Widow of Gettysburg (25 page)

“Will you?” Bella faced her squarely. “Will you take a husband?”

Liberty cleared the shock from her voice. “He said if he survives the battle. We don’t know what that verdict is quite yet. I’m sure you saw his leg.”

“A man can live with one leg. Will you marry him if he survives? He will want to know.”

“No. It’s you who wants to know.” Liberty laughed nervously.

“I’m serious. You must decide.”

“How can I marry him? We’ve only met on a few occasions!”

“But you’ve known him for two years.”

Liberty sighed, exasperated. “Well, I’d hardly call it a courtship. I can’t possibly love him yet. Such a hasty proposal!” Her cheeks warmed at the thought of the letter. The thought of him.

“Love is only one reason to marry.” Bella held Liberty’s gaze. “Security is another. Marriage can be and should be a safe place, protection, provision. Life is hard for an unmarried woman.”

“Life is going to be hard for Johnny. He’ll lose his leg tomorrow, if nothing else.”

“I’m not talking just about him, although if you were to marry him, I’m sure he’d find a way to provide for and protect you. I’m saying if you aim to marry, you ought not wait for cupid’s arrow if a reasonable opportunity presents itself.” She took a breath. “I don’t know how you’ll recover from this alone.”

Liberty wiped her forehead with the ragged hem of her sleeve, hoping to hide the tears pooling in her eyes. Recovery would be a long road for everyone.

“Forgive me. I do run on.” Bella twisted her fingers in her apron.

“Yes, you do.” Liberty’s lips curved up. “Then may I ask—don’t you love Abraham?”

“I love him plenty. Now.” A smile softened Bella’s face. “Real life love isn’t like the romance love in your novels. Love can grow out of companionship as well as it can from—well, anything else. Love is a commitment, and Abraham and I committed to each other when we married. The warm feelings followed. But at the time, I was more interested in the practicality of the arrangement.”

Libbie tilted her head and studied the woman before her. There was so much about Bella she didn’t know. But, “Dr. Stephens said amputees can often die of secondary hemorrhage. What if he dies right after I marry him, and I become a widow all over again?” She pressed her fingers to her throbbing temples. “Am I doomed to be the Widow of Gettysburg forever?”

“He isn’t dead. We don’t know the number of days appointed for any of us. You could marry any man in Pennsylvania, and the Lord might take him up the next day. Carriage accident. The fever. Could be anything, not just war. You can’t refuse to marry again just because the man might die. Didn’t I just hear you say to Amelia that you weren’t confined by your losses anymore? That it’s time to rise above them and go forth?”

“Yes.”

“So go forth. I’m not saying you have to marry him, I’m just saying it would be folly to let your past dictate the rest of your life. Forgive me for speaking so freely. But
you
make the decision. No one else—living or dead—gets to do that for you.”

Liberty’s thoughts churned as laboriously as wagon wheels through the mud. Her muscles ached beneath her sodden dress as she folded the letter and tucked it into her pocket. She would make her decision.

But not tonight.

T
hough dawn had lifted night’s curtain, a grey veil of rain still hid the risen sun. Liberty’s hands quavered slightly with the buttons and ties on her tired-looking dress. After four days without food, she could not control the tremors.

A knock sounded on her bedroom door. “Liberty! Liberty!”

She opened it with a frown, her hair still in a braid down her back. “You may call me Miss Holloway, Isaac.” It was high time he realized he had curried no favors with her.

“It’s Dr. Stephens. Something’s wrong with Dr. Stephens.” His lisp contorted his message, but Liberty dashed out after him just the same.

“If this is a trick to get me alone with you, Isaac, I will knock out your other teeth.”

“No. No trick. Just see.” His charm vanished, raw fear gaped open in its place. Liberty’s heart thundered as they approached the doctor,
convulsing in the corner of the great hall. “What happened to him?”

“I don’t know!”

“Tell me something, Isaac. Anything. When did you find him like this?”

“Just now. He was saying all kinds of crazy stuff all night long. I bet he didn’t sleep more than an hour, which meant I didn’t sleep more than an hour. About half an hour ago, he started hallucinating.”

“How do you know?”

“He was hugging the air, talking out loud some nonsense like, ‘Oh my boy, my boy, you’ve come back to me.’ Then he started mumbling about a leg, and apologizing, and crying all over himself like some milksop.”

Chills rippled over Liberty’s skin. “Then what happened?”

“I couldn’t stand to see him weeping like that, and he didn’t answer me when I asked what the blazes was going on. So I left. Went outside to use the trench—which is full of water I’ll have you know, about two feet, just right in there, with all manner of floating—”

“Enough! The doctor. Focus.”

“I’m just saying if the trench floods we’re going to have a whole lot of
mess
we didn’t count on. But anyway. When I came back in, the doctor was curled up on the floor like this.”

Liberty watched as the doctor’s body finally relaxed, his eyes rolled back into his head.

“Dr. Stephens?” She knelt by his side. His lips and fingertips were blue. With her fingers against his neck, she barely detected his pulse.

“What happens if he dies?” Isaac asked.

“He won’t die.”

“Come on, Lib—Miss Holloway, he looks near gone already. What’ll we do with all these patients? He’s the only one—”

“Isaac! Honestly!”
What would they do without a doctor indeed?
Fear churned in her belly.
What would happen to Jonathan?

She knew the answer. His body burned with poison-induced fever last night. Today he would only be worse. If the leg did not come off, and soon, he would die.

Liberty could not let that happen. She could not hesitate like she had before. This time, she could not fail.

“What do you do when someone is sick?” Liberty looked from Dr. Stephens to Isaac. “You go for a doctor. … Another doctor.”

“I’ll go at once.” It was Bella. “You’d best see to the boys outside.”

Liberty flew to the window. Water flooded the dooryard, overflowing wagon ruts and holes, rushing in tiny streams under and around the bodies of the men too weak to sit up. Willoughby Run had escaped its banks. The ground had been so churned up yesterday with men, horses, and wagons tearing up the earth, it was an absolute quagmire in the deluge. The men would drown.

She rounded on Isaac. “Quickly. Go to every man in the house and find the ones who have passed in the night, just stack their bodies in the hallway for now. Make note of how many spaces we now have inside, then fill them with men from outside. Fill the porch next. I’ll go to the barn. Can you do it? Isaac! Can you do it?”

Isaac nodded and she flew down the stairs, slammed open the screen door and plunged into the mud in front of the porch.

“Help is coming,” she called out, though she sank in the sludge past her ankles, and her skirts swirled and swam around her legs.

It had been hours since Bella had left, and though the sun now shined in a crisp blue sky, Liberty’s mood did not match it. Muscles aching from this morning’s emergency, she stooped over Dr. Stephen’s cool, clammy body. He was awake, but weak and confused.

She sat on her heels in her ruined dress, on her ruined floor, in her ruined house, too tired to care about any of it.

Amelia remained sequestered, busy with needlework. Isaac was next to Liberty, mercifully silent. He had risen to meet the need, and she was grateful. Not a man had drowned. Johnny was still alive, but slipping out of wakefulness for longer intervals. His skin was bright and moist with the poison of his shattered leg.

At long last, the screen door downstairs slammed. Two sets of footsteps grew louder on the stairs until two breathless, shining faces appeared.

“Owen O’Leary, United States Christian Commission, at your service.” A young man in his thirties with short brown hair that curled over the tops of his ears and a neatly trimmed mustache shook Libbie’s hand. Her gaze travelled to the bag in his hand.

“Liberty Holloway. I hope that’s a medical kit.”

“Indeed it is, and here we have a patient. Perfect fit, wouldn’t you say?” He bent to examine Dr. Stephens and Bella leaned in to Liberty.

“He’s a physician from Philadelphia, and a delegate of the Christian Commission. It’s similar to the Sanitary Commission, but they care for the spirit as well as the physical body. Came here on his own to offer his services free of charge for the wounded. He says wagonloads of supplies are on their way for the wounded, he just got here ahead of them.”

“Thank God.”

Dr. O’Leary pulled back Dr. Stephen’s eyelids then let them fall closed again. “Tell me what you know.”

As Isaac recited his story once more, Dr. O’Leary pushed down Dr. Stephens’s chin, opening his mouth, and smelled his breath.

“Opium overdose.”

“What?” Liberty fumed. “He told me we were out of opium!”

“No, he didn’t.” Isaac’s gap-tooth grin grated on her. “He said it wasn’t for the Union boy. Big difference.”

“I don’t understand. He said opium was the most essential drug in battlefield medicine. To stop bleeding, to relieve pain. We still have hundreds who need it! Why would he take it himself?”

Dr. O’Leary rummaged through his leather bag and extracted a bottle of watery white liquid labeled zinc sulfate solution. “A number of reasons. Doesn’t surprise me at all. In fact, doctors are quite susceptible to overdose because of the access they have to the wonder drug. It not only relieves physical pain, but emotional pain as well. Reduces nerves, helps one sleep. But ironically, taking opium can cause a depressed spirit,
prompting the user to take more of the drug—and so on, in an endless cycle.”

He drew some solution into a glass dropper, then carefully squeezed it into Dr. Stephens’s mouth. He swallowed. “I’ll need four pints of water, please, and an empty bowl or chamber pot.” Bella went to fetch them.

Five minutes later, Dr. O’Leary dosed Dr. Stephens again, and again at the same interval until ten doses had been given. The minutes between each seemed to drag on for Liberty as she thought of Johnny in the barn.

Fifteen minutes after the last dose had been given, Dr. Stephens vomited into the bowl.

“Just as I thought.” Dr. O’Leary sniffed the air. “Opium. Funny thing about drugs. They can heal, and they can kill. You must only use them as they are intended.” He snaked a tube down Dr. Stephens’s throat and flushed his stomach with the water.

“That should do nicely. But he’s in no condition to see patients for some time yet. The drug impairs mental capacity and interferes with physical coordination. No, he needs to rest. Fine way to spend a Sunday.”

“Oh! Is it?” Liberty hadn’t thought of church once today.

“It is. But there is no place I’d rather be than right here, at the seat of the emergency. If Jesus healed on the Sabbath—which He most certainly did—then so can I. Now. I imagine there are others you’d like me to attend?”

“Yes!” Liberty’s answer burst out of her. “We have a soldier who desperately needs a doctor’s attention. Wounded days ago, I believe, and suffering with fever from his injured leg.”

“After you.” He extended a hand.

Liberty paused. “Is it true that the Christian Commission is sending supplies into Gettysburg for the wounded?”

“It is. Medical equipment, tents, clothing, stimulating drinks, food—”

“When will they arrive?”

“This very evening, before dark.”

“I’ll go again,” Bella volunteered. “I’ll be there when the wagons arrive, Miss Liberty, and bring back whatever I can.”

“Isaac, you’ll go with her. She could use an extra pair of hands.” Liberty crossed her arms. “If you give Mrs. Jamison one lick of trouble, I’ll banish you from the property. Understood? These patients are counting on the two of you for supplies. Cooperate.” She turned back to Dr. O’Leary and led him to the barn.