A Death-Struck Year (8 page)

Surrounded by the smell of antiseptic and a coppery sweet scent I recognized as blood, I realized I could not do this. I did not want to be a patient here. I did not want to die. I should have remained at school, where it was safe and isolated. I should have listened to my brother.

Hannah and Kate were three cots down the aisle before they realized I had not followed.

Hannah turned. “What . . . ?” She took one look at my face and fell silent.

“I’m sorry.” I backed away, slowly, toward the main doors. Mortification welled up inside me. “I’m very sorry. I can’t stay here.”

Sympathy flickered in Kate’s eyes, but Hannah’s expression gave away nothing.

“I understand,” Hannah said. “Thank you for your help today. It was good to meet you, Cleo Berry.” She turned on her heel and walked off. Kate followed.

I watched them go, wondering if some people were simply born brave and others not, and that was that. Or maybe Hannah Flynn and Kate Bennett were just crazy. Knowing the risks, one had to be crazy to remain here.

“Aren’t you frightened?” I asked, my voice small, barely audible.

They heard me anyway and turned. A nurse and a doctor hustled by, each in the opposite direction. It was Hannah who answered.

“Of course I’m frightened,” she said quietly. “And so is Kate. And everyone else here. But these people need help. If not me, then who?”

I thought about the baby I’d carried into the Auditorium only a little while ago. On a nearby cot, a woman struggled onto her elbows. The noise she made was terrible. Wild and rough at the same time, like a cat grappling with a massive hairball. An empty bucket lay on the floor. I dived for it, thrusting it forward just as she leaned over the side and retched. Revulsion filled me. But so did pity. Eventually, the woman fell back against the pillow, her breathing labored. Hannah leaned over her, clucking and soothing. I moved away to give her room.

Kate stood at the foot of the bed, holding the coat I’d dropped. She eyed my shirtwaist. Additional chunks of vomit covered the fabric, reminding me, disgustingly, of Margaret’s nectarine pits.

I looked at Kate, at Hannah, at the bucket filled with vomit, at the endless rows of patients. I took a deep breath. Gathering up the tattered remnants of my courage, I asked, “May I still borrow that blouse?”

Saturday, October 12, 1918

The smell of frying cabbage and sausages could not mask the odor wafting through the hall. Someone had used the stairwell as a toilet. I wrinkled my nose and knocked on a door with peeling green paint.

I was back on Caruthers Street in an old, dilapidated apartment building. I had no idea what tomorrow would bring. Likely, I would be sitting in Jack’s study with my head hanging low. Listening as my brother yelled and Lucy stood by looking thoroughly disappointed.

Today, however, I would finish what I’d started.

Kate had led me to a bathroom and produced a fresh blue shirtwaist that fit surprisingly well. It belonged to her sister Ruby, and I was welcome to keep it, she had said. There was still no sign of Lieutenant Parrish or the children. But before I left the Auditorium, two familiar stretcher-bearers had swept onto the main floor. They carried the children’s mother, still unconscious, her long dark hair trailing off the sides. I watched as they disappeared through a door leading to an adjacent assembly room and wondered if that was where they treated the critical cases. But looking around, how could it get any worse than this?

I’d stopped by the house to retrieve my bag from the back porch. Also, to make sure the house was locked up tight. Then I’d continued knocking on doors. I found a woman, mildly ill with the flu, but her husband and mother were both home to care for her. I left them to it. Several knocks went unanswered, though neighbors confirmed the occupants were seen leaving for work earlier in the day. I distributed most of the masks and brochures. Overall, the last few hours had been duller than dull, and I was grateful for it.

This building was the last one on the street. With only a few apartments left, I glanced at my bracelet watch. It was nearly three o’clock. I was starving, though after all that I’d seen and smelled today, I was surprised I still had an appetite. I would finish here and find some lunch. And then I would head back to the Auditorium and learn, finally, what had become of that poor family.

It took a moment before I realized no one had answered my knock. I tried again. A heavy object thumped against the thin wood, sending me hopping back with a yelp. From the other side of the door came a voice, deep and irate. “Go on! Get lost! What do I have to do to get some sleep around here?” There was another thud. Then silence.

I pressed my hand against my chest and waited for my heartbeat to settle. I walked to the last door and knocked. To my surprise, it swung open fast and wide.

“Well, hello.” I smiled behind my mask, which I hated already. It itched. I suspected my face would develop a rash before too long.

The little girl before me was about eight, with messy brown braids and a blue dress. A small cloth bag hung from a string around her neck. The contents of the pouch were easy to identify. The smell of camphor balls permeated the air, so potent my eyes stung.

The child stared up at me with interest. Or, rather, she stared at the white and red armband I’d removed from my coat and pinned to the sleeve of my shirtwaist. “Are you a nurse, miss?”

The smile slid right off my face. “I’m not,” I said. My eyes darted over her head. The apartment was small; it looked like the space was used as a combined parlor, kitchen, and dining room. A single grimy window remained shut. I didn’t see a telephone, and there was no one else about. I looked down at the child. “Why do you ask? Do you need a nurse?”

“I think so.” She looked over her shoulder to where a door stood open at the opposite end of the room. “Mateo’s been in his room all day. I shake him, but he won’t get up.”

“Show me.” I dropped my bag just inside the door and followed her, then stopped in the bedroom doorway, heartsick but unsurprised.

Sitting on the floor with his back resting against the foot of a bed was a boy of about ten. He was dressed in blue knickerbockers. Thin arms dangled on bent knees. The pouch hanging from his neck, identical to the girl’s, had not fulfilled its promise. He looked up at our entrance, his heavily lashed brown eyes bright with fever.

The girl rushed to sit beside him. Tucking her arm into his, she looked up at me, fearful. “He’s very hot.”

I knelt beside them. Mateo mumbled something incomprehensible as I rested a hand against his cheek. I felt the familiar panic rising and tamped it down. I needed to be calm. Or at least pretend. I was the oldest person in the room. The adult.

“What is your name?” I asked the girl.

“Francesca Bassi.”

“Will your parents be home soon, Francesca?”

She shook her head. “There’s just Papa and Mateo and me. Papa’s at the shipyard.”

I sat back on my heels, thinking. Mateo had to go to a hospital. It would be easier to take him myself rather than search the building for a telephone. But I didn’t want to take the little girl with me. To expose her any more than necessary. I couldn’t leave her here alone. What should I do? “Listen to me, Francesca—”

“Buongiorno?”
A woman’s voice drifted in from the other room.

“Elena!” Francesca leaped to her feet, dislodging her brother’s head so it flopped back against the bed. The girl ran from the room. Mateo began a slow lean to one side, and I grasped his shoulders with both hands, holding him upright. Fire seeped through his jacket, frightening me.

“
Dio mio!
Mateo!” A woman in a green dress stood in the doorway, staring at us in horror. She had curly black hair and wore a green dress. Francesca clung to her skirts.

Relief surged through me. “Are you a neighbor?” I asked. “A friend?”

“Sì, sì,”
the woman stammered, wide-eyed. “I am Elena Tolemei. I am a friend to Signor Bassi.”

It was good enough. “I need to take Mateo to the hospital. Will you stay with Francesca until her father comes home?”

“Yes. Of course.” Elena did not move from the doorway but instead wrapped both arms around Francesca. Her gaze was riveted on Mateo. “It is the influenza?”

“I think so.” I gave Mateo a small shake. He jerked upright, for an instant, before slumping.

I leaned closer. “Mateo. I can’t carry you. Can you try and walk for me?”

Elena came over and crouched on Mateo’s other side. She smoothed his untidy black hair with her fingers. The boy stirred, opening his eyes. He mumbled something.

“Mateo?” I prodded.

“
Sì,
I can walk.” He slurred his words. “
Certamente!
For I am Tarzan, king of the beasts!” His eyes closed.

Elena and I looked at each other, dismayed. The stories from the East Coast came rushing back to me. Patient after patient. Delirium.

“Please, help me pull him up,” I said.

We managed to half coax, half drag Mateo to his feet. I snatched my bag off the floor before we left the apartment. We led him down three floors of dim, rank stairwell and into the gray daylight. Francesca trailed behind us.

With Mateo stowed in the rear seat, I turned the hand crank before climbing into the car. I started the engine, then looked at Elena through the open window.

“I’m going to take him to County,” I said, raising my voice to be heard over the engine. Multnomah County, just a few blocks south on Hooker Street, was closer than the Auditorium. I had completely forgotten that fact during my earlier panic with the two children. “And I’ll try to find his father. Do you know the name of the shipyard?”

Elena clutched Francesca’s hand and nodded. “It is the Columbia River shipyard.” She pointed east. “It is just there, near the bridge.”

“And his name?”

“Nicolo Bassi. He is an assemblyman,” Elena said. “
Scusa, signorina,
but what is your name?”

Good manners, I realized, were the first to go in a crisis. “I beg your pardon. My name is Cleo Berry.”

Elena gave Mateo one last look before stepping onto the sidewalk. Standing on her tiptoes, Francesca handed me a thin paperback through the window. “Please give this to Mateo when he wakes. It’s his favorite.”

I looked at the title.
Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar
by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

“I will,” I promised, laying the book beside me. From the apartment building, people were pressed up against windows, watching us. I gave Elena and Francesca what I hoped was a reassuring smile before racing down the street.

The Multnomah County Hospital was housed in a graceful three-story Victorian. When I turned onto Hooker Street, I saw two massive tents on the front lawn. Both were round and white, with a pointed roof. They looked like they’d been purchased from a circus.

People poured in and out of the open flaps that served as doors. Patients were being carried in on stretchers. Others were well enough to walk in on their own two feet. No one looked like they had an extra hand to spare, so I dragged Mateo toward one of the tents on my own. It took some doing, and by the time we crossed the lawn, I was breathing hard.

Mateo mumbled beside me. I peered inside the tent, half expecting to see elephants and tigers, or a crowd clutching bags of peanuts and waiting for a show. But no. There were the metal cots, the doctors and nurses, the bad smells, the crying—all of it now familiar.

A man in a white orderly’s uniform spotted me hovering. He was short but strong-looking. He lifted Mateo in his arms easily and carried him down an aisle. Relieved, I watched him set the boy on an empty cot. A nurse appeared by my side, her pencil poised above a clipboard. I gave her what little information I could: Mateo’s name, address, his father’s name. There wasn’t much. I hoped I wouldn’t have too much trouble locating Nicolo Bassi.

Iron ladders scraped against a steel-hulled ship at the Columbia River Shipbuilding Company, reminding me of fingernails on a blackboard. Assemblymen pounded on metal plates and hollered for bolts. Two dogs barked at a passing produce boat. Horns blasted from the bridge, from the ships in the river, from the trucks rumbling by pulling timber logs, wide as a grown man. Alarming thuds shook the warehouses lining the dock, followed by the
whoooosh
of smoke shooting from chimneys. The drills whirred. The cranes screeched. My ears rang from the sheer force of it all.

I headed toward the dry dock, where a massive cargo vessel stood near completion. A three-story jumble of scaffolding was braced against it, the planks thick with workmen. I hoped someone might be able to point out Nicolo Bassi. The day had warmed slightly. A good thing, as I could not wear my coat. It had been left in the car, along with my shirtwaist, to fester.

I heard a warning shout. A rough hand grabbed my arm and hauled me aside, an instant before a wrench crashed onto the spot where I’d just stood. My heart pounding, I faced the owner of the ham-size hand. I guessed he was old—grandfather old—though the grime on his face made it difficult to tell for certain. His smile was wide and amiable.

“Careful where you stand, miss.” He released my arm. “No telling what’ll fall out of the sky ’round here.” He pointed to the scaffolding, where a man sent an apologetic wave before turning back to his work.

“Thank you,” I said.

“No trouble.” My rescuer started to walk away.

“Wait!”

He paused and turned back to me, eyebrows raised.

“Do you know where I might find Nicolo Bassi?” I asked. “I was told he works here.”

He laughed. “Nicolo? Sure. He’s the man who nearly sent you to the hospital.” He scratched his chin, adding, “It might be a long while before he comes down, though. The boss wants those plates in by nightfall.” With one final smile, he stuck his hands in his pockets and ambled off.

I craned my neck to look at Mr. Bassi, who perched on the highest level of scaffolding. His back was to me, making it impossible to gain his attention. I could not wait here all afternoon, but I hated to leave a message. I doubted he would see it anytime soon.