Wickett's Remedy Read online

  The trolley made its way over the bridge to reveal a city of empty streets and shuttered stores. Lydia had not counted on the sight of Boston free of traffic. Until now her cognizance of the epidemic’s breadth had been as provincial as her first conception of the war. Newspapers had described the flu’s effect in Boston and elsewhere, but their full meaning was easily upstaged by daily circumstance. The sight of the city shut down vivified all that newsprint. Boston’s shuttered storefronts had their equals in Philadelphia and New York and Washington, D.C. All across New England and the east coast there were hospitals like Carney, overflowing with the desperately ill; and in the past few days, newspapers had reported flu making inroads west. Riding the streetcar, Lydia imagined a United States map like the one Henry had purchased of Europe, but this time she populated it with pushpins of a single color, pushpins that did not represent an army but a disease.

  She debarked on Tremont Street. Morning here felt miscued, as if flu had muddled the earth’s diurnal rhythm. Such a deserted street ought to have belonged to the dark, anonymous hours of night. She began striding—and then running—toward Boylston. Of all the buildings on the block, her destined address was the liveliest, but its activity was not a blow against the epidemic—it was a marker of it. These were the offices of the Public Health Service.

  Inside the front lobby, a sign instructed each visitor to don a gauze mask from a box beside the door. A masked receptionist directed Lydia to a small elevator, which she shared with two masked officials carrying briefcases. At the sight of the briefcases, Lydia realized the extent of her folly. She was riding an elevator to meet a man who did not expect her, in order to apply for a position for which she was not qualified, and which would fill her family with dread. She examined her clothes. She had been too tired to clean her shirtwaist the night before. Several small stains dotted the sleeve and collar, one of which was likely blood. Looking at the two officials, Lydia was frozen by the notion that there were millions of men in the world, and her brother was no longer among them. The elevator door opened.

  Jefferson Carver, the Public Health Service’s first colored elevator operator and the car’s fourth occupant, has become resigned to his omission from the memories of his white passengers.

  According to the lobby receptionist, Mr. Cory’s office was just beyond the elevator. To the right, an open doorway cast a slanted oblong of light into the darker corridor. Lydia started toward it and then turned around. If she stopped now she could leave without anyone ever knowing she had come.

  “Hello?” came a voice from inside the room. She heard a chair scrape against the floor. A head was silhouetted in the hallway. “Hello? Miss?” a man called as Lydia willed the elevator to return. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  “I’m sorry. I made a mistake,” Lydia apologized. “I had come about the notice—”

  “You mean the Gallups Island project?” the man asked.

  “Yes,” Lydia answered, “but I don’t—”

  “Don’t worry,” he assured her. “You’ve made no mistake. Did we have an appointment? No matter. You’re here. Please do stop standing beside the elevator. If word gets out that I let you go without interviewing you, I’ll never hear the end of it.” His head darted from the doorway, then reappeared. “Are you coming? Good.” The head withdrew.

  Lydia retrieved the listing from her pocket. Sweat from frequent fingerings had blurred the words into illegibility and fuzzed the paper’s edges. She smoothed the scrap against her dress and folded it in half before returning it to her pocket. Then she followed the man in.

  H. G. Cory’s office was a small, cramped room whose walls were adorned with health advisory posters. Its single window was open to its limit, allowing a brisk breeze into the room. In spontaneous defense against the open window, the haphazard piles of paper concealing the desk had been secured by objects not originally intended as paperweights. A daunting metal medical instrument anchored one pile; a soda bottle topped another.

  Mr. Cory was a frenetic man with shoulders that sloped as if also weighted by random objects. The gauze mask across his nose and mouth looked oversized on his small face.

  “The office is a mess, I’m afraid, but don’t let that scare you,” he said. “There should be a chair here somewhere.”

  “Thank you,” Lydia replied, “but I don’t want to waste your time.”

  “You’re confusing me, Miss—Miss—what is your name?”

  Horace Gilbert Cory has no recollection of the young lady or of this interview. The epidemic survives within him as a frantic search for personnel, interrupted by fitful attempts at sleep and intervals of abject fear.

  “Wickett.”

  “First name?”

  “Lydia.”

  “Miss Lydia Wickett. If you came about the Gallups Island position then you are most assuredly not wasting my time. You’re a nurse, are you not?” Mr. Cory was bent over in his chair, opening and closing various drawers in search of something, the piles on his desk obscuring him from view.

  “No,” she answered.

  “Well then, that’s all—” He straightened in his chair, and was again visible from the shoulders up. She was reminded of a burrowing mole. “Did you say that you’re not a nurse?”

  “That’s right. I really am sorry. I’ll just leave you to your—”

  “You’ll just—” He shook his head with quick, sharp movements. “No, please, not yet if you don’t mind. You say you’re not a nurse. Then what are you?”

  “Pardon?”

  Mr. Cory had produced a paper form from one of his drawers. “You must have experience, or else you wouldn’t have come, yes?”

  “Well, yes. I volunteered at Carney Hospital,” she began, hungry to tell someone, even if only a stranger. “When I brought a neighbor’s child there, it was already overcrowded, and then when I returned the next day there were so many ill that they’d been forced to put tents on the lawn—”

  “So you’re a nurse’s aide then?” Cory asked as he wrote, once again obscured by the papers on his desk. “And how long have you been at Carney Hospital?”

  “Just one day,” she replied.

  Cory stopped writing. “One day?”

  At Carney masks had seemed appropriate, but here—inside an otherwise normal office—they gave the conversation the feel of a waking dream.

  “Yes,” she acknowledged. “You see, I oughtn’t to have come. It’s one thing to volunteer, but to seek a position, an official position—” She rose from her chair. “Good day, Mr. Cory.”

  “Please, Miss Wickett,” Mr. Cory coaxed. “You would be doing me a great service if you allowed me to finish this interview.” He held up his paper. “I’ve already begun to fill out the form, you see.”

  She sat.

  “Age?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  “Address?”

  “28 D Street.”

  “Single?”

  “Widowed.”

  “Oh.” He looked up again. “My condolences.”

  The mask made it impossible to read his face. He returned his attention to his desk. His window looked out on the windows of other buildings. Without a view of the street, she could almost pretend the city was unchanged.

  “It’s really quite good of you to bear with me,” Mr. Cory continued. “Just a few more questions and then we’ll be done. Have you any children?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Are you a drinking woman?”

  “Certainly not!” she retorted.

  “Good.” He sighed gratefully. “Due to the extreme circumstance, some of the hospitals have begun accepting personnel with—handicaps of various sorts, but that won’t do here,” he explained. “We had one respondent, a lovely woman, but then she had some trouble and that scotched it. Oh dear, I believe I just made a pun.” Cory paused and eyed the paperwork arrayed before him. “You’ll have to forgive me, Mrs. Lydia Wickett. It has been a very long week. You don’t have a fever, do you?”


  “No, sir.”

  “Aches? Fatigue? Cough? Congestion?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Excellent. It is likely to be a two-week study but it could go as long as a month. Influenza transmission, headed by Dr. Gold. We’ve got to sort out how people are catching this thing if we want to stop it and I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that Dr. Gold—”

  “Sir?”

  “Well, exactly! Any other time and people would be clamoring to work with him. You will live and work on Gallups Island, where you will be expected to assist the nurses and doctors. Food and lodging will be provided. Salary is twenty dollars a week.”

  “Sir?” she replied. “You did hear all that I said?”

  Mr. Cory consulted his paperwork. “Let’s see. Your name is Lydia Wickett, you have limited hospital experience, you have no dependents, you are not a drunk, and you are not ill. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Lydia Wickett, including yourself do you know how many candidates I currently have under consideration for this position?”

  She shook her head.

  “One. And while you are not ideal, you are infinitely better than no candidate at all. I don’t need to tell you, Mrs. Wickett, that these are desperate times. Desperate times call for—measures. Would you like the position?”

  Her hands were shaking. She had felt this way only once before, a lifetime ago, when she received Henry’s first love letter.

  “Mr. Cory,” she answered slowly, measuring each word on her tongue. “I want to be—I am meant to be a nurse. I am as sure of this as I have ever been about anything.”

  “Well, Mrs. Wickett, I cannot think of a better time for you to have made such a discovery. Does that mean your answer is yes?”

  Along one wall were several wooden cabinets labeled with the word PERSONNEL. From this day onward, there would be a file inside one of them bearing her name. She committed to memory the high ceiling, the smell of pipe tobacco, and the way the sun through the window framed Mr. Cory’s figure in yellow light.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  Cory clapped his hands. “Fabulous. The study begins Monday, so you really mustn’t arrive any later than Sunday. There’s a ferry departing Commonwealth Pier at Sunday noon. I shall reserve you a place. Did I mention it’s to be headed by Dr. Gold? It’s rather a rare—”

  “Do you mean this Sunday, sir?”

  “Of course,” he answered.

  “Isn’t that a bit soon?” she stammered.

  “Soon? But it couldn’t possibly be any later. They were expecting someone last week.” He paused and his eyes appraised her, as if it had only just occurred to him to do so. “You seem like a sensible girl,” he concluded. “Do what the Head Nurse tells you and I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

  She nodded. She stood and shook Mr. Cory’s hand. Fifteen minutes after she had entered H. G. Cory’s office she found herself outside it again, clutching a ticket for the Sunday ferry. Walking unsteadily toward the streetcar, her disbelief subsided just enough for her to realize that now she had to tell her family everything.

  When she arrived home, James and John were racing to set the dinner table: their mother had deemed Thomas well enough to join them for supper. In the process of delivering a serving plate or a glass to the table, each boy’s path curved to detour past the open bedroom door to catch a glimpse of Thomas, who lay propped up in bed. Lydia stood near the doorway and basked in the sight of the bedsheet rising and falling with his regular breathing. Thomas’s flu had not given way to pneumonia. He would live.

  Both John and James wanted to escort their brother to the table, but their mother still prohibited anyone else from entering the sickroom and fetched Thomas herself. Thomas looked as if he had been bed bound for weeks and not days. As he took his usual place at the table, he fixed his younger brother with a stare that shrunk James in his chair.

  “Squealer,” he muttered, causing James to pale, but then Thomas grinned. “I’m just kidding, Jamie. You did the right thing. If you hadn’t fetched Ma that night I don’t know what would have happened.”

  “I didn’t want to do it,” James countered. “It was only on account of you being so awfully sick that I knew I had to. I prayed so hard for you to get better, Tom. I never prayed harder for anything in my life!”

  Jamie was so grateful that Tom was better and no wiser about the death wish he had made that for a few days he thought he might become an altar boy.

  As if by previous agreement, they all waited for Thomas to lift his fork to his mouth before beginning to eat. Though their father grinned with every bite Thomas took, his smile did not reach his eyes. Their mother watched Thomas warily, either unable or unwilling to admit that he might no longer require her vigilance. Whenever Thomas coughed, James froze while John shook his head, as if vehement disagreement with the sound might convince it to leave his brother alone. Lydia waited for the right moment to speak, in the meantime striving to appear as if she had nothing on her mind. Each benign moment gained by her silence felt like a small gift. Then dinner was over. Soon Thomas would return to bed.

  “I have something to tell you all,” she said softly, regretting the tentative beginning. Her desire to go to Gallups had not diminished, but here its imperative was dampened by her knowledge of the grief it would cause. “I’m not the same as I was two days ago.” She shook her head. That had to be wrong. It could not possibly have been only two days.

  Her mother reached for her daughter’s hand. “That’s all right, Liddie,” she soothed. “We’re all different than we were.”

  Lydia shook her head. “That’s not what I mean.” She paused. “Perhaps it started with Henry. And then, when we received the news about Michael—” She had not meant to begin this way. “When Brian was at Carney, all I could do—all I did do—was leave him there. So when Thomas fell sick and I couldn’t do anything for him either—” She looked to the faces of her parents and her brothers. “That was why I had to do it.”

  “Do what?” her father asked.

  “Volunteer,” she exhaled, loosing the word from her lungs. None of it was coming out the way she had hoped. “They had set up tents outside the hospital, and everyone wanted fresh blankets and water and there weren’t nearly enough nurses. I might not have saved any lives, but no one should have to lie inside a tent, alone, away from their family—” Her breath failed.

  There was a moment of bewildered silence.

  “You helped at the hospital,” her mother began.

  Lydia nodded.

  “You tended to the sick,” her mother continued. “You brought them water and blankets and they were very ill, as ill as Brian and poor Alice. Not just one or two, but many, many people.”

  Lydia nodded again.

  “And then you came back here without a word, to sleep in the same room with your brothers.” Her mother was talking in a low voice that did not sound like her at all. “Do you mean to kill us all?”

  “I took precautions—” Lydia began.

  “Precautions?” her mother cried. “What sort of precautions? They don’t know what it is or how to cure it or why it’s killing so many.” She looked around the table, as if taking stock of the family remaining to her. “Perhaps it is not very Christian of me,” she resumed, “but I won’t have you going back there.”

  Lydia looked toward her father and brothers, but their faces were unreadable.

  “I won’t go back there,” she conceded.

  “No,” her mother quipped. “You won’t.”

  John stood to clear the table, and that was how Lydia knew that he was frightened, because he never voluntarily cleaned anything.

  “I have found work somewhere else,” she breathed.

  To give herself strength she conjured Mr. Cory’s personnel cabinets and the expression on his face when she had said yes, his smile so broad his mask had not impeded it. “There is to be a government study on Gallups Island in the harbor, and they want nurses—”
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  “But Liddie,” her father protested. “You’re not a nurse.”

  “I told him that,” she assured him. “Mr. Cory, that is, but it is so hard to find nurses right now, and the work they are to be doing is so important that he said it didn’t matter. He said that if it wasn’t for me the project would be terribly shorthanded. They want to discover how people catch it, you see, so that they can—”

  “Do you truly know what you’re saying?” her father pleaded.

  “There is risk,” she affirmed, “but there’s risk in what the soldiers are doing too, and this is an enemy that lives right here, not across an ocean, but right here, and it’s killing people.”

  Her mother pushed herself back from the table. She rose to stand behind Michael’s empty chair. “You can’t bring him back,” she said. “You can leave me like he did, and you can get sick like he did, and you can even die like he did, but none of that will change the fact that he is dead.”

  No one spoke.

  “I know I can’t bring him back,” Lydia whispered. “I can’t bring him back, or Henry, or Brian. But by going to Gallups I’ll be helping to stop this from happening again. To you or Da, or Thomas or James or John.”

  Her mother shook her head. “No,” she said. “You left me once, Liddie, and I forgave you. But now you’re leaving me again, and you want me to believe that you’re doing it for my sake? No. If you love us half as much as you loved him, you would not be throwing yourself into his grave.”