Wedded to War (29 page)

The dim realization of what was happening in front of Ruby grew brighter until it almost blinded her.

“On whose authority?” Cora crossed her arms across her corseted waist and thrust a hard stare at Charlotte.

“Mine.” It was a male voice, from behind them.

“Fine,” Cora huffed, stirring up the thick violet scent she wore. “I was finished with all you old, used-up men anyway.” She swept down the hall, turning back only once to say, “You know, there are a lot of other hospitals in need of my ‘services’ anyway. I’ll have no trouble finding other
work.
”

“Good riddance,” said the man under his breath as they watched her flamboyant exit.

“Dr. Murray,” said Charlotte. “What—?”

“Don’t look so surprised, Miss Waverly. There are four hundred fifty brothels in Washington just crawling with Union soldiers, picking up venereal diseases as they go. Last thing I need is some prostitute prancing around right here under my nose, making house calls. Just hadn’t had the opportunity to confront her about it yet. I’m trying to heal patients, and they’re coming up with more work for me to do. Imbeciles.” He walked off, still muttering under his breath about brazen prostitutes.

Ruby could feel her posture sagging, her shoulders hunching forward. She wanted to sink into the floor beneath her feet.

Charlotte turned to Ruby now. Her face, which had been so stony a moment ago, now softened into gentility once again. “Mrs. O’Flannery, I do apologize that you had to witness that exchange. A prostitute
parading around as a nurse. Enough is enough. Some women are just born reprobate.”

Ruby swallowed hard and looked down at her hands. Her heart was beating so fast against her bodice she was afraid it would betray her. “I’m a decent woman, I am.” Her voice was weak, as if she herself had already been accused.

“Of course you are.” Charlotte laid a hand on her arm.

“I’m Catholic.”

“Is that so?” Charlotte’s eyes lit up. “Then I think we have the perfect place for you to work, if Alice agrees.”

“Yes?”

Charlotte looked at Alice. “Of course!” said the younger sister. “The Washington Infirmary at Judiciary Square, on E Street. It’s attended by a number of nuns from the Sisters of Mercy. You’ll feel right at home.”

The Sisters of Mercy had quickly welcomed Ruby, a fellow Catholic, into the Washington Infirmary, and had just as quickly ushered her down into the linen room. She did not feel at home with the nuns at all, despite Charlotte’s prediction. But the linen room, with its low ceiling, cracked window, and steam rising from soiled heaps of filth, reminded her very much of home. Her stomach roiled, as it did every day now, but whether from the pregnancy or the putrid vapors trapped in the room with her, she could not tell.

One other laundry worker, Sister Agnes Teresa, pinned up the sleeves of her habit and churned the sheets in cauldrons of boiling, foaming water with a long stick until the filth loosened from the fibers. Linens with stubborn stains were given to Ruby to scrub on a washboard until they, too, were set free. When she was successful, she was elated to see the white sheet pure and pristine once again.

But not all stains would cooperate. Some of them would not budge.

All the dark blemishes of her past seemed lodged in those stains.
Every sin, every sorrow, disappointment, betrayal, sin, every grief, every sin, every sin, every sin …

Ruby scrubbed and scraped until her knuckles bled, and yet the stains would not come out.

Ruby’s nausea was getting worse, not better. Sister Agnes Teresa believed it was from the fumes of the linen room, and Ruby did not deny it. Was that a sin, too? Deceiving a nun? She swatted the thought aside. Ruby had given up praying anyway.

One morning, between rinsing one load of soiled sheets and boiling the next, Sister Agnes leaned on her broomstick and turned to Ruby. “We’ve got a new batch of patients upstairs. Can you tell from the sheets what kind they are?”

“What?”

The sister smiled sheepishly. “It’s a little game I like to play to pass the time. See if you can guess. Go on, it isn’t hard.”

Ruby cast a brief glance at the pile by the door. The sheets were sodden, but thank goodness, not with dysentery or diarrhea this time. They were yellow.

“Fever,” said Ruby flatly. All she cared about was keeping her hardtack down. The nuns were a stoic lot, subsisting on the bare minimum.

“Right. Several from the Sixty-Ninth have just been moved from their regimental hospital here.”

Ruby nodded, unhearing. She was about to throw up again.

“Guess it’s a big Irish regiment, from New York. Say, didn’t you say you were from New York? I wonder if you know any of them.”

Suddenly, Ruby’s queasy stomach was forgotten. “What did you say?”

“The New York Sixty-Ninth Regiment. Some of them are here, upstairs.”

Ruby looked up sharply at the low ceiling above her. “Here?”

“I just said so. Is something wrong, Mrs. O’Flannery?”

She dropped the sheet she had been scrubbing back into the dirty water and stood up. “My husband.”

“What?”

“My husband, Matthew, he’s in the Sixty-Ninth! I need to know if he’s up there!”

“One way to find out! Go on!”

Ruby untied the wet apron from her waist and spread trembling hands across her belly. It was still flat. No one would guess yet she carried a child within her.

Out of the dark, moist linen room Ruby climbed, breaking through at last onto the ward of fresh fever patients. She caught at the black robe of a passing nun.

“Matthew O’Flannery? Is he a patient here?” The slightest hesitation raked against Ruby’s nerves. “I’m his wife! For God’s sake, is he here?”

“Go and see for yourself.” The nun yanked her robe out of Ruby’s grip.

With blood rushing in her ears and heart pounding against her ribs, she picked her way between beds of men so gaunt, so yellow with fever she had to squint at some of the faces to make sure it wasn’t her Matthew.

But when she came to his bed, she immediately knew him, even though he now resembled the skinny teenager she had fallen in love with in Ireland more than the brawny, calloused man he had become in New York.

She knelt down beside him and whispered his name.

Nothing.

“Matthew.”

A flutter of the eyelids.

“Ruby?”

The floodgates opened, and all the unshed tears of the last six months suddenly came pouring out as she laid her head upon his concave chest. Her voice could utter no words, but her heart cried out a single refrain.
I found you.

“How?” Matthew croaked out.

“Shhhh,” said Ruby. “It’s all right. I’m a laundress downstairs! Paid by the government, same as you.” It wasn’t the whole story, but it was enough.

Over the course of the next several days, Sister Agnes allowed Ruby ample time to visit Matthew, who grew stronger with each dose of quinia, opium, beef tea, and his wife’s tender touch. Finally, when he had the strength to tell it, his own story came out.

Why didn’t you send the money?

There was no money to send.

Why didn’t you send me a letter?

There were no stamps to be had.

Why didn’t you come home after Bull Run?

I did, and you weren’t there. Nobody knew where you were.

So you came back?

I came back. Here I am. Here you are. You look like an angel, what happened?

I made some changes.

Will you stay?

I won’t leave.

I missed you.

I need you.

These brief exchanges, while Matthew was still quite weak, had been easy in their simplicity. But suspicion seemed to grow along with strength, and his questions became more pointed.

How did you survive?

I sewed.

That’s not enough money, Ruby, and I know it. How did you make money?

I became a domestic.

How did you get here?

I met a kind doctor …

Did you do favors for someone?

She knew of this job …

A woman doctor? Don’t you mean a man?

She sent me here herself, she did.

You’re not telling me something. I know it.

But by the time Matthew was well enough to be sent back to his regiment, they still had not had time alone together, and still the baby grew inside of her.

The fear of losing Matthew had been replaced by the fear of him learning the truth. Matthew had never been bent on understanding another person’s point of view. Even if she began to tell him the whole story, all he would hear would be the very thing he feared the most. His wife, pregnant with another man’s child, conceived while he was at war.

She would not be able to complete a single sentence after that before his fists would pummel into her. If he was drunk, he wouldn’t stop beating her until the strength drained out of his arms.

He’d never forgive her. He had beaten her before for as much as an unsatisfying meal. The punishment for carrying a bastard child? She’d be a scapegoat for his violence for the rest of her life.

She had heard she had a choice in the matter. She had heard, more than once, there was an answer to her growing problem. Madame Restell on Chambers Street in New York City was famous for providing these answers, for a fee. Back then, Ruby had condemned the idea. But back then, the problem wasn’t hers.

In the burnished edge of October, the wind chafed and bit, carrying with it the scent of wood smoke from the camps encircling Washington. Ruby tugged her shawl closer around the shoulders of her black-and-brown gingham dress. In the apothecary window, there were several bottles of pills, fluid extracts, and medicinal oils labeled in the “Women’s
Health” category.
Female Regulator, Periodical Drops, Uterine Regulator, Woman’s Friend.
These vague names sounded vaguely familiar.

The bell clanged on the door as she stepped inside to take a closer look. Pulling a bottle marked
Graves Pills for Amenorrhea
off the shelf, she read, “These pills have been approved by the Ecole de Medecine, fully sanctioned by the M.R.C.S. of London, Edinburgh, Dublin, as a never-failing remedy for producing the catamenial or monthly flow. Though perfectly harmless to the most delicate, yet ladies are earnestly requested not to mistake their condition [if pregnant] as MISCARRIAGE WOULD CERTAINLY ENSUE.” The ingredients were hellebore, ergot, iron, and solid extracts of tansy and rue. “Supplement the doses by drinking tansy tea twice daily until the obstruction is removed,” the label instructed. The bottle might as well have read, “Abortion pills.” Death in a bottle, for $5.00.

She weighed the bottle in her hand, and felt the heaviness of decision. Grief pressed down upon her, for two babies she had already watched die, for a baby she was ready to kill, and for the part of herself that was willing to do it.

With trembling hand, she rattled the bottle back on the glass shelf. She couldn’t do it.