Authors: Kim van Alkemade
Climbing the back stairs, Miss Ferster hurried up past the door
that led to the room of glassed-in babies. Entering Isolation, she recognized Nurse Shapiro and asked her to get the Rabinowitz child.
“I’m sorry, but you won’t be able to take her. She was moved last week from Isolation to the hospital wing. She’s in the Measles Ward.”
“Oh, the poor thing.” Miss Ferster recalled when her nephew caught measles last summer, the long nights her sister spent beside him, soothing the boy with damp towels and spooning cool pudding into his sore throat. “How long until she’s recovered do you think?”
“Dr. Hess confirmed the diagnoses through a blood test last week. I imagine she’s covered in rash by now. She’ll be infectious until her skin is clear, but even after the rash subsides there could be other complications. Conjunctivitis is common, and we have to watch for pneumonia. I wouldn’t expect her to be released until next month at the earliest, and then only if she doesn’t contract anything else.”
Miss Ferster’s shoulders sagged. She’d been so excited about the foster placement that she’d asked Miriam to notify the Orphaned Hebrews Home to prepare Sam for transfer. She imagined his disappointment at having to wait another month, maybe more, before seeing his sister. “Could I visit her before I go? I wouldn’t be susceptible, I had measles as a child.”
“It’s impossible for you to enter the Measles Ward. I shouldn’t even let you into the hospital wing.”
“Is there no way for me to at least see the child? I’ve come all this way.”
Nurse Shapiro considered the request. It was nearly lunchtime
in Isolation, with no new admissions to process. A walk to the hospital wing would be a welcome change in her routine. “If you insist, but only if I accompany you. There’s a window in the door of the Measles Ward. I’ll ask the nurse to wheel her crib over for you to have a peek.”
“I’d be so grateful. I have a foster family waiting to take her, and I want to be able to tell them how she is.”
To reach the hospital wing, Nurse Shapiro led Miss Ferster down the back staircase and across the lobby. They climbed toward the turret’s skylight then turned down a wide corridor. They passed the various contagious disease wards: measles, pertussis, diphtheria, pneumonia. Knocking on the door to the Measles Ward, Nurse Shapiro explained their mission to the nurse, who went to find the Rabinowitz girl. While they waited, Miss Fertser looked around. Noticing the label on a nearby door, she asked Nurse Shapiro, “Isn’t scurvy a nutritional deficiency? It’s not contagious, is it?”
“No, but Dr. Hess is making a special study of scurvy. It helps his research to keep all the children together in one ward.”
A knock drew their attention. “That’ll be the child,” Nurse Shapiro said, waving the ward nurse to step back. Would Rachel be able to hear her, Miss Ferster wondered, if she said a foster home was waiting as soon as she got well? The news would give the girl some hope. Her face close to the glass window, Miss Ferster looked into the crib that had been brought to the door.
The child in it was unrecognizable. Naked to avoid irritating the rash, her skin was the deep red of a bad burn, mottled and leathery. Her face was like a painted mask, the shorn hair plastered to her skull with sweat. Her hands were tied with strips of cloth to the bars of the crib, a necessary measure to prevent scratching and
infection, Nurse Shapiro explained, but still piteous to see. When Rachel looked up, Miss Ferster took in a sharp breath. Conjunctivitis had reddened the whites of Rachel’s eyes so they glowed with menace. Yellow pus stuck to the black lashes, giving the child a devilish look. Then the girl’s eyes focused on Miss Ferster’s face through the glass.
There she was, the agency lady, finally come to take her away from this place and back to Sam. The weeks since Rachel had been left here were an eternity of sadness and pain, but now it was over. She tried to reach out to the woman, but her tied hands were held back. She began to cry, great, gasping sobs of relief, a release of all the fear and hurt she’d kept bottled up since that first day at the Infant Home.
Miss Ferster looked at the hysterical child, so unlike the lovely, brave little girl she’d described to the foster parents—her terrible skin, those infected eyes, the gaping throat, that swollen, quavering tongue. She turned away from the sight, shaking her head. Nurse Shapiro waved the ward nurse to take the crib away. As the window receded, Rachel screamed desperately, further disfiguring her appearance. Choking on her tears, she coughed and retched. The ward nurse noted the potential development of pertussis on her chart. In her crib, Rachel thrashed and cried until, defeated, she crumpled to the mattress, tied hands sliding down the bars.
Miss Ferster followed Nurse Shapiro back to the receptionist’s alcove in the lobby. “Thank you for bringing me to see the poor thing.” She extended her hand, around which the nurse wrapped her own chapped fingers.
“It’s better to face reality than to nurture false hope,” Nurse
Shapiro said. “From the look of her, I expect the girl will be with us for some time.”
“I expect so.” Turning to the receptionist, Miss Ferster asked to use the telephone. First she’d let the Orphaned Hebrews Home know that Samuel Rabinowitz would not be leaving them, then she’d call Miriam back at the agency to ask if any other siblings had come in who needed a foster placement. There was no sense letting a perfectly good home sit empty for months on end, waiting for Rachel Rabinowitz to recover.
I
CARRIED THE TRAY OF BROTH AND THE SYRINGE OF MORPHINE
to Mildred Solomon’s room, set them on the nightstand, and cranked the bed. As her back lifted, the old woman squirmed with pain.
“It hurts.”
“I know, I’m sorry. Let’s have something to eat first, then I’ll give you your medication.” I spooned broth into her mouth, noting the effort it took for her to swallow. I studied her face, but it was so changed from what it would have been—thirty-four, thirty-five years ago?—that I recognized nothing. It seemed to me there was something familiar about her voice, her gestures, but I didn’t trust that these impressions were real.
The broth revived her. When she was finished, she pushed the bowl away with more force than I would have thought she could muster and nodded at the syringe. “It’s time for my morphine, isn’t it? Not too much, but some, I need some. That doctor prescribes too much. I told him, just enough for the pain.”
She certainly sounded like a doctor. I examined her chart again, searching for some indication of the medical degree she claimed,
but there was none. I wondered if the nurses preparing her chart had thoughtlessly stripped her of her profession.
“He said I complain too much, can you believe that? I’m the doctor here, Mildred, he said. You’re not the only one, I told him. He didn’t like that. He said he’d send me up to Fifth if I didn’t cooperate.” She licked her lips and looked around the room. “Is that where I am, on Fifth?”
“Yes, you’re on the fifth floor of the Old Hebrews Home. I’m your nurse, Rachel Rabinowitz.” Would she remember my name? I peered into her eyes but saw no spark of recognition there. I reached for the IV line to inject the morphine, then stopped myself. All I had to do was ask. Ask now, before the morphine sent her into dreamland.
“Doctor Solomon?” I worked very hard at keeping my voice steady. “Do you remember if you ever worked at the Hebrew Infant Home?”
“Of course I remember. I’m not senile. It’s just that damn morphine, he prescribes too much.” Dr. Solomon closed her eyes against the pain in her bones. She seemed to be looking for something behind the closed lids. Her mouth pulled into a smile.
“I did my residency in radiology at the Infant Home. I was responsible for all of Dr. Hess’s radiographs—for the scurvy experiments, his work on rickets, the digestion studies. He hadn’t used barium X-rays for that before. Dr. Hess was still putting gastric tubes down children’s throats. I conducted my own research, too.”
So, she was my Doctor Solomon. An electric charge jolted through me, shaking loose fragments of memory. Images began popping into my head like camera flashes. The bars of the crib I was lifted into at night, like a baby, even though I was almost
five. Holding someone’s hand as I slept, though I couldn’t imagine who that might have been. A number embroidered on the collar of my nightgown—I remembered tracing the raised threads with my fingertip. There was so much I wanted to ask, I didn’t know where to begin.
She was looking at me now, eyes eager. “Have you read my article about the tonsil experiment I conducted? Is that how you know about the Infant Home?”
“No, nothing like that. I was there. When I was a child, I was in the Hebrew Infant Home. I think you were my doctor.”
Mildred Solomon flinched. I assumed it was a jolt of pain. She obviously needed that morphine.
“What study were you in?” Her voice was tight in her throat.
“I don’t know anything about a study. I know I had X-rays, but I don’t know what was wrong with me.”
She snorted, her head collapsing back against the pillow. “All the children got x-rayed, that was routine, doesn’t mean a thing. The important work was our research. The article I wrote got me my position in radiology, ahead of a dozen men. After the Infant Home, I never had to work with children again.” A twinge of pain pulled her mouth into a taught line. “Enough talking. I want my medication.”
I checked the time: quarter to two. A full dose now would leave too much in her system when the next round of meds came at four. I knew Gloria wouldn’t alter the next dose without a doctor signing off, but he didn’t usually come around until after five. She could call him up, of course—if there was an emergency, she wouldn’t hesitate to do so—but if he came early he’d want to get
his rounds over with, and that would throw off the whole schedule. I knew what the schedule meant to Gloria.
I pushed the syringe into the valve in the IV line and depressed the plunger. I stopped halfway, just enough to keep her comfortable, and quiet, until four o’clock rounds. Mildred Solomon’s face relaxed as her eyes fluttered shut, a drug addict savoring her fix. “That’s a good girl,” she whispered.
Withdrawing the syringe, I decided Gloria didn’t have to know anything about it. At the nurses’ station, I found an empty vial near the autoclave. I pierced its rubber cap and emptied the syringe of morphine, then dropped the vial in my pocket before calling Gloria over to initial Mildred Solomon’s chart. I could see she was pleased. Fifth was on schedule, all opiates accounted for.
“It turns out she really was a doctor,” I said. “Mildred Solomon. I knew her, once. She was one of my doctors at the Hebrew Infant Home.”
“Infant Home?” Gloria peered at me over her glasses. “I never knew you were in an orphanage. When was that?”
“Back in 1918.”
Gloria considered the date. “Did your parents die in the Spanish flu?” I made a sad sort of shrug, which she interpreted as a yes. “So, this Doctor Solomon, she took care of you?” Touching my hair, I nodded. “And now you can take care of her. That’s fitting. I doubt she has anyone else. For a woman to be a doctor, in those days? She couldn’t have been married. I guess you were all like her children.”
“I suppose so.” Something had come to me, an image so clear I wondered where it had been all these years. “When she came to
get me for my treatments, Dr. Solomon had such a smile, you’d think it was only for you in all the world. She always told me how good I was, how brave.”
“What were you being treated for?”
“I don’t know.”
“Of course not, you being so young. But you could find out, I suppose. Aren’t there records?”
“She said she wrote an article.”
“There you go then.” Gloria pushed up her glasses, satisfied my problem had been resolved. “I’m sure they have those old journals at the Medical Academy library. You’re off tomorrow, why not go find out?”
H
EADING HOME
, I practically collapsed into my seat on the sweltering subway. Once the train was above ground, across the river, the open windows helped ease the heat. I stretched my neck to catch what wind I could. We reached the end of the line at eight o’clock, the sky still light from the late summer sun. Avoiding the crowds, I walked the back streets to my apartment building, Gloria’s question rattling in my mind.
Why hadn’t I ever found out? I only knew I’d had X-ray treatments because Mrs. Berger always said it was a shame what they had done to me, but I didn’t actually remember getting them. I blamed my ignorance on the way we were raised. At the orphanage, questions were usually answered with a slap from one of the monitors; even Mrs. Berger was evasive if I asked about my hair or where my father had gone. Doing as I was told hadn’t come naturally to me as a child, but eventually I’d learned. Learned to stop asking questions. To eat everything on my plate. To open my
mouth for the dentist. To stand with arms outstretched for punishment. To strip for the showers. To snap into silence.
I checked the mailbox in the entryway, my name and hers snugged together on that tiny label like any pair of roommates: widowed sisters, cohabitating spinsters, cost-conscious bachelorettes. I was hoping for one of her postcards scribbled with complaints about the Florida heat, but there was nothing. I imagined her lounging by the pool, too preoccupied to write. Disappointed, I rang for the elevator. As I pushed the button for my floor, I heard Molly Lippman’s voice calling out to hold the door, but in my moment of hesitation—that woman can be so tedious—it shut, leaving me feeling a bit guilty. Upstairs I hustled to get into the apartment before Molly caught up to me. How many minutes of my life have I wasted with her while she went on and on about Sigmund Freud and that psychoanalysis club of hers? I might have been more abrupt if she didn’t live right next door.
I went straight to the bathroom and started a cool shower. If Molly did knock, at least I’d have a good excuse for not answering. I shed everything head to toe in seconds, desperate to be naked, dying to feel the water on my limbs and scalp. I was clean in a minute, the Ivory slick against my skin, but I stayed under the cool spray until my toes began to wrinkle. Only when I pulled back the curtain did I realize I’d forgotten to take out a fresh towel. Reaching up to grab one from the linen closet, I felt that twinge again, a slight strain from lifting a patient out of bed a few months back. I’d thought it was better by now. No matter.