Where the Light Enters

by Sara Donati

  If the Catholics claimed her, they would baptize her and name her for—whose feast day was it? St. Agnes of Montepulciano? St. Mary Clopas? Whatever name was she given, she would be fed and kept warm and clean and made aware of her humble origins. The nuns would teach her the Stations of the Cross and the catechism she would recite every day; she would learn to read and write and do sums, to sew and clean and cook and how to care for infants and linens. If she showed any inclination she would be groomed for the convent. Things would be much the same if one of the Protestant asylums took the baby in: a regimented but safe childhood. A warm place to sleep and a full belly was more than most orphans could count on in this city. Some met far worse fates.

  As soon as Elise unwrapped the newborn in the nursery she knew that this little girl would never need a wet nurse or an asylum. It was not so much the low birth weight, but the way she breathed, snuffling through congested sinuses as though she had caught a head cold in the womb. Elise palpated her abdomen, and found what she feared: both liver and spleen were enlarged.

  One of the student nurses had come close to watch Elise examine the baby. In a whisper she asked a question that took Elise by surprise.

  “Chinese?”

  Elise glanced at her. “Are you referring to the yellow cast of her skin?”

  The student nodded.

  “There are other reasons for the skin to take on such a color. Have you not studied the liver?”

  An awareness came over the long, thin face. “Jaundice?”

  “Yes. Even healthy newborns sometimes have jaundice. The liver is slow to begin its work. But in this case—”

  Very gently Elise unfurled one clenched fist, and the student drew in a startled breath at the sight of watery blisters on the palms.

  “How does a newborn get blisters?”

  “They’re called bullae of pemphigus. A symptom of congenital syphilis. They will be on the bottom of her feet as well.”

  The student was very young and new to medicine, and thus unable to hide her shock.

  “There’s a chapter on congenital syphilis in the Prendergast text,” Elise told her. “It will be helpful to you.”

  Because the girl asked thoughtful questions, Elise went on to point out other signs: the telltale coppery brown rash that covered the baby’s chin and vulva, and most significantly: her nose looked as though someone had pressed a finger to the bridge and flattened it.

  “Sometimes the symptoms don’t show themselves for weeks or months,” Elise said. “This is an extreme case.”

  The unnamed little girl began to twist and mewl and stutter a weak wail. Her heartbeat was less than steady, and her fontanel pulsed erratically. Worst of all, she had very little suck reflex. A newborn who wouldn’t suckle couldn’t live. It wouldn’t take an hour to write up the case for Dr. McClure; it would hardly take ten minutes, because there was nothing to be done.

  A nurse Elise knew well came over and looked briefly at the baby. Margit Troy was highly skilled, compassionate, and still pragmatic, exactly the right person to take responsibility for this infant. Elise should have been relieved to hand the little girl over to her, but she hesitated.

  As was the case with the best nurses, Margit was very good at hearing what was not said: Elise wasn’t ready to give up the infant. So they worked together, bathing the baby and putting ointment on her rashes. They wrapped her hands and feet in loose layers of gauze saturated with more ointment, and swaddled her firmly.

  The student nurse was desperate to be of help. “She’ll need feeding. Should I get a wet nurse?”

  “No,” Elise said. “She is almost certainly contagious and it wouldn’t be right to risk the health of a wet nurse.”

  In the end Elise sat down to see if the little girl would take a few ounces of warmed sugar water from a bottle with a rubber nipple, putting her cheek to a skull as fragile as porcelain. The baby swallowed feebly once, twice, and then began to cough, a startling sound from so small a creature.

  Elise turned the little girl on her side and held her while the cough deepened. She caught the first sprays of blood with a towel and in no more than ten seconds, it was over.

  Her shift was near its end by the time she finished writing out her notes and then the death certificate for Dr. McClure’s signature. Unnamed female newborn, Caucasian. As she had been taught to do, she left the cause of death blank, but attached another sheet of paper with proposed wording: pulmonary hemorrhage following from congenital syphilis.

  There would be a price to pay not obeying Dr. McClure’s orders, but Elise found it hard to worry about that. In a few years she would probably have forgotten whatever task Dr. McClure thought up, but for the rest of her life she would remember the first two patients assigned to her, because she had been unable to do anything for them, and both had died.

  When the church bells at St. Mark’s in the Bowery tolled six o’clock Elise gathered her things. On her way down the stairs she could only hope not to come face to face with Dr. McClure. Instead she ran into Margery Inwood, who was almost as bad.

  Margery was an able nurse but a terrible gossip. Working with her in the wards had meant constant dodging of inappropriate and intrusive questions about the Savards and their personal lives. Anna’s marriage to an Italian detective was an enduring topic of interest, or had been until the newspapers exploded with news of Sophie’s engagement to Cap Verhoeven. Margery had cut out headlines to show to Elise. Mulatto Doctress to Marry Dying Knickerbocker was the headline that had most tested Elise’s temper, but she had managed to remain calm.

  “So,” Margery said now. “How are you liking medical school?”

  “I like it,” Elise said, summoning a smile. “When I have time to sit and consider, I like it.”

  “I’ve heard Dr. Morrison say that anybody who needs to sleep more than five hours a night should forget about studying medicine.”

  “That just about fits my experience,” Elise admitted. “How are things with you?”

  Margery ignored the question and leaned forward to put a warm, damp hand on Elise’s wrist.

  “Tell me,” Margery said. “Is it true that Dr. Sophie came back to the city in order to start a medical school for negro girls?”

  Elise pulled away in surprise. “Where did you hear that?”

  “It’s common knowledge.”

  “If that were the case you wouldn’t be asking me,” Elise said. “Really, Margery. You should know better. She isn’t starting a medical school. She’s setting up a scholarship fund.”

  Margery wrinkled her nose in disagreement. “What I heard—”

  The landing door opened and a doctor came through. He was a stranger to Elise, but Margery recognized him, because she paled at the sight of his unhappy expression.

  “Nurse Inwood, what is the delay?”

  “Sorry, Dr. Martindale. I’m on my way.” And she took off up the stairs at a tear. Elise had never seen her move so fast.

  Dr. Martindale, as she had called the man who still stood in the open doorway, stood watching her until she disappeared. Then his expression cleared, but his gaze fixed on Elise. She saw curiosity there, but nothing of ill humor.

  He said, “I think you must be Candidate Mercier. Don’t look so alarmed, it’s the color of your hair that gives you away.”

  Elise’s thoughts jerked in one direction: who is talking about my hair? To another: who is this man?

  Before she could think of something reasonable to say he was coming toward her, his hand outstretched. “Gus Martindale.”

  He stood two full steps below her, and still Elise had to look up, just slightly, to meet his gaze as she shook the offered hand. He should have waited for her to make this gesture, but social niceties often gave way to more pressing considerations in medical settings.

  “I’m Elise Mercier. Somebody told you about my hair?”


  He ducked his head, as if to draw her attention to his own thick mop, unfashionably short and almost exactly the same deep auburn as her own. “Actually, I asked. I caught sight of you on rounds—condolences, by the way, on being stuck with McClure—and I asked. You look so much like my wife, which is why I noticed you, but once I asked I got all the stories—good stories, complimentary. You needn’t worry.”

  Elise drew in a breath. “That’s good to know. Thank you. I think.”

  “Oh, but it’s true,” he said. “You’re very highly valued for your—”

  “Miss Mercier,” Nurse Troy called down the stairwell.

  Elise turned and had to crane her neck to see up as far as the third floor. “Yes?”

  “Could you come back to the ward, please? We have an issue. I need your help.”

  “It was a pleasure to meet you,” Elise said, which was true and not true; this Dr. Martindale had agitated her for no good reason except that he was friendly and complimentary and tall and—she glanced once more at him before turning to run up the stairs—very handsome. He was watching her with eyes that might have been gray or blue, his smile wide enough to show off a lot of very white teeth, with a chipped canine on his left.

  He straightened and saluted her. “My pleasure entirely. Next time I hope we’ll be able to talk at more length.”

  * * *

  • • •

  THERE WERE ELEVEN newborns on the ward, and Elise had examined each of them before she left and made chart notes. On her way back up the stairs she went over the cases in her mind. Three might survive long enough to go home with a wet nurse. Five were simply too small and weak to live. The rest were the real challenge: a case of mild hydrocephaly, one of esophageal atresia, and one of severe spina bifida. What she might do for any of them was limited, but she considered the possibilities and then stopped short at the sight of a stranger standing in the nursery, as out of place in this ward as a bull.

  He wore a sailor’s long peacoat and stood legs splayed and tensed, as though he were on a pitched deck. Even if he had been dressed like a clerk or farm worker, anyone would recognize him as a sailor. His clubbed dark hair and beard were streaked with salt or sun, and his face and hands were deeply tanned.

  “This is Mr. Bellegarde,” Nurse Troy said, unable to keep the unease out of her voice. “He is asking about his son, who was born here on the sixth of April.”

  “Can you tell me where to find my son?” His tone was curt to the point of accusation. “If you can’t, who can?”

  Angry husbands and fathers were nothing out of the ordinary at the New Amsterdam, Elise reminded herself. Many of them had less cause than Mr. Bellegarde, whose name she remembered perfectly. His wife had been brought to the New Amsterdam by Sophie, on the day she returned to the city. And she had died of eclampsia a few minutes before her child was delivered.

  He hadn’t asked about his wife, so he must know that much. She said, “Mr. Bellegarde, I can tell you that your son will have been sent home with a wet nurse, and he’ll be there still.”

  “Then I want the name and address of the wet nurse.”

  “Let’s go to the records office, we can find out there.”

  His expression didn’t soften at all. Instead he made an abrupt sweeping motion with one arm, as though Elise were a child dawdling on her way to do her chores. She set off, very aware of him right behind her.

  The records office was always open, but in the evening there was only a single clerk, a timid young man Elise didn’t know. She explained to him what she needed, and saw his complexion go a pasty white.

  “I don’t have the authority to release that information,” he said to her, his gaze darting toward Bellegarde and away again.

  “Mr. Roebuck,” Elise said, “the responsibility will be mine.”

  The idea of freedom from responsibility worked as neatly as a magical incantation. He opened the file room and let them pass.

  It took Elise all of two minutes to find the file, and then she opened it on a table next to the room’s only window and began to turn through the pages. Anna’s surgical notes were concise and clear, the ink very black. A copy of the death certificate was in the file, too, also in Anna’s hand.

  Elise set it aside and paused when Bellegarde took it. While he read she continued to work her way through the file.

  “What does this mean, under ‘cause of death’?”

  She looked at the phrase he was pointing out. “Eclampsia is a condition that strikes some women in late pregnancy. The cause is not really understood, and there’s no cure. I’m sorry for your loss.”

  He said nothing but continued to stare at the certificate in his hand.

  “Here,” she said. “This is the address of the wet nurse who has the care of your son. I know Mrs. Quig. She’s very well respected and responsible. You won’t be able to claim him today, but tomorrow you should be able to get a court order that will release him to you.” Assuming, Elise added silently, that you can prove you are his father.

  The muscles in his jaw clenched and rolled. “Does it say there why a child with a family would be declared an orphan and given to a wet nurse?”

  Elise had been wondering this herself. She let her eyes pass over the paperwork and came to the copy of the birth certificate.

  “It says here that the mother was a widow. She must have believed you were dead.”

  “She knew I was not. This form was filled out after her death. Who told the clerk what to write on it?”

  “She was traveling with her brother, wasn’t she? Yes, this must be his signature. Charles Belmain. Did he have reason to believe you to be dead?”

  Color shot into Bellegarde’s face only to drain away as quickly as it had come. A white anger, but one held in a strong fist. “Let’s say he wished me dead. As he will wish himself dead the next time he crosses my path.”

  Elise drew in a sharp breath. “If I remember correctly, he sailed for France the day after his sister—your wife—was buried.”

  Bellegarde’s mouth tightened. “And still,” he said. “The day will come.”

  “So do I understand you correctly, your brother-in-law—”

  “He lied,” Bellegarde interrupted her. “My mother would have taken the boy in without hesitation and she’s an easy walk from here. Now, let’s go.”

  Elise told herself she had misunderstood him as she put the file away, but when she turned around his expression was impossible to misinterpret.

  “You want me to come to the wet nurse’s home with you?”

  “Obviously. I need you to verify I am who I say I am, so I can claim my son. We’ll need that file you just put in the cabinet, too.”

  “You’ll need more than the file,” Elise said. “You can’t just walk in and claim the boy.”

  Bellegarde looked at her sharply as he pulled a piece of paper from the inside pocket of his jacket and thrust it toward her.

  Certificate and Record of Marriage

  Be it known that Denis Étienne Bellegarde and Catherine Antoinette Belmain were lawfully united in the Holy Bonds of Matrimony on this first day of January in the year of our Lord 1883 in accordance with the Rite of the Roman Catholic Church and in conformity with the laws of the State of New York, in the Church of St. Gaspard de Paul in New York City, the Rev. Georges Beaufils officiating, in the presence of Lucinde Coline Bellegarde and Marcel Paul Roberge, witnesses, as recorded in the Marriage Register of this church.

  “Father Beaufils,” Elise murmured. She had met the priest once when she was still Sister Mary Augustin, and she had liked him. He said mass for the city’s French speakers. Or at least, the poorer ones.

  Bellegarde’s gaze sharpened. With a voice gone hoarse he asked her where she was from and who her parents were. In French. In Québécois French.

  “I grew up on the Quebec border,” Elise tol
d him in the same language. “My mother is Québécoise by birth and so were my father’s parents. We spoke their language at home.”

  Bellegarde regarded her for a long moment, his eyes narrowed.

  Finally he said, “Then you will come with me to get my son from this wet nurse and you can explain it all to my mother.”

  She must have looked unwilling, because he leaned closer and spoke in a low and very compelling tone.

  “I hold this hospital partially responsible for what has happened to my son. It is in your best interest to come with me and sort this through right now. Or I will have to call in the law.”

  “You need not threaten me,” Elise said with all the calm she could muster. “I will do what I can to help. I hope it will be enough.” She resisted the urge to take out her handkerchief to wipe the sheen of perspiration from her brow.

  * * *

  • • •

  WHEN THEY WALKED out of the hospital she handed him the slip of paper she had used to copy the street address. “You grew up in this city. Do you know this street?”

  The abrupt sound he made in his throat was meant as a yes; her father and brothers and uncles all made the exact same sound when they were too irritated to use words.

  He began walking very quickly, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders bent forward, as though they walked against a strong wind. It seemed he had nothing to say and no questions to ask, which was just as well because as soon as they turned onto the Bowery it was too noisy to talk. In places it was even difficult to walk, and Elise had to skip to keep up as Bellegarde wove in and out of knots of people and around beer wagons and delivery drays, pushcart vendors hawking pretzels and sausage rolls, newsies shouting out headlines, music pulsing at doors and windows of theaters as if trying to escape, the barking of dogs, and louder than all that, the screech of the elevated train passing overhead.