Fever: A Novel

by Mary Beth Keane

  “Dr. Baker said—”

  “Dr. Baker isn’t in charge here. She shouldn’t have made promises.”

  Mary felt his words like a fist to her gut. She leaned out the window as far as she could. “Hello!” she cried at the street below. She waved her arms so someone might see her. She shouted again but her voice was choked, and Dr. Soper had his arm around her waist. “Help me,” she said to the other women as Soper and the guard dragged her across the room, into the hall, and then pushed her ahead of them to a private room farther down the corridor, where Dr. Soper continued to brace her from behind, and a nurse struggled to open a small vial and pass it under Mary’s nose.

  “I don’t know why you always insist on making a scene, Miss Mallon,” Soper muttered in her ear as they struggled. She could feel his breath on her neck, the sharp point of his chin where it pushed into her scalp.

  “Relax,” the nurse whispered. “Just relax.”

  TWO

  Just as Dr. Baker had warned, after two weeks of testing at the Willard Parker Hospital, Dr. Soper told Mary that since she would not agree to have her gallbladder removed, the Department of Health had no choice but to transfer her to North Brother Island. There were facilities on the island where researchers could continue testing, “in a calmer, more focused atmosphere.” She could notify her friends and family when she arrived on the island, but not before. Soper watched her every chance he got, and when he turned away Mary felt space to breathe for a moment, until he turned back. She would not beg—they had enough power over her already. Soper had forbidden anyone at Willard Parker to give her a means to contact her friends—no more promises to post messages—and Mary clung to her composure by reminding herself that Alfred must have seen the newspaper articles. A night nurse had shown Mary the article that was in the Sun, and said there were others; her capture was mentioned in almost every major paper. The papers didn’t have her real name—they referred to her only as the Germ Woman—but Alfred would figure it out. It was possible, she thought, that he’d already tried to come to her. That he’d shown up at the hospital demanding to see her, but had been turned away.

  “Isn’t that a Consumption island?” Mary asked.

  “Riverside is a Tuberculosis hospital, yes. But they’ve seen Typhoid, too. Diptheria. Measles. Everything.”

  Mary shivered. “How long?” she asked.

  “A few weeks,” Dr. Soper said. Mary told herself that she could put up with anything for a few weeks. She’d let them test her and when they got whatever it was they needed from her, the ordeal would be over, and she’d never have to see Soper again.

  • • •

  From the first hour of her arrival, North Brother Island seemed to Mary too flimsy for the roiling East River. It was as if a jagged corner of Manhattan had broken off and floated away before getting caught in the prehistoric rock that lurked just below the surface of the water. North Brother was a little skip of land, an oversized raft made of dirt and grass where the dying went to wait their turn. It was located just above Hell Gate, that point in the East River where half a dozen minor streams met head-on before rushing out to sea, and only a fool would dip her toe in the water there. The entirety of North Brother would barely be big enough for a respectable estate if it were anywhere but New York, but in New York, or at least in Manhattan, where even the very rich live within arm’s length of their neighbors, it was a rarity: a stretch of space that was quiet, and private, and where everyone there was meant to be there, adult men and women whose names appeared on the roster of approved persons the ferryman kept under the bench seat of his small vessel, protected from the spray.

  There were no automobiles on North Brother, only a single horse, and that one old and mangy, retired from pulling a sanitation cart and donated to science. During the day, there were always a few bicycles leaning against the western gable of the hospital, the side closest to the ferry that carried the nurses and doctors back and forth from 138th Street in the Bronx, but no one ever used those bicycles to pedal around the island, and seeing them there, leaning haphazardly against the redbrick wall or lying on their sides on the grass, Mary needed no further proof that she’d been removed from the city. If she were in the city, in the real city, and not this in-between place, those bicycles would be gone inside an hour, liberated from their spots and cycled away by Lower East Side teenagers. There were few urban sounds on North Brother. No store shutters creaking open in the morning, clanging closed at night. No bells, no rumble of the El overhead, no peddlers hawking their wares, no children hopping balls, no old women shouting from upper-story windows. In their place were the sounds of tree frogs, birds, the gardener’s clippers slicing the hedges into neat squares, and everywhere, always, the sound of water lapping the shore. Everything, everyone, stayed put, at least until evening came, when the doctors hustled out to the pier to make the awkward step down into the ferry, and the night shift leaned into the slight incline of the walking path and through the hospital’s wide front door. The evening croak of a heron on the island’s eastern shore sounded to Mary like a taunt, and chilled her.

  Sixteen buildings anchored North Brother, ranging in size from the main building of Riverside Hospital to the gardener’s toolshed. There was also the morgue, the chapel, the physical plant, the coal house, the doctors’ cottages, the nurses’ residences, the X-ray building, the greenhouse, and so on. The circumference of the entire island could be walked in less than three-quarters of an hour, and from any point on North Brother, unless there was a building or a tree blocking the view, one could look back and see upper Manhattan, and north of that, the invisible seam where Manhattan met the Bronx. When it rained, the current that charged over the pebbles and jagged stones of shore reminded Mary of a pack of galloping horses steaming toward the sea.

  • • •

  There were no Typhoid patients at Riverside on the day she arrived, so they assigned her a bed in the main Tuberculosis ward. A nurse provided her with paper and envelopes, a pen with a reservoir of ink. She wrote to Alfred what, by then, surely, he already knew, but unlike the letter she’d drafted in her mind when she was still at Willard Parker, the first letter from North Brother was matter-of-fact. No patient at Riverside Hospital was permitted to have visitors, so she counseled patience, told him it might help to pretend she’d gotten a situation too far away for her to visit—Maine, perhaps, or Massachusetts—and before he knew it she’d be home. She was angry, but had learned that anger wouldn’t get her far. “So I may not see you until Memorial Day,” she wrote. Worst-case scenario, she thought. Two whole months should be plenty of time. He’d had a difficult stretch over the winter, not working, spending far too much time at Nation’s Pub, but she decided not to mention any of that. “Remember the rent if you haven’t already.”

  After listening to the hollow coughs from her fellow patients for a few days, Mary learned to predict the end: when a rattle in the chest sounded like a penny thrown into a very deep well that had gone dry. She observed that the consumptives looked like relatives: the same pall, the same dark rings under the eyes. They would stare at Mary and wonder what she was doing there. At night, she slept with the sheet over her face in case she might breathe in their disease, but after a week she stopped worrying. During the day, she couldn’t stop herself from flaunting her health, walking back and forth by the windows, asking the nurses if she could be of assistance. On sunny afternoons she took a book from the hospital library and read in the courtyard. On less temperate days she jotted down ideas for recipes so as not to lose her sense of purpose. She made sure to get outside every day, even if it was just for a few minutes, and when she got back to her cot and nodded to her neighbors, she felt the pink glow in her cheeks, the rise and fall of her chest, the power in her lungs. The confusion on their faces confirmed what she already knew: a mistake. A terrible error had been made, but would soon be corrected.

  She submitted to their tests without protest and hoped that the sooner they collected all the informatio
n they needed, the faster they would let her go. She had not seen Dr. Soper since the first day she arrived on North Brother, and when she asked about it, Dr. Albertson told her that she likely wouldn’t be seeing much of Dr. Soper anymore. He might check in on her now and again, and of course her test results would be shared with him, but his part in her case was likely over. This tiny piece of good news lifted her spirits for a day.

  The doctors on North Brother seemed even more greedy than those at Willard Parker to look at her body. They wanted her hands, her belly, her breasts, her hips; they wanted every wet thing that came out of her, top to bottom—but when they came to her face their eyes flicked away. Some of her interrogators weren’t doctors who had patients but different types of medical men, like Soper, who called himself an engineer but seemed to know diseases. Some of them only studied things and took notes. The questions had changed since Willard Parker. There, they wanted to know about every fever she’d ever had. Had she ever had a rash on her bosom? Now they demanded to know when she knew. You’re an intelligent woman, they said. Several of your employers said you read novels when you had time off. You must have known. How can you ask us to believe you didn’t know?

  Mary tried to think of images that would block out the questions—any memory at all that would take her away from North Brother. But more often than not, thinking of Alfred and her friends made her less patient with their questions, more frantic to get home. She paced. She counted to one hundred, and when she was finished, she counted again. She closed her eyes, held her hands to her ears, and still, each question was a dripping tap, a loose shingle in the wind, a fly buzzing by her ear that she could never slap away.

  One morning, at the end of her second week on North Brother, she looked out from a fourth-floor window to see if she might spot the mail sack being transferred from the ferry and noticed a trio of men framing a small wood structure a short distance away. As soon as she saw it she knew it had something to do with her, and wanted to disown it immediately. Why go to the trouble of building something for a person who will be let go in a few weeks? No, it must be for some other purpose.

  “Pardon me,” she said to a passing nurse, and pointed out the window. “Do you know what they’re building?”

  “It’s your cottage,” the nurse looked confused. “Didn’t they tell you?”

  “Tell me what?”

  “You’ll be transferred there once it’s complete. You won’t have to be here with the TB patients anymore.” She smiled gently at Mary as if this might be received as good news. Mary felt as if she’d waded into a lake of cold water and just felt the bottom drop away.

  “Why? If they’re going to let me go soon?”

  “Did they say that? That they’re going to let you go?”

  “Yes, they did,” Mary said quietly as she felt her throat constrict and her body begin to tremble. She stumbled back to her cot and sat at the edge. She calculated back to the day they took her from the Bowen residence—nearly a month. How much more testing did they need to do? She got out a sheet of paper and again wrote to Alfred.

  Dear Alfred,

  In case you sent a letter in response to my last I wanted to let you know that I haven’t received it. I don’t trust anyone here and maybe you sent it but they didn’t give it to me. They are building a room for me separate from the hospital—just a hundred yards or so away. I don’t know why they would go to that trouble if they’re going to let me go soon. Will you ask around and see if anyone knows of a lawyer who might help? I hope you are getting on fine. I keep thinking that the last time I saw your face we were arguing and it doesn’t sit right that I haven’t heard from you since then. Try again to send a letter, Alfred. It will put my mind at ease.

  Love,

  Mary

  She asked a nurse to post the letter immediately, and one week later, she got a response.

  Dear Mary,

  I was just sending a response to your first letter when I got your second. I saw the article in the paper and knew the Germ Woman was you since you were supposed to return for the weekend that Saturday night and never did. And also because of them mentioning Oyster Bay. I went up to the Bowens and Frank told me everything. I went straight to Willard Parker but a nurse there told me you’d already been moved to North Brother.

  Tell me what I can do. I know things were not so good when we last saw each other but I’m feeling better now, no late nights, and I met a Polish man who has a connection in the water tunnels. We have to think about how to get you off that island. Billy Costello has a rowboat but said the waters around North Brother are too rough and no sane person would risk it. I didn’t believe him at first and went over to the East Side fishery but the fishmongers there all said the same thing. What do they want with you? If they really think you have Typhoid couldn’t they treat you at Willard Parker? Or St. Luke’s?

  I’m going to ask around to see who knows a lawyer. Don’t worry.

  Alfred

  Mary read the letter three times before folding it and placing it carefully on her bedside table. It was the longest letter she’d ever gotten from him in the nearly twenty-two years that she’d known him, and thinking of him sitting down to write it made her more eager to be back home. The room they were building for her had four walls now, a roof, a door, and needed only shingles and a window. Dr. Anderson said she’d be moved in a matter of days. Alfred hadn’t mentioned anything about how he was getting by without her, whether he paid the rent for April, but he knew where she kept the spare cash in their rooms, and maybe that water-tunnel job would be a real lead, maybe he’d love it, maybe he’d find someone who knew exactly how to help her and she’d be back home by summer.

  Sometimes they called it a cabin. Sometimes a cottage. A bungalow. A hut. A room. A shack. Whatever it was, they moved her there in April 1907. It was a simple ten-by-twelve-foot structure with a two-burner gas range, a kettle, a sink with running water. They gave her a small box of tea, a bowl of sugar, two teacups. She was not allowed to cook, but prepared food would be delivered from the hospital cafeteria three times a day. To pass the time between visits from medical personnel, Mary was told that she could sew for the hospital, or if she had a knack for crochet, they would provide needles and yarn. She could read. She could explore the island. Mary took all of this information blankly, and as she looked around her new home for the first time, she felt disoriented.

  “And linens!” A petite nurse bustled around the small space, showing Mary a wicker basket that held fresh sheets, a towel, a washcloth. “Leave them outside your door when they need to be laundered.”

  “How long?” Mary asked. How many times can a person ask the same question?

  “In the main building we wash them once a week, so I’d say the same for you.”

  “That’s not what I . . .” Mary sighed, and sat on the edge of the cot. “Will you leave me, please?”

  “Almost done.” The nurse lined up a dozen glass canisters on the counter.

  When she finally left, and Mary was alone for the first time since they’d captured her, she felt as if she’d left a crowded room and now approached that same room from a different door. She saw herself from a distance: the walls of her hut, the river just beyond, the chuffing of trains and trolleys crisscrossing Manhattan and the Bronx, so close she could hear the whistles. They are not letting me go. She made herself say it aloud. She’d been watching for the mail sack every day, hoping for a letter from Alfred to tell her that he’d found a lawyer, that help was coming, but maybe he already knew that they’d never let her go. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t written again: because he hadn’t known what to say. Unlike other times in her life, when she moved from laundress to cook, or when she moved in with Alfred without a single promise, North Brother felt like a place that was off the map entirely, no footprints left behind for her friends to follow and figure out where she’d gone. Sure, some knew. Those who were there for the arrest, those who helped hide her for all those hours only to be rewarded with a sce
ne they’d talk about for the rest of their lives: a grown woman kicking, cursing, punching, dragged bodily into a police wagon. And there were the articles in the papers, but none of those said how she felt, what she thought. She was certain that word of her arrest had spread among the other cooks and laundresses and gardeners of Manhattan, but like the fast-moving currents that run deep in the ocean without disturbing the surface of the water, Mary was also certain that there were plenty who did not know. It was possible that after her arrest, after their humiliation, the Bowens had never spoken of Mary to anyone but each other. The agency wouldn’t utter a peep for fear of being dropped by other fine homes. The papers would follow her story for a while, but then they would move on, and Mary would still be in her hut, wondering how to get home.

  The next morning, after fitful sleep in her new cot, Mary woke to the sound of an envelope sliding under her door. She recognized Alfred’s writing from across the room. She tore it open and stood beside the window to read it.

  Dear Mary,

  Are you doing all right? Have they said anything more about when you’ll be allowed home? I went up there to see if I could talk the ferryman into bringing me over for a visit but he has his instructions and they are very strict. I offered him money but he wouldn’t take it. I looked across the water to see what it’s like for you out there but it’s hard to tell.