The Nurse's Secret by Amanda Skenandore

Author:Amanda Skenandore [Skenandore, Amanda]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2022-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 26

The Insane Pavilion was a new, single-story brick building that ran the length of the south side of the lawn to the river. Una had never been inside, not even on her initial tour, as it was one of the few locations of the hospital not staffed by the training school. She’d learned through hushed conversations with Miss Cuddy that Superintendent Perkins refused to supply nurses for the pavilion because of insufficient physician oversight. Instead, the attendants were semi-inebriates recruited from the lodging houses, their skill commensurate with their abhorrently meager wages.

A single resident physician oversaw the ever-growing number of patients. He, along with a city-appointed Examiner in Lunacy, reviewed each case and made out the necessary certificates to commit and transfer the patients to the asylum on Blackwell’s Island.

On several occasions as she’d crossed the darkened hospital grounds after her shift, Una had heard cries from within the pavilion or seen shadowed figures behind the barred windows. Some of the nurses refused to pass by the building at night unless accompanied by the watchman. Una had met enough so-called lunatics to know it was a convenient label for many who simply didn’t fit in. Even so, she crossed herself and whispered an “Ave Maria” when walking past the building on particularly black nights.

Now, however, she had to get inside, no matter what sort of pitiful horrors lay within the walls. Mrs. Hobson and the other matrons from the governing board had flocked to Una when they heard the crash of her teacup, fussing over her pallid complexion and unsettled gaze. Overexcited, they pronounced her and shooed her out of the boardroom to rest for the remainder of the afternoon.

But Una had not returned to the nurses’ home for rest. Instead, she’d hidden in the stairwell alongside the warden’s office until she heard him return from the yard. Then she slipped outside, hovering in the shadow of the arched entryway until she was certain the coppers were gone.

What business had they been about? Surely they weren’t here looking for her. Her heart quickened again, thudding against her chest like a bird trapped in a chimney. Police came to Bellevue for all sorts of reasons, she reminded herself. They brought drunks and tramps in all the time. Invalid prisoners received care on the wards under police supervision. But that didn’t explain the orderly’s urgency or Warden O’Rourke’s grave expression. Una had to find out the reason.

The sun hung low in the sky, still muted by clouds, casting long pale shadows across the yard. Not as safe as darkness, but if the coppers suspected she were here, she couldn’t wait for nightfall. She crept down the steps and along the edge of the hospital, her seersucker skirt rasping against the stone wall. It wouldn’t do for anyone from the governing board to see her sneaking about the lawn when she ought to be resting at the home. When she neared the entrance to the Insane Pavilion, she stopped, straightened, and then crossed the lawn to the door with a purposeful, unhurried stride.

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