Julia climbed out of bed and put on one of her plainer dresses, without hoops. She heaped pillows beneath her covers to make it appear that she was asleep, then took the servants’ stairs down to the back entrance. She hurried outside to the stable in the dark to find the Rhodes’ coachman.
“I need to go to Fairfield Hospital right away,” she told him. “Kindly get a carriage ready for me.” Her voice and her demeanor carried authority. The man never questioned the unusual request or the lateness of the hour.
The hospital looked dark and deserted when she arrived. “Wait here,” she told the driver. “I’ll be right back.” Julia didn’t expect to find James at the hospital. She had no idea where he lived, but she assumed that someone had to know where to find him in case of an emergency. The front door had been locked for the night. Julia pounded on it as hard as she could and was very surprised when Phoebe opened the door.
“What are you doing here?” Julia asked.
“I live here. Dr. McGrath fixed me a room because there wasn’t no place to rent in the whole city. What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to Dr. McGrath.”
“He ain’t here. He’s probably at the shantytown, where Belle and Loretta used to live.”
“Thanks.” Julia turned to hurry away, but Phoebe grabbed her arm to stop her.
“Whoa! Hold on! He’s fighting a typhoid fever epidemic. He don’t want me helping him for fear I’ll catch it—and he sure as shooting won’t want you there. You’d better come back tomorrow.”
Julia knew she could never wait until morning. She had let Nathaniel throw James out of the house without saying a word to stop him. James had no idea how she felt about him. “Okay, Phoebe. I’ll come back tomorrow,” she said. But she hurried down the steps to the carriage and gave the coachman directions to the shantytown.
The driver hesitated. “That’s a pretty rough part of town, miss.”
“I’ll be perfectly safe. I’ve visited there before. Kindly stop arguing and drive.”
The jumbled cluster of shacks and lean-tos had tripled in size since Julia had last seen them. In the dim light of a few flickering campfires, the piles of wreckage that served as houses looked like a vision from a nightmare. The stench of death hit her as soon as she stepped from the carriage.
“You may return home,” she told the driver. James would have no choice but to let her stay and work.
“Miss, I never should have brought you here in the first place,” the coachman said. “Please, get back in and let me take you home. I’ll lose my job for sure.”
“Go home, put the carriage in the stable, and go to bed. No one will know I’m missing until morning—and I won’t tell a soul that you drove me here.” She turned and strode toward the camp.
The first people she stumbled upon were three young Negro men hunched around a smoky fire, sharing a bottle of whiskey. They eyed her from head to toe, then one of them stood. “Lady, you must be lost for sure!” She knew by the way they laughed that they were all drunk.
For a terrible moment, Julia felt the same paralyzing fear that had seized her when Otis Whitney had grabbed her from behind and clamped his hand over her mouth. She had been helpless, un-able to fight him off as he’d dragged her down into the bushes and tried to rape her. This time there were three men, all much stronger than she was. She had been a fool to come here.
“I’m not lost,” she somehow managed to say. “I’m a nurse. I’m looking for Dr. McGrath. I’ve come to help him.”
The stranger stared at her as if she had spoken a foreign language and he was struggling to translate it. Then he pointed to a nearby shack built from packing crates. It was lit from inside by a lantern. “He’s in there, taking care of Ida and her little ones.”
“Thank you.” She walked toward the shack on rubbery legs.
Inside, a half dozen feverish children lay sprawled on the floor beside their mother. James knelt in the dirt with a limp toddler in his arms, pounding the child’s back to break up the phlegm in her lungs. He looked up and saw Julia.
“Don’t come in here!” he yelled. “Get out! Get out!”
Still shaken from her memories of Otis, Julia lashed back. “What gives you the right to order me around? This isn’t your hospital. I have as much right to work here as you do.”
“Please, Julia, it’s too dangerous. This is a typhoid epidemic.”
“It’s my life,” she said quietly. “I have as much right to risk it as you do to risk yours.” They stared at each other without speaking. But Julia knew that they’d reached an understanding, just the same. “Tell me what to do,” she said.
They worked side by side all night. James showed her how he diagnosed typhoid by the characteristic red skin lesions on the patient’s chest and abdomen. She helped him dispense calomel to help stop the diarrhea, and potassium nitrate and Dover’s powders to induce sweating and bring down their fevers. In some cases, the typhoid had developed into bronchitis and pneumonia. Julia helped him hold feverish children over pans of steaming water to ease their breathing. Neither of them mentioned Nathaniel Greene or spoke of what had happened earlier that evening. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
At dawn, James lifted a sleeping infant from Julia’s arms and helped her to her feet. “Come on,” he said gently. “We’ve done all we can. It’s time to go home.”
Neither of them spoke as they picked their way through the debris of shantytown. As she walked down the alley toward the main street beside James, Julia felt as if she was returning to another world. The smell and the despair still clung to her, and she longed for a hot bath and several hours’ sleep. James looked just as weary. He had opened his heart to her at the congressman’s house, but now his carefully constructed walls were back in place again. She knew it was up to her to help him dismantle them.
“What are your plans now that the war is over, James?”
He took a moment to reply. “I’ve accepted a staff position at another army hospital here inWashington. There are a lot of soldiers who still face a long rehabilitation. And the prisoners of war are in terrible condition, too. Then there are the former slaves. … I’ll still be needed here for a while.”
“Will your hospital need nurses, by any chance?”
He stopped walking. “Why?”
She smiled slightly. “It seems I’ve just broken my engagement— again. And my father will probably disown me, too, when he learns that I stayed out all night. I could use a job.”
“Why would you stay here in Washington? Your home is in Philadelphia.”
“The doctor I’m in love with is here in Washington.”
He closed his eyes for a long moment, then started walking again. “You came to my hospital inWashington with your chin held high, so stubborn, so determined to be a nurse. I did a cruel thing to you, using that patient with gangrene. Yet you stayed, even though I did my best to get rid of you. I think I knew I would fall in love with you if you stayed. And that’s exactly what happened. The night your first patient died and you gave up your elegant evening to come and sit with him …I watched you from the hallway. You looked so beautiful, spoke so tenderly to the boy. … Then you flew into my arms, and I held you close, and I was sure my heart would break from loving you.”
“You did a very good job of pushing me away.”
“Sparks and gunpowder, Mrs. Hoffman. I believed you were a married woman.”
“Would you have hired me if I’d told you the truth?”
“Never.”
“That’s why I lied.”
He stopped walking when they reached the corner and looked down at her. “I have very little to offer you, Julia. I inherited a modest sum of money from Eldon Tyler—compensation, I suppose, for ruining my life. But other than that …I know I’mnot as goodlooking as your minister, and I’ve been told that I’m rude and disagreeable and mean-tempered. I have a shady past and an uncertain future as I try to start all over again and build a new practice. I also have a seven-year
-old daughter I barely know, who’s a little frightened of me, I’m sorry to say. I was not a very good husband the first time—”
“Does that mean there might be a second time?” she asked.
“Only if you’ll say yes.”
“Yes.”
He set his medical bag down on the sidewalk and pulled her into his arms, drawing her close. He didn’t seem to care that they were on a Washington street at dawn or that a handful of people and carriages were scurrying past.
“That night in Fredericksburg,” James said, “when the sky was on fire and we kissed …I believed you were married, and I wanted to die of shame afterward.”
“I thought you were, too.”
He gently caressed her face as she looked up at him. “But there’s no need to feel guilty this time, is there?”
“None at all,” she whispered.
Bone Hollow, West Virginia
July 1865
Phoebe walked all the way down the long, dusty road from Bone Hollow to her family’s cabin, wondering what she would find. Nobody in town had paid her any mind, so she’d walked straight on through it and headed home, hoping that at least one of her brothers would be there. When she got within sight of the place and saw Jack sitting on the front steps, her eyes filled with tears. She was so happy to see him that she wanted to run, but the sun was hot and Phoebe was tired from the long walk home. She lifted her hand and waved instead.
Jack stared at her as if he were seeing a ghost, then grabbed his crutches and scrambled to stand up, hobbling down the road to meet her. His left pant leg was empty below his knee. “Can that be my baby sister …Ike…?”
“Yeah, it’s me, Jack. How you doing?” They hugged each other awkwardly, Jack’s crutches getting in the way. It was the first time she could ever recall having her arms around him when they weren’t wrestling or fighting with each other.
“We thought you fell off the edge of the world.” Jack’s voice sounded husky.
“What do you mean ‘we’? Is Junior here, too?”
“Yeah, he’s out plowing. He came home from the war all in one piece, which is more than I can say for myself. Hey, are you crying, Ike?”
“So what?” she said, wiping her fist across her face. “I’m a girl, in case you ain’t noticed. And girls can cry if they’ve a mind to.”
“I can’t believe you’re really home,” Jack murmured. “Wait ’til Junior sees you. He won’t believe his eyes. You’re all grown up …and you’re a girl!”
“What’d you think I was?”
Jack shrugged. “One of us.”
Junior seemed tickled to see Phoebe when he came in at noon for his lunch. He grinned from ear to ear at her and gave her a sweaty hug. They sat down to the lunch Jack had fixed, and Phoebe told them where she’d been for the last few years and what she’d been up to. They all grew quiet when she told them about Willard and how she’d been with him when he died at Chancellorsville.
“The doctor couldn’t do nothing for him,” she said. “But at least he didn’t have to die all alone.”
They ate in silence for several minutes, then Junior said, “Speaking of doctors, one of them come by a couple times looking for you.”
“For me?” Phoebe asked in surprise.
“Yeah. What was his name again, Jack?”
“I don’t know …Morgan …Morris…?”
Phoebe nearly dropped her fork. “Daniel Morrison?”
“That’s him. Nice fella. Only I gotta say, he looks like somebody built him out of spare parts and kindling wood.”
Phoege remembered the gangly Rebel doctor she had met in Gettysburg. But he couldn’t have been wearing his Confederate uniform or her brothers would have run him off with the shotgun. Why on earth had he come here to see her? She could feel the heat rushing to her face and hoped her brothers didn’t notice. They would tease her from now until next Christmas.
“What did he want?” she finally asked.
“I dunno,” Jack said. “But he said he’d be back. Said he’s gonna see about getting me a leg made out of cork. Can you picture that?”
“I’ve seen stranger things,” Phoebe said.
By the end of the week, Phoebe was feeling restless again. She’d promised Ma Wilson that she’d come back for a visit, and now that she knew her brothers were okay, she was eager to be on the move. Jack was fixing to drive into Bone Hollow later that day, so she packed her things and got ready to hitch a ride with him.
She was standing on the cabin steps with her satchel in her hand when Dr. Daniel Morrison drove right up to her cabin in his own horse and buggy.
“Good morning, Miss Bigelow,” he said, sweeping off his hat. “Are you coming or going?”
“I’m fixing to go. I promised someone up in Pennsylvania I’d go see them.”
He jumped down from his rig and stood in front of her, his hands on his hips. “Well, how am I gonna court you if you go running off again?”
“You come here to court me?”
“I sure ain’t here to court your ornery brothers.”
Phoebe knew that she was blushing, but she couldn’t seem to do anything about it. “There’re plenty of other girls in Morgan County to court,” she said. “Berkeley County, too, for that matter.”
“I told you, I’m partial to pretty gals with yellow hair.”
Phoebe couldn’t speak. He had called her pretty. Her heart began to pound just like it used to do sometimes when she was with Ted. She wished Dr. McGrath was here so she could ask him what was wrong with her, find out if she had something fatal. She looked up at Daniel Morrison and remembered that he was a doctor, too. But the thought of asking him made her heart beat faster still.
“Tell me something,” Dr. Morrison said, interrupting her thoughts. “Did you like being a nurse, or are you all through with that now that the war’s over?”
“I liked it real fine. I don’t know what I’m gonna do with myself now.”
“Well, I watched you at Gettysburg, and you were real good at it. I think we’d make a good team, me being a country doctor and all. I could use a good nurse. And I think I’d probably grow on you once you decide to forgive me for being a Rebel and give me half a chance.”
Phoebe looked away, gazing into the woods beyond her cabin for a long moment. “I fell in love with a fella during the war,” she finally said. “He got killed.”
“I’m sorry …I really am,” he said softly. “Does that mean you’re never going to fall in love again?”
“I don’t know. He would want me to. Ted would tell me to live my life and be happy.”
“Well, do you think I could ever measure up to him?”
Phoebe glanced up at Dr. Morrison and couldn’t help smiling when she pictured Ted standing alongside him. “You already got him beat by about twenty inches.”
Daniel hitched himself up straight so he would stand even taller. “That’s real good news for me, then, isn’t it?”
She wanted to smile, to let down her guard, but she was afraid. She frowned and gestured to her satchel. “Listen, I promised Ted’s mother I would come back and see her, let her know I was okay. And then I was planning to go look up his grandmother who lives on a plantation down south. It might be a couple of weeks before I get back.”
“Want some company?”
“You want to come with me? You don’t even know where I’m going.”
“Don’t matter. Maybe we can get to know each other better along the way.”
Phoebe felt afraid. It was safer being alone, safer not to risk falling in love with someone and losing him again. “I been taking care of myself for a long time, you know. I’m used to traveling alone.”
“Well, I can see that plain as day. But that isn’t why I want to tag along.”
“How come, then?”
“The war showed me how short life is. I just wasted four years of it, and I don’t aim to waste any more. I aim to live.” He grinned, and his smile was so warm and friendly that something in
side her melted a little. She thought of Ted’s grin.
Then she thought of Dr. McGrath and knew she was wrong to close herself off to people the way he had after his wife died. He had finally found love again with Julia. Maybe she could find it, too.
“You know, you’re like a tick on a dog,” she told Daniel. “Awful hard to shake off.”
“That’s the nicest thing a gal ever said to me,” he teased.
“If you want to tag along, I don’t reckon I can stop you,” she said, trying to sound gruff.
“You keep sweet-talking that way, Phoebe Bigelow, I’ll be falling in love with you before we cross the state line.”
He made her smile again, in spite of all her efforts not to. “You ain’t half bad for a Rebel,” she told him.
Dr. Daniel Morrison started to laugh—and he laughed so joyously that Phoebe just couldn’t help laughing along with him.
Lynn Austin, Fire by Night
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