'I'll be okay,' Donald said in a faint voice. 'Just need sleep.'
But in the morning, with Donald so feeble he couldn't get up from the bed to brush his teeth, Bucky again put his hand to the boy's forehead and said, 'I'm taking you to the infirmary.'
'It's the flu,' Donald said. 'Diving in the cold.' He tried to smile. 'Can't say I wasn't warned.'
'Probably the cold did do it. But you're still running a temperature and you should be in the infirmary. Are you in pain? Does anything hurt?'
'My head.'
'Severe?'
'Kind of.'
The boys in the cabin had all gone off to breakfast without Donald and Bucky. Rather than waste time having Donald change into his clothes, Bucky slipped Donald's bathrobe over his pajamas in order to walk him in his slippers down to the small infirmary that stood close to the camp entrance. One of Indian Hill's two nurses would be on duty there.
'Let me help you up,' Bucky said.
'I can do it,' Donald said. But when he went to stand, he was unable to, and, startled, he fell backward onto the bed.
'My leg,' he said.
'Which leg? Both legs?'
'My right leg. It's like it's dead.'
'We're going to get you to the hospital.'
'Why can't I walk?' Donald's voice was suddenly quavering with fear. 'Why can't I use my leg?'
'I don't know,' Bucky told him. 'But the doctors will find out and get you back on your feet. You wait. Try to be calm. I'm calling an ambulance.'
He ran as fast as he could down the hill to Mr. Blomback's office, thinking, Alan, Herbie, Ronnie, Jake — wasn't that enough? Now Donald too?
The camp director was in the dining lodge having breakfast with the campers and counselors. Bucky slowed to a walk as he entered the lodge and saw Mr. Blomback in his usual seat at the center table. It was one of the mornings especially loved by the campers, when the cook served pancakes and you could smell the rivers of maple syrup flooding the campers' plates. 'Mr. Blomback,' he said quietly, 'can you step outside a moment? Something urgent.'
Mr. Blomback got up and the two of them went out the door and walked a few steps from the dining lodge before Bucky said, 'I think Donald Kaplow has polio. I left him in his bed. One leg is paralyzed. His head hurts him. He has a fever and he was up during the night being sick. We better call an ambulance.'
'No, an ambulance will alarm everybody. I'll take him to the hospital in my car. You're sure it's polio?'
'His right leg is paralyzed,' Bucky replied. 'He can't stand on it. His head aches. He's completely done in. Doesn't that sound like polio?'
Bucky ran up the hill while Mr. Blomback got his car and drove after him and parked outside the cabin. Bucky wrapped Donald in a blanket, and he and Mr. Blomback helped him off the bed and out onto the porch that looked down to the lake, the two of them holding him up on either side. In the time Bucky had been gone, Donald's unparalyzed left leg had weakened, so his two feet dragged limply behind him as they carried him down the stairs and into the car.
'Don't speak to anyone yet,' Mr. Blomback said to Bucky. 'We don't want the kids to panic. We don't want the counselors to panic. I'm taking him to the hospital now. I'll call his family from there.'
When Bucky looked at the boy lying in the back seat of the car with his eyes closed and beginning now to struggle to breathe, he remembered how on the second night at the lake Donald had done his dives even more confidently, with greater smoothness and balance, than he had on the first; he remembered how robust he'd been, how after Donald's finishing his repertoire, Bucky had worked with him for half an hour more on a swan dive. And he remembered how with each dive Donald had gotten better and better.
Bucky rapped on the window and Donald opened his eyes. 'You're going to be all right,' Bucky told him, and Mr. Blomback started away. Bucky ran alongside the car, calling in to Donald, 'We're going to be diving again in a matter of days,' even though the boy's deterioration was plainly discernible and the look in his eyes was gruesome — two feverish eyes scanning Bucky's face, frantically seeking a panacea that no one could provide.
Fortunately the campers were still at breakfast, and Bucky ran up the cabin steps to make up Donald's bed as best he could without the blanket in which he'd wrapped him. Then he went out onto the porch to look down at the lake, where his staff would be assembling in a little while, and to ask himself the obvious question: Who brought polio here if not me?
The boys in the cabin were told that Donald had been taken to the hospital with stomach flu and was to be kept there until he recovered. In fact, a spinal tap at the hospital confirmed that Donald Kaplow had polio, and his parents were notified by Mr. Blomback, and they set out from their home in Hazleton for Stroudsburg. Bucky put in his day at the waterfront, working with the counselors, spending time in the water with the young kids and at the diving board correcting the dives of the older kids, who were crazy about diving and who would do nothing else all day long if they were allowed. Then, when his workday was over and the campers were back in their cabins, changing out of their dirtied clothes for dinner, he took off his glasses and went up on the high board and for half an hour concentrated on doing every difficult dive he knew. When he was finished and came out of the water and put on his glasses, he still hadn't gotten what had happened out of his mind — the speed with which it had happened or the idea that he had made it happen. Or the idea that the outbreak of polio at the Chancellor playground had originated with him as well. All at once he heard a loud shriek. It was the shriek of the woman downstairs from the Michaels family, terrified that her child would catch polio and die. Only he didn't just hear the shriek — he was the shriek.
THEY TOOK THE CANOE to the island again that night. Marcia as yet knew nothing about Donald Kaplow's illness. Mr. Blomback intended to notify the entire camp at breakfast the following morning, in the company of Dr. Huntley, the camp physician from Stroudsburg, who visited the camp regularly and, along with the camp nurses, was usually called upon to treat little more than ringworm, impetigo, pinkeye, ivy poisoning, and, at worst, a broken bone. Though Mr. Blomback expected there would be some parents who would immediately remove their children from the camp, he was hoping that with Dr. Huntley's help in minimizing fear and curtailing any panic, he could carry on operating normally to the end of the season. He had confided this to Bucky when he returned from the hospital and reminded him to say nothing and to leave the announcement to him. Donald's condition had worsened. He now had excruciating muscle and joint pain and would probably need an iron lung to help him breathe. His parents had arrived, but by then Donald had been placed in isolation, and because of the danger of contagion, they hadn't been allowed to see him. The doctors had commented to Mr. Blomback on the rapidity with which Donald's flu-like symptoms had evolved into the most life-threatening strain of the disease.
All of this Bucky recounted to Marcia once they reached the island.
She gasped at his words. She was seated on the blanket and put her face in her hands. Bucky was pacing around the clearing, unable as yet to tell her the rest. It had been hard enough for her to hear about Donald without her having to hear in the next breath about him.
'I have to talk to my father' were the first words she spoke. 'I have to phone him.'
'Why not let Mr. Blomback tell the camp first?'
'He should have told the camp already. You cannot wait around with a thing like this.'
'You think he should disband the camp?'
'That's what I want to ask my father. This is terrible. What about the rest of the boys in your cabin?'
'They seem to be all right so far.'
'What about you?' she asked.
'I feel fine,' he said. 'I have to tell you, I spent two sessions at the lake with Donald a few days back. I was helping him with his dives. He couldn't have been healthier.'
'When was that?'
'About a week ago. After dinner. I let him dive in the cold. That was probably an error. A bad error.'
'Oh, Bucky, this isn't your fault. It's just so frightening. I'm frightened for you. I'm frightened for my sisters. I'm frightened for every kid in the camp. I'm frightened for myself. One case isn't one case in a summer camp full of
