Page 98 of Two Wars and a Wedding

“When you say she’s pretty bad,” Betsy broke in, before the men could get going, “what do you mean?”

“Fever,” said the first man laconically. “She was moaning like anything last night.”

The Russian officer cast a sideways glance at his counterparts. “Lieutenant Akiyama, as well.”

“The representative of Japan,” explained the Swedish officer.

Two more patients for her roster. “Is there anyone else I ought to know about?”

One of the newspapermen shoved the other. “Herbert here was ill over the rail last night.”

“That was the bully beef,” protested Herbert with an attempt at dignity.

Betsy ignored them. “Right. Thank you so much to all of you who have offered to sacrifice your own comfort for the good of others. I’ll look in on Mrs. Scovel and Lieutenant Akiyama as soon as I have the worst cases transferred from the hold.”

She spoke as briskly as she could and just hoped none of them could see how she was shaking, from exhaustion and relief and fear.

“Ma’am?” A man stepped forward, the others parting to let him through. He was a distinguished-looking man of middle years, with an impressive beak of a nose. “Captain Robert Dowdy, US Army. You say you are the only nurse aboard. I cannot claim any experience of nursing, but I do have a sound pair of arms and can follow instructions. A few of us back here have had a quiet word, and we’d like to help. Say the word and I’ll make a list of volunteers and set up a rota.”

Betsy was overcome. Volunteers. A rota.

You’re not in this on your own, Holt had said.

“I don’t know what to say other than thank you. And yes, please.” Betsy cleared her throat, hoping they’d put any suspicious scratchiness in her throat down to the salt air. “Our first order of operations is moving the men up from the hold. If you’ll indicate to me which cabins are now free and how many there are, we can designate some for fever patients and others for the most gravely wounded. And now if someone could help me get down from this chair?”

The Turkish military observer retreated into his cabin and pretended not to understand her French, but the rest of them were good-natured about gathering up their personal belongings and the odd pillow or two and making nests for themselves in the corners of the smoking room.

When Betsy went down to the hold to inform the doctors of her success, she found Dr. Baird with a lung-shot patient, examining two open wounds oozing quantities of foul pus.

The doctor didn’t look up as Betsy came up beside him. “Sergeant Pagelow—he was shot through both lungs the first day of the fighting at Santiago.”

Betsy straightened, ready to work. “What can we do for him?”

“Nothing,” the doctor said bitterly.

The man was in so much pain. “There must be something! What if we—” Betsy came up blank. She might have had a fair bit of experience nursing, but there had always been doctors to direct her. And actual implements. Even on the battlefield at Domokos they had been better prepared than this.

“Don’t you think if I could, I would?” Dr. Baird turned to face her and Betsy realized he was near tears. “If I had a proper operating theater I could help him—or just a set of sterile instruments. But here? Nothing.”

Betsy took a deep breath. “We can move him upstairs.” It seemed so little, but it was something at least. “The passengers have agreed to give up their cabins. Almost all the passengers.”

The doctor blinked at her. “We’ll have to find a way to move them. . . .”

“Don’t worry,” said Betsy, patting him on the shoulder. He looked like he needed a pat on the shoulder. “We’ve got that worked out too.”

True to his word, Captain Dowdy organized stretcher bearers. The cabins weren’t large—the boat had been a coastal steamer, designed to house passengers for one night on the trip from New York to Norfolk, Virginia, not a grand ocean liner like the one Betsy had taken to Greece—but even so, that was thirty men they moved out of the hold.

Thirty men and Kit.

Fever cases and the worst sorts of wounds were given priority for cabins; the rest stayed in the hold or, if they were well enough, had blankets set out for them on the deck. There were some cases that would have made Betsy rage if she’d had time to rage; as it was, she could only do what she could do with what they had, making her rounds with malted milk for the wounded and beef tea for the feverish, bathing foreheads, changing dressings, taking temperatures.

Down in the heat of the hold, one man told her sheepishly it would make such a difference to have a handkerchief to mop his brow. So Betsy took her petticoat and cut it into squares. Another patient had taken a bullet in his left side, a bullet that couldn’t be extracted for want of surgical tools. Every time he rolled in his sleep, the pain woke him. Betsy appropriated a pillow and squished it into a sort of bolster, strapping it to his side. Crude but effective. It felt good to be effective, even if only in small ways.

It was the ones they couldn’t help at all that hurt; the men with shrapnel in them that could so easily have been removed if they’d only had the tools. Like poor Private Allen, who couldn’t straighten his leg because of the metal shards lodged in his knee. They had to move him every so often, so he wouldn’t get bedsores, but every movement was such agony that it felt like torture. One of the volunteers came to Betsy in tears, saying the poor man was begging to be left alone. But they couldn’t leave him alone, not if he wasn’t going to develop other nasty conditions, so Betsy moved him herself. Or did until Holt saw her wrestling with him and took over.

Holt was hardly well himself, but Betsy was too exhausted to complain. Some of the other wounded had quietly taken up places on the rota as well. She would have hugged each and every one if only there’d been time for it and she hadn’t been afraid of spreading disease. That was her biggest fear, that the fever patients would infect the rest of them. She’d tried to isolate the fever patients in the cabins, but with her one thermometer giving out on her, sometimes it was more guesswork than actual nursing.

Day bled into night into day again.