Wickett's Remedy (41 page)

Teddy spoke, shocking everyone, his quiet voice filling the otherwise silent room. “How long is this testing business going to keep up?” he ventured. “Are we stuck here until one of us gets it?”

A small muscle below Gold’s left eye pulsed three times and was still. Dr. Gold walked toward Teddy and placed one hand on the boy’s shoulder. Dr. Gold’s hand was large and broad and into Lydia’s mind unbidden came the image of Gold’s other hand encircling Teddy’s neck.

Dr. Gold smiled as he spoke, his words navigating his frozen grin. “You agreed to a month-long study, and Washington lacks the resources to extend our time together. In fact I did not expect I would be calling on you twice, but due to the extraordinary circumstances—let me assure you that the test we are about to conduct will be our last.”

The liquid filling the test tubes was a beautiful poppy red. She remembered the pride with which Percy had offered Dr. Gold his bandaged arm. She wondered when the blood had been taken and whose idea it had been.

Nurse Foley approached Dr. Gold with the notebook that in previous tests had been Percy’s sole dominion. To her dismay Lydia realized that with Nurse Foley filling Percy’s shoes, she was for the first time expected to play an active role in a procedure. Dr. Gold was deft with the syringe and the men—by now accustomed to needles—compliant. When she reached Frank she focused first on the scissors as she cut a bit of tape and then on the raised bump she was to cover on his forearm. She focused on the arm with such single-mindedness that she was able to separate the
hand filling her vision from the one that had cradled her back—until Frank said “thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she quickly replied, and hurried to the next man. Within minutes the deed was done, the test tubes spent. Dr. Gold and Nurse Foley departed, leaving Lydia to deliver the men’s breakfasts. She removed the bacon from Joe’s plate and wrapped it in a napkin to bring to Max. The men accepted their trays without a word, for which she was grateful, as she felt incapable of speech.

Even with her back to the men she could sense his exact location. She did not turn toward him one last time. She put one foot in front of the other until she exited the room. And then, feeling as if her hand had been replaced by cinders, she locked the ward door.

The anticipation that gripped the compound that day was a malevolent cousin to that which had set the staff scanning the horizon for an approaching ferry almost one month before, only now lookout had been posted for several portents, none of which was as simple as a ship’s outline against the sky. The junior medical staff were in agreement that in the course of that day or the next the volunteers in the east ward would manifest symptoms. It was only fair play that the quarantiners fall ill now that Cole was sick. Over lunch, they spoke of this event with the dogged certainty of war generals. After having stared at ten raised bumps left behind by ten injections of infected blood, Lydia was inclined to believe them.

The junior personnel were unabashedly relieved at the prospect of a positive outcome. Dr. Gold had promised individualized letters of reference, but the value of such a letter would be compromised if associated
with a study that had yielded no results. All agreed that by falling ill Cole had guaranteed himself, at the very least, a prominent assistantship. The assurance of their words was undercut by the fear that inhabited their voices, reminding Lydia that white coats and elaborate titles disguised students ill-acquainted with genuine sickness. She felt unexpected compassion at the realization she was better prepared than they for what lay ahead.

It was a day of empty gestures performed to hasten the intervals that stretched between the times she might visit quarantine or the recovery room, which continued to be called the recovery room even though no one thought of it that way anymore: it was Percy’s room now. Whenever Gold and Foley collected quarantine samples, Lydia was glad to remain with Percy. She could not think of Frank without her hands shaking. Considering how badly they trembled whenever she delivered meals, it was a small mercy she was spared the prospect of handling thermometers.

Most of her visits to Percy found him sleeping fitfully, her appearance at his bedside enough to wake him. Each time, he insisted on discussing his condition with her as if they were attending a third, invisible patient.

“The fever is not abating,” he would wheeze, “and the chest is becoming fully involved.”

Toward the end of the afternoon, his fever had climbed particularly high, and the cold compresses on his head required frequent changing. “Is the condition—” she began, but could not go on. “Does that feel any better?” she asked, as gently as she could.

“Yes,” he whispered, reaching up to press his fingers against the cool cloth. “Yes it does.”

At dinner, news of Cole’s deterioration was never more than whispered, as if giving the words more substance would somehow make things worse. There was not much talk, and what there was pertained directly to the tests, to quarantine, or to Percy. Because Lydia was attending his bedside she was imbued with rare authority, her dining companions plying her for the smallest details of his condition. But she did not want to describe Percy’s pallor, his fever, or the swampy sound his chest made when he coughed; she had seen these things too many times before.

That night she returned to the spot at the compound’s periphery where she and Frank had stood a lifetime ago, before Percy’s illness. Then she passed through the hole in the fence through which Frank had come to her. At the beach, she walked into the surf up to her waist. On returning to her room, she did not change out of her wet clothes, but instead stood shivering at the room’s center, attempting to retain for as long as possible the feel of wet fabric against her legs and the smell of the ocean.