The doctor departed, and she stared at the swaying curtain until it stilled. Like her, he would be away from his family tonight for “the well-being of society.” But tomorrow evening, he would strip off his protective gear, shower as an extra precaution, then ride the ferry to the 138th Street pier and take a carriage to Kleindeutschland on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. She’d heard about his darling wife, daughter, and newborn son. By the time he arrived home, he’d kiss his sleeping children on their foreheads and wish them sweet dreams. His wife would then serve him warm schnitzel and cold beer and massage his shoulders while he ate beside the hot stove.
Meanwhile, Cora would be trembling on her isolated cot at the end of a long room crowded with suffering, while mysterious, tiny predators roamed freely through her blood.
Twenty months later
September 1903
he sacrament of Penance drifted through the open windows of the church as Cora bowed her head, shrouded in the hood of a leper’s cloak. She folded her hands, encased in gloves to hide lesions that didn’t exist, and once again prayed to God for forgiveness and benevolence. If she’d been more alert, or less selfish, there wouldn’t now be a five-year-old girl in the main hospital building, slipping into and out of consciousness as Cora’s measles germs burrowed their way through her small organs.
How she wished she could go back and undo their encounter a week earlier. From across the central lawn, she’d been so engrossed in watching a game of marbles among three teenagers from the yellow fever ward that she’d missed the telltale sounds of the child creeping up behind her. By the time the girl had pulled back Cora’s hood—out of curiosity or as a prank—it had been too late.
She shouldn’t have dallied on her way to the northern shore, where she passed many of the hours that seemed to stretch into eternity. There, the gusting winds carried away the deadly air she exhaled. But those kids her own age . . . how she missed having friends.
Please, God, if you let her live, I’ll never lose faith in you, I promise. Cora rubbed her crucifix pendant. A month after she’d started attending Mass, she’d found it in the spot on the lawn where she always sat. Affixed to its case had been a note from the pastor:
And a leper came to Him and bowed down before Him, and said, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.” Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. Matthew 8:2–3
She doubted that God would cleanse her blood, but just in case, she always wore the necklace.
A chorus of greetings broke her meditation.
The Passing of the Peace during Mass had begun.
She twisted to face the rest of the lawn beside the redbrick church by the docks; twenty other contagious invalids dispersed across it came into the narrow view afforded by her hood. By the anguish on their faces and lethargic movements, she knew they were as miserable as she was. To greet them, she raised her hand slightly. Since they couldn’t see her face behind the cloth that she wrapped around her head each morning to contain her germs, she didn’t bother to smile.
Some waved at her. No one would dare shake her hand, even in its glove. Likewise, none would ever attempt to befriend her. Even if someone tried, she’d have to reject the kindness. Four people in the past year and a half had fallen ill because of her germs. The first three had perished, and Elena, the girl bedridden now, might join them before nightfall.
Whenever the guilt seized her, squeezing her rib cage until she could barely breathe, Dr. Gettler reminded her it could have been so much worse. In hindsight, his decision to falsify her death and recast her as a new patient with incurable leprosy had been prescient. Not only did her hood signal to patients and staff alike to keep their distance, but it also—usually—served as a barrier for her germs while concealing her identity.
During his third examination of her, the doctor had presented this plan in a soft tone, compassion radiating from his blue eyes, and Cora had accepted it without question. He hadn’t mentioned that the disguise would enable them to avoid arousing suspicion from the staff if she were to stay for a prolonged period. But Otto must have been thinking it. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have instructed O’Toole to build a wooden partition at the end of the typhus ward to give her the comfort of private quarters. Nor would he have written to her mother, notifying her that a “troublesome chronic cough and rash” necessitated a delay in Cora’s return.
Every month since, Cora had posted a letter to her mamaí. Not once had Cora received a reply. A year ago, as part of a campaign to alter its reputation as a pesthouse—to curtail the poor from hiding their ill—Riverside had opened its doors to visitors. Watching other families reunite, with tears and squeals of joy: that’s when Cora missed her mother the most.
A hymn began, and many of the invalids joined in, their raspy voices collectively thick with foreign accents. Just the sight of their thin cotton hospital shifts made Cora sweat more profusely within the heavy wool. It had been an unusually hot summer and today was no less cruel. How she longed to rip away the shroud, run to the beach beyond the new seawall, and charge into the cool water, racing all the way home.
She’d never make it. Even though a classmate had taught her to swim in the Hudson River four summers ago, she wouldn’t stand a chance against the turbulence caused by the convergence of several rivers at Hell Gate, the nearby bend in the tidal strait.
“Maidin mhaith!” O’Toole boomed and dropped to the ground beside her.
Cora planted her hands into the grass. Although she knew it wasn’t possible, the ground always seemed to shake when he did that.
To allow the cleansing breeze from across the river to flow between them, she shifted three feet to her right. Having previously suffered from every malady treated at Riverside, he was immune to her pests. Still, she tightened the cloth across her face before returning his greeting, Irish Gaelic for “Good morning.”
Although his grandparents had emigrated from Ireland, he hadn’t known a lick of the language before he’d met Cora. According to him, during his grandfather’s search for a job after reaching the “Land of Opportunity,” he’d repeatedly been rebuffed by signs that stated, “No Irish Need Apply.” Hungry and homeless, Eamonn O’Toole, with a wife and four small children in tow, had stripped away his brogue and changed the family name to Ogilvy. “On my eighteenth birthday,” Richard O’Toole had told Cora, “I marched into City Hall and changed it straight back. Anyone ta turn me down for employment, because of me Irish blood, is a damned amandan.”
Fool. She’d taught him that word, too.
While listening to him describe his family’s struggles, Cora had found herself thinking of her mam, who’d resorted to a line of work in the Five Points District that required no formal application and that had produced both Cora and her sister. Dreaming of a better life for them, their mother had been adamant that they complete public school. And now Maeve was dead, and Cora’s seat had surely been filled a year ago.
“What a fine morning!” O’Toole said loudly, the only timbre his voice contained. “A touch hot, though.” He wiped the sweat from his broad, sunburned brow.
Through the sides of her hood, Cora could feel the stares of the other invalids.
“Shhh” she hissed, though she couldn’t fault him. Early on, she’d asked why he didn’t attend St. John-by-the-Sea with his wife, a nurse, and their three children, all of whom were within the chapel now.
“God and I had a little chat,” he’d responded. “The Good Lord’s okay with me doing His work instead of listening to His word.”
Considering no one on the island labored as hard as O’Toole, who assisted both with the patients and the expansion of the hospital, Cora didn’t doubt that God approved.
This morning, in addition to the sweat that stained his collared work shirt, he reeked of oil, dirt, and antiseptic. Yet she didn’t turn away;
she knew she smelled no better.
“Elena. How is she?” Cora asked in a hushed tone.
O’Toole rubbed his temples, which shielded his hazel eyes, too small for his fleshy face. “On my way from the tuberculosis ward, I stopped to help with a tipped coal cart. I haven’t been ter the main hospital yet this mornin’.”
“What if she’s dead?” Cora shuddered.
O’Toole ducked his head so he could look straight into her eyes, beneath her hood. “None of this is your fault. You didn’t ask ta have those little buggers crawling inside ya.”
“Richard,” she said, using his Christian name for the first time, “that doesn’t mean I’m not responsible for them. If I’d had the courage to kill myself, Elena wouldn’t be fighting for her life now.”
“Don’t ever say that again,” said O’Toole with a growl. He nodded toward the chapel. “Trust in the Good Lord. He has a plan for you.”
Cora harrumphed. So far God had given her no reason to trust Him. But, she thought, if He saves Elena, that would be something. A sign.
The words of the benediction wafted through the open windows, and Cora realized she hadn’t listened to any of the pastor’s sermon. With little else to distract her during the weekdays, she often studied the corresponding passages in the Bible she’d received from the Ladies’ Home Missionary Society. This week, she would have to search on her own for stories that might give her suffering meaning. Then, as always, she would question whether those miracles had actually happened.
Beside her, O’Toole grunted as he clambered to his feet. Cora sensed that the other convalescents had begun to return to their wards. She stayed put, waiting for Dr. Gettler so she could ask about Elena as soon as they began their customary stroll. Her heart pounded like a caged squirrel knocking its teeth against the bars. If Elena had passed, Cora didn’t know what she would do. Five people dead—one her own sister—because of her? How could anyone take another step beneath the weight of that shame and guilt?
The door of the church banged open, and the resident staff’s children, laughing and screaming, darted outside.
O’Toole rushed forward to embrace his two boys and girl, all with ruddy complexions and hair as orange as his. Oddly, they’d never contracted any of Riverside’s germs.
“Why doesn’t he study them?” Cora had asked a few weeks ago while she and O’Toole had been watching Dr. Gettler give the children a drawing lesson.
“Because,” O’Toole had whispered, cupping his hands over his mouth and bulbous nose, “I won’t let him.”
Cora sucked in her breath.
“Darn it.” O’Toole grunted in irritation at his mistake. “The doctor’s a good man. If anyone can cure you, so you can git home to your mamaí, it’s him.”
She nodded in agreement and reminded herself of Dr. Gettler’s dedication to eradicating her germs. He genuinely cared about her. Whenever he cut her open to extract a much-needed tissue sample, he maintained a nearly one-sided dialogue as a means of leading her thoughts elsewhere. Often, he would tell her of microbiology’s daring pioneers, whom he’d studied while at Oxford, and his dream of becoming one. His favorite: Spallanzani, who’d debunked Needham’s theory that microorganisms, or “wee beasties,” could arise spontaneously from a “vegetative force.”
“Similarly,” the doctor liked to say, looking at Cora over his spectacles and surgical mask, “your immunities cannot be caused by a vegetative force. I will get to the root of dieses Geheimnis—this mystery.”
She believed that he would succeed.
Hopefully soon.
Nurse O’Toole, a Clydesdale of a woman whose coal-black mane gave away her Sicilian descent, joined the rest of her family. After a kiss on her husband’s lips, so unreserved it made Cora’s cheeks feel like they’d just been slapped, nurse O’Toole shepherded them toward the cafeteria for lunch, leaving Cora once again alone.
Her stomach rumbled from envious hunger. At mealtime, one of the line cooks always left her a tray outside the service entrance, beside the pails of garbage that would travel via ferry to the incinerator on Governor’s Island. In good weather, she would eat on the western shore, from which she could just make out the triumvirate of high-rises that housed the reporters and editors for the New York World, the New York Tribune, and the New York Times. Across the street from City Hall, “the center of the world,” those journalists ravenously consumed events as they transpired, whereas she foraged for secondhand, stale news.
The crowd exiting the chapel had thinned, yet Dr. Gettler still hadn’t emerged. The city had mandated that at least one doctor stays on duty at Riverside at all times, and this was Dr. Gettler’s weekend. He should be here, she thought anxiously.
While she felt terrible that his children lost so much time with him, she couldn’t help but look forward to their constitutionals. Away from his lab in the main hospital building, she didn’t have to face the apologetic look in his eyes before he penetrated her skin with a needle or knife. Here, beside the river, she could enjoy his stories of Ingrid’s and Ulrich’s antics, as well as his vision for Cora’s future once she could return to Manhattan.
Finally, the doctor’s brown boater appeared in the doorway behind a cluster of nurses who served as the church’s choir. With an image of Elena’s frail little body, as cold as Maeve’s, in her head, Cora stood up.
The women, who looked out of place on the island in their slim skirts, smart blouses, and deep-crowned, small-brimmed hats, veered toward the staff house to change into their Mother Hubbard gowns and rubber boots, giving Cora a clear view of the doctor, as well as the man beside him.
Her heart flitted at the sight of Linnaeus Jones, a hospital orderly and the most dashing man on North Brother Island. Aside from Dr. Gettler, he was also the cleverest. From what she’d overheard of the nurses’ gossip, only the high cost of medical school had kept him from becoming a doctor. At age ten, Linnaeus had begun working in the Marvin Safe Company’s sweatshop to help meet rent for the family’s room in a boardinghouse that Cora imagined must have been far more squalid than the Bowery, where she’d lived. It was a wonder he’d managed to obtain his position here at Riverside.
Absorbed in a conversation, the two men shrugged off their suit jackets, rolled up the sleeves of their collared shirts, and walked toward the seawall. Not until Linnaeus returned to his duties could Cora approach the doctor and ask him about the ill child.
Neither man glanced in her direction, which wasn’t surprising. Dr. Gettler had an uncanny ability to intensely concentrate on a single subject, blocking out everything else. And Linnaeus: well, to him, she was simply the resident leper, incurable and unapproachable. She doubted he even knew that the person beneath the shroud, whom he graciously waved at each time he extended his route to avoid coming too close, was a young woman. He certainly couldn’t be aware that she thought about him every day, timing her movements around the campus to catch glimpses of him.
Even from a distance, she could tell when Linnaeus was speaking; he punctuated his speech with broad gesticulations. His energy, olive skin, and hair the color of black lacquer provided a sharp contrast to the doctor’s calm demeanor and fair complexion.
Dr. Gettler pointed at the main hospital building, and Cora fantasized that he was inviting Linnaeus to become his lab assistant. “The research is daunting,” the doctor might be saying, “but with your sharp mind, we will succeed.” Mere months later—so went her daydream—she would be leaving this hellish place by ferry, hand-in-hand with Linnaeus.
He lit a cigar, his body still for the first time since he’d exited the church.
With false hope, she waited for him to cast his smoldering eyes toward her in shock at what had been hidden within plain sight.
He did no such thing. A schooner sailed past, and Linnaeus tugged on Dr. Gettler’s sleeve. The doctor’s hobby of constructing ships in bottles for his patients was well
known.
When the ship had disappeared, Linnaeus consulted his watch, then nodded to the doctor and hustled toward the staff house behind her.
Cora’s heart throbbed. He would pass within twenty feet of her. She stood stock still and held her breath so that none of her germs could possibly reach him.
He waved to her without slowing, and she nearly collapsed from the sudden weight of his attention. Maybe the doctor had let the orderly in on their secret. To find out, she hurried toward him, the first few steps faltering until she’d regained her composure.
“Good morning.” Dr. Gettler flashed her a smile as she stopped a safe distance away. “I see the way you look at him.”
Her cheeks blazed, and she was glad her hood concealed her reaction. “How can you?” she asked loudly so he could hear her.
He snorted. “Silly Fräulein. His features are attractive and his future promising. He would be a good match for you.”
Cora bit her lip. “Did you tell him about me?”
He shook his head.
“Maybe . . .” Cora ground the leather of one glove against the other. A barge steamed past, and she spotted its captain, grimacing in her direction. Often, sailors gawked at Riverside, rife with outcasts. To them, the sighting of her leper’s cloak must be particularly, entertainingly macabre. She longed to rip it off and show them the girl beneath.
Turning her thoughts back to Linnaeus, she continued, “Maybe he could be of use in the lab.”
“Oh, Coraline. I wish that were possible. You’re a lovely young woman who deserves to experience romance. But it won’t come this way. It can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Until I find your cure, you cannot go near that man.”
The girl. The thought of her now cut through any disappointment Cora might have otherwise felt at the doctor’s edict. “How is Elena?”
He grinned. “Her fever broke around three this morning. I expect a full recovery.”
The Vines Page 6