Wolfgang gave Dr. Waters another two days to live, at the most. At forty-five years of age, Dr. Waters was the second oldest doctor at Waverly Hills—five years younger than the chief doctor, Evan Barker—and had been second in command until the disease they were trying to cure had suddenly left him confined to a bed. He’d grown thinner and weaker the past twelve months.
Dr. Waters’s tuberculosis had started in his left lung, quickly spread to the right, and within months it had begun to invade his bones and skin. No amount of fresh air, sunlight, or healthy food had been able to slow the “white death.” His flesh was pale, his skin tight against a defined, hairless skull. Dr. Waters had been bald since his thirtieth birthday. Wolfgang had never even seen a picture of him with hair, so the idea of it was quite foreign to him, but now the lack of hair made him seem that much closer to becoming a corpse like the rest of the bodies that Lincoln sent down the chute.
“Someone there?” Dr. Waters called out.
Wolfgang stepped into the room. “It’s me, Henry.”
“Wolfgang.” The hint of a smile etched across Dr. Waters’s chapped lips. His voice was raspy, strained. His eyes remained closed. “Have a seat.”
Wolfgang sat in a folding chair next to Dr. Waters’s bed and beside a second bed that was vacant for the moment, the sheets tucked against the outline of a pillow, prepped and ready for a patient they had checked in just after sunrise. Wolfgang placed his black bag on the floor between his feet and leaned toward the bed. “How are you feeling, Henry?”
“Like death…taking a shit.”
Wolfgang chuckled. “Of course.”
“Any questions…that aren’t stupid…Wolfgang?”
Wolfgang grinned as he pulled out the request list that Susannah had given him. “Your name is on the list today, Henry. Didn’t know if that was a mistake.”
“No, not a mistake.”
Wolfgang read the request next to Dr. Waters’s name. “Niccolo Paganini.” He laughed. “Caprice Number Twenty-four in A minor.”
“Yes.”
“You are aware that I am not an Italian virtuoso on the violin?”
“Yes. Very aware.”
Wolfgang bent down, unzipped his black bag, and removed the violin that had been jammed inside next to his flute, harmonica, and piccolo. “You know Paganini bested tuberculosis?”
“But not syphilis.”
Wolfgang brought the violin up to his neck and paused as he stared at his friend, whose eyeballs danced beneath closed lids. Three months before Dr. Waters’s diagnosis, Waverly’s only colored doctor moved his family south to Alabama to open his own practice and get away from the Ohio Valley. Dr. Waters had taken over the patients at the colored hospital before he started getting sick. But his illness had left them with only three doctors and six nurses for nearly five hundred patients and a disease with no cure, a disease so contagious that the city treated Waverly’s hillside like a leper colony. Many feared even a glance up toward the trees surrounding the Gothic building, and all lived in fear of what they called the white wind that often swept down the hillside like lava from Mount Vesuvius. Citizens held their breath whenever the white wind blew, and passing cars quickly rolled up their windows.
Their third doctor, a young man named Jefferson Blunt, had left the hillside weeks after Henry was diagnosed, unable to face the pressure. He’d been married for less than a year. His wife was pregnant with their first child, and they couldn’t take the risks of living and working on Waverly’s hillside any longer—neither the patients nor the staff were allowed to leave. Now, until more help arrived, it was just Wolfgang and Dr. Barker covering both hospitals.
Dr. Waters coughed horribly, as if something had rattled loose inside his chest. “Wolfgang… Before I die, please.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Wolfgang sat straight in the chair, craned the violin against his neck, and attempted to do Paganini’s composition justice. Within seconds of the bow gliding across the strings, Henry’s eyes stopped moving, the tension on his face eased, and the chapped smile brightened—a common response to Wolfgang’s musical medicine. Despite the pain of the past months, a look of peace overcame his friend’s face. But as much as Wolfgang loved and admired Dr. Waters, he didn’t have time to play for very long. He had more patients to check on, more charts to go over, three surgeries on which he would assist Dr. Barker, and many more requests on the list.
After four minutes of, in his opinion, stumbling through Paganini, Wolfgang lowered the violin and placed it on his lap.
Dr. Waters breathed in and out through his nose, a cleansing push of air. “Believe in what you’re…doing here…Wolfgang.”
Wolfgang reached out and patted Henry’s arm.
Dr. Waters coughed. “Don’t let Barker—” He coughed again. Blood appeared on the right corner of his lips. Wolfgang wiped the blood with a small towel. Dr. Waters moved on the pillow, turned his head toward Wolfgang, and opened his eyes to mere slits. “Might not have a…cure…for the disease. But you…have a cure…for the soul.” He closed his eyes again.
Wolfgang stood, placed his hand on Henry’s forehead, which was burning with fever, and whispered a quick prayer, remembering how Dr. Henry Waters had touched so many patients over the years with his sense of humor, convinced that laughter, although not scientifically proven, was quite often the best form of medicine they could give. He had a dry wit that charmed the adults and an infectious childlike personality that won over the kids, telling jokes, pulling quarters from behind their ears and handkerchiefs from his nostrils. He would be missed by all. Wolfgang finished his prayer and removed his hand from the older man’s forehead.
“Too bad I won’t be around”—Dr. Waters shifted on the bed, wincing—“to be able to call you…Father. Or to see where this…music takes you.”
Wolfgang smiled. He remembered the flask Susannah had given him. He pulled it from his pocket, placed it in Henry’s right hand, and closed his fingers around it. “Whiskey. From Susannah.”
Dr. Waters sighed. “A beauty. Give her…a kiss for me…will ya?”
“It was Lincoln’s doing,” said Wolfgang. “He’s Prohibition’s worst nightmare. Or maybe Barker’s.”
They shared a laugh, but it wasn’t long-lived.
“Go on, Wolf.” Dr. Waters raised his arm, flask in hand. “Leave me…to my drink. And to the memories…of that…crappy rendition of Paganini.”
Wolfgang placed the violin inside his black bag of instruments, zipped it up, and tapped the lid of the flask. “Try to make that last until tomorrow.”
“Not a chance.”
Wolfgang stepped out to the second-floor solarium and spotted an ambulance coming up the wooded hillside. Electric cones of light propped in front of a dark Buick, flickering between the trees as the car noisily climbed the serpentine road.
The choking throttle of the ambulance engine drew closer.
Another patient was coming.
***
Wolfgang waited in the Grand Lobby, at the corner of the sanatorium where the east and west wings joined on the first floor. Roman-style columns stood like centurions throughout the space, crowned with carved swirls and geometric shapes that matched the deep, reddish-brown woodwork, warming its grandeur with a feeling of home. He watched out the glass doors as the ambulance puttered up the hillside.
“Dr. Pike.”
Wolfgang turned to find Mary Sue Helman parked in her wheelchair. She’d been a patient at Waverly for fifteen months, arriving just a week after her twentieth birthday and four weeks after her wedding to Mr. Frederick Helman.
Wolfgang smiled. “Has someone abandoned you, Mary Sue?”
Mary Sue laughed and tucked strands of her shoulder-length brown hair behind her ears, at ease in her chair. “Abandoned momentarily. Lincoln has run off to the bathroom. I saw you standing here, so I escaped down the hallway.” She appeared he
althier every week, gaining weight at a faster rate than most of the ambulatory patients. Of course, she was eating for two now. Her cheeks were filling out, her brown eyes and dimples prominent in a face that was now soft instead of fragile. She rubbed her belly, nearly eight months with child. “I’m strong enough to make my own trip to the bathrooms now.”
“Marvelous.” Wolfgang extended his hand and she gripped it. “Bedpans be gone.”
Mary Sue rubbed her bulging stomach. “He just kicked.”
“He, huh?”
She nodded. “Feels like a boy.”
Wolfgang looked over his shoulder toward the front doors as the ambulance came to a stop on the rutted road before the sanatorium’s main entrance. He faced Mary Sue again. “I’ll come check on you soon and we’ll talk.”
“I would like that.”
“Until then.” He popped his umbrella open and the skeletal spokes jutted out, the cloth ripped. Water splashed down onto his shoulder.
Mary Sue giggled. Just as Wolfgang was turning away she touched his lab coat, stopping him. “Dr. Pike, could you give this letter to Frederick?”
Wolfgang took the letter from her and tucked it inside his coat.
“He hasn’t responded to my last two letters.”
“I’ll see that he gets it, Mary Sue.”
Lincoln Calponi, an orderly dressed in white pants and a white shirt, hurried into the lobby toward Mary Sue. “There you are. You trying to give me the shake?”
“I couldn’t make it out the door in time.” She pointed at Wolfgang. “He got in my way.”
Lincoln moved behind her wheelchair and eyed Wolfgang suspiciously but playfully. Lincoln and Mary Sue were about the same age, and they got along pretty well, as well as anyone could get along with Lincoln, who was as obnoxious as anyone on staff. He had fair skin with freckles, and sandy hair that was parted but always a tad disheveled, which blended well with his tendencies of hyperactivity. He knew of Mary Sue’s situation, but it didn’t stop him from harmless flirtations with her. Lincoln flirted with all the Waverly women, no matter their age or appearance. He was also one of Wolfgang’s closest friends on the hillside.
“Oh, Lincoln,” said Wolfgang. “Dr. Waters thanks you.”
Lincoln winked and then rolled Mary Sue out of the lobby.
Wolfgang opened the front doors and stepped out into the rain. With his free hand he grabbed a wheelchair next to the doorway and navigated it downhill. The concrete walkway soon gave way to mud, and pushing the empty wheelchair proved difficult with his aching foot, especially while holding on to a torn umbrella.
The ambulance was coated with wet leaves and twigs from the low-hanging boughs that canopied the roadway all the way up the hillside. The driver appeared none too pleased to be out in the rain. He rolled down his window and beckoned Wolfgang with a chubby hand. He produced a clipboard that Wolfgang quickly signed.
“Just one?” Wolfgang asked.
The driver nodded, gazing wide-eyed up at the massive sanatorium. As soon as Wolfgang let go of the pen, the window rapidly squeaked upward. Wolfgang stood ankle-deep in the muck. He grabbed the wheelchair, half kicking it toward the back of the ambulance, where the double doors burst open. A young male attendant stood with one hand propping open the closest door, holding a cloth over his nose and mouth.
Inside the shadows of the Buick was a stern-looking man with red hair sprouting out beneath a bowler hat. Later forties or fifties, Wolfgang guessed, and dressed as if he’d come from an opera. Brown trousers and a frock coat, a white cotton shirt with a club collar. Even through the rain, Wolfgang saw a gold pocket watch tucked inside the pocket of his vest, with a paisley cravat to match.
The man coughed into his right hand. The attendant flinched.
But the man’s eyes looked mischievous, as if he’d summoned up the cough on purpose to put a scare into the young attendant.
Wolfgang stepped closer and shouted over the rain. “Mr. McVain?”
The man nodded.
“Welcome to Waverly Hills.”
McVain didn’t reply. He stood on his own and lowered himself down into the wheelchair as the ambulance attendant quickly slammed the doors. The vehicle kicked into gear with a metallic grunt and pulled away.
Wolfgang held what was left of the umbrella over McVain’s head and put all his weight behind the wheelchair, rolling through the mud.
“I’m sorry for the weather, Mr. McVain. You would think at this time of year it would be snow. Is it Tad? Is that right?”
No response from Tad McVain. He sat with his hands on his thighs, his fingers spread. Wolfgang stared. The man had five fingers on his right hand, but two on his left; only the pinkie and thumb remained.
Then the wind grabbed the umbrella from Wolfgang’s grip and sailed it about ten yards away. The rain tapped against McVain’s hard felt hat, dripping from the crown. Still he said nothing. He just looked upward at the massive Gothic building before them.
“Don’t worry. You’ll receive top-notch care here, Mr. McVain. I assure you.” Wolfgang tilted the chair back slightly and bent to McVain’s right shoulder. “By the way, my name is Wolfgang Pike. I’m a doctor here. I’m also in training to be a Catholic priest. You can call me Doctor, or some here already call me—”
McVain reached up, gripped the lapels of Wolfgang’s lab coat, and pushed him back so forcefully that Wolfgang lost his balance and fell into the mud.
Maverly must have been watching from her rooftop window, because Wolfgang heard her screams begin again. “Maverly at Waverly,” she shouted from above. “Maverly at Waverly. Maverly says welcome to Waverly.”
Dr. Wolfgang Pike sat in the mud, rain pounding his head and shoulders, watching as the newest patient at Waverly Hills rolled himself into the sanatorium.
Chapter 2
Nestled among the trees, forty yards down the hillside from the main sanatorium, Wolfgang’s cottage crackled with the cold, for the January air stubbornly refused to stay outside. It was two in the morning, and despite the fire he’d started across the room hours ago, he still felt chilled. Of course he also blamed the rain from two days ago—working that entire day in wet, muddy clothes after the new patient McVain had pushed him down. A cold front had followed behind the rainstorm. Wolfgang hadn’t felt true warmth since, even in dry clothes.
A cold draft hovered around his ankles as his feet pressed the piano’s pedals. He wanted to play faster to keep warm, but faster always turned sloppy. By the number of crumpled pages on the floor beside his bed, it could be concluded that he’d been playing too fast for some time now.
He blew into his hands, rubbed them together, then touched his fingertips to the keys again. He continued warming up with Mozart’s piano sonata in C minor. After a few minutes he stopped. The candle flame atop his piano flickered and settled. A fresh red rose stood inside a white vase next to the candle. He looked to it for inspiration, closed his eyes, and imagined the low humming of a trio of violins. The harmony brought a smile to his face. And then, ever so softly, the clarinet eased in, rising above…
He opened his eyes at the sound of muffled laughter. Footsteps on dead leaves. Someone coughed. His fingers eased from the piano keys as a male voice called out.
“Nigger lover. The devil pisses on your pope!”
A brick crashed through the window, sending shards of glass to the wood floor. The attack sent him reeling back from the bench as cold air whistled through the broken window.
Someone coughed again, and then another shout: “Catholic heathen!”
Wolfgang curled up and covered his head with his hands, expecting another brick to come flying through the broken window, or something worse. When he finally stood up, he saw two dark silhouettes disappear into the woods, their footsteps fading with their laughter.
“Fools.”
He leaned with both hands on the w
indowsill for a moment, staring out, daring them to come back. Glass covered the sill. He looked down—his right hand was bleeding.
A slip of paper protruded from one of the three holes in the brick lying on the floor. His fingers shook as he unfolded it. GO TO HELL, PRIEST, it read in dark block letters. Fools. He crumpled it and tossed it toward the wastebasket, which was already overflowing with pages. Not yet even a priest.
Of course it was easy to mistake him for one, especially with as many confessions as he’d been hearing. In years past, Waverly had had preachers from other denominations. There were options. But not now. Father Butler had left five years ago during the construction of the new building. And the last Baptist minister had become ill with tuberculosis after only five months at Waverly and died of the disease ten months later. So there was no other choice: if the patients couldn’t spill their guts to Dr. Pike, they would take them to the grave.
Which is where the Klan apparently wanted him. Wolfgang knew that the first wave of the Ku Klux Klan flourished in the South in the late 1860s, focusing on the suppression of blacks, but the group pretty much died out in the 1870s. Then, in 1915, William J. Simmons founded the second Klan in Stone Mountain, Georgia, and in the 1920s, it surged behind its new Imperial Wizard, the dentist Hiram Wesley Evans. Only WASPs could belong. White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The Klan hated blacks, Jews, liberals, Catholics, and anyone foreign born. They dug their claws deep into the national debate over Prohibition, and sometimes their opposition to bootleggers and saloons turned violent, a tactic that colored much of their work. They burned churches and crosses, murdered, raped, and castrated, all in the name of keeping America safe. And to the new Klan, there was nothing more un-American than the foreign influence of the Roman Catholics, who, they claimed, held allegiance to the pope and Rome over the United States and its president.
It was nonsense, and nothing roiled Wolfgang more than such intolerance. Nearly seventy-five years ago, it had been the “Natives,” the Know-Nothing Party, who had caused the election riots in Louisville in 1855 that targeted the Irish Catholics. Rumors of Catholics interfering with the voting process boiled over into Bloody Monday, one of the country’s worst acts of anti-immigrant violence. Homes were vandalized, businesses looted, and tenements burned, including the block-long row of houses known as Quinn’s Row. Bodies were dragged out into the streets and beaten. Entire families were killed in the fires. Wolfgang’s grandfather, his father’s father, had been a member of the Know-Nothings involved in the riots. Wolfgang had spent his lifetime distancing himself from that hatred.
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