Page 103 of Two Wars and a Wedding

“Go on,” she urged the nurse, who was still standing there, looking like she wanted to argue. “I must leave as soon as can be arranged. Every moment matters.”

She wasn’t going to let Ava die.

Chapter Twenty-Five

“I don’t know how the Seneca came to be used as a hospital ship, but anyone with eyes in their head could have told you it shouldn’t have been. Not the slightest investigation was made of her condition before the sick and wounded were shoved aboard. Many of the men needed surgical treatment when they came on board, but the two medical men sent with the ship were supplied with neither instruments nor medicine. I found Dr. Baird in tears over one man, whose lung wounds might have been treated if only he had had the tools, but was instead smothering in his own pus, purely due to the carelessness of the relevant authorities at Siboney.

“You call that an unfounded accusation? Spend a week on a ship crammed with wounded men you have no means of helping and then tell me if you find it unfounded. . . . Even better, climb into one of those bunks with a chunk of shrapnel in your knee and a fever of a hundred and two, too weak to leave your bunk to relieve yourself, with only the clothes you came on board in, in agony every time you move, caught in your own filth, with men in similar state stacked all around you, and then tell me if you think my judgment is too harsh.

“And that was nothing to the way matters deteriorated once the water gave out. . . .”

—Report of the Commission, vol. 7, p. 3546; testimony of Miss Elizabeth Hayes re: conditions on board the USS Seneca

* * *

On board the Seneca

July 15, 1898

Holt woke up when someone kicked him in the kidneys.

He’d spread his blanket on a nice, quiet corner of the deck. At least, he’d thought it was a nice, quiet corner of the deck.

“Ooof,” he heard, and woke to Betsy windmilling her arms over him, flailing wildly to keep from falling.

Holt stumbled to his feet, kicking his blanket out of his way as he went. The motion made the scab on his leg itch. “Whoa. You almost went over the side there.”

“Sorry,” said Betsy, in a choked voice. “I didn’t mean to step on you.”

“I didn’t think you did.” It was too dark to see her face, but when she didn’t sass him back, Holt knew something was very wrong. “Betsy. What’s wrong?”

“It’s Kit,” Betsy said thickly. “She asked me if she was going to die.”

“Is she?” Holt asked.

“I don’t know. That’s the thing with typhoid—you just don’t know! Sometimes the ones you think won’t pull through do, and then the ones you think are fine—” Betsy paced in restless circles in the narrow space between the rail and the wall. “I told her she wasn’t going to die but she didn’t believe me. I don’t believe me.”

“You’re doing the best you can for her,” Holt said to the blur that was Betsy. “You got her into a bed.”

Betsy stopped, shaking her head wildly. “She asked me to say g-g-goodbye to her kids for her.” Her face crumpled. “Why couldn’t I have been the one to get sick? Why did it have to be Kit? She has people who want her back. Not like me.”

Holt held out a hand. “That’s not—”

“My brother can’t stand me. He’d be relieved to be shot of me.” Betsy moved in erratic circles, hands waving, skirts swishing, hair blowing, the words tumbling out like a river breaking through a dam. “My father’s dead. There’s no one else, no one else who matters. Ava would miss me—but she has Dr. Stringfellow now. She’ll be fine. And it’s not like I have children to care for. I gave my child away.”

Holt could have sworn the stars froze. Everything froze. Betsy stared at him, a look of horror on her face.

“I didn’t mean to say that,” she whispered, pressing her knuckles to her mouth. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

“I can pretend I didn’t hear it,” said Holt carefully.

“But you did. And you’re wondering, aren’t you?” Betsy’s voice was unnaturally high. “You don’t have to wonder. I had a baby. I had a baby and I gave him away. Now you know. You can hate me now.”

“Why would I hate you?”

“Why wouldn’t you hate me? I hate me. I had a lover—and I killed him. I had a baby—and I gave him away—”

Her voice broke. Holt watched, horrified, as Betsy folded in on herself. She rocked back and forth, shaking with the effort of keeping the sobs inside, great, gulping, ugly sobs that racked her whole body.