Chapter Three #2
Her heart sank, but she turned from her patient and followed him to the operating room.
She quickly saw that the amputation bench held a man whose legs were shredded from ankle to knee.
His flesh wore the dark tattoo of deep tissue infection, and he was, Charlotte saw from his uniform, a Captain.
Double gold bars on his shoulders had led her to believe this.
It was hard to guess his age, for he wore a full beard, but even his rank and breeding failed to conceal the terror in his eyes.
Spencer gave terse orders to Charlotte and to the two orderlies helping him.
“Hold that leg, Charlotte, and when I cut keep it level and hold it strongly. I don’t want it dragging on his flesh before it’s clear! And you two, hold him firm while I get this tourniquet on.”
Charlotte moved forward and glanced down at the ruination of the man’s legs. There were no gloves, no surgical masks, nothing to keep the infected blood off her hands. She braced herself then cupped the foot nearest Spencer, holding as firmly as she dared.
Another doctor took his place at the patient’s head, holding a copper funnel. Charlotte watched him pour chloroform into it, and the wounded officer slowly passed out.
It all happened so quickly that afterwards Charlotte had to admire Spencer’s skill.
He cut through flesh, sinew and muscle with the aplomb of a master butcher.
First, he used a double-edged knife called a Catlin to cut through the skin, pulling back a flap to sew over the stump.
Then he applied the slimmer scalpel blade to cut through muscle and sinew.
When he finally pulled out the tenaculum and began to hook out the blood vessels to ligate, Charlotte averted her gaze, fighting nausea, focusing instead on the orderly to the left of the patient.
He was tall and slim, dressed in a white apron that covered his blue uniform, clearly a Union soldier.
Charlotte’s heart lurched and she closed her eyes as though that might blot out the din of the bone saw.
When she opened them again, the other leg had been amputated, and another orderly took the leg to be thrown into a corner for the flies.
She forced herself to concentrate on the job at hand, tried to focus her eyes on the chipped edge of the operating table, anywhere but the bleeding stump and putrid leg.
Her hands were slick with the juices of the officer’s infection as the second limb came free from the man’s body. Resisting the urge to wipe her fingers on her apron, she steeled herself to show no disgust or fear.
Oh, God, I want to go home!
The doctor who had administered the chloroform to the patient barked her name.
“Are you with us, pray?”
“Yes,” Charlotte answered automatically.
“Then gather these dressings and take them away!”
Spencer was sewing up the second stump as the officer started to come round.
Charlotte, grateful to escape, scooped up the filthy bandages, heedless of how they dripped onto her apron.
She turned on her heel without looking back and hurried through the ward to the back of the building to the makeshift laundry where huge pots of water boiled the soiled dressings and sheets.
A young lad stirred one of the pots with a stick, and Charlotte smiled at him as she dumped the dressings on the ground.
He couldn’t have been more than twelve. She then went to sit on a bench under the shade of an apple tree to contemplate her dire situation.
Charlotte found it unbearable to stomach assisting in amputations that offered little to no pain relief to the patients after the procedure.
She could never erase the shrieks of those men and boys as the pile of limbs grew in the corner of the operating room and the blood flowed in freshets from the table.
It took three orderlies to hold the patients down, with her holding the limb to be cut. Most of them fainted with the shock and pain, leaving Charlotte thinking that surely this was purgatory on Earth.
Even Spencer who was performing the amputation as usual, was grim faced and scowling.
The patients tried their best to be brave.
They swore that they would not move in order to assist the surgeon, but each time they twitched and jerked so much in their agony that the newly severed limb would fly up when released from the final hack of the saw to spray blood onto all around the table.
Each time, Charlotte resolved to do better holding the limb firm but failed when the thrashing became too violent to contain. It was a bloodbath.
That day they performed three amputations and when at last another nurse came to relieve her, Charlotte went down the stairs like a sleepwalker to the apple orchard next to the hospital.
She leaned against a tree and sobbed for half an hour.
She felt ashamed that everybody seemed stronger than her and more able to cope.
Why is this happening to me? I am a surgeon back home. I should be able to stomach these grisly operations with ease, shouldn’t I?
****
The hour was late when Charlotte was able to finally return to Annabelle’s townhouse.
She ventured from the porch to the backyard of the house to amble leisurely with her thoughts.
In truth she was hiding. After she had told Annabelle what had happened that day, the other woman had not so gently lectured her about the need to control her temper and to avoid another outburst like the one Charlotte had described.
“When Dr. Abbott says they’re doing the best they can with what they have he means it,” Annabelle had said. “And you’d be wise not to refer to things which do not yet exist. You will only draw attention to yourself. Penicillin? Charlotte, really! What were you thinking?”
She cringed, as the memory chagrined her, but Annabelle was right, and if she wanted to blend in—which she wanted to do—she would have to be more careful.
She should probably apologize to Spencer again, but she really hated to do so, especially when she was in the right.
Sighing heavily, she rotated her head to ease the tension in her neck and shoulders.
Tomorrow was going to be a disaster. She’d made the mistake of meeting the gaze of the patient with the horrible wound.
His gray eyes had held such deep pain, they belied the youthful features that told her he could not be more than fifteen.
How could she not care?
Too chilled to continue avoiding the other occupant of the house out-of-doors, Charlotte turned to wander back to the house. Charlotte opened the back door and walked across the sitting room where Anabelle sat in a wingback chair.
“I think you need to get to bed. You need a good night’s sleep before you go to back to work at the hospital,” Annabelle advised.
Charlotte turned and walked up the stairs to her bedroom.
She made quick work of her clothes and got into her nightgown. She turned back the covers and quickly lay down in the bed. She tossed and turned, tangling the covers. I wish I could sleep! Visions of the hospital’s miserable occupants haunted her.
Tiring of the futile quest for sleep, Charlotte left her bed long before sunrise.
It was raining again. Flipping the lid of the clothes trunk, she began sifting through the contents in search of suitable clothing.
She knew that Civil War nurses did not wear hoops under their dresses due to safety, convenience, and hospital or Sanitary Commission regulations.
In the end she donned a simple brown skirt and tan blouse.
After a quick breakfast and a few chores, she embarked on a quick walk the short distance through mud-covered cobblestone streets to the Marshall House Hospital.
After she had arrived, she realized that the shock of the hospital’s atmosphere—and its lamentable downfalls—had ebbed.
She was morbidly fascinated. Moving toward the back of the ward, her eyes drank in every aspect of the place.
It looks more like a holocaust camp than a hospital—oh!
I must not mention Nazis or World War II, or even World War I for that matter!
Men in union uniform strode with importance about the facility, young orderlies strode up and down stairs, completing errands, following orders, and volunteers were carrying out a variety of tasks.
As if on cue, Spencer Abbott appeared before the wide door of the operating room throwing a bloodied apron into the corner.
Her heart positively lurched in the face of the pure devastation mirrored in his eyes.
The man looked tired and drawn, and so terribly young in that moment, all she wanted to do was to wrap her arms around those broad shoulders and pull him to her.
Slowly she approached. “Spencer? Are you all right?”
He glared at her, as if asking himself what the hell she was doing there.
“Miss Liddell,” he clipped, “if you have come to once more to take me to task about my methods of healing, you may leave. I am not in the mood to listen. I lost Jimmy Gooding this morning.”
Instantly, Charlotte understood his dour mood and once again the shattered pieces of her heart trembled in sympathy.
She wasn’t entirely sure she liked it, but her knowledge of medical advances yet to come assailed her conscience and she bled for him.
No doubt many physicians in this day had lost countless patients who could have been saved in her time.
How many young soldiers had placed broken bodies into Spencer’s hands, trusting his skills to perform miracles and give their lives back to them?
“What do you need me to do?” Charlotte asked quietly. “Remember, I agreed to help in whatever way I can.”