“Thank you, I’m quite well.” I looked him over, this scrap of a boy with a man’s solemn eyes. “You don’t belong here, do you?” My voice was gentle. Did they stoop to locking up foundlings now too?

“No, ma’am. I’m the slop boy.”

The chamber pots. This chap emptied the buckets of women who saw soap only once a week at best. “Are you, indeed?”

He held up a clean pot, then slipped it under one of the beds.

“What a noble lad. Thank you.”

“Out, boy!” Nurse Branson came through with a swinging hand, and the boy scrambled.

I rose and leveled a look at her. “A simple ‘thank you’ wouldn’t be completely out of place.”

She merely cast a hard stare at me before moving on into the room. She may have authority here, but she seemed to sense she was otherwise no match for me.

“Lights!” Nurse Branson called, turning down the gaslight valve near the door, and there was a scrambling for beds, as if the ward was one short.

All except a slight, middle-aged patient who wove absently toward the far wall of cloudy windows, hands on her chest. A nurse grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her around.

The patient yanked away. “I open the curtain!” Her voice was low and gravelly. Frantic. They grabbed her again, and she flailed. “Curtain! Open the curtain!”

No curtain graced their greenish glass—only bars.

Another aid came running and they yanked the woman off her feet, pulling her, with heels dragging, to her bed as she moaned and thrashed. I could only stare in the meager light coming from the corridor and hope my mouth wasn’t hanging open. The minute she touched her mattress, the poor woman sprang up and the incident was repeated. The aid knocked her off her feet, then slapped her across the face, shoving a finger near her nose as the other held her down. “Don’t make me fetch the corset.”

The curtain woman crawled into her bed, curled into her stained sheets, and lay still. Others around me began to whisper and point.

“Hush up, the lot of you!” Nurse Duffy stood guard, arms folded over narrow chest, and the aid wove between beds toward the door.

As mattresses creaked and twentysome women settled into beds, we all made our way toward the door.

“Open the curtains. Just open . . .” The wretched woman’s voice was muffled, as if she sobbed the words into a pillow.

My heart wrenched as I heard my own childish voice crying into a pillow, knowing there’d be trouble if I was heard. With a sigh I moved toward her bed and tried to whisper. “There aren’t any, you know.” Protectiveness leaked from my heart and gentled my voice. “It’s best if you just lie still. There are no curtains to open.”