Fever: A Novel Read online

  The water tunnels were not for me. Maybe you predicted as much. I’ve been shaping for scaffolding work.

  I’ve asked around about lawyers and went to see one who advertised in the paper but he didn’t seem to understand what I was talking about when I explained. Then I went back and brought the newspaper articles but he wasn’t interested. I will keep trying.

  I wish I knew what to do to help. Is there anyone there you trust who can give you advice?

  Alfred

  “Alfred,” she said, and felt bile rising in her throat as her stomach turned. She walked out of her hut to the water’s edge. Which day was he standing over there, trying to find her? Maybe they could coordinate; in her next letter she could suggest a date and time. But as soon as she had the idea she felt sick again. To do what? To wave? To blow kisses at each other from opposite sides of Hell Gate? Pressing her fists to her mouth, she closed her eyes and tried to think of what to do.

  THREE

  They tried to get her to accept the schedule, to stop making so much of the twice-weekly testing of her blood, urine, and stool, the handing over of samples, the visits to the lab, the monthly physicals, the dipping of her hands in chemicals and the scrutiny of her fingernails. They needed to track her patterns, one doctor explained when she asked why twice a week was necessary. The nurses chatted with her as if this had all grown to mean nothing to her, but when they saw that she couldn’t get past it, that it was a humiliation she would never get over, no matter how long it went on, they disliked her for it. They came in pairs, and eventually stopped bothering with her, chatting only with each other. Every week, when Monday rolled around again, after coaching herself all weekend to be better, to try, to show that she was a good sport, to prove that she was trustworthy enough to be set free, they appeared at her door with their cheery faces and their glass canisters and made her livid all over again. “But what are the results?” Mary asked. “I keep submitting to these tests but I never get results.”

  “Positive, I imagine,” a nurse said. “Or else why would they keep you here?”

  When she posed the same question to Dr. Albertson or Dr. Goode, they said only that individual tests didn’t matter. Single weeks didn’t matter. They would share results with her as soon as they had enough data to draw firm conclusions. Patience, they counseled. Everything took time.

  The only person she didn’t mind talking with was the gardener, John Cane, who had nothing to do with the testing and often left a bundle of flowers at her door. Even when her fury spread so wide it swept up everything in her path, including him, he seemed to barely take notice. He just talked and talked and talked. And when she talked, he listened. She searched the newspapers he brought for advertisements for law offices, and wrote letters asking for help. She wrote to the chief of police. She wrote to the head of the agency that had placed her at the Bowens. When the doctors and nurses continually refused to share the test results with her, she contacted an independent lab to ask if they would do private testing for her if she sent samples, and requested additional canisters from the nurses. In her next letter to Alfred she told him to go into the pantry at home, move aside the flour and the sugar, and there he’d find her bankbook. She instructed him to bring the book down to the bank on Twenty-Third Street where she had an account and arrange payment for the Ferguson Lab. “And then take the rest of it for yourself and close the account,” she instructed. “Show them this letter if they don’t believe you.” There wouldn’t be much left over, but it was something. She didn’t need money on North Brother, and she was worried about him.

  • • •

  Some days passed quickly and easily, and some days felt so long and empty that she couldn’t even muster the energy to find something to do. Six months went by. Ten. She wrote to Alfred every other week and tried to fill those letters with hope. She reminded him that North Brother was temporary and one day soon she’d be home and life would go on as it had before. It was important that she believe it, she knew, and just as important that he believe it. She found the determined tone of her letters echoed in his, at first, but then as the months slid by, his responses were spaced further apart. When a letter from him did arrive, the messages were so compact that she couldn’t find him in the words. After a long silence, he sent a letter in February 1908 that was barely a letter at all:

  Dear Mary,

  Missing you. Any news? Things are fine here.

  Alfred

  As always, she’d held the envelope for a moment before tearing it open. She’d studied the way he wrote her name. And then to finally give in to that pleasure, to unfold the paper after looking forward to it for so long, only to find that it was nothing, was almost worse than getting no letter. She vowed she would not write back to him, but then a few days went by and she gave in.

  Dear Alfred,

  I got your note. Please write more next time. You don’t know how lonely it is here and how I wonder all the time how you’re getting by. Maybe you imagine there are people around me all the time, but remember that most people on this island are very ill, and as for the doctors and nurses it’s not as if we’re friendly with one another. I’ve been knitting and trying crochet. The gardener lets me help him when there’s work, and that’s a distraction, but the ground has been frozen since December and the first tulips won’t push through until April. I’ve read every book in the hospital library. It’s only when I don’t hear from you for a long time that I worry I’ll be here forever. When I do hear from you I remember that North Brother Island is not my whole world. They don’t know what to do with me here. They can’t treat me like a sick person because I’m perfectly healthy but if they admit I’m healthy they’d have to let me go. When I ask questions I can see they look upon me as a nuisance. I don’t know what’s taking so long to figure out. Next month will be a year!

  I wake up every day determined to get back home, back to our routine, and I think when I do get back home I won’t take any situation that takes me away overnight. Not for a long time, anyway.

  How are you doing? Two letters ago you said you were getting regular work. Is that still the case? Any news from anyone in the building? Do they ask for me? Remember to take care of yourself. And please, Alfred, try to be better about writing.

  Mary

  She wanted to ask him if he was drinking, if his clothes were clean, how he was paying the rent when all of her spare money must be long gone, if he had enough money for the gas meter, but didn’t want to remind him of their fights.

  On the day that marked the first anniversary of her arrival—a milestone only Mary seemed to notice—she counted his letters and stacked them on top of one another on the small table of her hut. There were nine in all. She calculated back over the year and figured she’d written to him at least twenty-five times. She noted the date stamped on each envelope: two months between the eighth and ninth letters. One month since she’d last written to him—the longest she’d gone without writing since her arrival on North Brother. That she wanted to hear from him, that she needed to see the blank space she’d left behind, was something she shouldn’t have to explain, not after how long they’d been together, how well they knew each other. She felt raw, heartbroken, frustrated. If she could see him in person for a few minutes she’d know what he was thinking, but there was no use wishing for that. She returned each letter to its envelope and placed the stack on the ledge over the sink.

  She hoped he’d use her silence to think about what she needed from him and send a letter so full that the envelope would be too fat to slide under her door. Still, the weeks passed, and she heard nothing. She continued to hold out. She’d been on North Brother for almost fifteen months, and hadn’t heard from Alfred in four months. Her resentment turned to worry. Maybe he’d gotten injured on a job. Maybe he’d been evicted. He was not a violent drinker, but he’d had fights before. Maybe he’d gone to that rough beer hall he liked on Pearl Street and got pulled into a brawl. She wrote to her friend Fran to ask if she’d seen h
im, if he was getting on all right. Fran couldn’t read or write, so the response came back in her husband’s shaky hand, taped to a box of cookies from a bakery on Thirty-Ninth Street. The cookies were stale after the three days it took them to get to North Brother, but she ate one as she read.

  Mary,

  Things are the same here. We don’t see much of Alfred but he seems all right when we do. He’s not up for much conversation, but that’s Alfred. He misses you, I’m sure. When will you be home? There hasn’t been anything in the paper for a long time.

  Fran

  Inside, Fran had folded a cartoon from the Daily that she knew Mary liked, and even though she’d already seen it, tears pricked her eyes. So Alfred was in one piece, still making his way up and down the stairs to and from their rooms, and still no word.

  • • •

  “You know what your trouble is?” John Cane asked one morning when he came upon her sitting on the grass outside her hut, watching the ferry dock. “You’re not looking on the bright side.” It was October, she’d been on North Brother for eighteen months, and she’d still heard nothing from Alfred since that February letter. Her arms were brown from helping John all spring and summer, and now he asked if she wanted to help him prune back the overgrown rhododendron.

  “Is that the problem?” Mary asked as she followed him along the walking path. She struggled to find the right words to ask how a person could be so completely and utterly out of tune with the unfairness he was witness to, how he could be so indifferent, and as she was forming the words he pulled off his gloves and handed them to her. He rummaged through his bag for spare gardening shears.

  “I think so. You’re entirely at your leisure. You have your meals delivered.”

  Mary sighed. It was useless. He was just trying to cheer her up.

  “You hear from any of them lawyers you wrote to?”

  “No. Not yet.”

  He accepted this with a nod as he studied the bush. “Well, in the meantime,” he said, and started clipping.

  A few days later, just when she’d stopped expecting it, nearly eight months since she’d heard from him last, a letter from Alfred was waiting on the floor of her hut when she returned from her walk. As always, she weighed it in the flat of her hand for a moment. She placed it on the table and looked at it while she waited for the teakettle to boil. When she finally opened it, a dozen seeds slid along the seam and she caught them in her palm.

  Dear Mary,

  Fran stopped me outside the building a few weeks back saying she’d had a letter from you worrying about me. I’d been telling myself it hasn’t been that long, but then I counted back. I’m sorry. I have no good reason for why I can’t seem to write as often as you’d like so I won’t try to give you an excuse. It’s not that I’m not thinking of you. You, at least, know the outlines of my day. You can picture what I do, where I go. But when I try to imagine you out there I don’t know what to picture. You tell me you’ve started knitting and gardening and that kind of thing, but it bothers me to hear you doing things you didn’t used to do before. It makes it seem like you are even farther away. I tried to get you interested in gardening, remember the window box I made for growing herbs? The seeds I’m folding into this letter are for tomato plants. I thought if they won’t let you cook then at least you can grow something you can eat and not have to get everything from the hospital kitchen.

  I’m sorry I can’t be better. I miss you every day. I know all of this has been hard on you—hardest on you. But it’s been hard on me, too.

  Alfred

  When Mary opened her palm to look at the seeds, she realized Alfred expected her to be on North Brother for a very long time.

  • • •

  And then, out of the clear blue, in November 1908, she received a thick envelope from the Ferguson Lab. They had been testing the samples she’d been sending for almost nine months, and could now share with her the good news that her samples came back negative for Typhoid bacilli 100 percent of the time. They needed such a long sample period to make sure the bacilli didn’t flare with the change of seasons, or for any other reason. She read the paragraph again, and flipped quickly through the dozen pages of results they’d sent. She almost shouted her joy. Shaking, she went inside her hut to smooth back her hair and compose herself, and then, clutching the envelope, she walked quickly up the path to the hospital. The halls were oddly silent. Mary came upon one of the secretaries. “Where are they?” she asked, almost breathless.

  “A meeting. They’ll be finished soon.”

  “Hello, Miss Mallon,” came a voice from behind her, and when she turned she found Dr. Soper sitting in a waiting room chair, a book open on his lap. She swallowed, clutched the envelope to her breast. She turned her back to him.

  “I’m waiting too. How are you feeling? You’re looking well.”

  “Don’t you speak to me,” Mary said, and walked out to the hall to wait for another doctor to come by. She hadn’t seen Dr. Soper in months, and seeing him now flustered her. She read the letter from the Ferguson Lab once more.

  She wasn’t in the hall for a minute when Dr. Albertson emerged from the conference room and asked if he could help her. He strolled into the office suite where Soper was waiting and she followed, not glancing toward the seating area.

  “George!” he said, shaking Dr. Soper’s hand. “I’ll be right with you. Miss Mallon wants to see me.”

  Dr. Albertson told her to have a seat in his office, and Mary passed to him the lab results from Ferguson.

  “May I close the door?” she asked.

  “Well, yes,” Dr. Albertson said, surprised.

  He listened to her from beginning to end. She knew, she told him. She was no fool. She knew they were keeping her prisoner to study her for reasons they kept only to themselves, and couldn’t possibly admit to the public. Dr. Albertson just listened until she was finished.

  “Mary,” he said kindly. “There is a good reason the Ferguson results came back negative. I’m going to call in Dr. Soper and he’ll help explain.”

  “No!” Mary said. “He started all this. It’s made him famous, hasn’t it? What he said about me?” But it was too late. Dr. Albertson was already waving him inside.

  “What’s this?” Dr. Soper asked as he entered the office and took the envelope Dr. Albertson passed to him.

  “Ah,” he said simply when he was finished. “I see.”

  “The samples must be tested immediately, Mary,” Dr. Albertson explained. “Or else the bacteria die. You’ve just told me that you often can’t get the sample out in the mail for a day, and then it might take three days to get to Ferguson. It’s no good. It’s not possible to test that way. And what’s more, they would know that if they really are scientists, as they claim. Have you already paid them? The results are meaningless.”

  “You’re just saying that because you want to keep me here. What are your results, then? Why has no one told me the results from the lab here?”

  “I can tell you, Mary, that so far, your blood and urine come back negative, but your stool comes back with a positive result roughly sixty-five percent of the time.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Mary.” Dr. Albertson held up one of his hands, and Mary remembered that he’d always been kind to her. “I’m on your side, believe it or not. Don’t misunderstand—you do manufacture and carry Typhoid bacilli in your body, but I don’t think you should be held for that reason. You are not wrong when you talk about how valuable you are to our work. However, at this point we know that there are many healthy carriers out there, and it’s unfair that you should be here while the rest of them are conducting their lives.”

  Dr. Soper bristled. “Or they should all be held. Or they should be taken case by case. In any event, Dr. Albertson explained it clearly, I think. These results are worthless.”

  Mary looked at him and was so furious that she spat when she spoke. “You’re a liar,” she said to Dr. Soper.

  Dr. Soper c
ontinued as if she hadn’t responded. “What I find interesting is that you dismiss our test results completely, give them no credence whatsoever, and yet you wholly believe these private results. So which is it, Miss Mallon? Do you believe in the science or don’t you?”

  “You are a vile person.” Mary’s whole body shook as she said it.

  “Mary,” Dr. Albertson offered, taking the envelope from Dr. Soper and returning it to Mary’s hands. “Why don’t you take these and think about it for a day and then come back when you have more questions? We can talk about all of this at length.” He gave her a look that said he was sorry to have called in Dr. Soper. He hadn’t understood. “I know it’s disappointing.”

  “I want to see all the doctors. I want to see them right now.”

  “I’m sorry. We have several new Diphtheria patients as of this morning. And Dr. Soper has come to give a lecture. Come back tomorrow morning. I’ll organize a group of doctors and we’ll all talk about this.”

  “Oh, I’ll be back tomorrow. You can count on it.”

  But she didn’t go back the next day, because she imagined them in wait for her, ready to punish her for taking investigative steps on her own. She was not a carrier. She had not made anyone sick. And yet, from time to time she felt a fissure in her certainty, like a reminder string wrapped around her pinkie that she’d forgotten about entirely until, at the end of a long day, she glanced down and noticed it there where she’d left it.