Page 44 of Two Wars and a Wedding

“No,” said Holt. The rum he’d drunk made his mouth sticky. “Not a doppelgänger.”

Paul stared at him, too confused to be upset. “What would you be doing at Harvard?”

“College.” He could omit, but he couldn’t lie, not straight-out. Holt gave up. So much for a new life. Sometimes, the old one just wouldn’t let you go. “That’s what I was doing at Harvard. I was an undergraduate there.”

Siboney, Cuba

June 30, 1898

“Men. They just never learn.” Kit came into the Cuban hospital, setting down a bundle with a decided thump.

Betsy glanced over her shoulder from the man whose dressing she was changing. “Aren’t those the blankets Miss Barton told you to take over to the US Army hospital?”

“They sent me back with them. Apparently the army’s quite self-sufficient as they are,” said Kit drily. “Even though they can’t seem to rustle up cots or blankets or even a jug of water.”

“That’s ridiculous. All right, you’ll do for the moment,” Betsy told her patient, tucking in the ends of the fresh dressing. Dropping the soiled bandages into a basket for boiling, Betsy went over to join Kit at the washstand. “That’s worse than ridiculous.”

“That’s men. Sooner die than ask for directions. Or a blanket.” Kit scrubbed her hands furiously with the lye soap. “I feel filthy just having stepped inside there. The boys asked me why we’d deserted them for the Cubans. I told them don’t blame us, blame their doctors. You should see the difference between that hellhole and here.”

Here wasn’t exactly a picnic in the park, but Betsy had to admit to herself that they’d done a pretty good job. All right, a very good job. They’d meticulously scrubbed each room, boiled everything that could be boiled, and provided fresh bedding and supplies from the stores in the hold of the State of Texas before moving the men back in, in clean shirts, on clean sheets, with clean bandages, and with an organized rota that made sure each man got his share of care in a timely fashion. Betsy found Sister Bettina a bit of a pill, but the woman knew what she was doing. The ward stank of carbolic, not rotting flesh.

Betsy felt . . . proud. It was a strange thing to feel, but there it was. Looking at her ward, at her patients, there was the satisfaction of knowing she’d actually done something for them, that there were men who’d go home because she, Betsy Hayes, had changed their dressings rather than letting them fester.

Betsy wasn’t used to feeling like she’d done something right.

“You’re going to wear off the skin if you keep that up,” Betsy said. Kit’s already chapped and calloused palms had gone lobster red, but she kept scrubbing away at them all the same, as if there were something more than dirt she was trying to eradicate. “Are things as bad in the army hospital as they were before?”

Kit shook the water off her hands and turned away to look for the drying cloth. “Worse. Sixty-odd men lying on the floor in their own filth, packed in like sardines. Some of them have been lying there since last Friday. You can smell their flesh rotting. It’s a disgrace.”

Betsy thought of all those men in Tampa, fighting over who got to go to Cuba, so proud in their brown uniforms and blue bandanas. Paul telling her how they were going off to fight Spain. His friend strong-arming her back onto the train. Officious man.

Betsy didn’t like to think of them lying on the floor of that squalid shack, wounded, helpless. “Did you see . . .”

Kit glanced sideways at her. “That Rough Rider we met outside the hotel? No sign of him. Although those men were so close-packed it was hard to tell.”

Betsy absentmindedly washed her own hands, breathing in the sharp scent of lye. “He hath no drowning mark upon him / His complexion is perfect gallows.”

“Huh?” Kit put down the drying cloth. “Where did that come from?”

Somewhere from the recesses of her distracted mind. Betsy shook her head. “I just meant that he’s too annoying to die. According to Herodotus, whom the gods love die young. Not the other ones.” Belatedly, Betsy remembered Paul. If ever there was a man whom the gods loved, it was Paul. “What about a tall, blond Yale man?”

“Honey, the place is packed with tall, blond Yale men. I didn’t notice any in particular.”

There was a peculiar note to Kit’s voice. Her banter seemed strangely flat. Betsy followed her as she went to collect the basket of dirty linens for boiling. “Is something wrong?”

“You mean other than all the dying men?” Kit brooded over the basket for a moment, before saying, “I saw Edward Marshall there. From the New York Journal.”

Ah, that was it. “Getting the scoop on you?” asked Betsy sagely.

Kit shook her head, stopped, and then shook it again. “Yes. But also no. He has a bullet through the spine. His legs won’t move. They’re not sure if he’ll make it. But he wrote up his story all the same.”

Betsy had no idea what to say. “Oh, Kit.”

“I didn’t even particularly like him.” Kit pressed her lips hard together, her face contorting before she got it back under control. “I offered to file his story for him but he said Stephen Crane of the World had already done it.”

“Well, that was nice of him,” said Betsy cautiously.

“Betsy, am I crazy? Are we all crazy? He might die. He’ll never walk again. And I can’t decide if I’m scared or jealous. What are we doing?”