Echoes From Hospital and White House

[Susan Higginbotham]

The actual story about the artery is from the memoir of Phoebe Pember, who was the matron of Chimborazo Hospital in Richmond:

"The hardest trial of my duty was laid upon me; the necessity of telling a man in the prime of life, and fullness of strength that there was no hope for him.

"It was done at last, and the verdict received patiently and courageously, some directions given by which his mother would be informed of his death, and then he turned his questioning eyes upon my face.

'''How long can I live?'

"'Only as long as I keep my finger upon this artery.' A pause ensued. God alone knew what thoughts hurried through that heart and brain, called so unexpectedly from all earthly hopes and ties. He broke the silence at last.

'''You can let go — '

"But I could not. Not if my own life had trembled in the balance. Hot tears rushed to my eyes, a surging sound to my ears, and a deathly coldness to my lips. The pang of obeying him was spared me, and for the first and last time during the trials that surrounded me for four years, I fainted away."

https://archive.org/stream/asouthernwoma...8/mode/2up

Fun, and rather obscure, fact: Before the widowed Pember got the appointment as matron, she lived (unhappily) with her parents in Marietta, Georgia. At some point, probably in the summer of 1862, Emilie Todd Helm stayed in the same residence, as a letter from Pember in the Helm papers indicates.