Around the tent, men loaded boxes onto wagons and unloaded more boxes from carts coming in from the countryside. A troop of local boys was splitting an enormous pile of logs into wood for the fires. Women stirred cauldrons of steaming water filled with sodden blankets.
A tired-looking man in a bloodstained apron was sitting on an overturned bucket, smoking a pipe.
“This is my new surgeon’s mate, Dr. Cochran,” Dr. Otto said. “His name is Margalen MacChauncey Doc. It sounds Scottish, ja?”
“Scottish? No, I don’t think so, Bodo,” Dr. Cochran said with a thick burr that reminded Marcus of his grandfather MacNeil. “Where are you from, boy?”
“Mas—Philadelphia.” Marcus caught himself just in time. A slip like that could cost him his life, if someone with an active curiosity were to hear it.
“He sounds foreign to me,” Otto said in his thick accent. “Some boys from Philadelphia said he was a Yankee, but I do not know whether to believe them.”
“He might well be.” Cochran studied Marcus closely. “Yankees do have very strange names. I’ve heard some called Submit and Endeavour and Fortitude. Does he have any experience? He looks too young to know much, Bodo.”
Marcus bristled.
“He is familiar with the methods of Dr. Rush,” Otto said, “and how to empty a man’s bowels most forcefully.”
“Hmph,” Cochran replied, drawing on his pipe. “We don’t need any help with that. Not in this army.”
“The boy has heard of Dr. Sutton, too.” Dr. Otto blinked like one of the owls that roosted in their barn in Hadley.
“Is that so?” Cochran’s tone was speculative. “Well, then. Let’s see if he knows something more useful than one of Dr. Rush’s extreme cures. If your patient was complaining of rheumatism and pain in the joints, how would you induce a sweat, boy?”
More questions. Marcus would rather be back among the Associators than be grilled and scolded like a schoolboy by the army surgeons.
“I’d have him examined by a committee of medical officers, Dr. Cochran,” Marcus retorted. “And the name is Mr. Chauncey, if you please.”
Cochran bellowed with laughter.
“What do you think, Dr. Cochran? Did I not find us a suitable replacement for that frightened young man who ran off at Princeton?” Otto asked.
“Aye. He’ll do.” Cochran tamped down on the tobacco in his pipe and slipped it into his pocket. “Welcome to the army’s medical corps, Doc—or whatever your name is.”
For the second time in his short life, Marcus shed one identity and adopted another.
* * *
—
TIME PASSED DIFFERENTLY in the medical corps than it had on the farm in Hadley （where nothing seemed to change except the seasons）， or in his life as a fugitive （where every day was different）， or the brief period among the Associators （when time passed so quickly that you didn’t have the opportunity to think）。 In the army’s temporary hospital in Morristown, time passed in a never-ending stream of wounds and illnesses that flowed among tables and cots, crates of bandages, and boxes of medicines. No sooner did a new patient arrive than a former patient left. Some left in pine boxes, destined for the graveyard dug on the outskirts of town. The more fortunate were sent home to convalesce from broken limbs and gunshot wounds or cases of dysentery. Others languished on the wards, poorly fed and poorly housed, unable to die, yet equally unable to heal.
As the newest recruit, Marcus had first been posted to the part of the hospital reserved for men with minor injuries and ailments. There his jobs were menial, requiring no medical knowledge whatsoever. His duties did provide a way for him to learn the rhythms of this new environment and to develop his skills. Marcus was learning how to diagnose patients by carefully watching their restless limbs, the pace of their breathing as they dreamed, and the spots of color that often appeared in the middle of the night and indicated that infection was taking root in the body.
The moonlit hours also provided Marcus with an opportunity to eavesdrop on the senior medical officers, who would gather by the ancient, inefficient stove to talk when the wards were quiet, their patients had sunk into whatever troubled sleep their injuries allowed, and only a skeleton crew of low-ranking surgeons’ mates like Marcus were present.
Cochran was smoking his pipe—something he did whenever he had an opportunity, even in the midst of a surgical procedure. Otto was rocking slowly in a chair with uneven runners, which made him look like he was riding a lame hobbyhorse.