Page 116 of Two Wars and a Wedding

Holt limped toward Betsy as fast as he could, but the crowd had closed in again, following her, and it was hard to get through. Her slight form was swallowed up by the reporters ranged around her, clustering in to catch her every word.

As Holt tried to push his way through, he saw Betsy pull herself up onto the step of one of the waiting horse-drawn cabs, but she didn’t duck inside. She stood there, on the step, one hand on the doorframe, and faced the crowd.

“I appreciate your kindness, but I can’t accept your accolades under false pretenses. You shouldn’t be praising me.” Betsy’s throat worked convulsively. “What I did on that ship—it wasn’t heroic.”

Holt watched as the entire crowd went silent, the reporters gripping their pencils, everyone waiting for what promised to be a shocking revelation.

“I wasn’t heroic,” Betsy burst out. “Half of what we call heroics are just people making the best of a bad situation. But we shouldn’t have been in that situation in the first place! Whatever you’ve heard about the Seneca? It’s true. All of it. The water was brackish; the ice gave out. The men were crammed into pens not fit for cattle. We hadn’t a surgical instrument or a roll of bandages on board except what I brought with me—which was precious little. Would you like to know the worst of it?”

Everyone leaned forward eagerly. Everyone desperately wanted to know the worst of it.

Betsy’s voice rang out clear and strong. “The worst of it is that it never had to happen. This wasn’t an act of God. This wasn’t the strange workings of Providence. This was nothing short of criminal negligence by men who ought to have known better.”

The newspapermen were writing frantically, desperate to take down every word.

Betsy waved one arm wildly. “Don’t look for someone to praise—look for someone to hold accountable! This was entirely the fault of the authorities at Siboney. We ought never to have been on that ship! No one inspected it. No one provisioned it. They just shoved us on board to get us out of the way. It was worse than careless. It betrayed a shocking lack of concern for human life—for the lives of these brave men who risked so much. This entire fiasco—this entire war!—is the fault of arrogant, incompetent men playing with lives as though they were boys playing with toy soldiers and then kicking them aside when they’re done.”

Betsy pressed her lips together hard. She was shaking. Holt could see her, standing there in her black dress with the Red Cross insignia on the arm, framed in the door of the carriage, swaying slightly, too thin, exhausted, worn to the bone, but determined to have her say, determined to make sure justice was done.

He was so proud of her it hurt.

A reporter broke the spell, shouting out, “Is it true that the captain was drunk and the doctors incompetent?”

Betsy glared at the unfortunate reporter. “I don’t know who told you that, but it’s nonsense. Captain Decker, the captain of the Seneca, was all that was kind and provided every assistance within his power—which was precious little! The doctors on board, Dr. Hicks and Dr. Baird, had ninety-four wounded to care for—and that’s not counting the passengers who fell ill. They worked themselves sick.”

Dr. Baird was standing with a bunch of the other passengers, waiting to board the cabs. Holt watched as he lifted a hand to scrub at the tears falling down his cheeks. One of the other passengers, the society boy from Boston, patted the doctor on the shoulder.

Betsy surveyed the crowd, quelling them with a look. “This fiasco was purely the fault of the authorities, not of anyone on board. The people on board were wonderful. We would never have survived—none of us—without the selfless assistance of the passengers who gave up their cabins and volunteered to serve as orderlies and nurses. Captain Dowdy and—and Private Holt”—for the first time, Betsy’s voice faltered; Holt saw her eyes slide sideways toward him before sliding away again—“they were pillars of strength. But they shouldn’t have had to be. None of us should have had to be.”

Her face twisted; she had exhausted herself and was fighting for control.

“Is that the opinion of the Red Cross?” demanded one of the reporters.

Betsy’s hand went reflexively to the Red Cross badge on her arm. “It’s my opinion. It’s more than my opinion. It’s my true belief.” She raised her chin. “If anyone wants to know more, I shall be staying—I shall be staying at the St. Denis Hotel. I will give my statement there, this afternoon.”

Her eyes met Holt’s for one moment before she turned and ducked into the carriage, shutting the door smartly behind her.

Betsy’s salvo appeared on the front pages of all the major papers that evening.

Holt didn’t go to the St. Denis Hotel. He didn’t go to her press conference. He wanted to go. He wanted to go and stand behind her, to announce himself as her lawyer, to fend off anyone who challenged her—but he wasn’t a lawyer. He was just a man who’d dropped out of law school. And she’d told him to go away.

Besides, she’d made it very clear she didn’t need Holt to stand up for her; she could stand up for herself.

So Holt went uptown to the Harvard Club on Forty-Fourth Street, venturing out only to buy copies of all the special editions containing Betsy’s statement to the press. He didn’t have to go far to find them. They were being hawked on all the street corners. The Seneca wasn’t just news. It was the news.

SOME ONE BLUNDERED . . . WOUNDED SUFFER.

There was a drawing of Betsy as she had been that morning, standing on the step of that carriage, alone and brave in her black dress, the Red Cross insignia disproportionately displayed and her hair inaccurately smooth. They’d got her hair wrong but they’d caught her defiance.

“Miss Elizabeth Hayes, the Red Cross Nurse, Exposes the Disgraceful Neglect Practised on Injured Soldiers Brought from Cuba on Seneca.”

Holt kicked back on the bed, a real bed, easing the pain in his healed but still not happy leg.

He could hear Betsy’s voice through the paper; he could picture her face as she lectured the press, as she said, “I don’t want to be a heroine. I don’t want your praise. I just want someone to promise me that this will never happen again.”

Holt fell asleep in a pile of papers and woke up with newsprint on his cheek.

The counterattack came swiftly.