An Unlikely Union

It would have been too late for Andrew but perhaps not for Mary. Instead he had lost both of them.

“Dr. Mackay?”

A female voice invaded his thoughts. He turned to find the night matron, a good patriotic woman, standing before him.

“Beg your pardon, Doctor, but it’s time for the evening medication.”

“Aye,” he said. “Of course.”

They went back to the ward. She had already secured a tray. Evan walked to the locked cabinet at the far end of the room. He took out a key from his inner vest pocket, unlocked the door, then started laying out the various pills and powders.

He made his rounds, distributing the necessary medication to each prisoner. When he came to the bed of the rebel major, the one Little Miss Baltimore was so bent on comforting, he told the family, “Visiting hours are now over.”

The father, gray-headed and wearing spectacles, politely protested. “Doctor, I am a physician myself. I would like to stay. Perhaps I can be of service to you.”

You should have been of service two years ago, when the streets ran red with patriotic blood. “I am afraid that is impossible, sir,” Evan said, deliberately disregarding the man’s title. Professional courtesy did not extend to rebel doctors. “You may return on the morrow.”

The man looked as though he would argue the point. Evan stretched to his full height. He stood a good six inches above the man. He leveled his most scrutinizing glare.

“Very well, then,” the rebel doctor said, and he encouraged his wife to say goodbye.

She did so, though the boy in the bed simply stared past her. The pair was slow in exiting, but Evan stood his ground until the door shut solidly behind them. He then took what was left from the dispensary tray and sent the nurse away. He inspected the Johnny’s wound. The site was healing satisfactorily, so Evan replaced the bandages, then moved on.

When his rounds were complete, he tramped off to his quarters, a postage-stamp room with a cot, a wash basin and a view of the city he so detested. After pulling off his soiled shirt, he lay down and tried to find a comfortable position. The bed was much too short for his body.

Despite being exhausted, he struggled for hours to find peace. When sleep finally did claim him, he dreamed of Andrew and then Mary.

* * *

Emily was awakened by Abigail’s gentle nudge.

“Rise and shine. You don’t wanna be late, now. I’ve drawn you a cool bath and laid out a fresh dress for you to wear.”

Though the precious hours of sleep had not been nearly long enough, Emily gave her friend a smile. After tending all day to wounded men it was nice to have someone look after her.

“Bless you, Abigail. You are a treasure.”

The woman’s dark, round face lit up with a wide smile. Abigail had come into service in Emily’s home only a year ago. She and her husband, Joshua, recently married, had been slaves in the household of one of Emily’s father’s clients. When the man had died, he had left a considerable amount of debt. As a lawyer it was her father’s job to oversee distribution of the estate, to make peace with the man’s creditors.

Rather than see Abigail and Joshua sold once again on the slave auction block, he ransomed the pair himself. Because he found slavery so abhorrent, he then promptly drew up papers granting Joshua and Abigail their freedom.

“We knowed right away your father was a good man,” Abigail once told Emily. “So we asked to come to work for him.”

Emily was so glad they had. As an only child, with parents heavily involved in professional and civic responsibilities, the house at times could be quite lonely. Abigail became the older sister Emily had never had. They laughed. They shared secrets. They encouraged one another in their faith.

“Hurry now,” Abigail urged. “Your mama will have breakfast on the table shortly.”

Emily readied herself, then stepped into a gray cotton day dress with tight-fitting coat sleeves. The simple style would serve her well in the hospital.

“That shorter hemline will work better for you, I believe,” Abigail said. “Your dress from the other day is still soakin’. That dark ring ’round the bottom hasn’t yet come clean.”

“No matter how many times they scrub, that hospital floor is still filthy,” Emily said. The West’s Buildings needed an army of scrub maids alone just to keep up with the task. She wondered if Dr. Mackay would permanently transfer her to that brigade after what she had said to him yesterday.

Emily fastened the hooks and eyes of her bodice, then adjusted her collar. Abigail smiled. “I declare, you are just as pretty in gray cotton as in pink silk. You’ll be cheerin’ those poor men right nicely.”

The thought of Dr. Mackay’s grief-stricken face suddenly passed through Emily’s mind. He had looked so lost when she inquired of his brother.

“You be thinkin’ of a particular soldier?” her friend asked.

“No. Well, I suppose so. A Yankee doctor.”

“Um-hmm,” Abigail said as she took the brush from Emily’s hand and began to arrange her hair. “He handsome?”

“Handsome?” He wasn’t particularly ugly, yet then again, how could Emily really say? She had only seen him once, for sixty seconds at the most, without a scowl on his face. “He’s a big tall tree of a man. A Scotsman.”

“Um-hmm. Like them ones in your poetry book?”

Emily let out a laugh, knowing where Abigail’s thoughts were headed. “Oh, far from it! All this man does is bark orders and frown. He makes more work for us than any other doctor. Do you know he insists on washing his hands after tending to each man?”

“Does he?”

“Yes, and not in the wash basin, mind you. Fresh water each time. Our ward goes through more buckets than the entire hospital combined. He is dreadful to work with and he treats us all as enemies.”

She stopped, realizing how foolish she sounded. Whatever she’d had to endure at the hand of Dr. Mackay was nothing compared to what Abigail and Joshua had faced.

“I’m sorry. That was thoughtless of me to complain so.”

Abigail’s face, however, showed not the slightest offence. “He just sounds like a soldier in need of cheerin’ to me.”

Her kindness often amazed Emily. Of anyone, Abigail had the most reason to be bitter. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation had taken effect earlier that year, but the document only proclaimed freedom to slaves in states of rebellion. Maryland had been kept in the Union by force. Since the state had not seceded, slavery was still legal, and the occupying army didn’t appear to be in any hurry to change that.

Furthermore, while many on the Confederate side did not support slavery, a great many did. Emily once asked Abigail what she thought of her tending to such men.

“Please be honest with me. Does it trouble you?”

“At times,” she admitted. “But then I think ’bout that verse in the Bible. ‘Love your enemies. Bless them that curse you.’ I don’t reckon this world will change much if we don’t start takin’ the Lord’s message to heart.”

Abigail finished setting the pins in Emily’s hair. “Your kindness to that Yankee doctor and to them other soldiers could go a long way,” she insisted. “You remember that.”

Emily nodded. She would try.

After breakfast the family went their separate ways. Emily’s mother was off to a bandage drive for the local hospitals, and her father had business at Fort McHenry.

Joshua drove her to the harbor, where a ghastly sight met her eyes. The Westminster trains had brought new wounded. Scores of bleeding, sick men lay once more along the docks. She could hear them begging for water and other simple necessities. Army personnel and many volunteers scurried about.

“Shall I stay with ya, Miss Emily?” Joshua offered. “Looks like ya could use the help.”

She wanted to say yes but feared in this chaotic environment Joshua would soon be commandeered as a slave, at least temporarily.