Page 87 of Two Wars and a Wedding

“It’s not typhoid.” Holt felt Nurse Hayes’s grip on his hand tighten. He tried to squeeze back. “I spent two months in a typhoid ward. I know typhoid when I see it.”

“It might be tertian fever. Malaria. If I had a lab I could tell you—there was a fascinating piece in the British Medical Journal last Christmas about malarial pigmentation found in cells siphoned from an Anopheles mosquito that had fed on an infected patient. . . .” Dr. Stringfellow recalled himself. “But without a lab, the best anyone can do is wait three days and see if the fever recurs.”

Nurse Hayes gave an impatient bounce. “Yes, but what can I do for him now?”

“Quinine. If it’s malaria, he should respond quickly. And if he doesn’t . . .” Dr. Stringfellow shrugged. “I was going to discharge him, but not now. He’ll need to go with the rest of them.”

“Go where?” Nurse Hayes dropped Holt’s hand in her alarm. Holt wished she hadn’t.

“Orders,” said Dr. Stringfellow in a clipped voice. “Straight from General Shafter. We’re to discharge anyone who can be discharged and move the more serious cases onto transports to be sent back to the States for care. These facilities need to be emptied for a new surge of wounded. They anticipate heavy fighting for Santiago—and we need to be ready.”

Holt struggled to sit up. “Need to go—need to get back to them—”

Nurse Hayes rounded on him. “Don’t you dare. The only person you’re fighting is me.” She turned back to Dr. Stringfellow. “What’s the ship? Is it a proper hospital ship? How is it provisioned? Who’s to accompany them?”

“They’ve sent the hospital ship Relief to evacuate them. Other than that, I don’t know.” Dr. Stringfellow’s voice crackled with frustration. “I have goodness only knows how many patients to move and an operating theater to prepare. I’m going to need you to tell me who among your men can be discharged and who needs to be transported. This one we know. What about the rest?”

Nurse Hayes wasn’t budging. Holt admired that about her. He admired a lot of things about her. “Who’s accompanying them on the ship?”

“Two civilian doctors. Contractors. I don’t know them.” Dr. Stringfellow perked up suddenly. “They’ll need a nurse. Do you want to go?”

“On the ship.” Nurse Hayes’s voice was curiously flat. Holt wished he could see her face, but her back was toward him. He could see her hands, though, curling into fists at her sides.

Dr. Stringfellow made an impatient gesture. “On the ship. The army doesn’t want to spare any of the male nurses. We’ll need them all, they say.”

“Half of them are useless anyway,” Nurse Hayes muttered.

“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear you say that—and that I don’t agree,” said Dr. Stringfellow drily. “Think about it. The ship sails tonight.”

Nurse Hayes turned and looked down at Holt, her face for a moment unguarded, anguished.

Holt reached for her hand, to comfort her, but the cold claimed him, making his hand shake as he reached for hers, so his fingers only brushed her wrist.

She gave her head a brisk shake. “First things first. I’ll get you your quinine straightaway.”

Siboney, Cuba

July 13, 1898

It was the Albania all over again.

Betsy pressed her hands to her knees, breathing in deeply, breathing in the scents of salt water and bleach and male sweat. Just like the Albania.

No, no, it wasn’t. This wasn’t the Albania. Betsy forced herself to straighten, to look out at the harbor, where the Relief was already at anchor. This wasn’t a broken-down old scow with men piled on the decks and launching themselves in their delirium from the mast. Based on the exterior, it was far more likely that this hospital ship Relief was a state-of-the-art wonder like the hospital ship Solace they’d toured a lifetime ago in Key West, with an elevator to move patients from surgery to the ward and everything shipshape and carbolic-scented.

Betsy tried to get herself in hand. She needed to get quinine for Holt. She needed to make that list for Dr. Stringfellow and see the able-bodied men discharged and the sicker men readied for immediate transport, and then she needed to go get her four hours of sleep before preparing for the new wounded who would come when Shafter made his final assault on Santiago.

This was where she was needed. They were short-staffed here already. Both Sister Anna and Sister Minnie were desperately ill; they’d been moved to a new fever hospital a way away from the rest, up on the top of a hill. No one wanted to use the words yellow fever, that terrible scourge from which so few recovered. But they were thinking it all the same.

If Dr. Stringfellow was right, if there was going to be a final scramble to secure Santiago, then the carts were going to start bumping down that road again, the wounded pouring in faster than they could sort them. There would be pallets on the ground and lights burning in the operating tent, only now, instead of a full complement of able-bodied nurses, they had two down with fever and the rest so broken down with nonstop work that it was a wonder they were still walking.

Of course, there was Ava. Ava was here now, and managing, in her own Ava-ish way, to do the work of multiple people.

But wasn’t that all the more reason not to leave? Ava was here and she was Betsy’s Ava again, even if now she was also very clearly Dr. Stringfellow’s Ava.

Betsy fetched the tin of quinine tablets from the store cupboard, her hand shaking slightly as she pressed the wooden panel back into place. She could feel her secrets like an unexploded shell lodged in her chest. Yes, she knew that was anatomically impossible, but that was what it felt like, a horrible, destructive burden that she carried cradled close to her, something that might someday explode.

She was so tired and so sick of herself. She didn’t think Ava would be shocked to hear that Charles had been her lover—Ava was enough of a realist for that. She would beetle her black brows at Betsy, she would probably say something sarcastic, but she wouldn’t be surprised, and she would, in her own way, understand.