Cut to the Heart by Ava Dianne Day

Author:Ava Dianne Day
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307417961
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2007-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

HILTON HEAD ISLAND

Clara and John had their first serious quarrel; it had been so unpleasant, so difficult for both of them that she had literally run away into her room, the only place she had any privacy. She had locked the door—something she never, ever did at any camp or field hospital, large or small—and placed the straight chair under the knob for good measure because she was so furious.

Then she’d dragged the rocking chair over by the window, and rocked and rocked and rocked, until at last she had rocked away most of her fury. Yet she’d refused supper when David came knocking, saying through the locked door, chair still under the knob, that she was indisposed.

A few hours later, when John had tapped on their adjoining wall for her to come to him, she had not allowed herself to tap in reply. Not even the three taps that meant a very polite no. She’d sat on her hands like a child to stop herself from doing it, until he did not tap again.

They’d argued because she felt he was treating her like a child, or as so many men treated their mates, like chattel, with no right to a will of her own. As if he could order her personal life as well as he could her life attached to the army.

John had said he did not approve of her plan to spend three days a week working at the Freemen’s Clinic in Beaufort, because he had heard the clinic’s reputation was fast declining. She had responded that the large houses turned into hospitals had plenty of nurses already, and did not want her there; that nurses in general did not take to Clara Barton because they all knew Dorothea Dix had refused to allow her entry into the Army Nurse Corps.

John had said: “Piffle.”

Clara had stamped her foot. Then, recanting, she’d tried to explain how much she needed something more to do than sewing and reading the ladies’ magazines well-meaning officers brought her from time to time, from their trips into town. She had no interest whatever in ladies’ magazines, and she’d read every book in Headquarters House at least once.

John had refused to even try (at least in Clara’s opinion) to understand why waiting for this battle, which they were obviously building up to, was so hard for her. He’d accused her of being a warmonger; well, so, he’d been teasing—yet still the accusation had hurt. From childhood Clara had known all too well that there is always some meanness at the base of teasing, and she hated knowing that her lover had it in him too.

John would not share with her any of the results of the meetings with other officers who now came and went on a daily basis. He would only say, “When it is time, you’ll know.” He would not respond to her continuing concerns about Dr. Claude Fontaine’s not living on the base like everybody else, nor would John take up with Fontaine what Clara considered the doctor’s unreasoning persecution of her.

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