Sidewhiskers comes alongside me. ‘Mrs. Chalmers tells me this is your first hospital visit?’
I nod, watching Mrs. Chalmers take the hand of a soldier before sitting on the stool next to his bed and wringing out the cloth from the metal bowl on his bedside stand. She swabs his forehead, her lips moving and his weak smile coming in return.
‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ Sidewhiskers says, sticking his hand out for me to grab. ‘I’m Ward-Master Levi Coventry.’
I get my mind in order and take his hand and shake firm. ‘Private Ross Stone,’ I say. ‘Ninety-seventh New York, at your service.’
There is a long silence before I think to fill it. ‘Where are all the wounded outside coming from?’ I ask.
‘Shiloh, I expect. There were so many casualties. But tell me, are you able to write?’ the Ward-Master asks.
‘Course,’ I say. ‘I ain’t got a lady’s penmanship but I write plain enough.’
‘Down there in bed twenty-seven is a soldier, he won’t be living more than a few more days and he doesn’t have use of his hands. He’s been saying this morning there’s folks he’d like to send word to.’ The Ward-Master brings a box stamped Sanitary Commission down from a shelf near the door and shows how it’s full of patriotic covers and papers.
I nod and take a sheaf as he presses a pen into my hand, saying, ‘His name’s Joseph Brown.’
Walking down that carpet, it’s like I’m in church and angels are all around. Only in church the coughs and noises ain’t like the ones in this ward. Here there’s ragged breathing, groaning, rustling of sheets, and somewhere someone is weeping quietly, nothing but hurt and sickness and tiredness in these boys.
The face on the pillow of bed twenty-seven is moon-pale with brown strands of hair stuck to it. The coverlet is pulled right up to the chin, where there’s a hint of whiskers, and I’m checking if his chest is rising and falling when a voice rasps, ‘I’m awake. Just resting.’
He turns his head to the left, his eyes still closed, his lips barely moving. ‘There’s a stool there. You can sit.’
I do as he says, the stool’s legs scraping too loud across the floor. Before I even get a chance to open my mouth or settle my papers in my lap, he’s back to talking.
‘Ward-Master send you to keep watch over me?’
‘I suppose you could see it like that. He said maybe I could be some service to you.’
As soon as he hears my voice, his eyes fly open and they are a dull green.
‘I thought—’ he starts. ‘But no. You ain’t her. Sound like her, though. You got a name?’ he asks.
‘Stone, Private Ross Stone,’ I say, working to keep my voice low, my heart pounding.
‘It’s funny, you dressing like a soldier,’ he says.
‘That’s what I am.’
The soldier lying in bed twenty-six looks at me from underneath the bandage across his forehead and says, ‘It’s the laudanum. Makes him see things. Makes him confused.’
I say, ‘Oh, I see,’ and try to smile before turning back to Joseph and saying, ‘The Ward-Master told me you’ve got a letter needs writing.’
‘Yes,’ Joseph says. ‘I’ve been feeling—I can’t be long for this world. There’s a terrible burning coming,’ he says.
And then he shifts his shoulders to throw his covers back and he’s got nothing but bandaged stumps for arms, stopping halfway to where his hands should be. Where the bandages ought to be white they are rust-brown and yellow.
I talk so I won’t stare. ‘Did you fight at Shiloh?’
‘So many burning,’ Joseph says. ‘My arms—’
I don’t know what he means. Maybe he is seeing things again. But then that other soldier in bed twenty-six speaks up. ‘Joseph there, he’s one of the lucky ones. Weren’t so wounded he couldn’t get away. You seen battle yet?’
I shake my head.
‘I was a fool to have such an itch to fight,’ Bed Twenty-six says. ‘It ain’t how I thought, having Rebel artillerymen laying their shells down in front of us. Canister. It tears right through the lines, cuts down whole Companies of men. And if it don’t get you, you got to keep moving forward into it. That’s bad enough. But at Shiloh the trees caught fire.’
Joseph moans and says, ‘Just like a bonfire.’
‘It was a sight to see. Like a halo over every tree, the way the leaves caught first. Except then the branches started falling.’ Bed Twenty-six takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. ‘You ever heard a hog at slaughter?’
I nod.
‘That ain’t nothing compared to the sound of the wounded burning to a crisp,’ he says.
We sit silent and I curse Mrs. Chalmers for ever bringing me here.
Finally Joseph says, ‘The letter. The letter first. Then the arms.’
It’s a relief to turn away from that other soldier and tell Joseph, ‘It’d be my honor to write that letter. Who do you want it written out to?’