CHAPTER 22
Mirielle continued to take the potassium iodide pills for three days straight. She stashed a few pills in her pocket or purse and swallowed them alongside her chaulmoogra oil. By the fourth day, she was sure the lesion on her neck had flattened and become less red. By the fifth day, the pale patch beneath her thumb that had started this whole mess all but vanished.
So on the sixth day, when her legs began to itch, she thought little of it, blaming the heat and muggy Louisiana air. She took her pills as usual and went about her day. Everyone in the infirmary who was well enough to sit up wanted their fingernails buffed and hair styled. Sister Verena kept her busy sharpening needles, emptying bedpans, and changing dressings too.
The next day, while she stood inside the X-ray room, helping Sister Verena ready shot after shot of thick chaulmoogra oil, her legs itched all the worse. It was sweltering in the small room, the electrical fan sputtering in the corner no match for the summer’s heat. When she bent down to scratch her legs, she felt dozens of tiny bumps through her silk stockings. Someone in house eighteen must have left the screen door open last night and invited in the mosquitos.
As the morning progressed, the itching turned to an aching. The line of patients awaiting their shots seemed never to shorten. She shifted her weight from foot to foot and at last dragged over a crate to sit on, but the throbbing in her legs only grew worse.
She awaited Sister Verena’s chastisement. Can’t you stand still? Must you sit? But instead she said, “Are you quite well, Mrs. Marvin? Perhaps you’d like to take the afternoon off.”
Was this a trick? Something to lord over Mirielle’s head later? “No, I’m fine. Quite capable of finishing my shift.”
The supper bell rang just as Mirielle finished packing up the needles and cotton and empty bottles of chaulmoogra oil.
“I’ll send one of the men to fetch the supplies back to the infirmary,” Sister Verena said to her. “Go eat.”
Trick or no, Mirielle nodded. But she hadn’t any appetite and went to her house instead. On her way to her room, she stopped in the bathroom, swallowing the iodide pill she’d stowed in her pocket with a few palmfuls of water. She splashed water onto her cheeks too, relishing the coolness against her skin. When she turned off the faucet and straightened, she caught sight of herself in the mirror. Her face was flushed. The spot on her neck, just yesterday flattened and pale, had swollen into a bright red boil.
She hurried to her room and tore off her stockings. Tiny boils covered her legs. She touched one. It was hot and painful. Mirielle recoiled and flung her skirt down to cover the sight, for once grateful for the uniform’s ridiculous length. What was happening to her? An allergy of some sort. The harsh detergent they used in the laundry had always bothered her. Or maybe it was the bath soap. She’d run out of her favorite soap from home and been forced to use the plain, hospital-issue soap until Charlie obliged to send her more.
She changed out of her uniform into her nightgown, refusing to look at her sore, bumpy legs. Never mind waiting on Charlie. Tomorrow she’d buy different soap at the canteen before she showered. She lay down on her bed without turning down the sheets or quilt. A little air would do these bumps good. And she was hot anyway. Tired too. Sunlight slipped in beneath the thin silk curtains she’d made from a skirt the laundryman had ruined. Her bedside clock read five thirty. Just a little nap then. Tonight was movie night at the rec hall, and she’d promised Irene she would come. The projector they had was a relic that broke down every other reel. The films they showed were ancient—three, four, sometimes ten years old. And never the good ones, the ones she’d watched in nickelodeons and vaudeville halls when her father and grandmother thought she was sipping tea in some society girlfriend’s parlor. Star of Bethlehem, Ivanhoe, Jane Eyre—pictures that had made her fall in love with the cinema long before she ever met Charlie.
She fell asleep thinking of those movies. Jane and the handsome Mr. Rochester. The three wise men on their camels following a shining star through the desert. But in her dreams, those images morphed. She was Esmeralda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, averting her eyes from the grotesque Quasimodo. Then, just as suddenly, it was she whose limbs and back were twisted, whose skin was coarse and hairy, whose face was that of a monster. It was from her that others hid their eyes. She was Nosferatu, Frankenstein, Mr. Hyde. Soon it was not enough for the others in her dream to look away. They pointed and snickered. They gasped and scowled. Those few who dared come close kicked and pinched her. They grabbed her shoulder and shook her.
“Polly,” they said, and she swatted them.
“Baby, wake up.”
Mirielle jolted awake, her arms flailing against the strong hands that held her shoulders. “Get away!”
“It’s me, baby. Irene.”
Irene? Irene. Mirielle sat up and flung her arms around her. “I was having the most awful dreams.”
“I’ll say. I could hear you clear across the house.”
“I can’t go to the pictures tonight. I can’t.”
“The pictures? Baby, you missed the picture show. A hoard of buffalo couldn’t have woke you.” She unwound Mirielle’s arms from around her neck. “Missed breakfast too.”
“It’s morning?”
Irene nodded.
Mirielle rubbed her temples. Her head ached. Her fingers were stiff and sore at the knuckles. She’d slept all night but didn’t feel rested. Morning meant it was now Friday. Friday meant . . .
“Oh, futz! We’re not late for our shift in the pharmacy, are we? Sister Verena will have my hide when she hears about it.” Mirielle swung her legs onto the floor to stand. The rush of blood sent her boils throbbing. They were bigger this morning. Redder. One or two oozed pale thick liquid. She hurried to cover her legs with her nightgown, but Irene had already seen. She bent down and touched one of the boils. Mirielle winced.
“How long you had these?”
“It’s just a reaction to the soap.” Even as Mirielle said it, she knew it wasn’t true. She’d seen hundreds of bumps and sores like this at the dressing clinic.
Irene stood and put a hand on Mirielle’s forehead. “You’re burning up. Let’s get you to the infirmary.”
“No. I can’t. I’m fine.” Her voice was thin and unsteady. She tried to stand, but the pain in her legs was unbearable, and she sank back onto her mattress.
“You sit tight. I’ll fetch a wheelchair.”
The path to the infirmary had never felt so long. Around every twist and bend in the walkway, they passed someone new who stared at Mirielle in the wheelchair the same way passersby in the street stared at Charlie, their eyes saying, Is that him? Impossible. It couldn’t be. The Rocking Chair Brigade were not content to stare but clamored for news as Irene pushed her by.
“What’s happened, Mrs. Marvin?”
“Are you ill?”
Excitement tinged their voices as if they’d gotten the scoop on a story sure to make the front page.
“Bugger off, you old fops,” Irene said to them over her shoulder.
Mirielle wished she could stand and stomp on every one of their feet. Or kick them between their legs so they doubled over and saw stars. What if the next time she passed this way she didn’t have feet or legs with which to kick at all? What if these boils got infected and the doctors had to amputate?
“You can have my shoes when they take my legs,” she said to Irene, as the infirmary came into view. Her eyes were dry, but there were tears in her voice. “The gold ones with the satin bows. And my alligator-skin pumps you like.”
“Oh, hush. No one’s gonna take your legs, and my feet are too damn big for your shoes anyway.”
At this, Mirielle did cry. Such beautiful shoes and they’d go to waste. Just like all the lovely things in her former life.
In the infirmary, Sister Loretta helped settle Mirielle into one of the beds then hurried off to find Doc Jack. It felt strange to lie beside women only two days before she’d been tending to. She hadn’t had the energy to dress but had thrown her kimono on over her nightgown before Irene returned with the wheelchair. Now she yanked its satin lapels tightly closed and pulled the rough bedclothes up to her neck, as if in doing so she could somehow disappear.
“Unhappy surprise to see you in the infirmary without your work apron, Mrs. Marvin,” Doc Jack said when he arrived. “Let’s see what the trouble is.” He motioned to Sister Loretta, who stood beside him, and she pressed a thermometer into Mirielle’s mouth. “May I?” He motioned to the blankets covering her legs. Mirielle nodded, careful not to dislodge the thermometer from under her tongue.
She expected Doc Jack’s eyes to widen or mouth drop open when he saw the ugly crop of boils. But his face remained placid. He pressed his fingers against a few, and Mirielle let out a cry through her nose.
“A dozen or so lesions on both legs in various stages of eruption. Erythemic and hot to the touch,” he said to Sister Loretta, who then scribbled the assessment in Mirielle’s record.
Mirielle whimpered again.
“Don’t worry, dear. They’ll disappear soon enough.”
Sister Loretta plucked the thermometer from her mouth and examined it, holding it only inches from her glasses. “One-oh-two, Doctor.”
“What’s wrong with me?” Mirielle asked.
Doc Jack pulled up a stool. “I think you’re experiencing what we call a leprous reaction. Something has exacerbated the disease.”
“Will I die?”
“No, that’s very unlikely. Sometimes a reaction can trigger acute nephritis, which can lead to kidney failure and death, but we’ll keep a close eye on you here in the infirmary.” He patted her knee as if what he’d said should be somehow reassuring. “Sometimes patients go blind if iridocyclitis develops, but that’s only if the illness goes untreated.”
“Why did this happen?”
“Many things can bring about a reaction. Poor diet, intercurrent disease like typhoid or influenza, pregnancy, overmuch stress. Anything that lowers your body’s resistance to the disease.”
Mirielle frowned. Ever since leaving the jail, she’d taken care to eat well and get enough sleep. And she certainly wasn’t pregnant. She couldn’t even remember the last time she and Charlie had made love. Thinking of him added a new dimension of pain. When she’d woken from the morphine-induced twilight sleep of childbirth, he’d been beside her. When she’d come to after her accident, he’d been clutching her in his arms. Now she was alone.
“And my legs? These dreadful boils will really go away?” She hadn’t the strength for tears, but her voice warbled like a frightened child’s.
“A few days or a week and I’m quite certain they will.” Doc Jack must have read the panic on her face for he leaned closer and patted her knee again. “Don’t worry. Why, there are some leprologists who think reactions like this are a good sign and find their patients better off afterward. Some even prescribe iodide of potassium to induce a reaction.”
Mirielle’s heart tripped on its own rhythm. “Iodide?”
Doc Jack nodded.
“Do you ever prescribe it?”
“We experimented with the drug a few years back but I was never convinced of its efficacy. The possible side effects of a reaction are too grave, you see. And patients don’t always improve afterward.”
Despite the pain in her knuckles, Mirielle’s hands curled into fists around the sheets. “Does that mean my next skin test might be positive?”
Doc Jack stood and looked at her with the same expression of condolence she’d seen him give other patients in the infirmary before delivering bad news. “I’m afraid so.”
Mirielle’s entire body went cold. She’d only just gotten her first negative. It took conscious effort to nod as Doc Jack continued to speak. Jean knew of the danger of iodide. Mirielle would bet her bottom dollar on it. How foolish she’d been to trust the girl! Mirielle’s mind was still foggy, and tiredness was creeping back upon her. As soon as Doc Jack left, she drifted to sleep, dreaming of monsters anew.