“It’s a quarter past one,” the doctor said from behind her, startling her.
Based on his muffled voice and the swishing of fabric, she knew he’d donned a Mother Hubbard gown.
Pretending she hadn’t heard him, she watched one of the crews use a grappling hook to retrieve a body. Within her, a fire burned hotter than the one she’d just witnessed.
“How can you be thinking of your research, with your son still missing?” She motioned toward the devastation.
“Presumably, he’s at the river bottom, considering his mother and sister drowned. If I’d been with them on that steamship, instead of here, studying you, I would have gotten them into a lifeboat. Or persuaded the captain to beach her earlier.” He clenched his fists.
“I must give meaning to their deaths. It’s time for your weekly blood draw,” he said, pointing toward his laboratory within the main hospital building.
Cora considered resisting, but the authorities would believe the doctor over the word of a leper. Furious, she strode toward the building.
Ten paces behind her, he followed, prattling about the latest theories in microbiology as if he hadn’t suffered unspeakable loss and didn’t have a three-year-old son unaccounted for.
His words faded away. She thought of the ring beneath her heel, disrupting her stride, and how gratifying it would feel to hurl it into the East River.
One Month Later
July 1904
s the scalpel punctured the tender skin an inch above the navel, Cora shut her eyes and tried to picture her mamaí’s indigo eyes and wispy red curls. Despite the numbing effect of the eucaine, she could feel Dr. Gettler slicing a small incision to access her pancreas. How she longed to scream, but she didn’t dare startle the doctor while he held a knife in her gut. The sooner he determined where the germs resided, which might happen with this tissue sample, the sooner he could remove them so she could return home.
The dissection stopped.
“Your self-control is impressive,” he said, exchanging the instrument for a pair of forceps. “Under the new purview of my research, the specimen requirements will be greater. My success will depend as much on your resilience as my scientific acumen.”
Alarmed, Cora lifted her head, igniting a surge of pain in her abdomen. “Purview?”
“It means scope.” He began probing her insides.
She bit down on a rag to keep from howling. Delirious from the torture, Cora couldn’t comprehend his words. All she understood was fear.
“The organ contains no visible abnormalities, but the microscope may reveal otherwise,” he announced through his surgical mask even though he had no medical staff assisting him. Despite the midnight hour, he’d even locked the door.
Shaking from physical and mental fatigue, she watched him prepare a series of slides, each containing a shaving of tissue that reminded her of liverwurst. “What new scope?” The tragedy had hardened Otto so fast and firmly that Cora was still reeling from the change.
“Now the sutures,” the doctor said to himself as he began sewing her up.
With panic welling within her faster than her tears could fall, Cora held still.
He can’t keep doing this to me, she thought, even though she knew he could and would. His word ruled the hospital, whereas she was a mere woman, and worse: just another indigent—and a “demented” one at that. Two days ago, she’d tried calling out to one of the other resident physicians for help. He’d ignored her. Later that night, Dr. Gettler had informed her that he’d added a list of psychoses to her case file; no one at Riverside would believe her now.
He knotted the thread. “Before, I was thinking too small. The potential hidden within your blood corpuscles is enormous.”
From his tray, he selected a roll of gauze. “Almost done.” He smiled for the first time since she’d entered the room.
“This isn’t right.” Her boldness surprised her, yet she continued, “I won’t be used for some grand experiment. I’m begging you. Let me go home.”
He lifted her torso to wrap her midsection. “Du bist zu Hause.” You are at home.
“No, my home is 3C, 21 West Ninth Street. My mother’s probably returning from work right now. I miss her.” She tried to strengthen her appeal with eye contact, but he’d turned to his equipment, and the hood of his Mother Hubbard gown blocked his face.
“Please,” she said, not hiding her desperation. “My mam could visit me here. I need her.”
“You think I don’t need my Rolene? And Ingrid?” He shifted so his back was to her, and began immersing his instruments in an alcohol bath. The vague outline formed by his protective gear reminded her of a statue only partially hewn from rough rock.
“Every night,” he said so softly that Cora couldn’t tell if he were speaking to her or himself, “my hand reaches for meiner Liebchen and falls through the air. She’s gone. No matter how hard I pray or wish or work, nothing will bring her back. Or mein kleines Mäuschen.”
His shoulders began shaking, and Cora knew he was crying. It was the first time she’d seen him break down since he’d left his dead daughter’s side. For the past month, he’d seemed as lifeless as the charred remains of the Slocum, which had drifted toward the Bronx shore.
Whenever she thought back to the tragedy, she couldn’t smother her inferno of what ifs. What if the fire hadn’t started in the lamp room and the lifeboats hadn’t been wired to the decks? And the Knickerbocker Steamship Company had replaced its life preservers before their cork had rotted to dust? What if Captain William Van Schaick, now standing trial, had run the ship aground right away instead of charging upriver into a headwind? What if I’d slipped off the island in one of those rescue boats? Cora often wondered.
If that day had unfolded differently, in any one of myriad ways, the death count wouldn’t have reached a staggering 1,021, mostly women and
