overcooked and cold. They tear their food apart with their hands because they don’t have forks and knives. There are no fresh vegetables, and the bread is so hard the men can’t chew it. As for sick rations … there are those here who seem to think that a light diet means no diet!”

I thought for a while we were all going to have to learn how to cook. But the Muslims would not allow women to prepare food for the men. Mrs. Clarke was pretty happy about that. Though we did end up with a roster for serving food. Soon enough, everyone in the hospital was given wholesome meals according to what the doctors recommended. Whole rations, half rations, quarter rations, or spoon feeding. I swear the men began to heal more quickly.

But as soon as things started to get into a pattern, like a well-run household, something else happened that upset everything.

I had come in from taking my turn in the wards, watching over men who had just had surgery to see if they were getting past the crisis and would live. A moment after I hung my cloak on the peg, I heard a disturbance at the door and the bright chatter of many women’s voices, none of them familiar to me.

When the door burst open to admit another eighteen women in nurses’ uniforms and ten more who were plainly Catholic nuns, my first thought was that some of us might be going home. But it had only been a few weeks, and there had been only one or two minor problems and two nurses sent away for drunkenness.

“Excuse me, girl,” said the one who seemed to be in charge, “I wonder if you’d be so kind as to direct us to Miss Nightingale.”

“What do you want me to tell her?” I asked.

“Tell her Miss Stanley is here, with reinforcements.”

Miss Stanley? She looked a little like the Mrs. Stanley who had interviewed the nurses at Mr. Herbert’s house in Belgrave Square. Probably her daughter. At this time of the morning Miss Nightingale was in her rooms, working in what she called her office. She was currently making a plan to get provisions to the hospital more quickly, so we wouldn’t run out of bandages and chloride of lime. I knocked on her door. When I told her Miss Stanley was waiting for her downstairs, a shadow crossed her face.

“She also said to say she’s brought reinforcements,” I said.

“Reinforcements? I hope she means supplies. We don’t need any more nurses. It’s hard enough managing you lot as it is.” She smiled at me, but not with any real mirth. The expression passed as quickly as it came, replaced by a frown that tugged at the corners of her mouth.

“I’m afraid, Miss Nightingale, she means nurses. And more nuns too.”

I’ve never seen someone’s jaw actually drop before, but Miss Nightingale’s did, and her expression changed in an instant to that determined hardness I’d come to recognize any time she was going to meet with the hospital administrators about one of her plans. “I told Mr. Herbert nurses were only to come out upon my authorization! And we already have too many nuns. I promised there would be no effort at conversion in the hospitals,” she muttered, marching out of her room so fast she sent three papers swirling into the air. She didn’t say not to follow her, so I did—at a bit of a distance, so she wouldn’t remember I was there.
This could be a very interesting meeting
, I thought.

The two women embraced like old friends. Which seemed odd, after what I had just heard Miss Nightingale say upstairs. “It’s always a pleasure to see you, Mary,” Miss Nightingale said. “But you needn’t have taken such a task upon yourself as to rush out here. You’ll see that we’re managing quite well as it is.”

Miss Stanley drew herself up a little. “There can surely never be enough nurses. And now I have brought you some with a higher level of education and a more reliable moral character. Sidney said you were having difficulties with some that came out with you initially.”

“If I required more nurses, I certainly would have written to Mr. Herbert, who assured me that he would never take it upon himself to send anyone whom I had not personally approved.”

The conversation was hotting up. The nurses—still in their winter cloaks and bonnets—began to shift from one foot to another. The one who was the head of the nuns stepped forward. “If you’ll excuse me, my bishop decides what we do or do not, and I have been charged with the task of nursing the poor dying men out here.” She spoke with a thick Irish accent, which I recognized immediately from having heard the Irishmen on the docks in London.

“I think you’ll find that I have complete jurisdiction over the nursing in this and the General Hospital,” said Miss Nightingale. “It is for me to determine who nurses or otherwise, not your bishop.”

“Allow me to introduce Mother Bridgeman, superior of the nursing sisters I have brought with me,” said Mary Stanley.

“Superior in religious matters does not mean superior in medical matters.” Miss Nightingale’s voice was rising and sharpening. Things were set on a downhill course, I could see. I decided I’d better do something to stop it, even if I risked losing some of the favor I’d won with Miss Nightingale.