Wickett's Remedy

by Myla Goldberg

  “I think so,” she concurred.

  “Bring that over here,” Harry Able advised. “Joe don’t eat ham but I like it fine.”

  “Pork is Yid poison,” Joe explained.

  “Oh dear!” she exclaimed, almost dropping the rashers on the floor in her rush to remove them from Joe’s plate.

  “Don’t worry over it none,” Joe assured her, accepting his tray with a grin. “Being a Mick there’s no way you could know. You don’t eat meat Fridays, Yids don’t eat pig Fridays or any other day neither.”

  “Never?” she asked, shuddering at the thought.

  “Never,” Joe confirmed.

  She nodded, making a mental note to request in the future a plate with extra eggs instead of ham. As she headed toward the door with her empty cart, the sight of ten men with healthy appetites stilled her apprehension enough to allow her to realize she had skipped her own breakfast.

  At the study’s outset Lydia was careful not to linger in the ward, but Nurse Foley was so often in the laboratory wing—assisting with a report or in conference with Dr. Gold—that Lydia soon became adept at multiplying the number of quarantine visits her duties required, until bringing fresh towels or linens, distributing trays, and delivering and collecting mail required as many as seven separate forays. She discovered she enjoyed supplying meals and mail, blankets and news. In the east ward she did not feel scrutinized or judged. Among the quarantines her feelings of homesickness and loneliness diminished. Afternoons with the men reminded her of rainy Sundays on D Street taken up with cards and checkers.

  Sometimes Tommy Fells would ask her to write a letter for him. Though he claimed his handwriting was illegible, she suspected he could neither read nor write. Likewise when a letter arrived for Tommy he asked Lydia to read it aloud, explaining he preferred the sound of a woman’s voice reading the words. Soon Lydia found herself reciting the words of mothers and sisters from across the Northeast, though she refused to be the voice of girlfriends on moral grounds, which exempted Joe Cohen’s letters from her talents.

  Tommo insists he just enjoyed having his own secretary.

  When on the third morning every temperature reading, throat swab, and blood sample from quarantine continued to indicate that the men remained healthy, she felt something inside herself loosen. Though Peterson and Cole continued to monitor the men’s blood and sputum, even they seemed less intent on their task. Foley must have shared their growing ease because she finally allowed Lydia to insert a thermometer between a volunteer’s lips.

  That afternoon Dr. Gold announced the inauguration of a second test in the west ward involving ten more volunteers. In an empty room in all other respects identical to the one in which ten men were celebrating their enduring health with homemade cookies sent by Teddy Evert’s mother, Lydia affixed ten new names to ten footlockers. The tentative sense of well-being that had stolen over her in recent days diminished with each additional name, until by the tenth footlocker she felt as ill at ease as on the first morning. In the afterglow of the east ward’s daily defiance of sickness she had forgotten that those ten men represented a beginning and not an end.

  The next morning she once again found herself behind an equipment-laden cart that included a bottle filled with milky liquid. The familiarity of these objects was consoling. Having observed their harmlessness once, she had reason to believe they might again prove benign. Apprised of the first group’s good fortune, the second seemed less cowed by the doctors, and her cart received fewer apprehensive glances. This time Peterson explained the inoculation would taste salty, and he avoided terms like Mather’s coccus.

  Larry resents that none of them had a ghost of a chance with Nursie Lydia. From the first day it was obvious that she’d already picked her favorite.

  Trailing Foley from bed to bed, Lydia found herself comparing each bed’s occupant with his counterpart in the east ward. Paul Louden was similar in build to Harry Able but lacked the affability of his predecessor. Lawrence Matthews seemed a pale imitation of Tony Cataldo. Ronald Nestor was as young as Teddy Evert but had close-set eyes that aroused Lydia’s suspicion. None of the men had the easy bearing of Frank Bentley. As she continued from bed to bed she tried to banish such comparisons from her thoughts. Had these men been her first patients, she would surely be holding Joe Cohen and John Kipling up to standards set by Fred Paley and Leonard Osterman rather than the other way around—but despite this intention, the men of the east ward remained at the forefront of her mind as Dr. Peterson traveled from bed to bed inoculating compliant noses and throats.

  Perhaps because she had one such test behind her, the second round of inoculations seemed to elapse more quickly. Soon Percival Cole was heading toward the laboratory and Nurse Foley was returning to the east ward for the second temperature reading of the day, an event whose results were so consistent that the men had taken to predicting their temperatures beforehand. Because Cole tended to read or write as he walked, he was quickly outpaced by Peterson and Foley and it was easier than Lydia thought to find herself alone with him in the hospital corridor.

  “Cole,” she began, keeping her voice low. “Dr. Peterson told the volunteers that the inoculation would taste salty this time. What was different about it?”

  “It’s a different isolate this time,” he explained while continuing to write in his notebook. “Dextrose bouillon was the growth medium for the cocci, but this time we used crude secretions from three acute cases. Which are naturally saline, of course, hence the saline suspension.”

  “What’s a crude secretion?” she asked.

  “Just what you’d expect,” he answered to his notes. “Mouth, nasal, and pharyngeal washings, also bronchial sputum. Think of them as naturally occurring broths, if you will. Made inside the body’s own laboratory.”

  Cole continued down the hallway, unaware he was no longer accompanied.

  “Percy,” she called. She was grateful Foley and Peterson were by this time out of sight and hopefully beyond earshot. Cole froze and, for the first time, looked up from his notebook.

  “Doesn’t it—” she began, but stumbled. The courage her question required vanished with Cole’s gaze. She wished he was still walking—it would have been easier to address his retreating back. “I understand our objective, but to give them secretions—” She was trembling, but she knew this would be her only chance.

  “Do you hate them?” she asked, the words practically bursting from her after their long confinement. “Do you hate them for what they did—for their crimes? Is that why you can do this like it’s nothing at all?”

  Cole cocked his head to one side as if to allow the words a more direct route into his ear. “Their crimes,” he repeated pensively. “You mean because they’re gray-backs?”

  She nodded, her heart pounding.

  He paused for a few moments more before answering. Whenever he spoke he gave the impression of having carefully considered every word, checking and cross-checking for alternate meanings before offering each up for conversation.

  “I don’t hate them,” he answered. “If anything I would say I sympathize with them. I would have made a terrible soldier,” he shrugged. “It’s not in my nature.”

  She sought some sign that this was an elaborate joke, but they were alone in the hallway and Cole was not known for his sense of humor. He looked toward her now with the same patient, reasonable expression that distinguished all their conversations.

  “But if that’s really how you feel,” she said, her voice echoing up and down the corridor, “how can you have done what you just did?”

  He gazed at her with incomprehension. “But Miss Wickett, the stated purpose of this study is the transmission of influenza! I know that, the volunteers know that, you know that—”

  “I didn’t know that we’d be helping to kill people,” she blurted. She swiped contemptuously at the tear that had appeared on her cheek.

  The expressiveness of that gesture stamped itself on Percival Cole’s heart. He will f
orever remember that single tear, trembling at the swell of Miss Wickett’s cheek and the arc of her hand as she brushed it away.

  “Oh dear!” Cole cried, closing the distance between them. Without preamble, he removed his white lab coat and placed it on the floor, then gestured for her to sit. She was too surprised by the gesture not to comply. He knelt beside her. He smelled comfortingly antiseptic, as though his skin were made of soap. She had never seen Percival Cole without his lab coat; he wore it even in the dining room. He was surprisingly solid.

  “Is that how you’ve been thinking of our work?” he asked, his voice solicitous. “That’s not at all descriptive, you know. While it’s true that this is a particularly virulent strain of influenza, the mortality rate is still only ten percent.” His voice had grown so soothing that his words, no matter how academic, could not help sounding like a lullaby.

  Though he had not previously regarded Miss Wickett in anything but a strictly professional context, her distress at that moment filled him with the urge to stroke her head.

  Cole nodded with small, quick jerks of his chin, his cerebral machinery practically made visible. “Considering the level of care they are receiving,” he continued, “I would submit that the chance of one of our volunteers succumbing is really quite lower than that. Yes. Quite lower.” A final, decisive nod. “Which still poses a risk, of course, but man’s greatest accomplishments have always involved a modicum of risk.”

  In that moment she became certain he had younger siblings, and that as an older brother he was adored. She was on the verge of asking him this when he stood and gestured for her to do the same, whisking his coat out from under her as she did. Once the coat had again disguised his frame, the previous moment was so thoroughly effaced that it seemed possible that she had invented it.

  Miss Wickett most certainly did not imagine this exchange; it remains one of Percival’s most treasured memories.

  “The chance to make history rarely comes even once in a lifetime, Miss Wickett,” he said. “I, for one, feel lucky to have been given that chance and I suspect the volunteers do as well, or else they wouldn’t be here.”

  To her shock, he placed his hand on her shoulder. It was the first time since arriving at Gallups that she had been touched and she feared for a moment she might have to sit down again.

  Percival was unaccustomed to touching a member of the opposite sex outside a professional or familial context. As troubled as he remains by his motivations at that moment, he has no regrets.

  “Please don’t upset yourself,” he urged. “You do yourself and this study a disservice.”

  “Oh,” she stammered. Footsteps sounded from around the corner. Cole removed his hand.

  “Good day,” he offered quietly before hurrying away.

  It’s a matter of viability—it’s common sense, really. The samples from the acute cases were extracted between thirty and seventy hours after onset, correct?

  Sure.

  For the purpose of discussion let us assume that is early enough in the disease cycle to obtain infectious material, though I have my doubts. But for the sake of argument, let us say they begin as viable, infectious samples. How long does it take these samples to reach Gallups? Almost two hours.

  Outside a human host.

  Exactly! Outside a human host. And how are they transported? In an uninsulated glass bottle inside an assistant surgeons pocket, for the love of Pete! A damn lot of good that’ll do when it’s practically winter! I tell you those cultures were dead before they docked.

  Then explain the presence of Streptococcus viridans, explain the presence of B. influenzae! These organisms were produced in the control cultures. You saw them yourself. They were not dead cultures.

  Maybe they were dead for influenza.

  Are you deaf? B. influenzae!

  Well, then maybe B. influenzae doesn’t cause influenza.

  Come on! Go tell that to the Surgeon General. “Excuse me, Rupert? You know that flu vaccine your boys are cranking out? I’m sorry to tell you, but you’re wasting your time. B. influenzae is useless.” Next you’ll be saying that influenza isn’t even bacterial!

  Okay, Cecil. You win. But we’ve got to be doing something wrong if all we’re getting out of these gray-backs is a few sore throats.

  Fine, Dick, but I’m telling you the fault lies with the transfer medium, not the organism. I think B. influenzae loses potency in suspension—there’s no evidence that the samples grown in the control culture are as powerful as the organisms extracted from the nasopharynx.

  That’s your theory.

  Of course it’s a theory! Krikey, Dick, if someone knew the answer none of us would even be on this rotten island!

  At the very least they could have gotten us more nurses.

  From where? Wickett isn’t Public Health Service. Hell, she isn’t even a nurse! The nurses are too busy taking care of sick people. We’d have better luck getting dancing girls.

  There’s an idea.

  Foley’s got the legs for it, don’t you think?

  Forget it, Cecil. She won’t even give you the time of day.

  What about Wickett then?

  The girl doesn’t know how to play bridge. She eats bacon like it’s filet mignon. She washes her clothes by hand rather than send them to the laundry. Perhaps you haven’t noticed, Cecil, but she’s strung a clothesline behind her quarters. And that accent!

  What accent?

  She works hard to cover it up; perhaps the poor thing even took diction lessons, but if you listen closely you can hear it.

  You ever been to South Boston?

  You couldn’t pay me to go.

  It’s not so bad. When I was a boy we had a delicious maid from Southie.

  As tasty as Wickett?

  I’ll be happy to let you know should the opportunity for comparison arise.

  Opportunity indeed. Half the so-called gentlemen of this world are merely cowards.

  Does that make you a coward then?

  I, for one, would rather be a living coward than a dead soldier.

  OUR MAIL BAG

  An Excess of Clothing Promotes Disease

  To the Editor of the Herald:

  It is my belief influenza is caused chiefly by excessive clothing on an animal by nature naked. The skin is a true breathing organ; its millions of blood vessels are forever gasping for air under even the lightest of drapery, while under the ordinary garb of many folds of clothing it is practically smothered and the blood is deprived of needed oxygen. Blood, thus depleted, loses its vitality and becomes a medium for diseases of all sorts. Proof of this is provided by the observation that while the people of Boston are languishing under the current epidemic of grippe, Bostons animal population—such as its many dray horses—seem to have been entirely spared from this affliction.

  Citizens of Boston, while in the privacy of your own homes, please consider the foregoing of clothes or—if modesty demands it—retaining only the loosest of undergarments. These measures will repay you hundredfold in sustained health in these challenging times.

  MERVIN K. LANGERHORN,

  16 Summer Street

  Sir, you’ve got to return to your bed.

  Where is she?

  You ought to be in the men’s ward.

  Nelly, it’s Poppa!

  Please! You’re upsetting the others. You must get back—

  I won’t. I’m fetching my Nell.

  Sir, you are very ill. And you’re upsetting the children. If you’ll just come—

  Don’t touch me, you bastard. Nell, where are you?

  Oh! Help! Doctor! Come quickly!

  Nell, we got to get out. There was a fellow beside me, and he just—we been tricked. We ought never to have come. Hey! What the—

  It’s going to be all right, sir.

  Get off me! Nelly, run!

  We’re going to return you to your bed now.

  Where’s my little girl?

  Please, sir.

  Her name is Nelly
Grace Dearborn.

  If you’ll just return to your ward—

  I won’t! You can’t make me! I’m a free man!

  Sir, please come along.

  Please, mister, just tell me true. Is she gone?

  James, quick, fetch the ether.

  Where is my little Nell? Where is my—

  Easy boy, easy. You get his feet. Let’s get him back before he wakes up.

  WHOLE COUNTRY IN GRIP’S GRASP

  Epidemic Spreads to Middle West and on

  to the Pacific States

  Spanish influenza has now spread to practically every part of the country. Reports today to the public health service showed the disease is epidemic in many western and Pacific coast states as well as in almost all regions east of the Mississippi river.

  Influenza now is epidemic at three places in Arizona, in Maryland, in many parts of Arkansas, in Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and many other states. The disease is reported from many parts of California. In the District of Columbia the malady is spreading rapidly. The disease is epidemic throughout New England, where it first made its appearance, and officials in that section are considering drastic steps to curb its spread, including the prevention of public gatherings.

  My Dear Boy—

  I used to say that any successful businessman was the equal of any headshrinker when it came to knowing how people tick, but now I am not so sure. Wasn’t it one of them who talked about our dreams coming from someplace outside of ourselves? I am thinking there might be something to that theory.

  It always goes the same way: A dead man lies on a table but his face is blocked by the doctors standing all around him. I do not know who this man is and I suppose I never will. All I know is that he is dead. I expect if I had fought in the war a dead man would not be such a shocking sight, but I did not fight in the war and so it hits me upside the head every time. Especially when a doctor cuts into the dead man’s chest. He carves a Y that starts below the shoulders and ends below the belly button. Once the cutting is done, it looks less like a man’s chest than a brisket butchered all wrong.