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My Red Cap
by
“Can you eat?” I asked, as he said, “Thanky, ma’am,” after a long draught of water and a dizzy stare.
“Eat! I’m starvin’!” he answered, with such a ravenous glance at a fat nurse who happened to be passing, that I trembled for her, and hastened to take a bowl of soup from her tray.
As I fed him, his gaunt, weather-beaten face had a familiar look; but so many such faces had passed before me that winter, I did not recall this one till the ward-master came to put up the cards with the new-comers’ names above their beds. My man seemed absorbed in his food; but I naturally glanced at the card, and there was the name “Joseph Collins” to give me an additional interest in my new patient.
“Why, Joe! is it really you?” I exclaimed, pouring the last spoonful of soup down his throat so hastily that I choked him.
“All that’s left of me. Wal, ain’t this luck, now?” gasped Joe, as gratefully as if that hospital-cot was a bed of roses.
“What is the matter? A wound in the head and arm?” I asked, feeling sure that no slight affliction had brought Joe there.
“Right arm gone. Shot off as slick as a whistle. I tell you, it’s a sing’lar kind of a feelin’ to see a piece of your own body go flyin’ away, with no prospect of ever coming back again,” said Joe, trying to make light of one of the greatest misfortunes a man can suffer.
“That is bad, but it might have been worse. Keep up your spirits, Joe; and we will soon have you fitted out with a new arm almost as good as new.”
“I guess it won’t do much lumberin’, so that trade is done for. I s’pose there’s things left-handed fellers can do, and I must learn ’em as soon as possible, since my fightin’ days are over,” and Joe looked at his one arm with a sigh that was almost a groan, helplessness is such a trial to a manly man,–and he was eminently so.
“What can I do to comfort you most, Joe? I’ll send my good Ben to help you to bed, and will be here myself when the surgeon goes his rounds. Is there anything else that would make you more easy?”
“If you could just drop a line to mother to let her know I’m alive, it would be a sight of comfort to both of us. I guess I’m in for a long spell of hospital, and I’d lay easier if I knew mother and Lucindy warn’t frettin’ about me.”
He must have been suffering terribly, but he thought of the women who loved him before himself, and, busy as I was, I snatched a moment to send a few words of hope to the old mother. Then I left him “layin’ easy,” though the prospect of some months of wearing pain would have daunted most men. If I had needed anything to increase my regard for Joe, it would have been the courage with which he bore a very bad quarter of an hour with the surgeons; for his arm was in a dangerous state, the wound in the head feverish for want of care; and a heavy cold on the lungs suggested pneumonia as an added trial to his list of ills.
“He will have a hard time of it, but I think he will pull through, as he is a temperate fellow, with a splendid constitution,” was the doctor’s verdict, as he left us for the next man, who was past help, with a bullet through his lungs.
“I don’no as I hanker to live, and be a burden. If Jim was able to do for mother, I feel as if I wouldn’t mind steppin’ out now I’m so fur along. As he ain’t, I s’pose I must brace up, and do the best I can,” said Joe, as I wiped the drops from his forehead, and tried to look as if his prospect was a bright one.