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Perhaps she hadn’t changed so much after all.
And then she thought afresh what she really wanted—Jed. Jed’s love, the security of his arms around her, his face smiling down into hers. Surely that would be a proper home, and it would never, never be hers.
Yet the force of wanting it did not subside, and for a moment it seemed as if her whole body would shake with a terrible, desperate longing before Ellen straightened her shoulders, as she had so many times before. She’d had dreams die before, knew what that felt like. Perhaps not the pain of this, but she’d felt it when Da had left or when she’d seen that her life in Seaton wouldn’t be as rosy as she’d hoped, or when she knew high school was not for her. She couldn’t travel any farther down this road, so she would choose another.
And yet what path could she follow? The thought of being a spinster nurse, living in the Nurses’ Home and spending her days changing sheets and slop buckets, assisting in surgeries as she grew older and lonelier, made Ellen shudder. She couldn’t. She wouldn’t.
So what would she do? By this time the moon had gone behind a cloud, and the bay was in shadow. Ellen’s feet were numb and her gloveless fingers were stiff with cold. There was nothing for her out here, no one, no answers. Slowly she turned back to the dormitory, her future as uncertain and undecided as ever.
The next few months passed in a bleak yet busy blur of work and duty. Ellen had started taking night duty once a week, and she walked the lonely corridors of the wards checking on sl
eeping patients, her heart leaden within her.
In February a year old baby with a wasting disease, abandoned by her parents, came into the charity ward. Ellen gazed down at her scrawny, scabbed body, her heart twisting in pity.
“Poor mite,” a low voice said next to her, and she turned in surprise to see Dr. Trowbridge. His face was unshaven, his cravat loosened; he must have been up at night as well.
“Yes, sir,” Ellen said after a pause, for she was still a bit intimidated by the handsome and proud doctor. He shot her a surprisingly wry smile.
“We needn’t stand on ceremony at this hour of the night, Nurse—?”
“Copley, sir.”
“Ah yes, Nurse Copley. You are friendly with Nurse Carwell, are you not?”
Surprise shot through Ellen at this observation. She had no idea that someone such as Dr. Trowbridge noticed any of the nurses. “I am, sir.”
“She has a kind heart,” Dr. Trowbridge murmured. “She rocked this poor child the last time she was on night duty. It’s likely the only time the wretched creature was held.”
It sounded like something Amity would do. “May I hold her,” Ellen asked tentatively, “if no one else requires my attention?”
“Of course, Nurse Copley. I think such action is needed, and not just welcome.”
She remained occupied for the next few hours, called away by various patients and tasks, but as dawn crept cold and gray-fingered across the sky, she found a spare moment and returned to the baby’s bed.
“Poor darling,” she murmured, and reached for the infant with her pale and scabby too-thin limbs. Superintendent Cothill had said the child would not last the winter. Ellen had not held many babies before, for she’d only been on duty on the maternity ward a few times, yet something about this unloved child made her heart ache and sudden tears spring to her eyes. When the little girl stirred and nestled against her, twining her scrawny arms around her neck and smelling—even in sickness—of childhood and innocence, something in Ellen broke.
She closed her eyes, tears trickling down her cheeks as she rocked the baby and crooned a wordless lullaby.
Oh God, wouldn’t anyone love this baby? Wouldn’t anyone want her? How could her parents have dumped her like an unwanted parcel—or had they been too burdened by grief and worry to care for her properly? Were their hearts aching within them at the knowledge of what they’d done, what they’d felt they had to do? The sheer misery of it made Ellen nearly shake with grief. Something in this child’s desperate situation called out to her, reminded her of herself and the lonely child she’d once been—and perhaps still was. And she felt another, fresher grief, not just for this poor creature, but for herself, and the child she would surely never have. Holding the baby’s warmth and weight against her made Ellen realize afresh just what kind of life would be passing her by should she remain a nurse. Should Louisa marry Jed.
Swallowing down that hot lump of misery, Ellen pressed a kiss against the baby’s forehead. How could she think of herself and her own small pain when this child’s life was near to ending before it had even properly begun?
Nearer than Ellen even realized, for three days later the bed was empty. Ellen skidded to a shocked halt, her arms full of freshly laundered sheets, as she stared at the stripped bed. She dumped the clean linens on a wheeled cart and hurried to find someone in charge.
Superintendent Cothill swept down on her almost at once. “Where are you going in such a careless fashion, Nurse Copley, with your cap askew?” She pointed one accusatory finger towards an escaped tendril of hair now looped around Ellen’s ear. “Repair yourself at once.”
Ellen barely heard her. “The baby,” she said. “The baby on Watkins Three. What happened to her?”
For a second Superintendent Cothill looked stern, but something of Ellen’s grief and desperation must have got through to her for her face softened slightly. “She died last night, Nurse Copley. Her body is in the morgue.”
Ellen let out a choked cry and whirled away. She barely knew where she was going, or why it mattered so much. Patients died every day. Yesterday she’d had to wash a forty-year-old woman’s body; she’d died of a tumor in her breast in the morning. Death was everywhere in a hospital, yet the life of that child seemed to matter more.
Knowing she was breaking just about every rule, Ellen left the linens on the cart and returned to the Nurses’ Home, now silent and empty in the middle of a busy working day. Alone in the little parlor with its sofas and books, she tore her cap from her head, her hair falling down from its tight bun as pins scattered across the floor. Her shoulders shook with the strength of her sobs.
“Nurse Copley.”
Ellen tensed, for she recognized the voice of the Superintendent. Miss Cothill must have followed her all the way back to the Nurses’ Home.
