Wickett's Remedy (32 page)

Brothers and Sisters, a plague has befallen our fair city, a plague more deadly than that which was visited upon Pharaoh, for this plague does not afflict merely the firstborn son, but every son and daughter that was ever born. Some have blamed this plague on the Germans but Brothers and Sisters, we all know where this epidemic was born: it was born in Sin.

Amen!

We have become complacent in our hearts. Because our brave soldiers are fighting the Hun across the ocean we have ceased to fight the war that never stops, the war against iniquity. The Devil has crept into this country and there is no mask that will keep him out, no pill or potion that will drive him out, no doctor who can flush him out. There is only one weapon, Brothers and Sisters, and that weapon is Prayer!

Hallelujah!

Every time we are envious, every time we are covetous, every time we speak in anger or with ill will in our hearts, we open the door to the Devil a little wider. The Devil creeps into our chests and steals our very breath from us; doctors call this Influenza but, Brothers and Sisters, I call it Beelzebub!

Amen!

There is only one way to drive this epidemic from our chests and from our homes and from our city and that is to Pray it down! Not only on Sundays—

No!

Not only before bed—

No!

But every day of the week, every hour of the day! And Brothers and Sisters, we are going to start right now! I want everybody to stand up! If you are at all able, I want you to stand up! I know that some of you are in the grips of your own battle, perhaps it was difficult for you to get here today, perhaps it is difficult for you to stand, but stand if you can! Pray that Devil out of your chest! I see that some of you are not standing. Brothers and Sisters, if you find yourself next to someone unable to stand on their own, offer them
your arm. And for those who cannot stand at all, we who can stand will Pray all the harder for you so that next time, when we come together, you will be standing right beside us! Let us now all join together and Pray—

T
he day of the study’s commencement was unseasonably warm, a breath of Indian summer in an otherwise cold autumn. The inaugural assembly, which was to have been held inside the volunteer barracks, was moved to the flag circle. On one side of the flagpole the medical staff stood in two white-clad rows of five; on the other, the gray-clad volunteers were arrayed in three rows of ten, each row punctuated by a blue-uniformed escort.

From her place in the second row Lydia could see only the swirl of hair along the nape of Nurse Foley’s neck and the navy blue nurse’s cape that fluttered about her shoulders like her own flag. Staring at that cape, Lydia was once again a little girl at the department store window, gawking at the objects on the other side of the glass. Her body assumed the posture years at Gilchrist’s had taught her: she thrust back her shoulders and raised her chin; she held her arms at her sides and aligned her feet.

On the opposite side of the circle, the volunteers were variously stooped and erect, excited and anxious—but Frank Bentley stood patiently in the front row, second from the left, like he was waiting for a pal
who was slightly late. Lydia found it difficult to maintain her regal stance: her toes wanted to tap; her arms wanted to cross. After days of endless preliminaries, she could barely contain the urge to yell, “Now! Now!” into the wind. Then Dr. Gold began to speak.

“It is beyond my power to express the pride and pleasure it gives me to be here with you today,” he began.

He left the ranks of the medical staff and crossed the circle to present himself before the volunteers. As he approached, the men stood at attention. Dr. Gold was their captain, his words the ones they would take with them into battle.

“You are here because you have agreed to embark upon a noble and selfless journey of vital importance, as vital as fighting the war itself. For just as the Hun threatens tyranny, disease exerts its own tyranny. Our country has never known an epidemic the breadth of that which afflicts us today. Thousands have died, thousands more have fallen ill, and if influenza continues to blaze unchecked across our nation countless more will suffer and perish. It is my hope that with your invaluable help, this is a tragedy our country will never know again.”

The doctor paused. The wind-gripped halyard was striking against the flagpole. Before that morning, history had never impressed Lydia as anything more than a dull litany of names and dates she was expected to memorize in school. But listening to Dr. Gold, the taxidermied specimen became a breathing creature. History was not the province of the dead; it was the daily result of people living their lives.

“It is no easy thing you will be doing,” Gold
resumed, his voice quieter but no less powerful. “The risks are clear. If any of you have developed reservations or doubts, now is the time to come forward. It is not too late to return to Deer Island, nor is there any shame in doing so. You will be free to resume your lives as before. Is there anyone here who wishes to reconsider? Speak now, as they say, or forever hold your peace.”

Lydia scanned the faces of the volunteers. The silence stretched tighter. Being free to return to a jail cell did not strike her as a particularly desirable freedom. Apparently the volunteers agreed.

“You are bringing honor to yourselves and to your country,” the doctor declared. The entire assembly let out its breath. “Surgeon Bertram Peterson will now acquaint you with the protocols of the study.”

Dr. Peterson plodded across the flag circle to join Gold. Though he and Dr. Gold were both in their early fifties, Gold gave the impression of a man still in his prime, while Petersons paunch and thinning hair marked him as fully subscribed to middle age.

“Good morning, men,” Dr. Peterson began, his dry professorial voice unequipped to follow the powerful orator who had preceded him. Lydia sensed the assembly’s attention lag, as if they were all at a vaudeville show, impatiently sitting through a trained poodle act. “I will now describe the specifics of our undertaking.”

Dr. Petersons voice was no match for the wind, and his stiff manner before the assembly suggested that he was more accustomed to associating with petri dishes than people. He had the pallid complexion of someone seldom outdoors, and Lydia expected he looked much
more at home inside a laboratory. In a hypnotic drone that Lydia had not been subjected to since she was a schoolgirl, Peterson explained that each test would last a week, during which the test subjects would be quarantined with brief opportunities for outdoor exercise. Test subjects were expected to cooperate fully with the administration of each procedure and with the daily monitoring of their conditions. Then Lydia’s attention was brought back into sharp focus.

“Are there any questions?”

These words were blown seaward as quickly as the rest, but Lydia felt a change in their wake. Some of the men shifted from foot to foot and peered at the ground. Others gazed at the sky, while still others stared blankly at the assembled medical staff standing opposite them. Finally, from behind the first row of gray uniforms, came an anonymous query—quiet and worried and impossible to trace.

“What happens when we get sick?”

As if the word “sick” carried its own smell, there was a palpable shift among the men. Hands clenched and unclenched, stances shifted. The word loomed over them, freighting the air.

Dr. Peterson stood with his mouth half-open, blinking as if he had been suddenly thrust into a bright light.

“I will personally attend any man who manifests symptoms,” Dr. Gold interceded. “I will do everything in my power to return him to full health. Because we will be monitoring each of you quite closely, we can commence treatment at the very earliest signs of onset. We will spare nothing in the care we administer—every
treatment, every medication will be at your disposal. If Surgeon General Rupert Blue himself were to fall ill he could not expect better care than that which you will receive at our hands.”

Dr. Gold’s words evinced murmurs and nods. Shoulders and stances relaxed, but Lydia felt unassuaged.

Having waited for this moment, Percival Cole left his place in the front row to join the two doctors. Though Lydia could not be sure, she suspected that Cole had rehearsed this moment. Several times she had heard his voice on approaching the examination room, only to discover that Dr. Gold’s protégé was alone. Lydia had never met a more meticulous fellow than Percy Cole; he was not the sort to leave anything to chance.

Once Cole reached the volunteers, he consulted his notebook. “Good morning,” he said without raising his head. Lydia was certain that a bird perched on his shoulder would have seen every word he was about to speak. “It is a great honor to be called on to initiate these tests, and I’d like to take this moment to personally thank each and every one of you for doing your part.”

Cole raised his head in acknowledgement of the assembled men, then returned his gaze to the page. “The following men should collect their belongings and report at once to the hospital,” he announced. “Able, Bentley, Cataldo, Cohen, Denson, Evert, Fells, Gray, Harris, Kipling.” This had been the first group to report to the lab room each morning, the first names Lydia had memorized.

Staff and volunteer alike remained in place, silently watching the leave-taking. There was Harry Able and
Teddy Evert. There was Billy Gray, whose ropy arms would have required custom tailoring for a truly smart suit. There was John Kipling, who rolled his eyes before having his temperature taken, as if this were just the next in a series of injustices against him. There was Joe Cohen, the perpetual whistler, his lips forming their customary pucker but the wind making it impossible to hear the tune. And then, of course, there was Frank Bentley, who walked like a man who had never been lost a day in his life.

Finally the silence was broken:

“Show your stuff Sammy!”

“Hang in there Joe.”

“Lucky, stay strong!”

“Show ’em Frankie!”

The calls tumbled one over the other, some loud, some soft, an uneven chorus of encouragement tinged with relief. Their five-day wait had ended.

Lydia and Nurse Foley preceded the men to the hospital’s east ward. Beside each of the room’s ten perfectly made beds rested a footlocker onto which Lydia had affixed a name the night before, wondering as she did so if her actions on Gallups would ever feel like something other than playacting. Now that time had arrived. As she placed herself behind her wheeled cart with its culture dishes, tubes, cotton swabs, and syringes, Lydia allowed herself to picture Michael alive and with his regiment, marching toward his first real battle after all those weeks of training. For a moment, she allowed herself to march with him.

Cole was the first to arrive, looking visibly relieved to have finished with his small speech. Between leaving
the flag circle and arriving to quarantine, he had collected a flask filled with milky fluid.

“Is that one of your broths?” Lydia asked, remembering Cole’s lab collection of various colored liquids.

“Exactly. This is our inoculation medium.” He passed it to her as if handling a baby bird. The action evinced a gentleness that Peterson lacked and that seemed wasted on the sterile confines of a laboratory. Lydia held the flask up to the light. It had the yellowish tinge of chicken soup rather than milk’s bluish undertone.

“You did well at the assembly,” she assured him as she placed the flask in her cart.

“Thank you,” he sighed.

At the sound of approaching footsteps, Lydia looked toward the door.

Dr. Gold was the first to enter, ushering the volunteers into the room with a grand sweep of his hand. Each man arrived carrying whatever scant personal belongings he had managed to acquire while at Deer Island: a deck of cards, a pair of dice, a few envelopes worn from frequent handling, a photograph, a page torn from a magazine. The men could just as easily have been recent immigrants, the bulk of their earthly possessions given away in exchange for passage to the New World.

Lydia had anticipated that she would feel at ease inside quarantine once the volunteers appeared, but their presence made the room seem even less like a hospital. The men were too healthy, their faces ruddy from time spent outdoors. They moved with none of the deliberation displayed by hospital patients and visitors. Footlockers creaked, feet stomped, and bedsprings
squeaked as mattresses were tested. Voices called out in normal tones and not in the hushed whispers reserved for sickrooms. A stranger peering through the window might have thought he was watching a traveling baseball team.

Once the ten beds had been claimed, there was some confusion as to the proper bearing of a person who was expected to fall ill but was not yet sick. Joe Cohen and Harold Able stood at attention beside their beds as if being inspected. George Denson tested his mattress by rolling on it. Sam Harris and Frank Bentley moved toward the tables and chairs, while Tony Cataldo investigated the washroom at the ward’s front left corner. Teddy Evert removed his shoes and lay down in anticipation of what was to come.

Dr. Gold explained the procedure: he and Dr. Peterson would look into each man’s nose and throat, then a blood sample would be taken and an inoculation applied. The men would be expected to remain lying down for a few moments to allow the inoculation to sink in, but afterward they would be free to go about their business so long as they remained in the room.