THE FEVER WARD AND ITS PATIENTS.
Rest--give me rest--my forehead burns,
Hot fires are kindled in my brain!
Oh, give me rest, till he returns,
Rest--rest from all this racking pain.
Poor Mrs. Chester, half dying and quite insensible, was borne into
the fever ward of that close and crowded Hospital. Number ten was
a large airy room, capable of holding twenty patients with comparative
comfort, but now the fever was raging fiercely. Nearly six hundred
patients crowded those gloomy walls, and in the room where twenty
persons might have been almost comfortable, eighty poor creatures
were huddled together, breathing the infected air over and over again
till their struggling lungs were poisoned and saturated with the
deadly atmosphere.
Close together, along the walls, were ranged narrow wooden cots, with
their straw beds and coverings of coarse cotton check. And close
together on those contracted couches--the meagre causeway from which
many of these poor creatures were lifted to a pauper's grave, the
patients were huddled, suffering in all the stages of that fierce
and terrible disease, the malignant typhus.
There the sufferers lay, their death-couches jostling, the hot poison
of their breaths mingling together, and spreading a dank miasma from
bed to bed.
Some were in the first creeping stages of the disease flattering
themselves that it was only a little cold they had taken. Others were
shivering with that deathly chill that glides like the icy trail of
a serpent down the back; the limbs aching as with severe toil, and
the brain literally on fire with seething poison. Others were fierce
and mad with delirium; their faces, their breasts and arms had turned
of a dull copper color, the strongest and unmistakable sign of the
deadly form which typhus takes when it is called malignant ship fever.
The poor creatures rolled to and fro on their narrow couches, tearing
out the straw with their hot and quivering fingers, or twisting the
soiled sheets with a feeble and shaking grasp. Some were calling for
water, and praying in piteous tone for mountains of ice, cold bright
ice to fall down and bury them.
Others were still further advanced in the terrible disease, and lay
with the last heavy clouds of delirium resting upon the brain. Pale,
emaciated and motionless, they spoke in whispers of the husbands and
children whom they had left, it seemed to them years before, and of
whom they faintly pleaded for tidings. It was piteous to see those
weaker still, that lay more helpless than infants, the tears rolling
mournfully from their eyes, unable to utter the inquiries that kept
their white lips in constant motion, but gave out no sound.
More than one stretched back upon the meagre pillow, was in her
death-throe groping in the air, with glazed eyes rolled upward to
the ceiling, while the under jaw dropped lower, lower, leaving the
mouth half open never to be closed again, save by a penitentiary
nurse.
One lay dead upon her couch stiffening, there unheeded, the God of
heaven only knowing at what moment the breath left her body.
Scant and miserable as were those pauper beds, enough for all to die
upon could not be found at the Hospital; so blankets had been cast
upon the floor, and on them were laid the sick, till the whole ward
was completely littered with human misery. Over this scene came the
glaring daylight, for the windows had neither blinds nor shutters,
nothing but a valance of gingham through which the sunshine poured
upon the aching eyes of the sick.
They laid Mrs. Chester among those who moaned and writhed upon the
floor. Nothing but the rough folds of a blanket lay between her
delicate limbs and the hard boards. Amid the groans, the ravings of
delirium, the faint death rattle that rose and swelled upon the horrid
atmosphere, they laid her down. The student physician had been his
rounds that day, and so she was left to the care of the nurses. Thus
she remained quite unconscious of the horrors that surrounded her,
till the nurse came back from her interview with Judge Sharp. This
woman grasped the money in her palm, and the touch seemed to give
a glow of animal pleasure to her features, as she threaded her way
through the prostrate sick.
A nurse some years younger than herself, but with less of character
in her face, stood near the door. She approached this woman, and
softly unclosing her hand revealed the money.
"What! there have but four died to-day--you did not find that about
them? I searched thoroughly myself, and none of them had a cent."
"Never mind where it came from. You shall have a share, but remember
I have got to work for it yet. Where is the woman they have just
brought in?"
"What, the slender woman with all that beautiful hair? She is about
here, on the floor, I believe."
"She must have a cot, I am determined on it," said the elder nurse,
resolutely. "Those who pay us shall be first served," and the woman
went on through the prostrate sick, searching eagerly for Mrs.
Chester. "Yes, here she is, sure enough," talking softly to
herself--"now let us see what can be done about a bed."
The woman moved from cot to cot, gazing on the inmates, not with pity,
she was used to their moans, but eagerly searching for a bed that
promised soon to be empty. Her eyes fell upon the corpse that lay
within a few paces of Mrs. Chester, and she approached the cot with
gleeful alacrity, saying to her companion:
"Oh, here is an empty bed--I thought it would not be long before we
found something for her to lie on besides the floor. Go and call
Crofts."
The younger nurse went out, and directly there came two men into the
ward, bearing a rude pine coffin between them. They trod heavily along
the floor, knocking the coffin now and then against a cot till it
jarred the helpless inmate, and thus they carried it down the whole
length of the ward. They deposited the rude thing close by the blanket
on which Mrs. Chester lay, and then went out, leaving the women to
relieve the bed of its mournful burden.
The younger nurse had brought with her a scant shroud, of the coarsest
muslin, and there in the midst of the sick, one of the women put this
grave garment on, while the other stealthily searched in the bosom
of the corpse and under the pillow for any little valuable that the
poor woman might have hoarded in her death-bed. After groping about
awhile, the young nurse drew forth her hand with a low chuckle. It
contained a bit of tissue paper, soiled and crumpled in a heap. A
bank note! what else could it be? The two women looked at the paper
and their eyes gleamed. It was not often that they found bank notes
about the Bellevue paupers! How they longed to examine it then and
there! But the sick were not all insensible, and the young woman
thrust the treasure into her bosom, whispering as she stooped down
to smooth the shroud:
"By and by--of course we go halves to-day!"
"That is fair and above board!" replied the other, folding the arms
of the dead upon the pulseless bosom they had robbed, "there now,
call in the men!"
Again those two men came tramping heavily among the sick. There was
some bustle and a little joking as they placed the pauper corpse in
its pine coffin; and when they bore it out one of the men inquired,
in a voice that might have been heard half over the room, if there
was much chance of their being wanted again within an hour or two.
The elder nurse looked around upon the cots, and answered that it
was very likely, but that the next coffin must be longer--at least
four inches longer!
The two women followed the coffin out, and when quite alone in the
passage, fell to examining the value of their prize.
"There must be two bills," said the younger, beginning to unfold the
little parcel, "what if each of them should be a five, now!"
These words were followed by a short and scornful laugh, accompanied
by an oath, that most fearful thing on the lips of a woman. The scrap
of soiled tissue paper unfolded a lock of grey hair.
"Never mind, mine is here all in hard chink!" said the elder nurse,
striking her bosom. "Here will be enough, with what the doctor allows
for the patients, to give us one glorious night. Just help me lift
the woman into bed, then slide round to the consumption wards; or,
what's better, whisper a word to the orderly, and ask him to come;
we'll make the old shanty shake again before midnight."
The young woman, after appeasing her disappointment by casting the
lock of hair upon the floor, and grinding it fiercely beneath her
heavy shoe, became somewhat consoled. But she sullenly expressed a
determination to find her share of the drink, if she were obliged
to rob every patient in the ward.
After this conference the nurses returned to the ward. One took off
Mrs. Chester's outer garments, while the other proceeded to arrange
the empty cot. In the same cot, the same sheets, and on the very
pillow from which the dead had just been removed, they laid the
helpless woman. Upon her fair hands and face still rested the dust
that had been gathering upon her from the street. But under our
benignant Common Council, the largest hospital in America contained
no bath for its patients, though the Croton water gushed everywhere
around the building. There was a shower bath for punishment of the
penitentiary women, but for the suffering---not even that.
They laid her down, therefore, unrefreshed in that death couch; and
there she remained moaning like the rest, lifting her sweet voice
louder and louder in her excitement; for the noise, the atmosphere
and the horrid sights everywhere in the room drove her wild. She flung
up her hands and laughed as the nurses passed to and fro before her
bed. She called them angels--those two besotted creatures--and
besought them with wild, sweet energy to cherish and care for Chester
while she was so far away. These women promised her cajolingly,
patting her head with their bloated hands, which, in her madness, she
would gather to her bosom or kiss eagerly with her hot lips.
The ordinary course of her disease might not have arrived so early to
the fierce virulence that it had now obtained; but the day had been
one of fearful turmoil, even for a healthy person, and this fever, in
a single hour, grows fierce and strong upon such causes. Fuel for a
death-fire had been heaped up in that one miserable day. Now the poor
creature began to rave--her child, her husband, and little Mary. She
shrieked for them louder and louder, that her voice might rise above
the wild, strong cries that swelled as she thought in defiance of her
feebleness.