Catch the Wind: My Journey with Caroline

I tell Caroline I’m having too much fun with her to think about getting a job. She smiles and says she’s having fun with me, too. So we continue on our way.

Beyond the shipyards, Caroline points toward a cluster of long, low buildings, their pale wood still raw and looking almost new. At a door standing wide open, she stops and tells me this is the hospital. No one has air-conditioning in 1812, I remind myself, so of course they’d leave the door propped open.

The smell reaches me as soon as we’re inside. It’s sickness tangled up with unwashed clothes and unclean water. Cots line both walls in two long rows, and every single one is occupied. Some of the patients look hardly older than I am. Gray has taken over another man’s beard completely. Dried blood stiffens the bandage wrapped around another man’s forehead.

All at once my nerves spike. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Just then, a round-faced woman with dark brown hair rises from beside one of the cots to ask how she can help. She doesn’t look like a doctor, in fact, I don’t see anyone resembling a doctor here, so I doubtfully ask if she works here. She explains she’s only visiting, checking in on her husband while he recovers from a bad fever.

Caroline holds up her basket and explains that we’ve brought new nightshirts. The woman says the men will be grateful, smiling as she adds that our friendly faces will probably do them just as much good. She urges us to go say hello. Caroline and I trade a nod, already getting along so easily it feels like we’ve been friends for years.

The nearest cot holds a man about Dad’s age propped against the wall, his left hand wrapped entirely in bandages. He smiles warmly and admits he’s mighty glad for company, having been bored out of his mind. After we introduce ourselves, I ask if he could use a nightshirt. He says he’s fine, but nods toward another man across the room, one with a sheet pulled to his chin, who could probably use one instead. But maybe I could do a favor for him?

Caroline offers to take charge of handing out the nightshirts, heading off with the basket and leaving me alone with the patient. I ask what I can do for him, with no idea what he might need but ready to help however I can.