“Someplace private,” the officer said. Sally nodded at Clara Barton and her nervous companion, indicating that they should follow; and she led Mercy through the remaining rows of cots and out the back, and down a corridor swiftly—urging their followers to hasten—and then they were in the courtyard of what used to be Judge Robertson’s mansion. Tents peppered the yard and bustling officials came and went from flap to flap, but they ignored the nurse and her party.
Back between the trees, where the chilly, sun-dappled grass moved with shadows from the leaves overhead, Captain Sally led all three to a picnic area where the ground was cleared and a set of benches was placed for lovers, or lunches, or rest.
Mercy was still squeezing Sally’s hand, because the moment she let go, someone was going to speak.
When everyone was seated, Sally pried Mercy’s fingers off her own, then held the shaking hand and patted it gently as she said, “Miss Barton, Mr. Atwater. This is Vinita Lynch, though around here, most everyone calls her—”
“Mercy,” said Mr. Atwater. He’d been good-looking once, but was almost haggard now, with dark hair and brown eyes, and a thin body that seemed on the rebound from the very cusp of starvation.
“Mrs. Lynch,” he tried again. “My name is Dorence Atwater, and I was in the camp at Andersonville for six years.” He kept it low, soft. Quiet. Not wanting anyone to hear.
He wasn’t fighting anymore, and he wasn’t in uniform, but the cadence of his speech marked him as a northern boy—a real northern boy, not a border-state boy like Vinita’s husband. He didn’t have an accent that could go either way: Kentucky or Tennessee; Virginia or Washington, D.C.; Texas or Kansas.
“Mr. Atwater,” she said, more curtly than she meant to. But all her words were clipped, and her grip on the matron’s hand was leaving crescent moons where her nails were digging deep. “That must’ve been . . . difficult.”
It was a stupid word, and she knew it. Of course the camp had been difficult; everything was difficult, wasn’t it? Marrying a border-state Yankee was difficult when her Virginia home stayed gray. Missing him for two years now was difficult, too, and folding his letters over and over again, reading them for the hundredth time, and the two hundredth time, that was difficult. Nursing the injured was difficult, and so was wondering with each new wound if it’d been inflicted by her very own spouse, or if her very own spouse was somewhere else—maybe a hundred miles away in Washington—being nursed by a woman much like herself, dutifully tending her own cannon fodder lads on sagging cots.
But he wasn’t in Washington.
She knew that. She knew it because Clara Barton and Dorence Atwater were sitting on a low stone bench facing her, with serious eyes and sad news on their lips—because, bless them both, they never brought any other kind.
Before either of the visitors could say anything else, Mercy nattered on again. “I’ve heard of you, both of you. Miss Barton, it’s wonderful work you’re doing on the battlefield—making it safer for the lot of us, and making it easier for us to comfort the wounded, and patch them up—” She nearly spit that last part out, for her nose was beginning to fill, and her eyes were blinking, slamming open and shut. “And Mr. Atwater, you made a . . .”
Two things rampaged through her brain: the name of the man not four feet in front of her, and why she’d heard it before he ever entered the Robertson Hospital. But she couldn’t bring herself to make these two things meet, and she struggled to hold them apart, so the connection couldn’t be made.
It was futile.
She knew.
She said, and every letter of every word shook in her mouth, “You made a list.”
“Yes ma’am.”
And Clara Barton said, “My dear, we’re so very sorry.” It wasn’t quite a practiced condolence. It wasn’t smooth and polished, and for all the weariness of it, it sounded like she meant it. “But your husband, Phillip Barnaby Lynch . . . his name is on that list. He died at the Andersonville camp for prisoners of war, nine months ago. I’m terribly, terribly sorry for your loss.”
“Then it’s true,” she burbled, not quite crying. The pressure behind her eyes was building. “It’d been so long since he sent word. Jesus, Captain Sally,” she blasphemed weakly. “It’s true.”
She was still squeezing Sally Tompkins, who now ceased patting her hand to squeeze back. “I’m so sorry, dear.” With her free hand, she brushed Mercy’s cheek.
“It’s true,” she repeated. “I thought . . . I thought it must be. It’d been so long. Almost as long as we were married, since I’d got word of him. I knew it went like that, sometimes. I knew it was hard for the boys—for you boys—to write from the front, and I knew the mail wasn’t all kinds of reliable. I guess I knew all that. But I was still dumb enough to hope.”
“You were newlyweds?” Clara Barton asked gently, sadly. Familiar with the sorrow, if not quite immune.
“Been married eight months,” she said. “Eight months and he went out to fight, and he was gone for two and a half years. And I stayed here, and waited. We had a home here, west of town. He was born in Kentucky, and we were going to go back there, when all this was done, and start a family.”
Suddenly she released Sally’s hand and leaped forward, making a grab for Dorence Atwater’s.
She clutched his wrists and pulled him closer. She demanded, “Did you know him? Did you talk to him? Did he give you any message for me? Anything? Anything at all?”
“Ma’am, I only saw him in passing. He was hurt real bad when they brought him in, and he didn’t last. I hope that can be some comfort to you, maybe. The camp was a terrible place, but he wasn’t there for long.”
“Not like some of them. Not like you,” she said. Every word was rounded with the congestion that clogged her throat but wouldn’t spill out into hiccups or tears, not yet.
“No ma’am. And I’m very sorry about it, but I thought you deserved to know he won’t be coming home. They buried him in a grave outside of Plains, unmarked with a dozen others. But he didn’t suffer long.”
He slouched so that his shoulders held up his chest like a shirt on a hanger. It was as if the weight of his message were too much, and his body still too frail to carry it all. But if he didn’t carry it, nobody would.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I wish the news were kinder.”
She released him then, and sagged back onto her own bench, into the arms of Sally Tompkins, who was ready with an embrace. Mercy let the captain hold her and she said, “No. No, but you came all this way, and you brought it to me anyway.”
Mercy Lynch closed her eyes and put her head on Sally’s shoulder.
Clara Barton and Dorence Atwater took this as their cue to leave. They left silently, walking around the side yard rather than cutting back through the hospital, toward the street and whatever transportation awaited them there.
Without opening her eyes, Mercy said, “I wish they’d never come. I wish I didn’t know.”
Sally stroked her head and told her, “Someday you’ll be glad they did. I know it’s hard to imagine, but really, it’s better knowing than wondering. False hope’s the worst kind there is.”
“It was good of them,” she agreed with a sniffle, the first that had escaped thus far. “They came here, to a Rebel hospital and everything. They didn’t have to do that. They could’ve sent a letter.”
“She was here under the cross,” Sally said. “But you’re right. It’s hard work, what they do. And you know, I don’t think anyone, even here, would’ve raised a hand against them.” She sighed, and stopped petting Mercy’s wheat-colored hair. That hair, always unruly and just too dark to call blond, was fraying out from the edges of her cap. It tangled in Sally’s fingers. “All of the boys, blue and gray alike. They all hope someone would do the same for them—that someone would tell their mothers and sweethearts, should they fall on the field.”
“I guess.”
Mercy loosed herself from Sally’s loving hold, and she stood, wiping at her eyes. They were red, and so was her nose. Her cheeks were flushed violently pink. “Could I have the afternoon, Captain Sally? Just take a little time in my bunk?”
The captain remained seated, and folded her hands across her lap. “Take as long as you need. I’ll have Paul Forks bring up your supper. And I’ll tell Anne to let you be.”
“Thank you, Captain Sally.” Mercy didn’t mind her roommate much, but she could scarcely stand the thought of explaining anything to her, not right then, while the world was still strangely hued and her throat was blocked with curdled screams.
She walked slowly back into the house-turned-hospital, keeping her gaze on the ground and watching her feet as she felt her way inside. Someone said, “Good morning, Nurse Mercy,” but she didn’t respond. She barely heard it.
Keeping one hand on the wall to guide herself, she found the first-floor ward and the stairwell that emptied there. Now, two different words bounced about in her mind: widow and up. She struggled to ignore the first one and grasp the second. She only had to make it up to her bunk in the attic.
“Nurse,” a man called. It sounded like, Nuss. “Nurse Mercy?”
One hand still on the wall, one foot lifted to scale the first step, she paused.
“Nurse Mercy, did you find my watch?”
For an instant she was perplexed; she regarded the speaker, and saw Private Hugh Morton, his battered but optimistic face upturned. “You said you’d find my watch. It didn’t get all washed up, did it?”
“No,” she breathed. “It didn’t.”
He smiled so hard, his face swelled into a circle. He sat up on the cot and shook his head, then rubbed at one eye with the inside of his arm. “You found it?”
“I did, yes. Here,” she said, fumbling with the pocket on her apron. She pulled it out and held it for a moment, watching the sunlight from the windows give the brass a dull gleam. “I found it. It’s fine.”