Ashes in the Wind by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

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    It was a mild, pleasant day as she hopped onto the mule-drawn streetcar to continue her journey to the hospital. Roberta had begged her father for the use of the gelding and carriage, leaving Angus no alternative but to hitch Ol’ Tar to the rickety buckboard and take himself to work and Alaina as far as the store. From there she walked to St. Augustine’s Church where she caught the streetcar and finally swaggered past the orderly at the hospital door.
    “You’re late,” Cole commented offhandedly as he brushed past her in the hall.
    “Yeah, well, it ain’t easy to pay for a ride on the money you Yankees pinch out,” she called to his back as he strode briskly down the hall. She opened her mouth to throw another retort but quickly snapped it closed when Doctor Mitchell, the surgeon general, stepped abruptly from one of thewards. He looked at the suddenly red-faced youth, then frowned down the hall toward the tall, ignoring back of the captain.
    “Do you have a complaint, son?” the gray-haired officer asked kindly.
    Alaina tried to swallow her discomfort. “No, suh.”
    “Then I suggest you get about your duties. Several ambulances arrived during the night, and there’s some tidying up to be done. Captain Latimer is far too busy now to discuss your wages.”
    “Yes, suh,” Alaina mumbled. General Clay Mitchell was the only Yankee yet she had not dared to stand her ground with. He was a tall, barrel-chested Irishman, and though he demanded the respect of every man in the hospital, there was something kindly about the man. It just wasn’t in her to be rude to such a gentleman, even if he was a Yankee.
    Closer to the surgery rooms, cots had been set up to accommodate the new arrivals, some of which writhed and moaned with pain while others wept softly. One lay apart from the rest; he was so still Alaina could have taken him for the dead. A bandage covered his eyes, and a thin trickle of dried blood trailed from the corner of his mouth. His belly was covered with a sheet to keep the flies away from the wound that slowly turned the whiteness of the cloth to a dark, forboding red. Here was one who was so far gone the doctors had chosen to delay treating him until those soldiers with a better hope for life could be tended and perhaps saved.
    The sight made Alaina back slowly away. No more , she thought. I’ve seen enough! She fled to where she kept the cleaning equipment, determinedto keep her resolve, and busied herself with scrubbing the wood floor at the end of a ward where she was sure no soldier teetered near the brink of death.
    Her promise to herself, however, was not to be kept. Even in the safe haven she had found, she began to hear the faint call of a desperate plea. She tried for some time to ignore it. Surely someone else would fulfill the man’s need. A simple task to fetch the soldier water. But not her task! Never again!
    Yet it seemed she could hear nothing else, and no one gave him water. Rallying her determination, she dipped her coarse brush into the murky liquid and began to scrub harder. But nothing could drown out the thin, weak call.
    “Blast it all!” she swore beneath her breath and jumped to her feet. She hurried down the hall to where the soldier lay, still so motionless that it frightened her. Then she saw his tongue flick weakly across parched, cracked lips.
    “Wait.” She bent beside his ear, afraid he was too deep in pain to hear her. “I’ll get you water.”
    She touched his thin hand reassuringly, then rushed off to the mess hall to find a glass. When she returned, she carefully slipped an arm beneath his head and raised him enough that he might sip the water. But suddenly she found her wrist seized.
    “Don’t!” Cole commanded sharply and, taking the glass from her, set it aside. “You’ll do him more harm than good.” He saw the bewilderment in the dirty face and gentled his tone. “You never give a gut-shot man a drink. Here, I’ll show you.”
    From a nearby