A scraping noise signaled that the keel had hit the pebbly bottom, and the man she assumed was Alfred jumped out, soaking his trousers. While his mate fought the current with a set of oars, Alfred shoved the boat farther aground. He wiped his hands on his wool coat and fixed his attention on Mary, who’d backed against the seawall.
“Mary Mallon, I’ve come to take you home,” Alfred announced with a German accent, not nearly as thick as Dr. Gettler’s, and waded toward her.
From her vantage point, Cora could barely distinguish among his thick eyebrows, dark eyes, and the circles beneath them. Although his features appeared to have sagged with age and alcohol abuse, he was still handsome, and he was staring at Mary as if she were a Broadway starlet. Cora understood why she’d stayed with him through the drinking and joblessness.
Mary raised the pillowcase that contained her boots and other meager belongings. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t show. Before your last, only two letters in six months. Two!”
“I’m not much of a writer, but I’m here, aren’t I?” Alfred unfastened his life preserver and tossed it into the boat.
Cora half expected Mary to hurl the sack at him. Instead, Mary hiked up her skirt and splashed through the surf. She dropped the lantern in the boat, and Alfred scooped her up and twirled her. They leaned inward for a kiss, and their faces merged in the gloom.
Cora looked away, her heart breaking.
She’d imagined a thousand scenarios of being embraced like that by Linnaeus Jones. In all, his smooth hands, separated from her skin by only a cotton shift, pressed her body against his broad chest, and his lips tasted like a mix of tobacco and the black licorice he often chewed while walking between wards. Afterward, he would whisper in her ear that he was only one promotion away from a salary that could support her as his wife.
A few times, while she’d been planting alone, Cora had even attached his surname to her first in elegant cursive letters scrawled in the dirt, erased forever with a swipe of her boot.
But the doctor’s refusal to focus on eradicating her germs—and the needs of a young man—had worked against her. Two weeks ago, from the stairwell of the nurses’ residence, Cora had overheard nurse Carlton coyly describing to nurse Puetz a midnight rendezvous with Linnaeus.
No, she’d thought, her body stinging like she’d landed in a thicket of nettles.
Cora believed that as long as she remained confined to North Brother, no more relevant than a single period in a world the size of the Bible, she would never meet her soulmate. Whereas across the tidal strait, once the doctors at Carnegie cured her, she would walk among two million men.
Even if the scientists at the lab couldn’t quickly rid her of all four animalcules, there might be at least one bachelor in New York whose immune system could best whatever germs remained. Mary had found a companion who appeared to be resistant to typhoid fever, and Richard O’Toole’s three children hadn’t contracted any of the diseases treated at Riverside.
If Cora didn’t join the escape party, she would never have the chance to find her soulmate.
Overhead, a seagull cawed, signaling the imminent arrival of the sun. If the boat didn’t leave now, they would be discovered.
She ground her gloved palms into the brick wall. Behind her stretched a precarious existence filled only with pain, yet before her raged almost certain death.
Daybreak
damp wind rushed past Cora, leaving behind a brittle emptiness. Seemingly unaware of the brightening sky, Mary and Alfred remained locked in their embrace.
Attempting to knead out the knot in her heart, Cora rubbed her chest and looked from the couple to the Gotham skyline.
Love was worth dying for. If Cora could have, she would have swapped places with Maeve during those final days of the fever. And without love, life wasn’t worth living. Two weeks ago, she’d learned that firsthand as well.
The memory of nurse Carlton’s giddy tone, as she’d described Linnaeus’s fevered kiss, invaded Cora’s skull. As their romance bloomed, Cora wouldn’t be able to avoid signs of it. The envy, worming through her bones, would rot her entire core. But if she made it to Gotham, she would be spared that torture, too.
Clutching her cross pendant, Cora scrambled down the seawall. “Excuse me,” she said, keeping her voice low, “we should go.”
“A leper?” Alfred sloshed backward. “What’s it doing here?”
“Ha! I knew you’d come!” Mary said too loudly. “Cora’s my friend and not a leper. She was . . . burned in the steamboat fire, while saving dozens of children. And she’s right: we’d better skedaddle.”
Alfred looked from Mary to Cora and back again.
Cora tugged the head wrap tightly against her nose and lips. Sitting so close to the others would jeopardize them. No, she thought, the wind will carry away any germs that escape my shroud.
The barrel-chested, hired sailor, resting over the oar handles, shook his head no at Alfred, who nodded in agreement.
“I won’t leave without her,” Mary announced.
The grimace on Alfred’s face settled into resignation.
“Helmut, get ready to row like a madman.” He lifted Mary into the dinghy.
Clutching her boots and the hem of her cloak, Cora stepped into the water. Its bite took her back to that day. Submerged in the muck, her feet refused to take her deeper, where she might step on the remains of Slocum passengers melded with the sediment.
“Cora, what’s wrong with ya?” Mary asked. “Hurry up.”
Startled by the rebuke, Cora waded deeper; the stinging water ascended her legs and saturated her shroud. While Alfred held the vessel steady, she hoisted herself over the edge. Her hipbone smacked against the wooden hull and several inches of standing water soaked her rear end. She gasped and sucked in her stomach. Making herself as small as possible, she folded herself into the corner.
Crouched in the other corner of the
