Chapter 1CHAPTER 1 August 1873 -- New York City The hospital''s administration corridor was always deserted after midnight. I glanced over my shoulder to double-check that I was alone, then peered through the first-floor pharmacy''s iron bars. Apothecary bottles, powder tins, and medicinal jars sat in shadowed cubby holes, locked up tight and out of my reach. They looked even sweeter than the fondant jars down at the chocolate shop on Maiden Lane. Definitely more forbidden. Bellevue Hospital allowed its male orderlies to carry keys to the pharmacy door. The male doctors as well. The male druggists.
Even the male janitors. But not us nurses, oh no . Too young, too female. My breasts were probably getting in the way of my brain comprehending why. I wasn''t allowed to know the chemical names of most of the hospital drugs, even though I''d been enrolled for three whole months in Bellevue''s new nursing training program. Half my job was spooning out mystery medicines that came from these very jars. I''d teach myself what was in them if it was the last thing I did. "Carum.
carvi?" I read aloud from the painted words marking the nearest ceramic jar. A band of flowers circled the Latin script. "What do you think that could be?" I whispered to my companion. "Or the one next to it--chloral hydrate? Are they related? Hmm." The ginger-haired nursing student at my side briefly twirled near a ticking grandfather clock in the dark hallway, watching her cornflower-blue nursing skirts billow. "Molly O''Rinn, you are the most stubborn girl I''ve ever known." Was that an insult? I couldn''t tell. "Wish they''d taught us Latin back in school.
" Bethany stopped twirling and stifled a yawn. "If I knew Latin, my father sure wouldn''t have sent me here. Really don''t understand why you''re so obsessed." I gripped the handle of my nursing lantern and lifted it higher, squinting into the dark pharmacy. "I''ve told you a hundred times, I won''t stop until I can prove the doctor made a mistake when he gave you those two bottles." "What bottles?" Poor Bethany. She really didn''t remember her own death. Then again, most ghosts couldn''t.
At least not the ones I could see. And in all my eighteen years, I''d never known anyone else who could see the dead like I could, something that had worried and frightened me as a child. But as I''d grown older, seeing random ghosts had just become part of my life. A secret that I kept close to my heart. Most people didn''t even want to believe someone else could see something they couldn''t. Hard to blame them, really. With her pink cheeks, Junior Nurse Bethany Cross still looked as alive as any other mortal walking around this hospital. At least, she did to me.
Until I studied her eyes. Or tried to find her shadow. Poor Bethany had died early this summer, only a month into our training. She''d gotten sick during our rounds, and one of the doctors had given her what he still claimed to this day was run-of-the-mill cough medicine. Whatever it actually was, it killed her within an hour. My theory was that the doctor made a mistake and gave Bethany something intended for another patient. But neither he nor the hospital would admit to negligence, not when their shiny new nursing program was on the line. The hospital''s official report of Bethany''s unexpected demise used words like "tragic" and "accidental," and because Bethany had been just a nobody from a poor family, her death was easily swept away.
And that just wasn''t right. "Knowing what''s inside these jars and bottles doesn''t concern us. You''re too curious," Bethany murmured, shaking her head as she gazed into the dark pharmacy. "Always the first to put your hand up in class and ask ''why.'' Always questioning the doctors when they ask you to do something. It''s not rational!" Rational? A bloody ghost was lecturing me about being rational? Bethany shouldn''t even have existed. "Look, I know you don''t remember what happened to you." She pouted.
"Nothing happened to me. What are you talking about.?" It was no use. We''d had this conversation a dozen times over the last few weeks. Most of the ghosts I encountered were merely caught in a loop of their daily lives, uninterested in talking about their deaths or much of anything else, really. I could see them, and I could speak to them. But if I tried to touch them, my hand would just pass through the air. I sighed and tried a different tactic.
"Think of it this way. Nurses can do more than just empty bedpans and take temperatures if they have the right information. I want to learn--I want to help people, yeah?" I whispered passionately. "Why is gaining knowledge so. forbidden?" "Because they''re smarter than us. Ugh, will this shift ever end?" Bethany yawned again and said dazedly, "Can you dream while you''re awake? I think my brain has decided it''s had enough of being tired and has gone to sleep without me." Just looking at her, you''d think that she''d spent the entire night working her fingers to the bone. She pushed a messy ginger braid off her shoulder, then frowned at the nurse''s fob watch pinned upside down to the top of her bodice, allowing its wearer to see the dial while their hands were occupied.
Well. A nurse''s watch used to be pinned to Bethany''s bodice, back when she was alive. In reality, that very watch was pinned to my own bodice at the moment; because Bethany had been my assigned partner for training, I''d been given some of her nursing tools when she''d died. And unlike Bethany''s ghost, I was both spiritually and physically exhausted, but I was nearly at the finish line. In minutes, my shift would be over, and I could leave the hospital to sleep like. well, the dead. Had it really been twenty-four hours since I''d been to our living quarters? Must stay awake, must concentrate. I''d just finished the last of my predawn rounds, walking the wards, and this was my last chance tonight to study drug names while the hall was empty.
So I ignored Bethany and carried on with my secret mission, face pressed against the iron bars of the pharmacy window. " Balsam styrax benzoin , hmm." I scribbled with the pencil attached to one of several chains dangling from a frilly silver chatelaine clipped to my apron''s waist. My chatelaine held other tools that clinked together against my skirts: a small pair of scissors, the miniature notebook I was using to take notes, a spoon for (unknown) medicines, and a case with safety pins to use with bandages. "Do you think this one''s for digestion.?" Bethany sighed. "Don''t care. I''m only here because my father says my face is boring and I''m built like a starving rat, which makes me unmarriable.
" My mouth fell open. "Bollocks. Who in God''s name says that to their own daughter?" To be fair, none of us were classic beauties, as our nursing program required its initial six students to possess both intelligence and iron constitutions, yet to be "plain of face." Male doctors feared pretty girls might pose a "distraction" to the male patients, and pretty girls, they said, would end up leaving work for marriage. Self-conscious, I fidgeted with wisps of my dark brown hair that had fallen loose from its pins over the course of my shift. I vaguely wondered what Bethany thought of my face, which was rounder than hers but no less plain. The only thing vaguely remarkable about me was a pair of pale blue eyes I''d inherited from my mother. I frowned at Bethany.
"Listen. If my father had told me that, I''d--" "Lily said your mother never married, so you didn''t have a real father." When did any of my other sister-nurses have time to gossip? But she wasn''t wrong. My father had been a morgue attendant who''d once worked in the basement of this very hospital. Never married my mother. He even refused to accept me as his own child until I was three. I only knew him in bits and pieces, a story here, a coin for sweets there. before he disappeared from the hospital and our lives when I was eight.
I saw him again, roaming the street near the mortuary entrance where he used to work, almost a year later. He was mumbling to himself and didn''t recognize me. But what stood out the most was something so subtle, anyone could miss it: his body didn''t cast a shadow, and his eyes didn''t reflect light. That little fleck of light in people''s eyes? It wasn''t there. Light couldn''t reflect because there was no body, only the illusion of one that was stuck, restless, and alone. My father was the first ghost I ever saw. Bethany was number thirty-one. "And your father is an expert on marriage?" I challenged.
"What, is he a matchmaker? Or maybe he''s a clairvoyant who can see the future, can he?" I waved my fingers dramatically and made spooky noises. Bethany rolled her eyes. "He''s just been promoted at the factory and says I must earn. I can''t speak in front of a group of people without wanting to vomit, so being a teacher wasn''t possible. That left secretarial work, washing clothes, or. this. I had no idea it would be so hard." That''s where we differed, because I loved a challenge.
Granted, I didn''t particularly like these marathon shifts. They were brutal. But I didn''t care. I''d wanted to be a nurse ever since I could remember. Being here in this nursing program at Bellevue was the biggest opportunity of my lifetime. There had been hun.