Her limbs were as white as ash, and her forehead still felt cool. She was so cold. “I don’t have the fever, sir.”
He sighed, looking tired for the first time. “I’m afraid your blood proves that you do.”
“No, sir, I meant I don’t have a fever.”
“It is strange, although it may simply be due to an unusually long incubation period. What’s odder: three of the patients in your typhus tent have been diagnosed with measles. You’re the only person they’ve had contact with who’s recently battled that illness.”
“That was two months ago.”
“Your body should be free of the virus, I agree.”
“Virus?”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “A great man, Dmitri Ivanowski, discovered evidence of microbes so small they can pass through candle filters. They’re too tiny to be seen even with a microscope, but his research proves they exist. I believe measles is caused by one of these undetectable viruses, and I suspect it’s still lingering within you.”
Picturing a horde of mangy, feral dogs gnawing on her organs, she shivered and scratched her arms, wishing she could dig them out.
Dr. Gettler finished adding a note to her file and capped his fountain pen. “I’ll instruct Mr. O’Toole to draw your blood first thing tomorrow, as well as collect stool samples every three days.”
Every three days? She’d already missed nine weeks at Wadleigh High School for Girls. It was unlikely the principal would allow her to graduate in the spring. What if he wouldn’t reserve her a seat in next year’s senior class until she’d petitioned him in person? With the new building scheduled to open in the fall, girls across the city were clamoring for admission. “When can I go home?”
His chin dropped. “Not until your specimens are free of the typhus bacteria, and we must rule out the possibility that you’re still harboring the measles virus—how, I’m not sure, but I’ll find a way.” He shut the folder. The case was closed. She had no say in the matter.
She was a prisoner, no freer than the convicts working the jail farm on Rikers Island, visible from the upper story of the measles ward. Her mother would find out about Maeve from a health official. Estranged from her older brother, Kieran, the only family who’d immigrated with her through Castle Garden, her poor mamaí would be alone in her grief.
Cora twisted the edge of her damp tunic, but no droplets emerged. “How long will that take?”
He brought his hand to his heart, as if he could personally feel her sorrow. “I know you’re homesick, but our priority has to be your health, and equally, the well-being of society. I will figure this out. Tomorrow, while at Carnegie, I’ll research if the world’s leading microbiologists have noted any similar cases. An orderly will bring you a cot. Please, sleep well tonight. Your body needs to recuperate.”
The doctor departed, and she stared at the swaying curtain until it stilled. Like her, he would be away from his family tonight for “the well-being of society.” But tomorrow evening, he would strip off his protective gear, shower as an extra precaution, then ride the ferry to the 138th Street pier and take a carriage to Kleindeutschland on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. She’d heard about his darling wife, daughter, and newborn son. By the time he arrived home, he’d kiss his sleeping children on their foreheads and wish them sweet dreams. His wife would then serve him warm schnitzel and cold beer and massage his shoulders while he ate beside the hot stove.
Meanwhile, Cora would be trembling on her isolated cot at the end of a long room crowded with suffering, while mysterious, tiny predators roamed freely through her blood.
Twenty months later
September 1903
he sacrament of Penance drifted through the open windows of the church as Cora bowed her head, shrouded in the hood of a leper’s cloak. She folded her hands, encased in gloves to hide lesions that didn’t exist, and once again prayed to God for forgiveness and benevolence. If she’d been more alert, or less selfish, there wouldn’t now be a five-year-old girl in the main hospital building, slipping into and out of consciousness as Cora’s measles germs burrowed their way through her small organs.
How she wished she could go back and undo their encounter a week earlier. From across the central lawn, she’d been so engrossed in watching a game of marbles among three teenagers from the yellow fever ward that she’d missed the telltale sounds of the child creeping up behind her. By the time the girl had pulled back Cora’s hood—out of curiosity or as a prank—it had been too late.
She shouldn’t have dallied on her way to the northern shore, where she passed many of the hours that seemed to stretch into eternity. There, the gusting winds carried away the deadly air she exhaled. But those kids her own age . . . how she missed having friends.
Please, God, if you let her live, I’ll never lose faith in you, I promise. Cora rubbed her crucifix pendant. A month after she’d started attending Mass, she’d found it in the spot on the lawn where she always sat. Affixed to its case had been a note from the pastor:
And a leper came to Him and bowed down before Him, and said, “Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean.” Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him, saying, “I am willing; be cleansed.” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. Matthew 8:2–3
She doubted that God would cleanse her blood, but just in case, she always wore the necklace.
A chorus of greetings broke her meditation.
The Passing of the Peace during Mass had begun.
She twisted to face the rest of the lawn beside the redbrick church by the docks; twenty other contagious invalids dispersed across it came into the narrow view afforded by her hood. By the anguish on their faces and
