But she was made of stronger stuff than that. Though it was a cold November night, Elizabeth stood up with vigor and opened the window wide. She liked to sleep with the window open anyway, all year round, but given the horrific smell on this ward, it was the only thing she could think to do that might alleviate the stink. Then she turned efficiently back to her bed and knelt on the floor to pray.
“Pray aloud!”9 demanded a woman from the opposite bed. She was called Bridget; she’d previously seemed a “quiet, inoffensive”10 girl.
For once, Elizabeth struggled to find a prayer to say aloud, for her mind was flooded with vengeful feelings toward McFarland. Faith for Elizabeth was like love: she did not want to go to God with such darkness in her heart. Instead, trying to crush those feelings, she prayed for God to forgive the doctor.
Bridget, “exclaiming with great vehemence,”11 interrupted, saying, “Let Dr. McFarland bear his own sins.”12 Her tone was laced with the “human passions and seething hate”13 that characterized this ward. There were no cutout dolls here, only real women: hating and loving and shouting and screaming with all the spirit they had.
And they would not be silenced. Even as Elizabeth finished her prayer and slid quietly into bed, shivering beneath the thin sheet supplied, feeling the rough straw in the tick mattress at her back, she heard the nightly chorus begin. She’d heard it before from Seventh Ward, but tonight she had a front-row seat.
“O, my dear Willie!” cried one mournful voice. “Do, do, come back to me… I do love you!”14
This lonely cry soon drew company. Some women screamed blasphemies against the husbands who’d sent them there; others lamented children loved and lost. There was “sobbing and loud weeping”15 but also “swearing, cursing, and still worse sounds from the vicious.”16 A few prayed, the more forgiving asking God’s protection for the friends they’d left behind. Some sang or recited poetry, the lines a link back to their former lives, as though they hoped a refrain or rhyme could unlock doors and turn back time.
Elizabeth listened to it all numbly. She kept her eyes fixed on the transom window above the door, through which she could call for help if needed.
But who exactly would she call?
Too late, she realized the total power of the doctor. Too late, she realized exactly what he was. She’d thought she’d found in McFarland a protector to replace her husband; ironically, he had assumed the same sovereignty over her.
And McFarland’s power had proved as absolute as that of Theophilus.
With a sinking heart, Elizabeth now saw that after all this time and all this effort, she had simply switched one persecutor for another.
She could trust no man at all.
But how could a woman live in this world without a man to defend her?
In the “silent musings”17 of her own heart, she let her thoughts run free. There were no answers to bring solace, only memories mixed with anticipated fears: “Comfort, attention, respect, privilege, all, all were in the dead past, and discomfort, inattention, disrespect, contempt, wrong and deprivation are to mark the future of my prison life.”18
She could see no light at all.
At half past nine, the curfew bell called, announcing the end of the asylum day. Lamp by lamp, every light was extinguished till the entire building fell black. It matched Elizabeth’s mood.
The night watchman began his monotonous march through the long corridors, his slow, steady steps punctuated every now and then by the haunted shrieks of unhappy souls. And in her bed on Eighth Ward, Elizabeth Packard lay wide awake, feeling friendless and voiceless and hopeless and alone.
In all the ways it could be, she thought bleakly, it was the “blackest night of my existence.”19
CHAPTER 17
When the morning bell rang the next day at 5:30, Elizabeth Packard was ready.
She sprang swiftly out of bed.
Overnight, her favorite saying had come to her: “Duties are ours, events God’s.”1 There was simply no point in dwelling darkly on what had happened, nor in worrying for the future. Both were part of God’s plan for her, and it would have been impudent to “pretend to be wiser than God, by feeling that it would have been better to have had things my way.”2 Instead, she decided, her duty was to focus on what she could do practically, in the here and now, to honor both God and her own principles.
Here, too, God had shown her the way to remedy her sorrows. Although Elizabeth had lost her privileges “in consequence of my defence of others’ rights,”3 that was certainly no reason to stop her campaign to improve the patients’ conditions. If anything, it only emphasized the correctness of her course. She had preached her sermon to McFarland; now, she had to prove her words were not “mere empty bubbles,”4 such as those with which the doctor had first dazzled her. Her duty was to practice what she preached.