HEROIC AND ANTI-HEROIC TREATMENT.
The other ward in which I was not welcome, adjoined that one in which my
room was situated, and to reach it I must go out of doors or pass
through one-half the length of that ward. In these passages I had an
opportunity for studying Piemia and its ordinary treatment, and could
give the men lemonade when they wanted it.
In this ward lay a young German with a wounded ankle. He had a broad,
square forehead, skin white as wax, large blue eyes and yellow hair,
inclined to curl. His whole appearance indicated high culture, and an
organization peculiarly sensitive to pleasure or pain; but no one seemed
to understand that he suffered more than others from a like cause.
Surgeon and nurses scoffed at his moans, and thought it babyish, for a
muscular man over six feet to show so many signs of pain. I think that
from some cause, the surgeon felt vindictive toward him, and that his
subordinates took their cue from him. When I went to give him lemonade,
he would clutch my hand or dress, look up in my face, and plead:
"Oh, mutter! mutter!"
But if I sat down to soothe and comfort him, a nurse always came to
remind me of the surgeon's orders, and I used to go around on the
outside, that he might not see and call me. When he was in the
amputation room I heard his shrieks and groans, and carried a glass of
wine to the door for him.
He heard my voice, and called "Mutter! mutter!"
I pushed past the orderly, ran to him, and his pleading eyes seemed to
devour me as he fastened his gaze on my face. I cannot think to this day
why be should have been nude for the amputation of a foot; but he was,
and some one threw a towel across his loins as I approached.
Dr. Baxter said:
"No sympathy! no sympathy!"
So I stood by him, placed a hand on each side of his corrugated brow,
steadied my voice and said:
"Be a man and a soldier!"
He had asked me for bread; I gave him a stone, and no wonder he dashed
it back in my face. With a fierce cry he said:
"I hev been a man and a sojer long enough!"
Ah! verily had he, and much too long. Days before that he should have
been "a boy again;" aye, a baby, a very infant--should have been soothed
and softened and comforted with all the tenderness of mother-love; but
even now, in this cruel extremity, every sign of sympathy was denied
him. Some one put a hand gently but firmly on each of my shoulders,
turned my back to him, took me out of the room, and I hurried away,
while the air shuddered with his shrieks and groans. After he had been
brought back to his place in the ward I could often hear him as I passed
to and from my room, and even while I occupied it.
Once he saw me through the open door, and called, "Mutter! mutter!"
I went, knelt by him, took his hands, which were stretched appealingly
to me, and spoke comforting words, while his blue eyes seemed ready to
start from their sockets, as he clung to my hands with the old familiar
cry:
"Oh, Mutter! Mutter!"
He was strapped down to his iron cot, about as closely as he had been to
the amputation table, and the cot fastened to the floor. I had not been
five minutes at his side when his special nurse hurried up and warned me
to leave, saying:
"It's surgeon's orders. He's not going to have any babyin'!"
I drew my hands from the frantic grasp, took away that last hold on
human sympathy, and hurried oat, while his cry of "Oh, mutter! mutter!"
rung in my ears as I turned and looked on his pure high brow for the
last time.
Next morning I heard he had lock-jaw, and that the surgeon was to leave.
The night after that victim of some frightful, fiendish experiment had
been carried to the dead-house, I was passing through the ward, when
attracted by sounds of convulsive weeping, and I found a young man in an
agony of grief, in one of those sobbing fits sure to come to the
bravest. He was in a high fever, and while I bathed his face and hands,
I asked the cause of his outbreak, and he sobbed:
"Oh, the pain in my wound! This is the third night I have not slept, and
my God! I can bear it no longer!"
It was a flesh-wound in the thigh, such an one as usually proved fatal,
and while I set him to talking I began patching scraps of observation
into a theory. He was from Pennsylvania, and bitterly charged his State
with having done nothing for her wounded, and when I asked why he had
not sent for me, he said:
"Oh, I thought you were from Massachusetts, like all the rest of them;
and if my own State would do nothing for me, I would not beg. People
come here every day looking for Massachusetts soldiers. Since I have
been frantic here, ladies have come and stood and looked at me, and said
'Poor fellow!' as if I had been a dog. I was as well raised as any of
them, even if I am a common soldier."
I thought his recovery very doubtful, and talked to draw his thoughts to
the better land. To his charges against his native land, I said: "I am a
Pennsylvanian; and more than that, the Governor of Pennsylvania sent me
to you; bade me come to-night, that you might know he had not forgotten
you."
"He did? Why, how did he know anything about it?"
"He just knows all about it, and has been caring for you all this time.
I do not mean Andy Curtin. He is nothing but a subaltern; but the dear
Lord, our Father in Heaven, who never forgets us, though he often
afflicts us. He sent me to you now, that you might know he loves you. It
was he who made me love you and care to help you. All the love and care
that come to you are a part of his love."
"He wept afresh but less bitterly, and said:
"Oh you will think I am a baby!"
"Well! That is just what you ought to be. Your past life is sufficient
certificate of manhood; and now has come your time to be a baby, while
I am mother. You have been lying here like an engine, under a high
pressure of steam, and the safety-value fastened down with a billet of
wood, until there has been almost an explosion. Now just take away that
stick of wood--your manhood and pride, and let out all the groans and
tears you have pent in your heart. Cry all you can! This is your time
for crying!"
When I had talked him into a mood to let me feel if his feet were warm,
I found that wounded limb dreadfully swollen, cold almost as death,
stretched out as he lay on his back, and a cushion right under the heel.
Had there been no wound the position must have been unendurable. Without
letting him know, I drew that cushion up until it filled the hollow
between the heel and calf of the leg, and supported the strained muscle,
tucked a handful of oakum under the knee, moved the toes, brushed and
rubbed the foot, until circulation started, sponged it, rolled it in
flannel, of which I had a supply in my basket, washed the well foot, and
put a warm woolen sock on it, arranged the cover so that it would not
rest on the toes of the sore leg; told him to get the new surgeon next
morning to make a large opening on the lower side of his thigh, where
the bullet had gone out--to ask him to cut lengthwise of the muscle; get
out everything he could, that ought not to be in there; keep that
opening open with a roll of bandage, so that old Mother Nature should
have a trap-door through which she could throw her chips out of that
work-shop in his thigh; to be sure and not hint to the surgeon that I
had said anything about it, and not fail to have it done.
I left him asleep, and the next day he told me the surgeon had taken a
quart of pus and several pieces of woolen cloth out of his wound, and
his recovery was rapid.