The flagpole bent beneath the child’s weight. And snapped, plummeting the boy into the inferno.
Cora opened her mouth to scream in fury and frustration, but not even a whisper emerged. The smoke-laced air rushed across her open lips and melded with the taste of salt in her mouth.
She staggered backward and dropped to the ground. Waves, thick with wreckage, washed over her cramped thighs. If she tried to stand back up, to find her cloak, her legs would refuse. With her remaining strength, she pivoted her body to take in the carnage strung out along the shore.
The beach was littered with people, some wailing, most silent. Racing to resuscitate at least a few more, pairs of hospital workers moved among the victims. It had to have been at least fifteen minutes since the last person had jumped from the blazing Slocum. Dazed survivors, seemingly unaware of their own burns, broken bones, and lacerations, stumbled around as they screamed out in search of their families.
Now aiding the staff were city officials and volunteers, who’d arrived in boats ranging from ferries to fishing trawlers—all large enough to manage the fierce currents that bounded North Brother Island.
With such an influx of outsiders, none of the staff would question the presence of an unfamiliar young woman. Certainly, they wouldn’t recognize her as a typhus patient who’d supposedly died more than two years ago.
But she still needed the cloak to contain her pests.
A bedraggled, soaked woman, wearing only a bodice and knickers, stumbled past, within three feet of Cora, reminding Cora that without her symbolic shroud, others wouldn’t know to keep their distance. She rolled to one side until both knees met the coarse sand, but she didn’t rise. Her legs still felt as heavy as anchors.
“Ingrid!” a hoarse, familiar voice yelled, louder than all the others.
Cora twisted her neck to locate the doctor.
Scanning the rescue workers huddled over limp bodies, her heart plunged into the saltwater within her stomach. There had to be dozens—hundreds—of bodies. And most didn’t appear to be moving. Praying she would find the doctor embracing his daughter, she continued her search.
And saw the head nurse, Kate White, seated on the sand with a girl hanging over her knees like a wet blanket. Crouched beside them: Dr. Gettler.
“No!” Cora screamed, and this time the sound penetrated the ashy air.
She scrambled to her feet and began running toward them. Remembering her cloak, she veered away, dodging staff, anguished survivors, and lifeless lumps now baking in the sun. Near the seawall, she found her boots, gloves, and pile of fabric, trampled.
A knot formed in her throat, already swollen from the smoke and salt. Forcing it down, she redressed. Momentarily, blackness encased her. The wool chafed her wet skin. She found the hood, and the chaos on the beach reappeared.
A leper to be feared, she wove her way through the throng, maintaining a safe distance, and stopped ten feet from Ingrid, still draped over Kate’s knees.
Not even the smoke-drenched breeze could budge the singed skirt of the girl’s dress, coated in sand. Dr. Gettler slapped her back, and brine spilled from her gaping blue lips. Still, she didn’t gasp or cough. He rubbed between her shoulder blades, attempting to coax life back into her. “Mein Mäuschen, komm zuruck. Ich brauche dir zuruck zu kommen.” My little mouse, come back. I need you to come back.
Cora twisted the folds of her cloak. Now there was nothing she could do to help the doctor’s daughter, or anyone else. The eleven children she’d rescued were not enough.
The doctor tucked a strand of his daughter’s hair back into her plait and listened for her breathing. “Bitte, mein Mäuschen, bitte.”
A gust of wind blasted the beach. Smoke filled Cora’s nostrils and burned her eyes. She coughed and wiped at them, bringing Dr. Gettler back into focus.
“Ingrid’s gone, sir.” Kate placed her fingertips on the back of his soaked dress shirt, clinging to his slim frame. “She’s with the Lord now,” she said in her gentlest southern drawl.
Cora hated that string of words. Since Maeve’s death, she’d heard it far too often. And now today, it would be uttered over and over. Why would God have let this happen? Hadn’t He taken too much from this island already?
“Nein.” He sliced his hand through the air. “Lay her on her back. This time you pump the arms, I’ll press on her chest.”
Kate didn’t stir from her seated position. From Cora’s vantage point, she could see tears welling in her gentle, brown eyes. She could tell that the nurse would have embraced the doctor if it weren’t for the dead child between them.
“Noch einmal! Do as I say!” The doctor scooped up his “little mouse” and stretched her out on the sand to try the resuscitation maneuver once more. Her blank eyes stared upward. Too early in the summer to be tan from playing in the alleys of Kleindeutschland, her pale face, beneath the bright sun, had a sheen to it.
The nurse pulled Ingrid’s thin arms above her head, and in a quick, pumping motion, brought them to the girl’s sides, right as the doctor jabbed her chest. No water surged from her mouth; she remained silent.
He slapped her cheek. “Wake up, mein Mäuschen, wake up.”
With one hand, Kate gripped his palm; with the other, she closed little Ingrid’s eyes.
The grieving father moaned and pressed his face to his daughter’s. Beyond him, the fire on the steamship raged on.
Cora bit her hand to redirect the pain from her heart. She’d never met this child, but that mattered little. She knew the doctor’s grief.
The same man, whom earlier this morning she’d watched with envy, was now curled in the sand next to his deceased daughter. His wailing overpowered the desperate cries of those around them.
Kate adjusted Ingrid’s arms, her fingers lingering on a silver chain that winked in the sun. “Her bracelet identifies her. Coroner O’Gorman said we should—”
He raised his head. “Give it to me.”
Kate tucked the chain into his palm and wiped a tear from her flushed cheek. Her chin dropped, and her buxom chest heaved. The blond strands that had come loose from her chignon veiled her eyes, but Cora could tell she was weeping.
The doctor rolled the silver wristlet between his fingertips. “It was a gift from Rolene.” His focus darted to the steamship. “Where is she? Ulrich.” He scanned the bodies, many child-sized, some not even two feet long, and his eyes glazed over.
Cora’s entire being ached in sympathy with this man, who’d been so devoted to helping her. She moved to approach him but then forced herself back against the seawall. Holding the next breath of thick air at bay, she took in the scene. An unnerving calm had descended upon the shore. Time had run out for the drowning victims, and the doctors and nurses were now focused on tending the burns and other wounds of those still breathing.
There were only six doctors on the island, five without him. Cora knew one way she could help the recovery effort, as well as her grieving friend: “Dr. Gettler, sir.”
“What?” he moaned without separating from his daughter.
“Look.” She pointed to a burn victim writhing in the surf.
“My Rolene?” He raised his head.
Kate, who’d begun stitching a gash in the leg of a boy about twelve, glared at her. Although the person Cora had pointed out was burned beyond recognition, the physique was unmistakably male.
“He needs help,” Cora said, and a look of understanding passed over Kate’s face.
Still dazed, the doctor rose and lurched toward the burn victim, but his back foot remained rooted beside Ingrid.
Kate tied off the stitches and came to the doctor’s side. “I’ll find a covering, and write her name on her arm.” She wiped her hand clean and pulled a pen from the pocket of her skirt. “Now”—she looked Dr. Gettler square in the eyes—“you must tend to your work, the work the good Lord’s given you.
”
He gave a rote nod, as Cora had seen so many patients do in response to Kate’s orders, and grabbed his kit. Single-handedly, he dragged the large figure onto higher ground. After ripping away the remains of the man’s pants, he set about cleaning and bandaging the seared skin that barely clung to the flesh.
“Miss McSorley,” he said without looking up, “find my Rolene and my boy.”
Cora straightened. Finally, a way to be useful. Through the doctor’s stories, she’d pictured the boy playing with his rubber ball, stealing a pretzel from the jar atop the icebox, laying track for his toy train set. Her image of him couldn’t possibly match his actual appearance. The same for Rolene. Ever since their discussion about Linnaeus, he hadn’t spoken of his wife except in reference to their children. He certainly hadn’t shown her a photograph.
All around her, volunteers were arranging the dead in rows. Nurses followed behind, draping sheets over their faces. How would Cora find either of them? And what if she did, beneath two of those shrouds? She would have to try yet hope for failure. If they weren’t here, they might have jumped overboard before the Slocum reached North Brother and hopefully had been rescued. “What do they look like?”
“Find my Rolene,” he mumbled as he rummaged through his bag, “and Ulrich.”
“I’ll do my best, sir.” She dug the tip of her boot into the sand. “What do they look like?”
He scrunched his face. “Blond, blue eyes, slim.”
That description had to match many of the Germans who’d been attending the Lutheran church outing. At least the boy might bear a resemblance to the doctor, and the memory of Ingrid’s features would give her a sense of the mother’s.
Sweltering beneath the layer of wool, she walked toward the end of the row of corpses on the beach, closest to the water, and pulled back her hood. These poor souls are beyond the reach of my pests, she thought as she tugged down her face covering.
As she moved along the beach, waves tugging at her ankles, she thought of the bodies settling into the muck. Rolene and Ulrich might be among them. What if she’d grabbed a different hand, saving Ulrich instead of a stranger’s child? Was his life more valuable simply because his father was her doctor? If she’d swum faster, enabling her to rescue a twelfth, it might have been him.
Nearby, a badly burned elderly woman collapsed in the shallows, and nurse Nellie O’Donnell rushed to her. Cora sidestepped them to keep her distance.
“Du stolsst mein Baby!” shrieked a hoarse voice.
Cora turned toward the noise and stiffened. A tall, soot-stained woman in a sodden dress was charging at her, narrowly dodging the bodies in her way.
She thinks I stole her baby, Cora realized.
“Gib ihm zu mir.” Give him to me.
Cora winced at the woman’s misplaced hope.
The distraught mother tripped over a leather dress shoe, attached to a corpse, and regained her momentum.
“Ich habe ihn nicht,” Cora said, using the German she’d learned from Dr. Gettler, and raised her empty hands to show she didn’t have him.
“Meine kleiner Friedrich, wo ist er?” (Where is he?) the woman asked from within spitting distance. The strands of wet hair wrapped around her neck and intense, beady brown eyes gave her the look of a crazed animal, but Cora knew it was instead herself who should be feared.
Donning her hood, she backed away from the woman. “Ich weiß nicht.”
How could she know where little Friedrich was? Most likely, she thought as a sob snagged in her throat, the babe was somewhere within the burned wreckage or the river depths.
The woman howled and reeled toward another female of childbearing age.
Cora longed to run to her room and hide beneath the bedcovers. Instead, she lifted the sheet from the face of the first body and bit her knuckle. The teenage boy’s mouth was contorted in agony, his fingers curled as if he were still clawing for the water’s surface. She dropped the cloth and moved on to three children and a woman, all with auburn hair and freckles. Surely the father had heard the news by now and was frantically searching for them.
Stop, she warned herself, or she would fall apart and fail at her task. Clenching her teeth, she peeked under the next sheet and backed into the surf, away from a mother, her baby still clutched to her breast.
Unnaturally warm water, thick with debris, sloshed against Cora’s calves. She shoved aside a charred plank and turned away from the pair. The heat rolling off the Slocum stung her cheeks and dried her tears. Beyond the shallows, men aboard a hodgepodge armada were collecting the floating bodies, adding to the number of faces she’d have to scrutinize.
No, she couldn’t complete this assignment. The sorrow would drown her.
But if she quit, Dr. Gettler might abandon the wounded to search for his family. And then others might die because of her. Inhaling deeply, she once again faced the rows of dead.
Under Kate’s direction, volunteers had begun moving the bodies to the lawn in front of the main hospital. To avoid seeing any face twice, she decided to restart her search with the farthest row on the higher ground. Climbing over the seawall, she reeled at the lines of tiny corpses.
“You sh-sh-shouldn’t be out here,” nurse Puetz called to Cora as she trudged past with a tower of blankets that dwarfed her petite frame.
“Dr. Gettler wants me to find his family.”
“Oh, dear God.” The nurse handed the topmost to a shirtless, portly man, who was staring into the sun and singing a German hymn in a deep baritone. “I’ll keep an eye out.”
Cora nodded and skirted the dead to reach her starting point. She passed a mother, hugging her howling baby girl to the side of her body that wasn’t burned. “Mein Adella.” she said with a sob, “Mein süße Adella.”
A bedraggled man, wearing the white collar of the church, reached the mother and patted her head. “Your husband, he’s alive. Stay here. I’ll tell him where you are.”
The woman cried harder. “Vielen Danken, Reverend Haas.”
“God is with us, even now.” His hand slipped from her brow, and he wandered away.
Maybe she would happen upon Rolene and Ulrich in the same condition, Cora told herself and inspected the first prostrate figure on the grass—a girl close to her own age. Quickly, she moved on, passing two full-size bodies in britches and a plump, shrouded woman, without lifting their coverings. Three fewer faces to haunt her dreams. She moved on to an outline that looked about three years old.
Saying a quick prayer, she flipped back the sheet. With blondish hair and chubby cheeks, the dead boy looked cherubic. His expression was calm, almost smiling, like he’d just seen an angel. Maybe he had. His eyes were shut; they could be blue.
One of his hands was fisted. Cora struggled to uncurl his fingers.
In his palm was a well-worn engineer figurine, cheaply made. She tipped backward with relief. From Dr. Gettler’s stories, she knew Ulrich’s train set was a finely crafted Märklin, imported from Germany.
But this boy was someone’s son. She positioned his hands on his abdomen and acknowledged his death with a moment of silence. Continuing on, she passed three primary- school-age children; a teenage boy and girl who might have been in love; a gangly man; and an infant, fully covered by a scrap of cloth meant to veil only a face. Tears burned at the corners of her eyes.
Carrying a lifeless man in a Sunday suit, O’Toole staggered past her on the far side of the row. His face as white as the corpse’s, he didn’t notice her, nor did she call out to him. Later they would try to find the words.
She bent over another woman, this one slimmer, and lifted the cloth. Her tousled hair was corn-silk blond. On her neck, beneath her right ear, was a birthmark. If this were Rolene, wouldn’t the doctor have included such a distinguishing feature in his description? Only if he’d been of sound mind.
The woman’s lips were blue and he
r skin a waxy white, but still she looked beautiful, with a straight nose and dainty, curled lashes on her closed lids. Cora had seen this heart-shaped face before when picturing the doctor with his Liebchen. She prayed the eyes would prove her wrong. With an unsure hand, she raised one lid, glimpsed pale blue, and dropped to her knees.
Still, there was no definitive proof. Cora surveyed the woman’s crumpled skirt and dress shirt and stopped at her wedding band. It might be engraved. If not, she could show it to the doctor. But if someone saw her removing it, he might assume she was a thief and summon one of the many policemen now present. She would be carted from the island and imprisoned. Eventually, they would release her. But along the way, how many would fall ill because of her?
An escape wouldn’t require a pair of handcuffs: with so many good-size boats strung along the shore, she could act like a departing volunteer.
Preoccupied, the doctor wouldn’t notice her slip away. She would have to discard her cloak, but she could huddle in a corner of one of the larger vessels and breathe into her hand. Once in Gotham, she would carefully make her way to Bellevue Hospital, home to Carnegie Laboratory. The first microbiology lab in the country, it housed the best microscopes and the brightest minds. Surely, they could cure her.
But if she fled, and the dead woman before her was Rolene, and one of the many small bodies she hadn’t yet checked was Ulrich, Dr. Gettler would be left with nothing. Although she hated this exile, she didn’t fault him for keeping her here. He was a good man. The patients and nurses loved him. And she loved him, the way she might have adored a father.
On the other hand, his loss shouldn’t matter more than her own. He’d gotten the chance to experience love, whereas she hadn’t, nor would she as long as she remained confined to this facility. Conflict bubbled up from her stomach, an organ he’d sliced and stitched three times already and would surely probe again. If she stayed.
The Vines Page 8