Chapter Text
When he was young, Jonathan found a dead cow. It had fallen into a fast-flowing river and drowned, and the corpse was carried off by the current before it could be caught. Jonathan found it two days later, caught on a branch sticking up from the river. It was bloated, awful, hardly recognizable as an animal. Jonathan, overcome with childish impulse, threw a rock at the thing. The impact of the rock was too much for the rotting cow hide, and it burst.
Jonathan had vomited by the river, then again, later, when he got home. The smell of rot and death was overpowering. It clung to his clothes and his hair. He remembered the smell for weeks afterwards, and knew he never wanted to smell anything like it again, as long as he lived.
The field hospital at Antietam smelled like the dead cow. The grass under Jonathan’s feet was slick with blood. His shirt was drenched in the damn stuff. Everywhere he looked, someone cried out in pain, fear, misery. On the table before him, a private, barely over eighteen, writhed as Jonathan dug a bullet out of his thigh. If he was very lucky, extraordinarily lucky; he might just survive. Jonathan got the feeling he’d be seeing the boy again, and not under any better circumstances.
The barn, the only building someone could spare for them, was overcrowded with injured and dying soldiers. They didn’t have enough cots. Those who were better off slept on the floor, some with blankets, some without. Every morning, the gravediggers came to take those who had died overnight, but there were always more bodies. More blood turning the dirt to mud. Torn cotton bandages could only do so much to stem an ocean of red.
He wondered if Lincoln, or Jefferson Davis, or anyone sending soldiers to die really knew what ten thousand casualties looked like. Could they imagine it? The amount of pus that comes from ten thousand infected wounds? The noise of ten thousand voices crying out in pain and fear as they died? Could anyone imagine such a scale of pain and death, or was it just a number for them?
It must be easier for them. They didn’t have to look the dying soldiers in the eye.
More wounded were brought in as the ambulance corps started returning. A stretcher was laid on Jonathan’s kitchen-table-turned-operating-table. He gagged. The smell of rotting meat was worse when it came from a living person.
“Is it very bad?” The soldier’s voice was weak and shaking. “I can’t… I can’t feel it anymore.”
Jonathan tried to offer a comforting smile, but wasn’t sure if it reached his eyes. “I’m sure you’ll be up and moving again in just a few days.”
It was a lie, of course it was. There was too much blood smeared onto the man’s shirt. Jonathan pulled the hem of the shirt up to see the wound, and gasped. The man’s abdomen was a mess. Some of the tissue was already blackened by necrosis. Something wriggled through the gaping wound, and Jonathan shuddered to realize it was maggots. The man was being eaten from the inside out, decomposing while still alive.
Jonathan wished he could simply take the man out behind the barn and shoot him. It would be more merciful than leaving him alive, and there was nothing that even the most skilled surgeon could do. He administered morphine, and hoped the man died quickly. They needed the bed space. Jonathan shuddered at the thought. Was it horrible to hope a man died so they could use the bed?
It was funny. Almost. Jonathan enlisted as a private, but was asked to become a surgeon because of his medical training. It didn’t matter that he was a country doctor, or that the worst wound he ever saw was when Ezra Higby’s son cut himself on a scythe. He was medically trained, and that was enough for the army. He agreed to be a surgeon because, despite his enlistment, he was frightened of the idea of battle. Frightened, ha. Somehow, he had more blood on his hands than any soldier carrying a rifle.
Someone removed the stretcher, and brought in another one. There were more. There were always more.
For a moment, Jonathan looked out, past the hospital, past the wounded, past everything. The sun was beginning to set, casting the sky into vibrant color. Purple, gold, pink, blue, but no red. Not a drop. Out there, at the horizon, that was where Lydia was waiting for him, where Nathan was growing up from a boy into a man. No red. No blood.
He could go back. If he did it right, the union army would never find him, and he could escape back into private practice. Lie about his age, fabricate an injury, anything that would get him out of here and back there, where blood didn’t infest his every waking moment.
Something wet and sticky grabbed Jonathan’s wrist, and he startled. The man on the table, covered in yet more blood, was still awake. Indeed, he was talking. He spoke as though each word was causing him pain, yet nonetheless, he spoke.
“I have a little girl at home,” he whispered. “She’s turning four in a month.” He paused, gasping for air. “I just want to see her again, one more time, tell her I love her. Please…” He trailed off, clearly in too much pain to continue.
Like Jonathan, this man had something to go home to. If he left, this man would die. This little girl, nearly four, would never know her father.
Jonathan set to work dressing the man’s wounds. At least one of them should see home again.
After Antietam, he decided something: leaving would result in more deaths, and staying in fewer. He may not have been an angel of mercy, but if his work in a field hospital saved even one life, it was worth walking through hell.