Christie's nursing career in Chapters 17 ("The Colonel") and 18 ("Sunrise") in Work recall Hospital Sketches, first serialized in The Commonwealth and later published in book form in 1863. For this work Alcott drew upon her experiences in 1862-1863 as a wartime nurse at the Union Hotel Hospital, Georgetown. The seriocomic narrator, spinster Tribulation Periwinkle who is added for the book version, courageously endures the emotional trauma of caring for wounded and dying men in shabby conditions. The story "My Contraband," published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1863, unites an abolitionist theme with wartime nursing in the characters of the spinster Nurse Dane, and Bob, a freed mulatto assigned to her as aide. Chapter 5 ("Companion") in Work recalls "A Nurse's Story," a thriller serialized in Frank Leslie's Chimney Corner in 1865-1866. The feminist narrator, nurse Kate Snow, has dealings with a girl plagued by inherited insanity.

Christie's experiences as a...