After an orderly shouted that they’d cleared the tent, a cheer reverberated throughout the encampment.
Dr. Gettler whooped in obvious relief and tossed the rag.
Waving his arms, he addressed the crowd: “Return to your pavilions.” He spun and beckoned to the nearest staff member, who happened to be head nurse Kate Holden. “You know they must remain segregated by disease. We cannot have the pests mingling.”
“We’ll see them to their wards at once, sir,” she replied.
A prickling sensation crept up Cora’s neck. Nearby, a man cleared the phlegm in his throat, and the sound felt like a fog bell pressed to her ear. A woman coughed wetly, and Cora covered her own mouth and nose.
Nurse Holden called to four in her staff, who lined up like soldiers to receive their orders. Only the sodden hems of their Mother Hubbard gowns, tangled around their rubber overshoes, betrayed the women’s fatigue as they collected those housed in their respective wards—measles, scarlet fever, tuberculosis, and typhus.
Cora dropped her hand from her face. She should welcome another disease: it would hasten her death.
The typhus patients who’d evacuated the burning tent, barefoot from fleeing their cots so quickly, looked to nurse Holden, who’d personally suffered through a bout with this most deadly of diseases. Although she managed all aspects of the hospital not under the head physician’s purview, she often found time to lift their spirits.
Her wit reminded Cora of her dearest friend, Sophia, who lived in her same tenement on West Ninth Street. She wished she were with her now, talking about marriage prospects and the hats they couldn’t afford in the shops on Millinery Row. Cora wondered if she would ever again find joy in something as trivial as a green felt headpiece.
Now though, as the nurse, her face blackened with soot, surveyed those remaining, she made no lighthearted remarks.
Even though they’d survived the fire, several wouldn’t see another sunrise. The day following the last one in the overflow encampment, Cora had heard two of the nurses discussing the final death count in hushed tones.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the head nurse called, clapping her hands, “I’ll be reassigning you to new quarters, where you’ll receive medical attention, as well as blankets and tunics. Please give the fire a wide berth so the men can do their job.”
Before the loss of the tent, the typhus ward had already been overcrowded. A shipload of Russian exiles had imported an outbreak that had filled the quarantine hospital beyond capacity. Now, to accommodate the newly displaced, pallets would be laid on the floor wherever space remained. Throughout the night, Cora knew, there would be moaning, coughing, vomiting, and periodic final gasps, followed by the removal of a body. By morning, the incinerator would be busy.
She would hear it all; for the past week, sleep had been illusory. Those relying on willpower and prayer to stave off their last breaths wouldn’t benefit from her despondent restlessness. She edged away from the huddle.
Beyond the camp, she trudged past piles of construction material for the final five single-story, wood-framed pavilions, their progress halted by the harsh winter. She sunk to her knees and burrowed her arms and face into the snow. Like a coffin, it muffled the distant commotion as well as her sobs. The tears that had refused to surface before now sprung free and froze on her lashes. The darkness felt as heavy as dirt piled on a corpse. She might as well be lifeless. Then, at least, she would no longer be burdened by the stench and specter of death that was so pervasive on North Brother Island. And she would be reunited with her sister, Maeve.
Icy water pricked her exposed skin, and her hospital gown gripped her in a frigid, wet embrace. She rubbed her eyes to break the icicles clinging to her lashes and sat up. Squinting, she noted that she’d fallen to her knees near the edge of the island.
If she stepped off the partially constructed seawall, during her final moments she would be numb. No! She wanted to suffer. For letting her sister accept that tin toy train from the boy who’d wandered from the typhus ward over to the measles pavilion.
Ten weeks earlier, as she and her sister were being forced into a Health Department carriage, bound for the reception hospital on Sixteenth Street, Cora had promised their mother that she would watch over Maeve. Born from a different father, Maeve didn’t possess the hardiness that Cora had inherited from hers, whoever he might be.
After two days on Hospital Island, Cora had fully recovered from the measles, but the disease had hit her sister much harder. Three intense weeks later, she turned the corner. With both girls anxious to go home, Maeve’s recovery progressed agonizingly slowly. Finally, a month ago, the small red spots covering her body had disappeared and her energy for play had returned.
Cora had been too busy envisioning her mam’s joyful tears to recognize the new threat hiding in plain sight. Despite Riverside’s isolation rules, she hadn’t rebuffed the boy’s gift.
As Maeve’s body, still weak from her bout with the measles, had succumbed to this second, deadlier disease, she’d been in too much pain to manage more than a whimper. Cora’s death should be no easier.
Soon, the blazing tent near the center of the island would collapse into a smoldering heap.
“I’m sorry I failed you, Mamaí.” Cora stood up and walked toward the flames.
The heat increased; her skin felt like it was blistering.
She didn’t even turn her cheek. The air became dense with acrid smoke, her dress began to steam, and the intensity of the light forced
