Unsure what to do, she swayed from side to side on her knees. Inexplicably, Cora felt tied to this woman. Her spirit seemed as present as Maeve’s right after her body had slackened. If the blonde were Rolene, Cora would stay at Riverside with the doctor, she decided, so that he would not be alone in his grief. For all he’d done for her, she owed him that. Otherwise, she would make for the nearest vessel that looked ready to cast off.
Before her courage could abandon her, she checked to see that no one was watching and wrenched the ring off the already bloated finger.
On the inner side, glistening in the sunlight, were two initials: O & R.
The wedding band fell, and she buried her face in the grass, its smell too sharp even through the cotton wrap. Too alive. She sat up and pressed the back of her hand against her nose. First Ingrid, now Rolene, and possibly Ulrich, too. How could any man bear such loss in one day? Fighting off the urge to flee this scene, she found the ring and smoothed out Rolene’s skirt, stiffened by the salt left behind after the water had evaporated.
“Steh auf und geh weg. I need to see.”
She tensed but neither stood up nor went away, as he’d commanded. Dr. Gettler’s gruff voice had sounded distant. Without his full hospital garb, he couldn’t approach the woman, whom he must suspect was his wife, until Cora had moved.
She shifted to block Rolene from his view.
“Your germs. You’ll kill her.”
The words sliced through Cora, and she scrambled to her feet. These rows consisted of only the dead; Dr. Gettler had to be in denial. Cora’s courage fled, and she edged away.
The wedding band, laced with her pathogens, felt like a branding iron, burning her palm. She dropped it into her shoe. Somehow, she would find a way to return it, sterilized.
Dropping his crumpled boater hat, which he must have recovered from the beach, he rushed past her and crouched before his wife.
Tears streaming down her face, Cora braced for the guttural wailing that had followed Ingrid’s death.
None came.
She gingerly stepped around two bodies so she could better see his face.
He’d ripped off his glasses. His eyes were squeezed shut, and his mouth was moving.
Cora lowered the cloth wrapped around her head. Still, she couldn’t hear him clearly.
He kissed his wife on the lips and grasped her hand.
Now the ring in Cora’s boot did seem stolen.
“Mutti!” a towheaded boy yelled as he ran toward them.
She inhaled sharply and looked at Dr. Gettler, who didn’t appear to have heard the child’s cries.
Just before reaching the doctor, the boy cut across the line of corpses that included Rolene, as well as the next row, and plowed into Cora.
She stumbled backward, and the sun’s warmth hit the top of her damp head as her hood fell.
He wrapped his chubby arms around her leg and buried his tear-streaked, grimy face against her cloak. “Mutti, Mutti.”
Without thinking—only feeling the crushing grief of the tragedy around her—she rubbed his back, and he pressed himself tighter against her. His hand found the bottom of her robe, and he reached under the fabric and prodded her knee. Cora straightened but didn’t brush him away. It had been more than two years since she’d last received any affection, and this boy needed her. He began stroking her skin. She closed her eyes and allowed his self-soothing to calm her, too. As his whimpering faded, the knots in her muscles unraveled.
This warmth: she wanted it to extend into forever. Focusing on his soft touch, she blocked out everything around them, and her breathing fell into rhythm with his. Her eyes closed, she pretended this child was her own, and she gave him the comfort that only a mother could.
You fool, her subconscious chided.
She jerked her face away from his.
At this very moment, her germs might be traveling down his airway. She tightened the wrap that hung around her neck and pulled the hood over her head. Holding her breath, she shifted to pry him off her leg and gasped at his bare, blistered shoulder. He was the final child she’d saved.
Cora wobbled from the fatigue that accompanied the shocking realization. If she’d been stronger, or more determined, his mother would still be alive. She tried detaching the boy from her leg, but his grip tightened, and he began chanting “Mutti.”
Exhaustion was beginning to overwhelm her. She wavered, and the grisly scene around her dimmed. If it weren’t for the child clinging to her, she would allow herself to collapse.
“Wie heißt du?” What’s your name?
“Em-em-Emmett.” He wiped his runny nose with his hand.
She brushed back his hair, thick with sand. “Hast du Hunger?” With all the chaos, no one would notice her sneaking into the kitchen. “Möchtest du einen Apfel und Milch?”
“Nein, Mutti,” he said, seemingly unaffected by her shroud.
He was calling her mother. Although he was clearly in shock, a warm current still passed through Cora. She knelt and hugged him. “It’s going to be okay.”
He looked at her with his big brown eyes and nodded, though she doubted he understood English. She wondered if the rest of his family had been aboard the ship. If not, they were probably in Kleindeutschland, frantically searching for the pair among the returning survivors. If all his kin had died in the tragedy, maybe he could stay here with her.
She could find a way to mother him from a distance. Just until Dr. Gettler had his breakthrough. The two of them would be a family.
She knelt before him. “If we can’t find your Vater, I’ll take care of you. I promise.”
“Mutti, ich habe deinen Kasten.” From his pocket, Emmett pulled a small, nickel-plated box, its lid engraved with a cross, and handed it to her with a shy smile.
He’d been through so much; she didn’t have the heart to tell him it didn’t belong to her. “Du bist ein guter Junge,” she praised him.
Cora tried opening the box and noticed a keyhole. “Hast du das Schlüssel?”
“Im Wasser.” He sniffled and pointed at the river, where the key must have been lost during their struggle.
She shut her eyes and brought him closer. “That’s okay.”
Suddenly the boy flew upward from her grasp, blocking the sun; then he was gone.
Baffled, she shielded her eyes from the glare.
Already five yards away, Dr. Gettler was struggling to hold the writhing boy at arm’s length. He, too, must have thought at first that the child was Ulrich.
“Mutti!” the boy wailed.
She ran toward them. “Give him back! It’s okay, Emmett, I’m coming.”
“Dummkopf,” Dr. Gettler said so harshly that Emmett stopped struggling.
The admonishment stilled her, too.
“Haven’t we lost enough today? This boy now must be isolated.” Still holding Emmett, he set out toward the main hospital building, then turned on his heel. “What were you doing with him?” His tone contained a steel edge she’d never heard before.
“Es tut mir leid,” she said, hoping the apology sounded more convincing in his native tongue. “He thought I was his mother, and I—”
He laughed cruelly. “Mother? You’ll never be this boy’s mother, or any other child’s.” Holding the whimpering Emmett in outstretched arms, he strode across the corpse-lined lawn.
Emmett cried and reached for her.
She wanted to rush after them, rip the boy away, and pummel the doctor with her fists.
But he was right. Within a week or two, some of those she’d saved this morning might be sent back here.
Clutching the small box, Cora prayed that she hadn’t just infected the boy.
A man, dragging his injured leg as he perused the dead, stopped and stared at her, reminding her that the unfathomable tragedy around her hadn’t obscured t
he meaning of her shroud. To these outsiders also, she was nothing more than an untouchable outcast.
Dr. Gettler disappeared into the hospital with Emmett, and she realized he hadn’t asked her to continue the search for his one remaining family member.
A part of her wished Ulrich were dead, so that the doctor would be as lonely as she was.
Ashamed of the thought, she traced the crucifix etched on the box and decided she’d been meant to receive this trinket. As a reminder of her promise.
She turned toward the General Slocum. The popping and hissing of the fire had slackened. All that remained of the steamship in the shallows was its blackened skeleton. She should have slipped aboard one of the rescue boats an hour ago. Maybe she still could. Until dark, the salvage crews would be working to collect the dead bobbing in the waves.
“It’s a quarter past one,” the doctor said from behind her, startling her.
Based on his muffled voice and the swishing of fabric, she knew he’d donned a Mother Hubbard gown.
Pretending she hadn’t heard him, she watched one of the crews use a grappling hook to retrieve a body. Within her, a fire burned hotter than the one she’d just witnessed.
“How can you be thinking of your research, with your son still missing?” She motioned toward the devastation.
“Presumably, he’s at the river bottom, considering his mother and sister drowned. If I’d been with them on that steamship, instead of here, studying you, I would have gotten them into a lifeboat. Or persuaded the captain to beach her earlier.” He clenched his fists.
“I must give meaning to their deaths. It’s time for your weekly blood draw,” he said, pointing toward his laboratory within the main hospital building.
Cora considered resisting, but the authorities would believe the doctor over the word of a leper. Furious, she strode toward the building.
Ten paces behind her, he followed, prattling about the latest theories in microbiology as if he hadn’t suffered unspeakable loss and didn’t have a three-year-old son unaccounted for.
His words faded away. She thought of the ring beneath her heel, disrupting her stride, and how gratifying it would feel to hurl it into the East River.
One Month Later
July 1904
s the scalpel punctured the tender skin an inch above the navel, Cora shut her eyes and tried to picture her mamaí’s indigo eyes and wispy red curls. Despite the numbing effect of the eucaine, she could feel Dr. Gettler slicing a small incision to access her pancreas. How she longed to scream, but she didn’t dare startle the doctor while he held a knife in her gut. The sooner he determined where the germs resided, which might happen with this tissue sample, the sooner he could remove them so she could return home.
The dissection stopped.
“Your self-control is impressive,” he said, exchanging the instrument for a pair of forceps. “Under the new purview of my research, the specimen requirements will be greater. My success will depend as much on your resilience as my scientific acumen.”
Alarmed, Cora lifted her head, igniting a surge of pain in her abdomen. “Purview?”
“It means scope.” He began probing her insides.
She bit down on a rag to keep from howling. Delirious from the torture, Cora couldn’t comprehend his words. All she understood was fear.
“The organ contains no visible abnormalities, but the microscope may reveal otherwise,” he announced through his surgical mask even though he had no medical staff assisting him. Despite the midnight hour, he’d even locked the door.
Shaking from physical and mental fatigue, she watched him prepare a series of slides, each containing a shaving of tissue that reminded her of liverwurst. “What new scope?” The tragedy had hardened Otto so fast and firmly that Cora was still reeling from the change.
“Now the sutures,” the doctor said to himself as he began sewing her up.
With panic welling within her faster than her tears could fall, Cora held still.
He can’t keep doing this to me, she thought, even though she knew he could and would. His word ruled the hospital, whereas she was a mere woman, and worse: just another indigent—and a “demented” one at that. Two days ago, she’d tried calling out to one of the other resident physicians for help. He’d ignored her. Later that night, Dr. Gettler had informed her that he’d added a list of psychoses to her case file; no one at Riverside would believe her now.
He knotted the thread. “Before, I was thinking too small. The potential hidden within your blood corpuscles is enormous.”
From his tray, he selected a roll of gauze. “Almost done.” He smiled for the first time since she’d entered the room.
“This isn’t right.” Her boldness surprised her, yet she continued, “I won’t be used for some grand experiment. I’m begging you. Let me go home.”
He lifted her torso to wrap her midsection. “Du bist zu Hause.” You are at home.
“No, my home is 3C, 21 West Ninth Street. My mother’s probably returning from work right now. I miss her.” She tried to strengthen her appeal with eye contact, but he’d turned to his equipment, and the hood of his Mother Hubbard gown blocked his face.
“Please,” she said, not hiding her desperation. “My mam could visit me here. I need her.”
“You think I don’t need my Rolene? And Ingrid?” He shifted so his back was to her, and began immersing his instruments in an alcohol bath. The vague outline formed by his protective gear reminded her of a statue only partially hewn from rough rock.
“Every night,” he said so softly that Cora couldn’t tell if he were speaking to her or himself, “my hand reaches for meiner Liebchen and falls through the air. She’s gone. No matter how hard I pray or wish or work, nothing will bring her back. Or mein kleines Mäuschen.”
His shoulders began shaking, and Cora knew he was crying. It was the first time she’d seen him break down since he’d left his dead daughter’s side. For the past month, he’d seemed as lifeless as the charred remains of the Slocum, which had drifted toward the Bronx shore.
Whenever she thought back to the tragedy, she couldn’t smother her inferno of what ifs. What if the fire hadn’t started in the lamp room and the lifeboats hadn’t been wired to the decks? And the Knickerbocker Steamship Company had replaced its life preservers before their cork had rotted to dust? What if Captain William Van Schaick, now standing trial, had run the ship aground right away instead of charging upriver into a headwind? What if I’d slipped off the island in one of those rescue boats? Cora often wondered.
If that day had unfolded differently, in any one of myriad ways, the death count wouldn’t have reached a staggering 1,021, mostly women and children. Rolene and Ingrid might still be alive. And, as a result, Dr. Gettler would not have been transformed by grief.
Tears tickled her cheeks. Unsure for whom they’d been shed—his family or hers—she sniffled.
The doctor twitched at the noise. With his back still to her, he tore off his gloves and screamed at the ceiling, “How could you let this happen?”
This time Cora knew he wasn’t addressing her.
Weeping, he shoved the cart, dropped to his knees, and curled forward to bury his face in his hands.
His coldness since the tragedy suddenly forgiven, she fought the urge to embrace him. Lord knows, we both need it, she thought, but her pests would show no respect for his loss.
So instead, she remained on the examining table, his howls echoing in her empty heart.
At last, he quieted, though he didn’t rise.
“Your son,” she said. “You still have him, and he needs you.”
Over the past month, the doctor had spent every night at Riverside while a Kindermädchen looked after Ulrich.
“He’s probably awake right now, crying for his Vati in the dark. Tomorrow, go to him.”
Dr. Gettler slid his h
ands into a fresh pair of gloves and adjusted his surgical mask. “I can’t.” His eyes, the only part of him exposed, showed no emotion. “He wants his mother to comfort him, not me. I can’t give him that, and he looks so much like her. It’s too much to bear.”
Cora closed her eyes now and pictured the boy’s ash-stained face streaked with tears.
Shortly after the Slocum had stopped smoldering, nurse Puetz had found him wandering on the beach. She’d brought the distressed child to Dr. Gettler’s lab, where he’d been drawing Cora’s blood. Ulrich did have Rolene’s delicate, straight nose, high cheekbones, and curls in the blond hair around his crown.
“Vati!” he’d called, and Otto jumped to his feet in delighted surprise.
Shocked that the boy had survived, Cora had sat up suddenly, and the needle within her arm twisted free, spraying blood onto her and the doctor.
“Ulrich, stay back,” he’d yelled, “I’ll come to you in a moment. Nurse Puetz, don’t let him near me.” He rushed to the far side of the lab and stripped off the contaminated gown.
The relieved look on the toddler’s face had turned to horror at the sight of his father, covered in blood. “Ich will Mutti.” I want Mom.
As he was stepping out of the pile of fabric, Dr. Gettler’s body turned rigid. All that moved was his Adam’s apple as he presumably attempted to swallow the pain of their joint loss.
“I’m here,” he said, shaking himself out of his stupor. “I’ve got you.” He lunged toward his son but pivoted to the sink so he could scrub his hands.
“Nein,” Ulrich whimpered. “Ich will dich nicht (I don’t want you). Mutti.” His desperate gaze swept the room as if Rolene might be hiding beside one of the equipment cabinets.
Trembling, Dr. Gettler leaned against the counter and covered his face with his hands, apparently having forgotten he’d intended to wash them. “Nurse Puetz,” he said without looking up, “take him to a private room and have Dr. Fisher thoroughly examine him.”
Silently, Nurse Puetz ushered the boy out of the room.
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