Four days later, Una was back at the large gray-stone building on Twenty- Sixth Street, this time as a bona fide nurse trainee. A probationer, really, but Una wasn’t one to quibble over titles. Besides, she’d pass her probation easily enough.
Her few possessions fit easily inside the valise she carried. Claire had given it to her on the condition that she never came by begging favors again. Una had agreed, though she couldn’t resist stuffing the last of Claire’s licorice root into the valise and swiping another pen—this one sterling silver—from Randolph’s desk on her way out.
To Una’s relief, a tall, middle-aged woman answered the door when she’d knocked, not the snooty Miss Hatfield. The minute the front door closed behind them, the knotted muscles in Una’s back began to relax for the first time since the night of Traveling Mike’s murder.
“We try to keep things as homelike as possible here,” the woman, who’d introduced herself as Mrs. Buchanan, the resident housekeeper, was saying. “After all the grim work you ladies see at the hospital, you need a place of refuge to fortify the spirit.”
The great building was not like any home Una had ever lived in, certainly not since her mother died. The thick velvet draperies, the warm wood paneling, and the plush rugs blunted the noise and bustle just outside the door. Both the foyer and the adjoining parlor were well-appointed without the insufferable frills she’d spied through the windows of the so-called fine homes about town. Even Claire’s house, though smaller, was crammed with doilies and lace-trimmed cushions and shiny knickknacks.
Una hadn’t been impressed, not at Claire’s nor when strolling down Millionaire’s Row. Of course, the gilded mantel clocks and marble urns caught her eye. She looked not with longing but valuation. How much might that golden statue fetch her? Those decorative feathers? That crystal vase?
Here at the training school, or “nurses’ home,” as Mrs. Buchanan had called it, the decor was more modest. Not austere like the Mission or House of Industry, but not putting on airs either. Still, if Una cleaned it out, she’d clear a pretty sum. But she wasn’t here for a quick grab. Deidre or some other thieves Una knew would be sorely tempted by the watercolor paintings on the walls or brass knobs on the lamps or the porcelain tea service in the cupboard. Not to mention all they might find if they raided the nurses’ bedrooms above. But not her. Una was playing the long game. Besides, it violated rule number ten: Don’t steal from your housemates unless they steal from you first.
Mrs. Buchanan showed Una around the first floor. Most of the other probationers had arrived earlier in the day and were upstairs in their rooms unpacking, Mrs. Buchanan explained of the near-empty rooms. The rest of the trainees were at the hospital. They did pass by a few second-year trainees who were enjoying a day off. Those who looked up from their reading or knitting smiled, but no one seemed to take too keen an interest in Una. That was fine by her. She wasn’t here to make friends. The fewer people who noticed her, the better.
In addition to the parlor, there was a large dining room where the nurses took their meals. Beyond that was the kitchen—Cook Prynne’s domain, though Una could help herself to a biscuit and a glass of milk between meals—and rear yard with nothing more than a spigot and a few clotheslines.
“Where are the privies?” Una asked, imagining she’d have to trudge into some adjacent yard to find the festering and overflowing privies that served not only the entire school of nurses but the neighboring residents as well.
Mrs. Buchanan smiled and led Una back inside. She opened the door to a small room off the back hall and stepped aside so Una could peek in. An ornately carved wooden box with a hinged lid sat against the far wall. Two pipes connected it to another box high above. A brass chain with a wooden handle dangled beside it. Next to this contraption was a waist-high cupboard crowned with porcelain. Twin spigots hung over a wide, inlaid bowl.
“What is it?” Una asked.
Mrs. Buchanan chuckled. “A water closet, my dear.”
Una inched inside but hesitated before lifting the lid atop the shorter box. She’d read about these indoor privies but never actually seen one. Beneath
the lid was another porcelain bowl with a dark hole leading away to the ground. Una dropped the lid and hurried out of the room, burying her nose in her sleeve.
“What about the sewer gases?” she asked once the door was closed and she could safely uncover her nose. “Don’t they make you sick?”
Mrs. Buchanan waved her hand. “That’s poppycock. On cold winter days like these, this closet is a godsend.”
Una managed a weak smile and nod but was relieved when the tour took them away from the small room and its poisonous gases.
Their next stop was the demonstration room, a square space twice as large as Una’s old flat, stocked with bandages, bedpans, and stoppered bottles of various shapes and sizes. Then came the library. Una had been so intent on not bungling her interview that she hadn’t paid much attention to her surroundings when she’d sat here four days before. Between the tables and armchairs, several dozen women could be comfortably seated here, though only a few occupied the room now. The books, though neatly displayed on the shelves by size and topic, were not for ornamentation, as Una suspected many private libraries were. Their spines were cracked and covers worn. And they weren’t all medical textbooks either. Una noticed the names of several authors whose stories and poems Una’s mother had read to her as a girl. She reached out and brushed her fingers over their spines.
“You’re welcome to any book on the shelf,” Mrs. Buchanan told her. “Just be sure to return it to its proper place when you’re through.”
Una pulled back her hand. What was the point of some fanciful story if it didn’t put food in your stomach or shoes on your feet? “Might you show me to my room?”
“Yes, yes, of course. I’m sure you’re eager to settle in and meet your roommate. I’ll go fetch some fresh linen, then show you up.”
Una wandered from the bookshelf to the far side of the room where a heap of coals glowed behind the grate of a polished stone hearth. Roommate, Mrs. Buchanan had said. Singular, not plural. Una had imagined all the trainees sharing the same room. The idea of one roommate instead of dozens sounded positively luxurious. Maybe the months she spent here while the fuss around Traveling Mike’s murder blew over wouldn’t be so bad after all.
On the wall to the right of the hearth hung a framed letter. It seemed odd to go to all the trouble of framing a simple letter and mounting it on the
wall like a piece of art. Unless perhaps it was from President Arthur himself. She drew closer to see who it was from. But only the first page of the letter was displayed, with the rest perhaps tucked behind. It was addressed simply to “sir” and began, “I wish your association God-speed with all my heart and soul in their task of reform . . .” and went on to discuss the duties and instruction of nurses. “Nurses are not ‘medical men,’” it read. “On the contrary nurses are there, and solely there, to carry out the orders of the medical and surgical staff, including, of course, the whole practice of cleanliness, fresh air, diet, etc.” It described the nurse as an intelligent, cultivated, and moral woman. Ignorant, stupid women, the letter’s author said, were always headstrong.
Una snickered. Though she’d been accused of being headstrong a time or two herself, she found it was those women who fancied themselves well- bred and moral to be the pigheaded ones.
The soft patter of footsteps sounded behind her, and Una turned around. The woman who approached her could have stepped right out of the silly pastoral paintings that decorated the walls. Though made from quality wool, her dress had the simple, straight cut of a country bumpkin. Unlike city women, whose skin—no matter the hue—looked matte and sallow, she had a dewy complexion with undertones of pink and copper brought out by the sun. Her warm, smiling expression hid nothing. Were they meeting like this in a park or train station, she was exactly the type of woman Una would fleece.
“Can you believe it’s truly a letter from her?” “Her?”
“Miss Florence Nightingale. The founding committee wrote to her for advice when they were establishing the school. This is her return correspondence. Did you know that her school in London has trained over five thousand nurses who are in service now all over the world?”
This woman might be from the country, but she spoke fast as a New Yorker and with a sugar-sweet enthusiasm that made Una’s teeth ache. Una took a step back—for the woman was close enough to pick her pockets— and stumbled into the ash bucket beside the hearth. Luckily, neither she nor the bucket toppled over.
“I’m Miss Lewis, by the way, but you can call me Drusilla. I’m sure we’ll be great friends. I feel so fortunate to be here I may well burst.”
Pinned between the hearth and the wall, Una winced, fearing that Drusilla may well burst for all the nervous excitement she seemed to have pent up.
“I’ve always wanted to be a nurse,” Drusilla continued. “Haven’t you? Ever since I read Miss Nightingale’s Notes on Nursing when I was ten. Can you believe—”
Mrs. Buchanan came to Una’s rescue with an armful of bedding. “Pardon the interruption, Miss Lewis. I wanted to show Miss Kelly up to your room before Cook Prynne needs my help with supper.”
“Our room?” Una asked, shimmying around Drusilla. “Yes, you’re roommates.”
“Roommates!” Drusilla squealed. She looped one arm through Una’s and collected the bedding from Mrs. Buchanan. “I’ll show her up.”
Mrs. Buchanan smiled appreciatively and toddled off, leaving Una to Drusilla’s clutches. She rattled on about this Nightingale woman up two flights of stairs and down a long hall. Though lamps burned at frequent intervals along the walls, Una found herself reaching for her matchbook out of habit. Unlike the narrow passageways of her tenement, where people had to squeeze and shimmy around one another, here at least three women could walk abreast, giving Una no excuse to slip her arm free from Drusilla’s.
Their room was twice the size of the cramped, closet-sized room she’d shared with Deidre and the other women back in the slums. Two beds with plump mattresses and polished wood frames fit snugly inside. Each had a matching nightstand at its head and a wooden trunk at its foot. Against the far wall between the beds stood a wardrobe taller than Una and twice as wide.
She hovered in the doorway while Drusilla got to work making Una’s bed. This was where she’d be staying? There had to be a catch. She scanned the wall for nicks and cracks, but the plaster was smooth and unblemished. She took a deep sniff and then another. It smelled funny. Soap, maybe. But something floral too.
“I hope you’re not disappointed,” Drusilla said, glancing at Una with concern. “I heard a few of the other trainees whispering about how dreadfully simple the appointments are. But I find them more than satisfactory. Don’t you? This is a school, after all, not some holiday villa in Newport.” She spread a quilt over the bed, gave the pillow a fluff, and turned to Una, who still tarried in the doorway. “Well?”
Una took a step inside and peeked behind the door. Two hooks hung on the wall, one already occupied by Drusilla’s coat. Otherwise the slender space behind the sweep of the door was empty. What had she been expecting? This wasn’t some narrow alley where a thug might be waiting to spring. Or had she thought Drusilla was part of some con duo, here to lure Una into the room where her partner waited to knock Una on the head and rob her? The idea was so preposterous Una had to swallow a laugh. She knew conwomen who worked such a grift. Drusilla couldn’t be more unlike them if she tried. True, she might yap Una’s ear off, but there wasn’t a guileful bone in her body.
Nevertheless, Una checked her pockets before hanging her coat on the wall. She set her valise beside the trunk and poked at the bed. The mattress sprung back beneath her finger. Whatever was inside, it wasn’t straw or rags. She poked it once more, then leaped onto the bed, landing on her back with her arms and legs spread. The wooden frame groaned but held. The mattress hugged her body without sagging.
Drusilla gave a nervous chuckle and sat down opposite Una on her own bed, the picture of ladylike poise. Una remembered what Mrs. Hatfield had said during the interview about bad breeding and wiggled into a more decorous repose with her legs together and hands folded across her stomach. Hopefully, Drusilla wouldn’t go squealing to their superiors.
To her surprise, Drusilla kicked off her slippers and lay down too. “Let’s take a nap before supper, shall we?” she said with childlike delight as if she and Una were conspirators in the same game.
Una closed her eyes. After all the scheming it had taken to get here, she was, in fact, desperately tired.
But not a minute passed before Drusilla spoke again. “Aren’t you going to take off your boots, silly goose?”
Reluctantly, Una unlaced her boots and pried them off her feet. She waited until Drusilla had closed her eyes, then hid them beneath her pillow. Guileless or not, Una wasn’t about to chance waking up to find her only pair of boots stolen.
