Wickett's Remedy (40 page)

No one in the east ward was asleep when she arrived, but it was difficult to discern whether the men’s wan expressions were the product of encroaching sickness or fatigue. Some lay propped against their pillows. Others sat rigid at the edge of their beds. The room’s stagnant air held a sour, sweaty odor. She did not mind the smell of a room where men had been working, but this smell—sharper and more pungent—was different.

“What’s going on?” Roland Thompson asked as soon as Lydia had closed the door behind her.

“What do you mean?” she countered. Until now she had forestalled—from one moment to the next—considering the larger implications of last night’s encounter. Though reason assured her that Roland’s question had nothing to do with Frank, her imagination conjured less comforting possibilities.

“I mean all that running back and forth, and the voices, and us pounding on our door fairly begging them to tell us the trouble, and them acting like we was invisible,” Roland fumed. “It ain’t right. After all the hullabaloo last night we oughta be told.”

“Rollie thinks it was one of ours from the west ward,” chimed Arthur Sealey from Evert’s bed, “but I say it’s one of them gobs that breathed and coughed all over us.”

“If you ask me, they oughta’ve told us last night, ‘stead of making us wait like this,” protested Leonard Veeson from across the aisle, where Cataldo had once been. “Like Rollie says, we gotta right to know.”

“The way they was actin’, it could’ve been a fire,” Francis Maddox accused from Denson’s bed in the far corner. “For all we knew the hospital was burnin’ down.”

“I’m so sorry,” she apologized. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Several of the men scowled; a few muttered under their breath. She was divided between alarm that something had happened and relief that it did not involve her and Frank.

“I haven’t talked to anyone yet this morning,” she explained. She wondered if news of whatever had happened in the hospital had reached the volunteer barracks. “As soon as I learn anything I promise to tell you straightaway.”

She distributed the breakfast trays. The men accepted them grudgingly, most placing them beside their beds uneaten.

“You wouldn’t hold out on us, would you?” Roland asked, eyeing her. “Thinking it was for our own good? ’Cause I don’t know about these fellas, but I’d rather have it straight.”

“Rollie, drop it,” Arthur Sealey groaned. “She don’t know and neither do you. And even if she did there’s nothing anyone could do either way. If we’re goners, we’re goners. If we ain’t, we ain’t. Maybe it was a gob got sicker, maybe not. I don’t know why some fellows think that knowing a situation is a good thing, when usually knowing just makes it worse.”

“If something has happened, it’s only right that you be told,” she confirmed. “I promise that if there’s anything to know, I’ll tell you as soon as I can.”

Roland nodded glumly and turned his attention to his breakfast, the rest of the room following his lead. Since arriving on the island, Lydia had become accustomed to being a source of disappointment, but not in the wards.

“Hey, Nursie!” Max Stein complained after she completed her breakfast duties and was wheeling her empty cart toward the door. “I got a bum plate. There ain’t no bacon on it.”

“I told the cook to give you extra eggs instead,” she replied.

“Aw, whaddya do that for?” Max groaned. “How am I s’posed to keep my strength if I don’t get meat? Now I’m a goner for sure.”

“But it was bacon!” she explained. “When Joe Cohen was in here—”

“Do me a favor, honey,” Max interrupted. “Keep Joe out of it. I don’t go in for none of that dietary mumbo jumbo. Be a doll and fetch me some bacon before they run out and I gotta cut a slice off the Mad Ox over there.”

“Let’s see you try,” warned Francis Maddox from his bed.

The west ward still wanted breakfast, but she did not want to appear there without answers to the questions she knew would be waiting for her. She tried to imagine which of the four seamen might have deteriorated, but their features had merged into an amalgam of all the young men she had seen inhabiting hospital beds. She left her cart in the hallway and ventured to the forward portion of the hospital. Nurse Foley, Dr. Gold, and a good number of medical staff were already in the recovery room, anxiously gathered outside a fifth curtained bed opposite the aisle from yesterday’s four arrivals.

“Who?” she asked to the air, her mind reeling off names as she fixed on the curtain, as though it might tell her which of the volunteers it concealed.

As she neared the bed Dr. Gold gestured for Peterson and Foley to follow him. Lydia positioned herself to catch a glimpse of the patient’s face when the curtain was parted, but so many medical staff filed past that there was no need for her to hang back.

She could feel her pulse in her neck. In the split second before approaching the bed, she tendered an urgent prayer that its tenant be anyone save for a particular volunteer. It was a child’s impulse, and her knowing that it had been an empty, impotent plea had little bearing on her guilt when Percival Cole opened his eyes.

“Hello Miss Wickett,” he said at the sight of her. Cole’s skin was wan and his voice thin. She could not return his greeting; her reply would have been too absurd. All she could think to say was that he was far too fastidious a person to fall ill.

“How are you feeling, Percival?” Dr. Gold asked.

Cole held out a bandaged arm. “Do you need any more, Doctor?”

“No, son,” Gold affirmed. “You’ve given us quite enough.”

“You can take more if you’d like. I would hate for the opportunity—” Cole’s words were truncated by violent coughs.

“Your dedication will not be forgotten,” the doctor assured him. “You have a bright future with the Health Service, son. I can promise you that.”

“But first you’ve got to get better,” Nurse Foley chided. “You really ought to have reported to the infirmary earlier. Flu can’t be given any leeway.”

“But I wanted to make absolutely certain first,” Percy whispered, his breath gone. “I assure you I kept out of quarantine and kept my mask on even outside the hospital.”

Foley stroked Percy’s head. “That’s fine but I wish you’d shown as much concern for yourself.”

“You must conserve your strength,” Gold instructed. “Bed rest is a potent medicine.”

“Yes sir,” Percy replied, closing his eyes.

The group followed Gold from the bedside but Lydia lingered, placing a tentative hand on Percy’s shoulder.

Percy opened his eyes and smiled. Until he held out the notebook he had been clutching, she did not realize how strange such an object should have seemed in
the possession of a bedridden man. Percy always carried a notebook; it was as natural to him as a hand.

“I think you’ll find this of interest. I started keeping it yesterday,” he whispered, “when the aches started. In the event it wasn’t just overwork.”

Percival Cole’s entries had begun at noon the day before, with hourly notations charting appetite, temperature, respiration, heart rate, and overall condition until he had been confined to bed, after which the observations became more erratic as he awoke and returned to sleep. Even when he was sick, Percy Cole’s handwriting remained immaculate, the chart of his continuing illness a paragon of organization. It was of momentary comfort to Lydia to suppose the order Percy had imposed upon his symptoms would somehow make sense of his disease.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, returning it to his hand.

“Wickett?” Foley called from the other side of the curtain. Lydia turned to go.

“Not yet,” Percy whispered. “Nurse Foley,” he managed a little louder. The nurse pushed aside the curtain. “I would like Miss Wickett to attend my case.”

No one, not even Dr. Gold, had ever advised the nurse on how to best employ her assistant.

“She is on her way to becoming an awfully good nurse,” Cole continued. “I’d be pleased if my condition could help her toward that end.”

Nurse Foley tilted her head—a feline gesture now familiar to Lydia as a bid for composure—then righted herself. “As long as you’re not trying to get rid of me Percy,” she teased.

“Never,” he assured her.

“All right,” Foley agreed. “The two of us should
have you back in the lab in no time.” She crossed to the other side of the curtain.

Once she had gone, Percy grinned. “That certainly took her by surprise,” he whispered.

“Not only her!” Lydia added.

“Nurse Foley undervalues you,” he said. Talking had tired him, and it was difficult to make out his words.

“You’re a kind man,” Lydia murmured. “Now get some rest.” But he was already asleep.

Lydia emerged from Cole’s bedside to find Nurse Foley staring fixedly at his closed curtain. She gazed a few moments more before turning toward Lydia. “You attended numerous flu cases at Carney?” she asked softly.

Lydia nodded.

“How does he look to you?” Foley asked. Her brief time on Gallups had traced worry lines on the smooth skin of her forehead.

“It always comes on frightfully quickly,” Lydia replied. “The next day or so will tell us the chances of him holding his own.”

“I hate this part of it,” Cynthia sighed. She looked toward Cole’s bed. “It’s maddening how much of medicine comes down to waiting. Most doctors don’t think of it that way; they make their diagnoses and move on. We’re the ones who decide from moment to moment if anything more can be done. We’re the ones who stay behind.”

They both observed the closed curtain, listening to Percy breathe. Then Nurse Foley moved toward a supply cabinet at the far end of the room.

“Of course, you mustn’t let caring for Percival interfere with your other duties,” she said, making a show of opening and closing the cabinet’s drawers. “I
need you to report to the west ward and prepare ten fresh beds.”

“But what happened to the ten who were already in the west ward quarantine?” Lydia asked. “I’ve got their breakfasts.” Too much was changing too quickly. Time seemed to have accelerated with no concern for her ability to keep pace.

“Save those for the new men,” Foley answered. “The others are back in the volunteer barracks. Now hurry. Dr. Gold will be needing your assistance.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she answered and returned to quarantine.

She was making up the last often new beds when the door to the west ward opened. On seeing Frank standing with Dr. Gold in the doorway, the blood rushed from her head and she wavered on her feet. She wondered if a special ferry would be sent or if she would be kept on Gallups until the next mail delivery, if she would be permitted to eat with the medical staff until her departure or if she would be confined to her room. She looked over the ward she had just prepared. At least she could be satisfied with the last duty she had performed. She turned toward Dr. Gold, determined not to avert her gaze.

“I’m sorry,” she confessed. “I know I ought to have said something, but I just couldn’t.” She could feel her beating heart. “I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

The moment stretched. She looked from Dr. Gold to Frank. She thought she saw him shake his head.

When she turned back toward the doctor, he offered her a puzzled smile. “No apologies necessary, Wickett. I’m sure you got these beds together as soon as you could. Is the room ready?”

Only now did she see nine other men standing
behind the first two, their scant possessions clutched in their hands.

“Oh yes, Dr. Gold, of course,” she replied in a rush. “The room is perfectly ready. Everything’s fine.”

She fought the desire to put as many words between herself and near catastrophe as possible. Even a misplaced breath might revoke her tenuous reprieve. The men filed into the room, in the absence of name cards assigning themselves the same beds they had occupied in the east wing. For a moment she allowed herself to enjoy the notion that time had reversed. Then Nurse Foley appeared at the group’s flank with a cart containing syringes and a tray of blood-filled test tubes.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Dr. Gold began. “As you may have heard, Acting Assistant Surgeon Percival Cole has contracted influenza. It is through his dedication to the study that we are able to perform this test, which will involve a small, subcutaneous injection of blood. It is not at all a painful procedure; in fact, it’s less intrusive than the blood samples you boys have grown so accustomed to giving. It will leave a raised bump underneath your skin a lot like a mosquito bite; and like a mosquito bite it may itch, but try to leave it be. Are there any questions?”

There was a pause. Lydia recalled the happiness that had attended her earlier that morning. She would have preferred never to see Frank again than to see him in this room. She looked toward him briefly—she could not help herself—and was relieved to find he had not been looking at her. A shared gaze could indict them both.

“How sick is he?” asked George.

“He’s got a rough case, but he’s receiving the best possible care,” Gold assured him. “Anything else?”