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Prologue
Septeround She jerked her elbow free froressman’s hand and refused to take even one small step toward the door Instead, she planted her feet on the speaker’s stand and turned on hier between his eyes "I came here at your behest, Mr Caperton, but I will not stand for your disrespect"
"Captain Sally," he tried, reaching for her elbow again, but , as the tiny dark-haired woman ducked out of his reach
"Nor your condescension, thank you very much I came to say my piece I was invited to say my piece--"
From the second row on the left, Herschel Cobb interjected "You were invited to discuss your hospital"
"And so I am," she fired back "If you don’t like ood It’s a terrible report, one that I hate to ures are true! Gentlemen, we have an epidemic on our hands One that the Robertson Hospital is neither equipped nor prepared to fight"
"Don’t sell yourself short, Captain We have great faith in you," assured Francis Pugh, in the third row on the right He s across the wide expanse of his fleshy pink cheeks "Your rank is testament to that"
She sneered, and took one measured step away froht ask her to dance "Apparently entle heh to drown her out, she declared, "For nineteen years I’ve served the Confederacy Nineteen years, I’veno children, and bankrupting ain in a ood work I’ve saved thousands ofI keep them clean; I feed them and bathe them and stitch their wounds, hold their heads while they bleed and cry And most relevant to this testimony, I watch theo away by pretending I’m a madwoman!"
Senator Landon Barksdale rose fro a madwoman"
"Yet you treat me like a liar or a scoundrel And a fine irony that is, as I stand here before your Congress" She spit out the word, and eyed Mr Caperton, who hovered about her now as if he wasn’t entirely sure how to proceed
Praying that he wouldn’t rab, Captain Sally turned her back and addressed the assembled men "You sit there behind your little desks in your fine suits and act like you understand this war and these soldiers more fully than I do … but every last one of you knows better than that Josiah Snead, I see you creeping toward the door like you’re trying to escape me--you, sir It was your son who picked up three bullets in Henegar; and everyone said he’d die, didn’t they? But they got hirandson, unless I’m mistaken And Wellers Chrisman, don’t you hide your head Your brother would’ve died without the attention he received at the Robertson Morgan Cluskey, your father wouldn’t be here without e, your nephew Robert Batson, your sons--both of thelowered at the from face to face
She knew them all, in some fashion or another She’d received letters fro, accompanied by money, all of them essentially the same: "They say this man is done for, but at the Robertson he may have a chance"
When they prayed to God, they prayed for her
And still they treated her like a fondly regarded pet, a reliable watchdog, or a steadfast mule
While she still had them stunned into uncomfortable silence, she lowered her voice, steadied it, and continued "Out on the western coast, in the Washington Territory, a substance seeps froas, which kills anyone who breathes it But the people it kills don’t lie down and rot They walk, they hunt, and they feed The gas is largely confined to a walled, partially abandoned city called Seattle, but its ill effects have scaled the walls and headed east in the for--sometimes called sap, sohting men on both sides of the Mason-Dixon"
"Conjecture!" cried Morgan Cluskey, who sat back in his chair with an iave Boyd Caperton the nudge he needed Caperton caught Sally’s arain, and this time, she could not shake him loose
As he determinedly, carefully ushered her off the speaker’s stand, she called out over her shoulder, "Men are dying--more men than I ever saved at the Robertson! And if you think"--she tripped over Caperton’s foot, and recovered--"if you think it’ll stop with the soldiers, with the poor men from the Southern fields and the Northern factories, you’re idiots, every last one of you! The probleer every day"
"We’re aware of this drug, Captain Sally," said Wellers Chrisman "But it’s a Union problem Who cares if the illiterate Italians blast therabbed the edge of a table That bought her another few seconds while her escort tried to figure out how to allant in front of God and everybody
"Exactly how many Union soldiers do you think I treat at the Robertson, Mr Chrisot fewer of them to lose Take off your blinders and take action while there’s still tie us by the steps we take right now The whole globe is in danger!"