From the personal journal of Miss Eleanor Caldwell
Richmond, Virginia
January 14, 1862
Late Evening
Private Journal of Eleanor Caldwell
It happened. Thomas's dear father passed this evening at sunset, and I find myself overwhelmed by grief so profound yet relief so shameful that I scarce know how to order my thoughts.
For nearly three years I have tended to his needs—measuring medications, changing soiled linens, sitting through countless nights when fever made him restless and confused. The burden has been heavier than I dared admit, even to myself.
He went peacefully, praise God. Sarah and I maintained vigil through these final days, taking turns reading Scripture and ensuring his comfort. At the end, he pressed my hand with surprising strength and whispered, "Tell Thomas... the pattern is complete." I know not what he meant, but his eyes held such serenity that I believe the Lord granted him understanding before calling him home.
Within the hour, Dr. Morrison arrived to examine the body and arrange for its removal. Given the mysterious nature of Mr. Everett's condition—never quite consumption, never quite fever—he deemed it prudent to avoid traditional viewing arrangements.
"Best for everyone's safety," he said gently, though his words stung Sarah deeply.
The undertakers came before midnight, wrapping the poor man in treated shrouds and removing him with efficiency that felt almost brutal in its haste. Sarah wept as they carried him through the front door, her grief compounded by the denial of proper farewell rituals. No wake, no final viewing, no opportunity for friends to pay their respects—just swift removal and burial arrangements that feel more like disposing of contaminated materials than honoring a beloved patriarch.
Sarah has thrown herself into funeral arrangements with fierce determination, as though controlling these details might restore some dignity to his passing.
She spends her hours writing notices, arranging for the minister, coordinating with the church ladies who will provide a modest reception after the service. The activity seems to comfort her, giving purpose to her grief.
I find myself oddly displaced in all these arrangements.
Though I cared for him daily, I am not family by blood or marriage, merely the woman who loved his son… loves his son.
Sarah graciously includes me in decisions, but the weight of planning falls naturally upon her shoulders as his daughter-in-law. I hover at the edges of these preparations, useful for small tasks but not truly essential.
I’m unmoored, and it unsettles me more than I expected.
For three years, my days revolved around his needs, my schedule bent to accommodate his care. Suddenly that structure has vanished, leaving me adrift in unfamiliar freedom.
Sarah's house feels different now—no longer a place where I serve some essential purpose, but somewhere I am kindly tolerated during family grief.
Little Charles senses the change in the household atmosphere and clings to his mother with unusual intensity.
His endless questions about why Grandfather won't wake up exhaust Sarah's already fragile composure. I try to help with his care, but even my relationship with the child feels altered now that I am no longer his Grandfather's primary nurse.
Loneliness strikes me at unexpected moments.
During Mr. Everett's final weeks of lucidity, he served as my closest confidant.
With Father away and Thomas separated by war, I have precious few souls with whom I can freely speak about my fears, my growing fascination with medical work, my confusion about my own health and my spirit.
"You have an uncommon mind, my dear," he told me last week, his voice weak but his eyes sharp with understanding. "Don't let convention diminish you, hamper whatever you might become."
A dying man keeps your confidences absolutely, and Mr. Everett never judged my unladylike curiosity about medical matters or my growing interest in cases that horrify other volunteers. He understood my hunger for knowledge even when it extended beyond conventional feminine concerns.
Now he is gone, and with him my last safe harbor for thoughts I dare not share with Sarah or the other church ladies.
His death leaves me not only grieving but realizing my true isolation, surrounded as I am by people who love me yet cannot comprehend the questions that increasingly occupy my mind.
I confess shamefully that alongside my genuine sorrow, I feel liberated.
The weight of constant caregiving has lifted from my shoulders so suddenly that I feel almost dizzy with the freedom.
My time is my own again. My energy need not be carefully rationed between hospital duties and nursing obligations. I can think of my own development, my own future, without the constant interruption of medical doses and sickroom demands.
What manner of woman experiences such relief at a beloved patriarch's death?
The guilt threatens to overwhelm me, yet I cannot deny the truth. These months of dividing myself between his care and my hospital work have left me exhausted in ways I barely acknowledged. Now, suddenly, I can direct all my attention toward my own improvement, and the work that increasingly defines my sense of purpose.
Soon there will be a funeral to endure, condolences to accept, the painful ritual of laying him to rest. But tonight, in the quiet aftermath of death, I find myself contemplating not just what I have lost, but what I have gained.
Mr. Everett's final words echo in my memory: "Tell Thomas... the pattern is complete." Perhaps he meant that his suffering had served its purpose, that his death would free both Thomas and me to fulfill whatever destiny awaits us beyond this terrible war.
I pray Thomas will understand my relief alongside my grief when I write to tell him of his father's passing. The man we both loved would want his death to liberate rather than burden us, to open possibilities rather than close them.
Time will tell what those might be.
Richmond, Virginia
January 16, 1862
Late Evening
I have fled to the hospital today and yestereve, unable to bear the house heavy with grief and funeral preparations.
Sarah manages the arrangements with determination that both impresses and excludes me—writing notices, meeting with ministers, coordinating with church ladies who bring covered dishes and whispered condolences. I hover at the edges, and it drives me to seek purpose elsewhere.
This day brought horror that has shattered every assumption I held regarding the nature of illness and human behavior.
A patient attacked another in the fever section yestereve, and the sight will haunt me unto my dying day.
When I pushed aside the hanging canvas to attend Private Henderson during evening rounds, what I discovered defied every notion of civilized conduct.
Private Jameson crouched over Henderson's cot like some rabid beast, his teeth buried deep in the young man's neck. The sound—a wet, tearing noise mingled with Henderson's strangled attempts to cry out—will echo in my nightmares forevermore.
Blood soaked through the rough blanket, its metallic scent overwhelming even the tobacco residue that yet clings to every surface of this converted factory.
Henderson's form writhed beneath the savage assault, his eyes starting from his head with terror as he clawed feebly at his attacker. The desperate sounds he made scarce qualified as human utterances—more akin to some wounded creature expiring in agony.
I cried out until my throat grew raw. The sound reverberated through the factory's vast heights, bringing orderlies hastening from across the floor. But those moments stretched like an eternity as I stood transfixed by horror, watching Henderson's very life drain into the mattress beneath him.
When they finally tore Jameson away, his strength proved wholly unnatural—three grown men struggling to master him whilst he snarled and snapped like a mad dog, gore coating his mouth and chin. His eyes held no human recognition whatsoever, naught but a terrible hunger that turned my blood to ice.
Yet even as terror possessed me entire, even as my hands trembled and bile rose in my throat, something else stirred beneath the horror. For one fleeting, most shameful instant amid the tumult, I felt... hungry.
Not for sustenance—such thought revolted me utterly—but hungry for comprehension. Hungry to understand what I had witnessed.
Whilst Mrs. Coleman required vinaigrette and nearly swooned merely hearing about the incident, whilst poor Mary Catherine wept and declared she could never again set foot in the ward, I found myself consumed with questions.
This hunger for comprehension terrified me far more than the violence itself.
What manner of genteel lady feels such intellectual appetite when confronted with barbarity? What does it reveal of my character that my first instinct was to examine rather than flee in horror?
When the other volunteers departed early, too greatly disturbed to continue their ministrations, I remained at my post.
I attended Henderson each hour, documenting his declining state with precision that shocked even my own sensibilities. The pallor spreading across his features, his shrinking from lamplight, his refusal of all nourishment—I recorded each detail with the detachment of a natural philosopher observing some curious specimen.
The recognition of my own want of feeling sent waves of self-loathing through my very soul.
By this morning's light, Private Jameson had vanished—removed during the night hours, so they informed me, though none among the orderlies possessed knowledge of his destination, and Henderson's condition has declined with most alarming swiftness.
When I attended him at dawn, the hale young soldier of yesterday had become something altogether changed.
All healthy color had fled his countenance, leaving him pale as morning mist. He shrank from the merest glimmer of lamplight, beseeching me to extinguish even the dimmest flame.
He refused his morning victuals complete, declaring the very aroma caused him violent sickness, though he accepted Dr. Merriweather's iron preparation with what seemed almost desperate eagerness.
In scarce twelve hours' passage, Henderson had transformed from a robust man bearing but a trifling wound into something that bore every mark of our most grievous fever cases. Such rapidity defied all I comprehended regarding the progression of disease.
I confided in Dr. Merriweather this afternoon, still trembling from the admixture of horror and shame. When I confessed my most unnatural reactions—my appetite for knowledge amid such chaos, my methodical observations of Henderson's decline, my fears regarding what such responses revealed of my true nature—his words provided deliverance.
"Eleanor," he said with utmost gentleness, "what you experienced is not abnormal for one possessed of genuine scientific aptitude. Lesser minds turn away from disturbing phenomena, but true researchers feel themselves compelled to understand them."
Speaking with him made me feel myself again—as though the hunger for knowledge that so affrighted me was not evidence of moral corruption but proof of intellectual capability.
I told him everything then—my shameful appetite for knowledge amid violence, my guilt about feeling such relief at Mr. Everett's passing, my growing certainty that I was becoming something quite different from the conventional lady I was bred to be.
"You may always confide in me," he assured me, his voice carrying that paternal warmth which has become my sole anchor during these trials. "I consider myself most honored by your trust. You are as a daughter to me—the daughter of my mind, if I may employ such an expression."
Whilst he attended briefly to some pressing administrative matter, I discovered his research journal lying open upon his desk. My eyes fell upon detailed observations that set my heart to racing with gratification:
"Subject E.C. demonstrates remarkable adaptation following sustained exposure during civilian care period. Progressive enhancement of observational capabilities evident in clinical assessments."
When he returned, I confessed with complete honesty that I had glimpsed the notes. "It fills me with such happiness to know you have observed my progress with such scientific care," I told him, scarce able to contain my gratitude.
Then came the offer that transformed this day of horror into one of most extraordinary opportunity: he wishes for me, me, to assist him with the work in the new fever wing, funded by generous benefactions secured through Father's connections.
"You possess qualities most people lack entirely," he said, his hand upon my shoulder warm with approbation. "The analytical mind, the steady nerves, the intellectual curiosity essential for revolutionary medical discoveries."
To be recognized not as a mere volunteer offering charitable ministrations, but as a genuine asset capable of advancing medical science—such acknowledgment overwhelms me with purpose that transcends every fear.
The funeral shall be held tomorrow. I will attend and offer Sarah whatsoever comfort lies within my power. But afterward, my true work commences—the study of those phenomena that increasingly captivate my attention, under the tutelage of the sole person who comprehends my genuine capabilities.
Despite this day's horrors, I have never felt more sanguine regarding my future.
© 2025 E.M. di V. - writing as Morgan A. Drake & Joe Gillis. All rights reserved.