Deadly (21 page)

All the victims had bought their milk, butter, and cream at Kinley's Farm. We wasted no time in going over there and took several samples to be tested. All of the milk was clean, as was the cream, but a batch of the butter turned out to be positive for the typhoid.

We returned to the farm, bringing with us Dr. Baker and Jonathan so we could test the farmer and several of his farmhands on the spot. The doctor convinced them of the quotidian nature of the test and drew blood from each person, and the boy performed the Widal blood serum test on the samples. All of them came out negative except Mr. Kinley's.

The man is rife with typhoid germs.

Imagine our surprise to find a second healthy carrier, and so quickly! Though Mr. Kinley doesn't do the milking
on a regular basis, occasionally he pitches in. But he is the only one who forms the butter into slabs, and he does this with his bare hands. This is how he transmits the fever.

Mr. Kinley had heard about Mary Mallon, who he referred to as Typhoid Mary, which unfortunately I hear very often now. He laughed about the filthy Irish—until he understood the results of his own Widal test. Mr. Soper pointed out the epidemic in Riverdale. Mr. Kinley denied that he was to blame for it; his fury made me fear things would turn ugly. Dr. Baker firmly reminded him of the police intervention in Miss Mallon's case, and the farmer reluctantly agreed to accompany us back to the Detention Hospital, where he remains in quarantine.

This is a very disquieting discovery. I don't think anyone had truly envisioned another healthy carrier would exist, except Mr. Soper, who seemed to know it all along. There has been a great outcry that Mr. Kinley was not simply tested and released, but is now being held in detention. There have been many letters to the papers, and his wife is very upset. The reporters scream that soon we will have every other healthy New Yorker in quarantine, and for no good reason. No member of the press has bothered to travel to the Memorial Hospital in Riverdale to visit those children and
men and women who burn with fever and clutch at their bellies in pain thanks to the salmonella typhi bacteria that Mr. Kinley unknowingly passed to them. If they did, they would see the truth. They would see the reason we keep him from the public. They wouldn't defend the germ over the man.

I'm beginning to see that it takes a certain endurance to make unpopular decisions. I suppose this is one of the more difficult challenges a doctor has to face. I don't yet know what the department plans to do with Mr. Kinley. Perhaps it depends on the judge's decision in Mary's case. We don't know how many of these healthy carriers exist, nor what causes them, nor what to do about them. There simply is no precedent for any of this.

Mr. Soper seems to be including Jonathan in every aspect of our case now. The young man's involvement pains me. He is to appear at Mary's hearing, along with several scientists from his department. Out of all the science fellows, why him?

Perhaps I am to have compassion for Jonathan. I overheard him and Dr. Baker speaking on the train. He grew up in the St. Francis Orphanage after his parents died. He was too young to know them. He has no brothers or
sisters. All of this seemed to bring out the deepest pity in Dr. Baker. He has survived many difficulties, a life of crime and vice on the streets, and overcame them. He comes from another world, but it's one that seems too far from my own to understand.

T
he case
is moving so fast, I have hardly enough time to keep up with my notes here. Eleven of us are scheduled to appear before the judge: Mr. Soper and I, Dr. Baker and the two officers, Jonathan, three senior scientists, Dr. Parks, and a doctor from the island. We gathered in the lecture room, and the lawyers talked us through their plan for the defense—a straight line leading from the disease to Mary.

They told us what they thought Mary's lawyer Mr. O'Neal might say, and what questions we might be asked on cross-examination. They suggested we think about what is truth, and what will win the case. They said to use phrases that will stress Mary's obstinacy and violent uncooperativeness.

As the time approaches, the idea of speaking before a judge frightens me more and more—especially when I have
been advised to see the truth as selectable, rather than as a whole. I'm not even sure I know what that means, really. Can't we simply tell the whole story and let the judge decide? Won't truth prevail?

Oh, I wish I was not called to appear in court!

O
ne week
before I see Mary Mallon in the flesh again, and the thought makes the nerves in my stomach buzz. I fear she will point to me in the courtroom and scream out “You!” as she did in my nightmare.

I walk around with this raw, uncomfortable sense of being revealed. I cannot rid myself of this horrible feeling.

We had another meeting with the lawyers in which they arranged our placement before the judge. In the courtroom, I will sit between Mr. Soper and Dr. Baker in the first row, with Jonathan and the scientists directly behind us. At this meeting, Jonathan kept reaching forward and tapping me on the shoulder to tell me something, but I gracefully deflected his attempts at conversation.

I did not know anyone was watching me do this.

When the meeting concluded, Dr. Baker leaned over
and asked me to join her in her office. Something about her request, the gravity in her eyes, worried me. I asked if we were to begin our tutoring, but she shook her head and held up her hand to stop any other questions.

I followed her upstairs to her office, where she waved me into a chair as she settled into hers. She leaned her elbows on the desk and folded her hands and rested her chin on them, as if she were searching for the right words.

“Prudence,” she started, “I'm not sure there is any good way to discuss this, other than to be blunt and come right out with it.”

“Please do,” I said.

“It's important that our department work together in harmony,” she said.

“Of course,” I said. I tried to see in her eyes what she was thinking, but she was inscrutable.

“It's also important that you as a woman get along with your male colleagues. You might as well start now, because you don't know who will be helpful to you in the future.”

I did not picture myself as someone who didn't get along with others. I said I was surprised she had seen that in me.

“I sense some discord between you and Jonathan,” she said.

My mind raced back to the morning he trapped me. My tongue felt pasted to the roof of my mouth.

“I hear him trying to be cordial to you, but you are almost rude to him,” she went on.

I looked at Dr. Baker's lovely face and wondered if she had ever had difficulties with men.

“He's an intelligent young man, and by the looks of his clever experiments in our laboratory, I can see he will make a powerful scientist one day. Those are the sort of men who can influence your career,” she said.

“It's that—I just—Ma'am, I'm not sure that boy will ever respect me as a doctor,” I stammered.

She frowned. “What do you mean?” she asked.

Something in her voice made me feel I could trust her and confess what happened. I took a deep breath and told her about that morning, how the boy tried to kiss me, how Mr. Soper saved me. Her lips turned white with anger while I spoke.

She closed her eyes for a long moment, then opened them, looking straight into mine. “It will happen, Prudence,” she said. “There is a lot of ignorance among men, so you must teach them how to treat you. By ignoring Jonathan, you're not furthering your relations. You must be better than him, smarter than him.”

In her cool eyes, I saw the steeliness inside her—that hard place that allowed her to barge into strange houses and wrestle down disease. It was a place of pure resolve.

“You must be careful with your emotions,” she went on. “You mustn't allow your dislike of one man, or your love for another”—she lightly stressed the word “love” without looking at me—“to interfere with your work and your studies. You must learn to stay neutral. Save your passion for yourself and the knowledge you must acquire,” she said.

Her words revealed me; I felt bared before her. She knew my feelings for Mr. Soper! She released me, and as I walked down the stairs, it occurred to me that she wasn't the only one who could see my feelings so clearly. Mr. Soper had not returned to his previous kind self since I had kissed him. He was civil and straightforward, professional, but no longer openly kind.

Had he spoken to Dr. Baker about me?

Had other people noticed?

I worried that everyone in the department saw right into my secret heart. I feared they all knew my mash on Mr. Soper, and my dislike for Jonathan.

When I reached our office, I said a brief good night to Mr. Soper and left. I did not take the streetcar, but walked
the mile home. I have been thinking about what Dr. Baker said. She has learned to be careful with her emotions, to see men as influencing her career, as stepping stones to a future goal. Has she ever felt raw and revealed? Has she ever loved?

I am afraid perhaps she sees me the way I see Josephine—irrational, excitable, susceptible to the ways of men. I'm afraid she thinks she made the wrong decision about me when she chose to help me with medical school. If only I could rid myself of this anguish. I must learn to speak to people in a cool, controlled manner. Oh, how the weight of my own self presses me to earth! I wish I could hold my breath and sink down deep into the East River and feel the water flow over me, taking away the tide of my emotions.

I
wish
I could speak to Marm about Papa, but I know he lives inside her every moment of every day, that she thinks of him upon rising in the morning, and nights before bed. I don't want her to suffer the fate of knowing that he will never return.

I wonder if Papa himself had this thought. If that's why he didn't want us to find out.

Keeping the knowledge inside me is like holding a knife in my chest. No matter what I try to do to avoid it, still, the pain is there.

I must find a way to tell her.

T
he trial
began today. I cannot blame my blunder in the courtroom on anyone but myself. Yet I feel Mr. Soper should have known what might happen. He should have known and warned me somehow.

This morning, as I walked through a light drizzle to the courthouse near the Brooklyn Bridge, I felt weary from a nervous sleep. When I came within view of the huge stone building, I saw a group of women at the bottom of the wide stairway with a banner that said
FREE MARY MALLON!
Bunches of angry people held signs that said
IF SHE'S TYPHOID MARY, THEN I'M DIPHTHERIA DAN!
and
RELEASE FARMER KINLEY NOW!
They furiously shouted their slogans. I felt like they were shouting at me.

At the top of the steps, Dr. Baker stood between two great columns, talking to Jonathan.

Men with cameras and press hats took pictures of the protesters. The courtroom, and our case, was ordered closed to reporters by the judge. My heart thumped harder as I wove through the crowd, up the stairs to the doctor. I forced myself to meet Jonathan's eyes and say “Good morning,” a greeting that he returned. I stood beside him as we waited for Mr. Soper, who darted between two carriages and came toward us, studiously ignoring the crowd.

As Mr. Soper took the last few steps, Jonathan opened the door to the courthouse and we all went inside. We walked through the marble halls until we found the proper room, a muffled, wood-paneled square with rows of pews like a synagogue, and a high podium for the judge.

We took our seats behind our lawyers; others gathered, until the courtroom held the witnesses that would be called on both sides. I saw the Thompsons, and the Bowings, and other families who had hired Mary Mallon. Jonathan pointed out Mr. O'Neal, Mary's lawyer, and two of the men who sat behind him. He said, “They're the independent scientists who say she doesn't carry the germ. Lab rats!”

Outside the room, I could hear the voices of men, reporters waiting for Mary to appear, which she did shortly, but through a door in front, accompanied by a nurse and a
policeman. The room fell silent. She was well coiffed, her collar starched, her dress clean and pressed. She seemed heavier; she didn't look at any of us; she sat beside her lawyer and gripped the arms of her chair. Something in my chest squeezed tight, looking at her—this woman whose whole life had changed because of what she carried around inside her. She had become an idea in my head, a germ theory, but there she sat, flesh and bone, and that bad, tight feeling moved all through me.

The judge entered and sat, and the lawyers stated their cases—Mary Mallon versus the Department of Health and Sanitation. The first witness called was Mr. Soper, who went through the story of how we had discovered that Mary was a healthy carrier of the typhoid disease. He seemed very dignified on the stand and kept to the basic scientific data that was detailed in the folios I'd written of the case. He was questioned for about twenty minutes, and cross-questioned for another fifteen, and then it was my turn.

I tried to appear as calm as my chief. I repeated much of what Mr. Soper said, telling how I kept notes and followed the food trail to the peach ice cream, which led us to Miss Mallon. But on cross-questioning, Mr. O'Neal asked me things other than what he had asked Mr. Soper.
I didn't understand where he was going until it was too late.

“And how did you find out where Mary Mallon lived?” Mr. O'Neal asked.

“Mr. Soper and I waited outside the house where she worked,” I said. “I was away for Christmas, and when I came back, we went to a saloon and talked to a man about her, who agreed to set up a meeting with her.”