Wickett's Remedy (42 page)

B
y the next morning, Cole’s condition had further deteriorated. When Lydia stepped inside his curtain he was asleep, but she recognized all too well the dull cast of his skin, the grayness of his lips, and the sounds he made as he breathed. His notebook had fallen to the floor. When she replaced the book at his side, she was gripped by the terrifying, irrational notion she would see Henry’s eyes staring out of his face should he awaken.

After collecting the breakfast trays for quarantine, she found herself propelled toward the west ward by her desire to see Frank, only to stop in her tracks, cowed by a vision of him felled by illness. The fear that illness had preceded her transformed the entire morning into a sleeping figure whose eyes she dreaded, until her need to see Frank overpowered her apprehension and she started forward again. Percy had once comforted her with talk of making history. If this was what history required, then Lydia was content to remain outside history’s reach.

When she entered, she was careful to glance at two other fellows before turning toward Frank, and then
she only gazed long enough to determine he looked no worse than the rest.

“Hey Nursie,” Joe asked in lieu of good morning, “is it true that Cole fellow has caught pneumonia on top of the flu?”

He deflated at the sight of her nod.

“Then here’s the thing we gotta know,” Sam interceded. “Did he catch it before or after we got his blood?”

She could feel the men’s eyes on her. “I’m not sure,” she answered. “Perhaps Dr. Gold or Dr. Peterson would know, but it’s not the sort of thing—”

Sam slammed his fist against his bed frame. “Are they tryin’ to make us crazy as well as sick? You gotta tell us, Nursie. You’re the only one we trust.”

“You know as much as I do!” she exclaimed, her blood pounding in her ears. She was sure the sound of it could be heard throughout the room, a ball ricocheting off the hard, white walls. The men’s ten faces at that moment could have belonged to ten lost children. “You probably know as much as anyone,” she concluded, her voice its own apology.

Sam shook his head. “Even if they did know something, you can bet the docs wouldn’t tell us. They oughta try lyin’ here all night long, with some sort of injection spreading all through them and them not knowing what it is.”

“Would you shut up about it already?” George growled. “There ain’t nothing we can do about it so what’s the use? We asked for this mess. You think they would’ve called on graybacks if it was gonna be fun and games? We ain’t worth nothing—that’s why we’re here. And the sooner you get that into your skull the better off you’ll be!”

There was a knock on the quarantine door. “Is there a problem in there?” came the voice of an escort.

“Everything’s fine,” she tried to assure him.

“If those fellows are giving you a hard time—”

“No, no,” she insisted. “We were just having a conversation.”

“Don’t make me come in there,” the voice threatened before footsteps were heard walking away.

“How are you boys feeling today?” she asked. She wanted to apologize for everything: for the gaps in her knowledge, for the escort’s rough voice, for the locked door and the closed windows and the helplessness that inhabited quarantine with them. She wanted to give each man a pair of proper trousers and a decent shirt. She wanted to stand them all for a pint at O’Reilly’s. She wanted to dance with Frank again, somewhere no one would give them a second glance.

“We’re all right,” Frank answered, their eyes briefly meeting. “At least for now, anyway. Ain’t that right, fellas?”

As far as Lydia could tell, Frank’s assessment was correct. No one appeared feverish, which meant she needed only to serve breakfast to consider her responsibilities met. “You’re all really quite brave,” she said.

“We ain’t brave,” George said quietly. “Just desperate.”

She distributed ten trays and without another word left the room.

She treated the rest of the day as a contrivance in which she was a small cog. She filled her mind with the clicks of a cog; she moved with the steadiness of a cog, traveling her designated circuit in Dr. Gold’s machine. Percy only slept now, if sleeping was what she could
call his closed-eyed struggle for breath. She was attending his bedside toward afternoon’s end when his face contorted as if he was bearing a heavy weight and his eyes opened. When he saw that she was with him, his breathing accelerated, his chest sounding as if it was taking in some curdled version of air. She realized he was trying to speak.

“No, Percy,” she murmured. “You mustn’t exert yourself. Is there something I can get you? Water? A new compress?”

Percy shook his head and then gestured with his fingers.

“You want to get something for me?” she asked. Percy nodded. She wondered how high his fever had climbed.

Percy pointed to her again, and then to himself. With his finger he traced a line from his left shoulder to his breastbone, repeated the gesture on his right side, and then drew a line from his breastbone to his stomach. Then he pointed at her again. When she did not respond, he reenacted the procedure. It looked as if he was tracing a giant Y.

“I’m sorry, Percy,” she whispered, “but I don’t know what you’re asking for.”

Percy shook his head, repeated the strange pattern once more, and then smiled.

Lydia smoothed his forehead. She wondered who he thought she was. “I’m afraid whatever it is will have to wait,” she murmured. He closed his eyes. Every few minutes she refreshed his compress because his fever demanded it and because this slight comfort was all that remained to offer him. At her shift’s end, when Nurse Foley stood outside the curtain and Lydia could
not stay with him any longer, she dipped her hand into the bowl of cool water and pressed her palm to his temple. “Good-bye Percy,” she whispered. She rose and approached the bed curtain. She gazed at Percy one last time, then passed to the other side.

Lydia was eating dinner when Dr. Peterson entered the dining hall and did not take his seat. Every head in the room turned as though attached to a single string held in Petersons hand. Everyone knew what he was there to say.

“I have some sad news,” he began, and the room exhaled. The doctor gave details but Lydia did not listen. The details did not matter. She stared at her plate, shocked by the anger that had bloomed inside her. Their presence on Gallups was absurd. They ought never to have come. When she looked up from her plate, Dr. Peterson had finished speaking and was walking toward her table. Killington and Warner turned toward him, certain his approach was meant for them, but she knew, somehow, that he had come for her.

“Hello, Wickett,” Dr. Peterson said.

“He went quickly,” she replied.

“He was an incredibly promising young man. His death is a terrible blow.” There was a pause, during which the doctor stared at her as though trying to peer under her skin. “Even in the depths of sickness,” he resumed, “Percival’s thoughts were of research and the advancement of knowledge.” He paused again. “To that end,” he finally continued, “he wished to invite you to his autopsy.”

Lydia stared at Peterson. To her surprise she found him blushing.

“I am extending this invitation solely out of respect for Percival Cole’s wishes,” he blustered. “I ought to tell you I don’t think this at all appropriate.” He shook his head. “Some sights were not meant for—”

“I’ll come,” she said.

Peterson’s voice was firm. “I’d be happy to provide you a chance to see him one last time under—better circumstances.”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Lydia answered. “I would like to come regardless.”

“I assure you,” Peterson tried one last time. “You will not cheapen Percival’s invitation by choosing differently.”

“When is the autopsy to take place?” she persisted, her mouth dry. She had seen corpses before. More importantly, Percy thought she could do it.

“An hour from now, in the lab.”

“Thank you, Dr. Peterson.”

“You’re making a mistake,” he pronounced, his voice gentle. “You will likely find you prefer to remember Percy differently.”

Only after Peterson’s exit did Lydia appreciate the table’s silence. Warner looked like he might speak, but she left the dining hall before he had the chance.

Lydia had been inside the morgue only once before, during Nurse Foley’s cursory tour of the hospital. It was a cramped, windowless room lined with black counters. Percy’s draped form lay on a marble slab at the room’s center. Dr. Gold and Dr. Peterson stood beside the body, attired in surgical caps, gowns, and gloves. The rest of the medical staff ranged in a semicircle just beyond arm’s reach. The room was too small for so many people. Only once she joined the periphery
of the semicircle did Lydia realize she was the only woman. Cynthia Foley’s absence felt like both a victory and a warning.

“If any of you should begin feeling uncomfortable,” Dr. Peterson cautioned as if addressing the group, though looking only at Lydia, “I ask that you leave quickly and quietly by the door so as not to disrupt these proceedings. I now defer to Dr. Gold.”

Towering over the draped figure, Dr. Gold resembled an Old Testament Abraham who had heeded too late God’s call to spare his son. “Percival Cole was a friend and colleague,” he began in a subdued voice. “His desire that his death not be in vain is shared by us all. We are honored and grateful to have this opportunity to so honor his wishes.
Hic locus et in hora mortis nostrae.
”

“Hic locus et in hora mortis nostrae,”
a few of the interns repeated.

“In the necropsy of Acting Assistant Surgeon Percival Cole,” Gold continued, “I, Surgeon Joseph Gold, Ph.D., will serve as prosector and Surgeon Bertram Peterson shall be my diener.”

The silence that filled the room had the sanctity and weight of the nave. The covered marble slab at the room’s center had become its own pulpit, the half dozen medical personnel its congregation, and Dr. Gold their surpliced cleric. That Lydia felt more intruder than member of this uncommon sacrarium was due to the glances sent her way by the rest of the flock.

The instruments on the tray between Gold and Peterson glinted silver under the electric lights. A pair of scissors, a large pair of tweezers, and what looked like a long, sharp bread knife with a narrow blade were
frighteningly banal: it seemed profane to employ such everyday objects for such a grim purpose. The others—like the handsaw and what resembled a large pair of clawed pliers for pulling a tooth from a mouth of terrible proportions—were disturbingly singular.

Lydia’s attention was diverted from the tools by the rustle of cloth as Dr. Gold pulled the sheet away from the slab. Percival Cole’s body had not been permitted to lie flat. An object had been placed beneath his torso, so that his chest protruded upward while his neck and arms fell back in a morbid swan dive. The body had lost its natural color to become a waxy blue-gray; someone had fashioned a loincloth from a towel, a gesture of modesty for which Lydia was thankful.

Corpses, in Lydia’s previous experience, had been clothed in pajamas or hospital gowns. This, to her mind, was their natural state. Clothed, a body still pretended at belonging to the world it had abandoned. Until viewing Percy, Lydia had not realized the degree to which the hospital gowns of Carney’s corpses had softened the bluntness of death. A corpse was a dead animal. They were all nothing more than animals, bloated by vanity into wearing clothes and ascribing lofty purposes to their actions, when in reality they all died the same dumb death that awaited any overworked nag—limbs stiff, features frozen in a rictus of shock and pain. Percy did not look like he was sleeping. His mouth gaped; his eyes bulged. Lydia did not imagine he might raise himself from that marble slab to reassure her once again with a gentle hand on her shoulder. His corpse resembled a waxwork crafted by a clever candlemaker.