Love and War

would start the damaged vessel bleeding again.'

'Yes, I did cover him. I admit to that mistake. In the confusion — so many needing help — the surgeons all yelling at once —'

'Nonsense. You are one of the best nurses I have ever met. I have always disliked you, but I don't minimize your ability. You would not make that sort of mistake unless it was deliberate.'

Feeling dampness under her arms and a series of tight little convulsions in her middle, Virgilia rose. She had gambled that admission of one mistake might lend credibility to a denial of greater guilt. Mrs. Neal was not taken in. Without looking at the supervisor, Virgilia bluffed. 'If I confess to the error in judgment, you'll have a hard time proving it was anything more.'

'I can certainly try. I shall report that you put the blankets on the patient, fully understanding the consequences, and you then concealed the hemorrhaging by covering one bloodied bandage with another and another — several, in fact — so that inevitably —'

'Damn you, I didn't!'

Whirling to cry at her tormentor, Virgilia saw two huge black birds perched on the one surviving branch of a scorched tree. She imagined the birds had been drawn by the smell of wounds. Including hers.

Mrs. Neal lifted her several chins, her glare challenging. 'If not you, then who?' 'I don't know. One of the orderlies —' 'Again — patent nonsense.' 'I admit to the blanket, nothing else.' 'In the face of that, further discussion is fruitless. But I know what you did, and I shall take the evidence to Miss Dix. I shall see you punished. I suggest you spend the evening rehearsing your defense. You'll want to have all your lies in order when the investigation begins.' And she swept by with a sideways look of pleasure. Virgilia stayed outside among the ruined trees as it grew dark. The black birds remained on the charred limb. She took a sip from the cup. Cold. She threw the coffee on the ground. Inside the pavilion, a wounded man began to weep.

She scarcely heard. Given Mrs. Neal's politics and personal animosity, the supervisor would certainly press for an investigation. And it would probably take place. Who besides Miss Dix would be involved? The surgeon general's staff? The civil police in Washington? Exhausted, disheveled, Virgilia saw fantasies in the lowering dark. A barred cell. A man in judicial robes high above her, passing sentence —

'God,' she cried softly as something flapped past and brushed her face.

When she recovered, she saw one of the roosting birds sailing above the pavilion. A train whistled. She knuckled her eyes to rid them of tears of fright. Keep your nerve. Think clearly. What you did isn't a crime. It was for Grady. There are millions who would call it patriotic. He was the enemy.

All that rationalization did nothing to cancel the other fact. Mrs. Neal would report her. There must be no investigation. It was up to her to prevent it and the possible consequences: prosecution, prison —

How, though? How?

'There you are, Virgilia.'

The woman's voice startled her. She saw Miss Kisco at the pavilion entrance. Belatedly, she heard something new in the tone of the other nurse: hostility.

'What is it?'

'The chief surgeon wishes to speak to you.'

'Tell him I'll be there in a moment. I'm a bit dizzy from all the fumes inside.'

'Very well.' Miss Kisco vanished.

Virgilia turned and walked the other way into the dark.

Her pass was in order; she had no trouble boarding the first train leaving for Aquia Landing. By sunrise she was on a steamer chugging up the Potomac.

She would never go back to the field hospital, or any other. But neither would she hide. It had come to her outside the pavilion that she had but one hope of aborting an investigation, and that was through the intervention of some person of influence. A person powerful enough to thwart Mrs. Neal and even Miss Dix.

Virgilia sat on deck bundled in her cloak, her valises between her feet. Despite her situation, she had no regrets. The Southerners had been responsible for Grady's death, and she had taken a life in reprisal, as the Confederates themselves did. As the biblical kings did.

She was sorry she could no longer continue as a nurse. The work had given her life a direction it had lacked since the debacle at Harpers Ferry. But at least she had closed out her field career as any good soldier should. By destroying an enemy.

Now she must deal with another. In the cool of the early morning, she debarked at the city pier, her face calm, her course determined. As soon as she found a room and cleaned up, she would set about contacting Congressman Sam Stout.

106

In his bed in Harewood Convalescent Hospital, Billy wrote:

Sun., June 5. Weather warm. At night we must all be cocooned in mosquito nets or be devoured. Tulip and redbud trees shade this pavilion in the hottest hours, but nothing can relieve the charnel smell which has hung over the city ever since General G. took the field. The dead are everywhere; beyond counting.

Can't get reliable news but am told by orderlies that another great battle is being fought 7-8 mis. from Richmond. Perhaps it will end matters and I can go home to you, my dear wife. If not, will be on my way back to Virginia within a few days — the Minié ball that struck my lower leg passed cleanly through the flesh, doing no permanent damage, though I still walk as awkwardly, for a different reason, as I did on the flight from Richmond.

I do not want to return to duty, and deem myself no coward for that admission. I will go only because if G. fails at Richmond, the effort must continue till this sanguinary business is ended forever.

Old Abe is to be renominated in Baltimore next week as the candidate of something called the National Union party, whose sudden invention is apparently meant to demonstrate a common purpose uniting less radical Republicans and pro-Union Democrats. It is by no means certain that L. will win this time. Many are against him, and more join that company each day. One officer here spoke openly and shockingly on the subject last night. He said the nation would be better served if someone were to slay the President. How far into madness must we sink before this ends?

On the day Lincoln won renomination, joined on the ticket by Governor Johnson of Tennessee, a Democrat, Isabel packed up the twins and left for a long holiday at the house in Newport. Washington had become intolerable. Almost hourly, the trains and steamers carrying the dead rattled over Long Bridge or tied up at the Sixth Street piers. Morticians wandered about with glassy expressions, exhausted from conducting their trade and counting their profits. Eighteen to twenty thousand patients jammed the district's military hospitals. Wounded walked even in the best districts, and pestilential smells overpowered even the strongest scent.

Stanley didn't object to his wife's departure. It enabled him to visit more freely with a young woman whose acquaintance he had made one night in April when he and some Republican cronies, all rip-roaring drunk, visited the Varieties, the big theater on Ninth Street whose front was bedecked with flags and splashed by the rainbow colors of a transparency wheel revolving in front of a calcium light.

The audience for the show was almost entirely male. Before the appearance of the sentimental soloists, Chinese contortionists, black-faced comedians, the scantily clad members of the dancing chorus performed a crowd-pleasing routine set to patriotic airs. The prettiness of one of the dancers, a busty girl of twenty or so, unexpectedly prompted Stanley to leap up on the bench, shouting like dozens of sweaty, tobacoo-chewing soldiers all around him.

A ten-cent whiskey in each hand, Stanley riveted his eye on this particular dancer and, afterward, struck up a conversation back­stage — not difficult once the young lady took note of his age and expensive clothing and heard