Chapter 2
Black iron squealed as I closed the big gates in front of the hospital and stepped onto cobbled stones.
Dawn rose over the city. My never-ending shift was finally over.
Now I could return to the nurses’ quarters to sleep.
Though, sleep might be difficult as long as Mr. Voss’s laughing face was still embedded in my brain.
Outside the gates, a grand black landau carriage sat empty, with four matching Frisians waiting in front, one pair in front of the other, snorting in the early-morning air as whorls of summer fog shifted around their thick hooves.
They made the carriage seem more like a chariot than a coach, and I’d rarely seen such fine horses.
Had rarely seen glass windows in a carriage—only when the president visited New York.
As I passed, a golden crest on the sleek door flashed in the gaslight: an elegant V pierced by two golden arrows.
V for Voss.
That’s his coach, I thought as my insides knotted with dread. He was still inside the hospital somewhere, perhaps in the mortuary with his sister’s body.
After Voss’s strange laughter, I didn’t have any further conversation with him nor his wounded valet, and I regretted this.
The only person I’d come across who could see ghosts like me…
I should have tried to ask him about it.
Now I wished I had. But the image of him winking at me gnawed at my stomach, so I hurried away from his carriage and headed toward our nurses’ quarters, a couple blocks away.
And while I hustled down First Avenue, wondering how many more warm summer nights like this remained, Bethany appeared by my side, startling me for a moment while she matched my pace.
“Worst shift ever,” she said, wrapping her arms around her middle. “Did you see what happened back there? Charles Voss looked at me! Me! Plain ol’ Bethany Cross!” She danced a few steps, grinning like a fool. “Maybe he’ll have to stay overnight with that cough. Then we can see him tomorrow.”
“Men like him don’t stay in public hospitals,” I reminded her.
And I was right. When I returned for my next shift the following evening, Voss and his valet were long gone, leaving nothing but a stray bit of gossip about their bizarre visit. Even the gentleman’s sister had been removed and sent to a private morgue.
Like most patients, they came, they got treated, and they left, never to be seen again.
Except, I’d eventually learn, that wasn’t what happened with Voss…
A month later, at the very end of September, when the air held a chill and the leaves were beginning to change color, I was walking the same path down First Avenue after a graveyard shift.
Bethany accompanied me. Surprisingly, she had not faded permanently like all the other ghosts I’d known, but maybe she was just stubborn enough to stick around.
I didn’t know. I still hadn’t been assigned a new nursing partner, so I was grateful for Bethany’s company, even if it was occasionally irritating.
“Why is it so cold?”
“It’s autumn,” I told her as we strode over the moonlit cobbles.
“What happened to the summer?” she asked, genuinely surprised.
“Time flies, even when you’re dead, I suppose.”
“Who’s dead?”
I sighed deeply and continued walking.
The nursing program had stashed us away from the hospital, on the second floor of Mott Mews on East Twenty-Sixth Street.
The mews were a three-story building tucked behind a taller one with a courtyard between; the ground floor housed stables, and above them were rented warehouse space and tenements.
My fellow nursing students and I had been crammed into a room on the highest floor.
Dueling scents of manure and ammonia assaulted me as I walked past a line of horses and nodded at the stable hand, Benjamin.
He sleepily tipped his hat. Some of the stable workers often harassed us with crude come-ons and belittling comments, and between them and all the rough street gangs that warred around these parts, I was always relieved to get inside as quickly as possible.
My boots crunched dirty straw as we ascended narrow stairs to the top floor.
Bethany paused to yawn. Sounds of a couple arguing and a baby’s colicky cries permeated the thin pine walls.
In some ways, I felt that living here was no different from my grandfather’s Ragpickers Row tenement on Mulberry Bend.
The nursing students’ room was at the end of the hall. When I took out my key, I paused to listen to voices I heard in the neighboring room.
“… and you may find that she occasionally talks to herself, which I found strange when I was getting to know her. But you don’t have to worry about her mental capacity. She’s merely very… intense about her work.”
I knew that voice. Was this conversation about me talking to ghosts? A little panic rose up and tightened my chest, and I accidently dropped my key. It bounced on the floorboards and dinged against the bottom of the neighboring door.
I froze in place, praying no one had heard the key fall. But the neighboring door swung open, and I found myself staring into the face of my supervisor, Sister Helen Bowden.
“Ah, Molly, there you are, back from your shift. Just the junior nurse I wanted to see.”
Sister Helen ran the nursing program. She’d journeyed to England last year to learn directly from Florence Nightingale herself.
I admired Sister Helen and would have admired her even more if she’d only been willing to tell us the names of the medicines.
Sometimes I wondered if Sister Helen even knew them.
The nun beckoned from the doorway of her own private quarters. “I’d like to speak with you if you don’t mind. Please come through.”
Fresh panic bubbled up inside me. What is this about? I’d set a man’s arm tonight by myself, but it… had been difficult. Had I botched the job? I worried I was in trouble. After all, I’d only been inside Sister Helen’s private room once before.
“Oooh, you’re in trouble,” Bethany teased.
I swatted behind me to shoo her away, and for once, she took the hint and disappeared.
With trepidation, I stepped into the good nun’s room, lit by candle and furnished spartanly. There was a single bed, a desk, and a small table with two chairs beneath a window that gave a glimpse of the purpling early-morning sky.
Sitting in front of that window was something I’d never seen in Sister Helen’s room.
A middle-aged man.
When he stood up to greet me, I noticed his short stature. Then I did a double take at the man’s missing pinky finger.
The man looked a lot less miserable than the last time I’d seen him… a lot less covered in his own blood. Pale and petite, the valet wore a tweed brown suit and gripped a bowler hat. His silver muttonchops were neatly trimmed, and they matched his broomlike mustache.
He pushed up a pair of wire-rimmed gold glasses and murmured, “Yes, this is the one.”
Who was the one? Me? Anxiety clawed at my chest. What is he doing here?
“Mr. Hoffmann,” Sister Helen said, “this is my brightest pupil, Molly O’Rinn. She’s the girl we’ve been discussing, who lost her mother to consumption a few years past. I believe she is the junior nurse who was training when you and Mr. Voss were brought in last month, yes?”
“Indeed, indeed.” The gentleman canted his head politely. “It’s a pleasure to formally meet you, Nurse Molly, especially under better circumstances,” he said in a thick German accent.
I nodded. “Likewise, sir.”
“Nurse Molly… In my tongue, it is Schwester Molly.”
“Oh?” I gave him a quick smile, flicking a questioning gaze to Sister Helen, and then said to the man, “Your pinky finger seems to be healing up nicely. I’m glad to see you’ve had the stiches removed.
” For the first time, I noticed a band of black fabric encircling his upper arm.
Formal mourning for the Voss sister, I thought.
“Is there, uh, anything I can do for you, sir?”
He chuckled softly and cleared his throat, pressing a fist to his mouth. “Why, yes, indeed. Quite a big task. That is what I was explaining to the good sister here.”
I must have stood there silently for too long because Sister Helen gently removed my nursing lantern from my grip and set it on the table.
She encouraged me to remove my wool cloak and steered me to the empty chair next to the man.
“A great and honorable task has been set before you, and I know you are the right girl to answer its call.” I could hear the eagerness in her voice as she whispered into my ear.
Curious, I carefully perched on the chair, allowing the bustle that puffed out the back of my blue nursing skirts to collapse into a neat pile behind me.
“My dear girl,” Mr. Hoffmann said, “I was sent here by my employer for a most urgent and important assignment.”
“The gentleman who lost his sister?”
“You remember,” Mr. Hoffmann said, and it sounded almost like a question.
I gave him a polite smile. “I remember. Voss, I think his name was?”
“Charles Voss,” Sister Helen said. “His father was Parker Voss, the financier known as the Hammer of Wall Street.”
I didn’t know anything about Wall Street bigwigs, which must have been apparent on my face, because Mr. Hoffmann said, “Well, that’s all right.
You are young. Mr. Voss’s father made his fortune on Wall Street, and the Voss name carries weight in this city.
More weight than the mayor. He and his wife were struck down last year in a tragic event, so the fortune went to Charles.
That included a quite lavish estate on the Hudson—upstate New York, in Tarrytown, near Sleepy Hollow. ”
“A couple hours by train,” Sister Helen informed me as she hung up my coat on the back of the door.
The man nodded, shuffling his bowler hat. “He sent me into the city with a rather large check to procure a live-in nurse.”
A live-in nurse? “Oh,” I said, realizing. “For his tuberculosis?”