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“Don’t we know it!” Mrs. Henderson exclaimed. She exclaimed almost every short thing she said, and now that it’d been noticed, Mercy couldn’t unnotice it.
The nurse took her napkin off her lap, wadded it up beside the plate, thanked the couple once more, and gathered her satchel to leave.
Outside, it was dark yet again.
Down the street, Mercy spied a Salvation Army sign swinging beneath a fizzing gas lamp. This seemed like a safe enough place to ask for directions, so she knocked upon the door and was greeted by a small, squat woman in a gray suit that matched her hair. Her face was round and friendly. She asked if she could be of service.
“I’m Mrs. Leotine Gaines,” she declared. She looked Mercy up and down, and before the nurse could reply, she asked, “Are you a sister from one of our English offices?”
“Oh, no. I’m sorry, I’m not,” Mercy said. Any doubts Mrs. Gaines might’ve had would surely be buffeted away by the Virginia accent. “I’m from Richmond, and only passing through. But I was looking for a place to spend the night, and I wondered if you might direct me to something safe and quiet. I have to catch a steamer in the morning. ”
“Ah. ” Mrs. Gaines said it with a happy snap. “And I’m not mistaken, am I? I recognize it now, the cross you carry. It’s not so different from our own. You’re a medical woman, yes?”
Mercy grinned, having not heard it put that way before. “I’m a nurse. I have a letter from the Robertson Hospital, anyway. ”
“Please, won’t you come on inside? I have a small proposal for you. ”
“A proposal?”
“Certainly. An exchange of services, if you will. Come on, Nurse—or, Mrs. . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name. ”
“Lynch. I’m Mercy Lynch,” she said. It occurred to her that she hadn’t given anyone her Christian name since she’d taken to the road, though her own motivations in the matter were unclear, even to herself.
“Nurse Lynch. Yes, indeed. Come in, and let me get you some tea. ”
“But, ma’am, I’m awful run down. I’ve had . . . too much excitement these last few nights. It’s a humdinger of a story. I don’t know if you’d even believe me, if I told you. But I’m so worn out. ”
Mrs. Gaines said cheerfully, “Tea will take the edge off of that! I’ll set a kettle on. Here, make yourself comfortable at the table there, in our kitchen area. ” With a broad sweep of her arm, she indicated a room beyond an open doorway. “I’d see you to the dining area, but it’s been cleaned up and sorted for the night, and besides, right now most of the people living here are men—single men, many of them all torn up from the war. We tend to leave the proper dining area for them. The other ladies and I take our victuals back here. ”
She seized a kettle as promised, filled it with water, and set it to boil while Mercy took a seat at a low wood table set with benches on either side. She dropped the satchel beside her left thigh. As the stove heated and the water within the kettle warmed, Mrs. Gaines sat down across the table from Mercy and continued. “You see, it’s as I said: Here at this mission we help the men who’ve fallen down on their luck, as well as those who’ve taken to alcohol or other vices. It’s our good Christian duty. But right now, our doctor is out at the front, having been called there by none other than General Jackson himself, and we’re . . . shall we say . . . between replacements right now. My own nursing skills are minimal at best, and I think I do myself too much credit to even say that much. It’s a pity, too, because we have a handful of fellows here in various stages of . . . oh, I can’t say what! It’s surpassing strange, is all I know. They seem to be dying of . . . not a disease, precisely. But I’d love a professional’s opinion on the matter, and if you wouldn’t mind giving them an hour of attention, I’d be more than happy to see you settled in one of our officer’s suites upstairs. ”
Mercy didn’t take long to think about it. It’d take her a couple of hours to find someplace else to stay for the night, likely as not, and the kettle was nearly boiling. She didn’t know what a Salvation Army officer’s suite was, but if it came with a bed and a basin, she’d chalk it up as a lucky find.
“All right, Mrs. Gaines. I expect I won’t get a better offer tonight, anyhow. ”
“I expect you won’t. ” She winked, and pulled the kettle from the stove. “Not in this part of town, at any rate. ”
“It didn’t seem so bad,” Mercy said, eyeing the china cup. “There’s a nice restaurant down the street. ”
“The Cormorant? Yes, it’s a good place with good food, if you can afford it. The neighborhood is beginning to gentrify, in bits and pieces, and the restaurant is pulling more than its fair weight. It’s helped by its proximity to the train station, I imagine, and the river isn’t so awful far away, either. ”
When the tea was finally ready to sip, Mercy sipped more extensively than Mrs. Gaines, who was happy to provide most of the chatter.
It turned out that Mrs. Gaines was originally of Maryland, which satisfied Mercy’s curiosity about her somewhat un-?Tennessee-?like accent; and that she was also widowed without any children. She’d been visiting distant cousins in England when she’d learned of the Salvation Army and its intent, and she’d been intensely eager to begin a chapter back in her own land. How she’d wound up in Memphis remained a bit of a veiled mystery, but Mercy didn’t pry.
When the tea had been drunk and the china washed and put away, Mrs. Gaines led Mercy back through the building with a lamp in hand to augment the few that had been placed on the walls but turned down low on account of the hour.
“This once was a Catholic school,” whispered Mrs. Gaines. “It’s suited our purposes well, since it was laid out for dormitories and classrooms. This way, and up these stairs, if you please. I’m afraid we’ve had to isolate the sicker men from the others,” she said as she pulled a ring of iron keys out of a pocket in her suit.
Mrs. Gaines took a particularly pointed key, jammed it into the lock, turned it, and retrieved it. Then she added, “Please don’t think less of us for the restraints. ”
The nurse’s voice slipped half an octave out of her usual range. “Restraints?”
Mrs. Gaines pleaded, “Just look at them, and you’ll see. And be careful. Don’t let them bite you. ”
“Bite me?”
“Yes, bite. They do that sometimes, I’m afraid. But don’t worry—I’m convinced that their ailment is caused by a substance, and not some unaccountable microbe or spore. But the bites do hurt, and they are prone to inflammation. Again, I’d beg you not to judge our handling of the matter until you see for yourself. ”
