Fire by Night (15 page)

“No more tea for me, thank you,” Julia said, placing her cup on the tray. “I know you’re busy, Miss Dix, and I’m afraid my aunt and I have already taken up too much of your time.”

“Lovely tea,” her aunt said groggily. “You’ve been very kind.”

They stood, and much to Julia’s surprise, Miss Dix took her arm companionably and walked with her to the front door. As she lifted Julia’s bonnet and cloak from the coat-tree and handed them to her she said, “I wish you luck, my dear. I hope you find what you’re looking for. And I hope you find contentment with your work.”

“Have you found that, Miss Dix?”

“Oh yes. Immeasurably so.”

Julia knew her aunt was befuddled as they returned to the waiting carriage. She kept looking awkwardly at Julia as if waiting for her cue, unwilling to admit she didn’t know the outcome of their meeting. Julia understood that it was wrong to tell a lie. But she wanted to be a nurse, and the door to accomplishing her goal through honest means had slammed in her face.

“Wasn’t that wonderful news?” she asked her aunt, not quite meeting her eyes. “I can’t wait to wire home and tell everyone that Miss Dix has accepted me as a nurse.”

Aunt Eunice didn’t try to disguise her dismay. “Your father won’t be pleased. He was quite certain you’d be turned down and that you’d be forced to return home disappointed.”

“Well, he was wrong. Listen, let’s get an early start tomorrow morning and find a boardinghouse near the hospital.”

“Which hospital is that again, dear?”

“It’s in the former Fairfield Hotel. They’ve made it into a hospital.” The lies rested so uncomfortably on her tongue that she was afraid to look at her aunt. Julia felt certain that the shame burning her cheeks would give her away. She decided that the sooner she was rid of her aunt, the sooner her conscience would ease.

Julia arose early the next morning and began her quest to find a reputable boardinghouse near Fairfield Hospital. Progress proved frustratingly slow. In fact, she quickly discovered that finding an empty room for rent anywhere in Washington was next to impossible. By the end of a second long, fruitless day she decided to concentrate on finding a room that met her aunt’s standards—which meant women boarders only—and never mind what the room looked like or how close it was to the hospital.

They found a vacancy on the third afternoon, but the room was small and depressing. It came furnished with a sagging bed, a dresser with a mismatched washbasin and pitcher, a small fireplace with a watery mirror above it, and a shabby rag rug on the bare wooden floor. The room’s only window overlooked the brick wall of the building next door. There was no closet or wardrobe, and the only place she would have to hang her plain brown dress was on a hook on the wall.

“No, no, no. This is dreadful, Julia,” Aunt Eunice said, clicking her tongue. “Why, it’s no better than a servant’s room.”

Julia thought of her spacious room at home, with its thick rugs, four-poster bed, and mahogany wardrobe filled with dresses and shoes, and nearly changed her mind.

“Please, dear,” her aunt begged, “forget this obsession of yours and come home with me where you belong.”

“This room is fine,” Julia said. She disguised her doubts behind a smile that she didn’t feel. “Why would I need a bigger room? I’ll be working at the hospital all day, so I’ll only be here at night, anyway. And then I’ll be asleep, with my eyes closed.”

“But where will you keep all your dresses? And what about your maid? Where will she sleep?”

“Inga is going home with you tomorrow, Aunt Eunice.”

“You can’t be serious. Who will fix your hair? And help you into your hoops?”

Julia sighed. That was one of Nathaniel’s accusations—that she was unable or unwilling to do the simplest tasks for herself. It was why she had started down this long, hard road in the first place. “I can fix my own hair,” she said. “Miss Dix’s nurses are supposed to look plain. And I won’t be wearing any hoops, remember?”

Aunt Eunice’s shoulders sagged with fatigue. “This is too much. I need to sit down.” But the dismal room didn’t have a chair, and Julia knew that her aunt would never commit the impropriety of sitting on someone’s bed.

“Let’s tell the landlady that I’ll take it,” Julia said. “Then we can both go back to the hotel and rest.”

“You can’t live here, Julia. There isn’t even a chair.”

“I’ll ask the landlady for one. Please, Aunt Eunice. You know it’s a respectable establishment. It’s been highly recommended. And there simply aren’t any other rooms for rent. Let me try living here for a few months, and if I’m unhappy I can always return to Philadelphia in April with the congressman and his wife.”

Aunt Eunice finally relented, too weary to argue. Julia paid the first month’s room and board and told the landlady she would move in tomorrow—right after she sent Aunt Eunice home on the first available train.

Her aunt wept as she said farewell the next day, convinced that Julia was making an enormous mistake for which she would be grievously sorry. “My only consolation,” Eunice said, dabbing her eyes as she said good-bye, “is that I’m leaving you in Dorothea Dix’s capable hands.”

That same afternoon, Julia took a horse-drawn cab to the hospital in the former Fairfield Hotel. The weathered two-story clapboard building looked as though it had been little more than a workingman’s hostel at the peak of its career and that now a strong breeze or an errant match would put an end to it. The railing wobbled beneath her hand as she climbed the front steps. The door gave such a weary groan as she pushed it open that she wouldn’t have been surprised if it had fallen off its hinges and crashed to the floor.

Inside, the former lobby had been partitioned off, leaving a dark, narrow entryway with little light. But as her eyes adjusted, Julia saw a makeshift office just inside the front door and a hand-lettered sign that read:
Dr. James McGrath—Acting Assistant Surgeon, U.S. Army
. The office door stood open, and the doctor sat behind a littered desk, sifting through a pile of papers.

He was an angry-looking man in his early thirties, with a furrowed brow and dark auburn hair. His short, ginger-colored beard and mustache were neatly trimmed, but they were the only thing, tidy about him. His clothing was disheveled, his hair looked as though he’d been running his hands through it, and his office had a worn, trampled look, as if a Wild West show had recently staged a performance there. The doctor remained seated when Julia entered. In fact, he didn’t even look up from his work.

“If you’re here to see a patient, don’t bother me,” he said gruffly. “Talk to the matron.”

“I’m not here to see a patient, Dr. McGrath. My name is Julia Hoffman, and I’ve come from Philadelphia to offer my services as a nurse.”

“Go see Dorothea Dix. She’s in charge of nurses.”

“I have seen Miss Dix.”

He stopped writing and finally looked at her, crudely sizing her up with his eyes as if measuring her for a dress. “Let me guess— Miss Dix waltzed you out of the door before you could blink, didn’t she? You’re too young. Too pretty. Too well endowed.” He made a rude gesture with his hands, and Julia gasped. He seemed pleased to have shocked her. “Oh, you won’t find ‘flat bosom’ on ‘Dragon’ Dix’s official list of qualifications, but that’s the way she likes her nurses—flat as dinner plates, just like herself. Good day.” He waved her away and returned to his papers.

Miss Dix had warned her that the doctor was a crude man. Julia guessed that the shock and anger she felt were exactly what he’d intended. She determined not to let him get the best of her.

“If I could have a moment of your time, Dr. McGrath, you’ll see that I come from a fine, upstanding family. My father is Judge Philip Hoffman, a United States District Court judge, and I have letters of recommendation from Congressman Rhodes of Pennsylvania; Dr. Albert Lowe, one of Philadelphia’s foremost physicians; and Reverend Underhill, pastor of—”

“Letters. Big deal,” he said, dipping his pen into the inkwell.“You upper-class, high-society folks love your letters of introduction, don’t you? I have enough papers cluttering my desk already.”

“But if you would read them you would see that I—”

“Have you done any
real
nursing work for any of these people?” he asked, pinning her with his gaze. “Are you trained? Experienced?”

“I—I would like very much to learn.”

“I’m a physician, not a teacher,” he said, looking away again.“Come back when you’ve been trained. Good day.”

Julia sat down in the chair in front of his desk and removed her bonnet, cloak, and gloves as if he’d invited her to stay. Dr. McGrath ignored her, dipping into the inkwell and scratching his pen across the pages as if she’d gone—although he surely knew she was still there.

She glanced around the untidy office while she waited and spotted a photograph on his desk—a pretty, dark-haired woman holding a small girl on her lap. Julia glanced at the doctor’s left hand, holding down the page he was scribbling on, and saw a gold wedding band. She picked up the picture for a closer look. “Is this your wife and child?”

“What a ridiculous question. Why would I have a photo of someone else’s wife and child on my desk?”

She bit back an angry reply. “They are both very pretty. What’s your daughter’s name?”

“Are you trying to annoy me, Miss Hoffman? Because you’re doing a first-rate job of it.”

“It isn’t
Miss
Hoffman,” she said, suddenly remembering Miss Dix’s words. “It’s
Mrs
. Hoffman. I’m married.” The lie came remarkably easy to her.

“Is that so?” he said in a disinterested tone.

“Yes. My husband is Lieutenant Robert Hoffman,” she said, giving him her cousin’s name and rank.

“Does the good lieutenant know that you’re away from home, bothering busy doctors when they’re trying to work?”

“I haven’t heard from Robert since he was captured at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff last October. He’s in Libby Prison in Richmond.”

He glanced up at her again. She hoped his attitude would soften after hearing her tragic story; instead, he said, “And so sweet little Mrs. Hoffman wants to be a nurse.”

“Yes, Doctor. Very much so.”

He bent over his work again, silently writing for five long minutes. Julia waited until he blotted the ink and moved the paper he’d been working on from one stack to another. Then she said, “All I’m asking is for you to give me a chance, Doctor. I admit I don’t know much about nursing, but I’m willing to learn.”

He studied her for a long moment, then stood abruptly. “Very well, then. Come with me, Mrs. Hoffman.”

Julia’s heart soared with happiness as she followed him into the ward in the former hotel’s dining room. It had been emptied of tables and jammed full of beds, all filled with ailing men. Some of them talked quietly, many of them were coughing, most simply lay there doing nothing at all and might have been asleep. The doctor stopped beside a small cabinet of medical supplies. The ward matron saw him and hurried over. She was a small, round woman with gray threads in her dark hair. “Is there something I can do for you, Dr. McGrath?”

“No, thank you. Mrs. Hoffman is going to help me change Private Jackson’s dressing.” Julia saw the matron’s carefully neutral expression change to one of concern. “Are you a relative of his?” she asked Julia.

Before she had a chance to reply, Dr. McGrath said, “No, Mrs. Hoffman is applying for a position as a nurse.” He smiled, and Julia had never seen a grin quite as nasty as the one that spread across his face.

The matron’s face went rigid. She made no attempt to hide her dislike for the doctor before quickly striding away. Julia’s joy began to fade. She was starting to dislike this man, too. He scooped up a pair of scissors, a brown medicine bottle, and a wad of gauze from the supply table, then beckoned for Julia to follow him.

The patient they stopped beside was very pale, his body wasted to skeletal thinness. Dr. McGrath greeted the soldier with genuine warmth, smiling as he met the man’s gaze. “How are you doing today, Jackson? The nurses treating you okay? The food all right?”

“I can’t complain.”

“Good. Good. Listen, I’ve come to have a look at your leg if you don’t mind.” He set his supplies on the bedside table and pulled back the covers. Julia braced herself, certain that the soldier’s leg would end in a bandaged stump. It did.

“This is Nurse Hoffman,” the doctor continued. “She’s going to help me remove your dressing so I can have a look.”

“How do, ma’am,” Jackson said.

“Um …very well, thank you.”

Dr. McGrath scraped an empty chair across the floor to the bedside and motioned for Julia to sit. He handed her the scissors. She cut through the knot in the gauze dressing and began carefully unwinding the layers. The room fell quiet. Too quiet. She was aware of the patient’s whistling breath, rustling like dry leaves.

“Where are you from, Mr. Jackson?” she asked, trying to ease the tension.

“Buffalo, New York, ma’am.”

“I’ve never visited Buffalo, but I hear it’s nice. What sort of work do you do there?”

“Well, I worked as a carpenter …before the war, that is.”

“And do you have a family back home?”