"Abner & Me" by Dan Gutman, Chapter 10

“Me, I got things to do,” Joshua said. “Got to fortify this position tonight. Bobby Lee and the Rebs are sure to come back at us with all they got at first light tomorrow morning.”

I was surprised to see some Confederate soldiers out there on the field picking up their dead right alongside the Union soldiers. It was so weird. Half an hour ago the soldiers on both sides had been trying their best to kill each other. Now they were chatting with each other as they did their morbid work, sometimes stopping to swap food, tobacco, or news with the other side.

“Anybody see General Doubleday?” we asked as we stepped gingerly around the bodies.

Union soldiers were building barricades at the top of the hill out of stone and logs to defend against tomorrow’s Rebel charge.

There was a sign at the gate of the cemetery that read: “All persons found using firearms in these grounds will be prosecuted with the utmost vigor of”—I couldn’t read the rest of the words.

We passed by a big tent filled with guys playing with some little machines and listening intently while they scribbled in notebooks. I realized they were telegraph operators, sending home news about the war.

“Look at this!” Mom said, aghast. “The latrine runs right into the source of their drinking water. No wonder men are dying of dysentery and diarrhea. I can only imagine the medical facilities around here. Where are the ambulances?”

This hospital probably didn’t even have X rays or antibiotics.

I turned my head away. No way I was going to watch him chop off the guy’s leg. But when I looked in the corner of the tent, there was an even more repulsive sight. There was a huge pile of arms and legs that had already been chopped off.

“Aren’t you going to sterilize that, Doctor?” Mom asked, alarmed. “He’ll get gangrene!”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the doctor replied. “Gangrene is caused by bad air. Didn’t they teach you that in nursing school?”

“I don’t wanna die!” screamed the guy on the table.
“Hold him down!” instructed the doctor. “You’re not going to die, son.”
I grabbed the soldier’s arms to prevent him from thrashing around.

“Don’t you have any anesthesia?” Mom asked desperately. “Chloroform? Ether? Nitrous oxide?”
“We ran out weeks ago,” the doctor replied, “and Mr. Lincoln hasn’t sent us more yet.”

Another injured guy was carried in on a stretcher and put onto the bloody table. He was soaking wet, and his shirt was pulled over his face. His arms were flailing around like he was a crazy man. He was shorter than the guy whose leg was amputated.

Mom climbed up on top of the table and straddled over Little John, with one knee on either side of him. She put her hands together against his chest and began pushing down on it, over and over again.

“It’s CPR,” Mom replied matter-of-factly. “Look, if you’ve got a patient who isn’t breathing, don’t worry about his blood or his wound. He’s going to suffocate before he bleeds to death. You’ve got to make sure he has an open airway and get some air into his lungs. If that doesn’t work, pump his chest until he comes to. Understand?”