TWO

 

DAY 1. WEDNESDAY, 9/20—7:30 P.M.

Clement Van Meter was a seventy-year-old former mate on a schooner. He had contracted cancer of the colon but, after a lifetime of incompetent care by alcoholic ships’ doctors, had not sought treatment until a bowel resection had ceased to be feasible. He had gone comatose two days before. He might linger for days or be dead in hours.

The Van Meters lived in a two-room flat on Pineapple Street, about a ten-minute walk. Noah stepped into a home filled with old furniture, worn carpets, and the slightly musty smell that seemed to settle around the aging like a shroud. A model of a four-masted schooner sat on the mantle. Some of the rigging on the mainmast had come undone and lay hanging over the deck.

Hermione Van Meter, a tiny, desiccated creature, latched on to Noah. “Thank you, doctor. Thank you so much for coming.” She dragged him toward the bedroom. Her bony fingers felt like twigs on Noah’s wrist. “You got here just in time. I saw his eyelids flutter. Twice. I think he might be waking up.”

Noah thought the prospect unlikely. Loved ones of the terminally ill often cling to the hope that the mere presence of a doctor might prompt a miraculous abatement of symptoms.

“Let’s go and see, Hermione.” One look at the husk of a once-vibrant seaman, the rhythm of the short rise and fall of Clement Van Meter’s emaciated chest, told Noah that there would be no miracle here. “I’ll sit with him for a bit,” Noah told her, pulling a rickety slat-backed chair to the bedside. “Perhaps it will happen again.”

Hermione Van Meter sat on the other side of the bed. She reached out and took her husband’s hand. “Is there something you can give him, doctor? So that he might wake up sooner, I mean?” She had endured a half century of extended absences of long sea voyages, sometimes two years at a time, but the prospect of the absence being permanent was unendurable.

“Nothing right now, Hermione. Let’s just see how he does.”

“All right, doctor,” she replied, trying to force a smile to show she was grateful for the visit.

They sat in silence for some moments, Hermione Van Meter stroking her husband’s hand. “Clement was going to buy a boat after he stopped sailing. For us to live on, I mean. He was so used to the water, he couldn’t get to sleep here. But I was used to the land and said no. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been so selfish.”

“Nonsense, Hermione. Clement only wanted for your happiness. I’m certain he loved the home you made for him.”

She nodded, unconvinced, and they lapsed once more into silence. Hermione Van Meter did not move her gaze from her husband. Noah was certain that, even now, she still saw him as the strapping young merchantman that she had married five decades before.

After about thirty minutes, Noah told her he must leave. “Perhaps I can fetch a pastor.” The Van Meters were Lutheran. “I would like you to have company.”

She shook her head.

“Any friends I might ask?”

“No, thank you, doctor,” she replied with resignation and hopelessness. “I’d like to just be with Clement. Fifty years, but we had such little time, really.”

Noah nodded and stood to leave. Mrs. Van Meter reached for her purse on the table at the side of the bed. “I suppose I should pay you now,” she said softly.

“I never accept payment in the evenings, Mrs. Van Meter. I’ll prepare a proper invoice and have it sent over.” He would not, of course. Funeral expenses would come close to breaking her as it was.

She paused for a moment, her fingers on the snap of the purse. Then she replaced it on the table. “Thank you, Dr. Whitestone.”

“You’re very welcome, Hermione.” He took her hand and wished her well as she showed him out, frail and very old, alone with her dying husband.

Medicine taught to avoid personal involvement. Treat with the head and not the heart. Slip into the reverse, and patients suffered. But how could he not feel for Hermione Van Meter? Doomed to pass her remaining years in a two-room flat, abandoned by her husband, her neighbors, even by life itself. What was worse: death or loneliness? Noah had no shortage of opportunity to observe the former, but the latter he had known all too well. Isobel. Oliver. There had been many days when he was convinced death could not be worse. What about now? Would his loneliness finally ameliorate with Maribeth?

Noah arrived at a tenement on Montague Street, the home of his second patient, Thea Harpin, an aging widow with Bright’s disease. While she was in no immediate danger, her kidneys were certain to eventually fail, leaving her with the same prognosis as Clement Van Meter. Her rooms, on the second floor, were as crowded as Van Meter’s had been empty. Five other widows had crammed their way in to keep vigil, partly in triumph that they would live while their acquaintance would die, partly in despair that one of them would be the next to be chosen in this devilish tontine.

The widow Harpin herself was little changed. But with six women in one room, he was forced not only see to his patient but also to reply to a plethora of inquiries about the various ailments of the others. Then there were the cakes he had to sample and the inquiries as to his marital situation to which he was forced to respond. When the assembled widows learned that he was now betrothed, disappointment filled the room. Various nieces and granddaughters—all beautiful, bright, and vivacious—would now be forced to locate another good catch. With it all, there was scant a moment to reflect on Hermione Van Meter. Or himself. In truth, Noah loved the busiest days. Hard on the body, but easy on the spirit.

By the time he could extricate himself, it was nearly nine. He did not return to the Anschutz home until about a quarter after. Three hours. The laudanum he had given Willard would have largely worn off. Noah hoped that the symptoms would not yet have returned in full force. He wasn’t sure what he would do—he was reluctant to administer laudanum twice to a child so young—but controlling the symptoms was most urgent until, if necessary, he could insist that Willard be admitted to the hospital in the morning.

He knocked lightly on the door. The maid answered almost immediately. Molly was a thin, fragile girl, her face spattered with freckles. She seemed to wear a look of perpetual anxiety, no doubt a result of having Mildred Anschutz as her employer. Her lips began to quiver, as if she was trying to force herself to say something, when Mrs. Anschutz stepped through a doorway to the left.

Noah expected to be chastised for his tardiness by an angry and imperious mother. Instead, Mrs. Anschutz seemed surprisingly at ease.

“Come in, doctor.” She even smiled at him.

“Willard is well?” Perhaps the boy had been so exhausted by his symptoms that he remained quiescent.

“He’s still sleeping. Quite peacefully,” Mrs. Anschutz replied. “When I looked in on him a few minutes ago, he did not even notice when I felt his forehead.”

“I am pleased to hear that, Mrs. Anschutz. Perhaps his crisis is past.” Could it be? So soon? Had his diagnosis been incorrect after all? “I should look in on him for a moment in any event.”

“Of course, doctor. Whatever you say.”

As they mounted the stairs, Mrs. Anschutz cast Noah an abashed glance. She paused on the second step. “You know, Dr. Whitestone, I must confess that I came to you with some trepidation. Dr. Frias has cared for this family since Aldridge was born. He often says that experience makes the best doctors. But I can now see that some of our younger physicians are more than competent.”

Despite himself, Noah was flattered. “Thank you for saying so, Mrs. Anschutz. I was gratified to be able to bring Willard some relief. I am very fond of him. He reminds me of . . . myself, when I was a boy.”

“Well, you should visit then. Willard is a great joy. Such spirit.”

“Thank you. I will.”

They made their way up the stairs. This time, Noah modulated his pace to allow Mrs. Anschutz to keep up with him. When they reached the landing, Noah didn’t wait, but moved to the door of Willard’s bedroom.

He turned the switch to the electric light. Willard was under the covers, lying on his back, mouth agape. His skin was sallow and pasty and his breathing labored and shallow.

Noah ran to the bed. He had only moments, perhaps seconds. Noah grabbed him by both arms and shook him, first gently, then with ferocity. The child didn’t rouse. Noah threw back the covers, pulled up the boy’s nightshirt, and dug the knuckle of his middle finger into his solar plexus. There was no effect.

Noah lifted Willard’s eyelid. Acute miosis—constriction of the pupil.

“Get me cold water!” he yelled to the boy’s mother, who stood stunned in the doorway. Willard’s breathing had almost ceased. If Noah could not induce its return, the boy’s brain would begin to asphyxiate—if it had not done so already.

Mrs. Anschutz stuck her head into the hall and screamed for Molly to bring water. Noah continued to shake Willard, tried to stand him up, slap him on the cheeks, anything to induce motor function. Finally, Molly appeared with a pitcher of cold water and a cloth. Eschewing the cloth, Noah began to douse the boy’s face. No response. He poured some on the child’s privates. Nothing.

Don’t die, he thought. Don’t die. A vision flashed before him. Another occasion on which he had been helpless. A woman. In childbirth. Hemorrhaging. In shock. Don’t die. Beautiful. Fading. The baby, Oliver, already dead. Don’t die. Don’t die.

Isobel. His wife. Don’t die.

But she had.

And so did Willard Anschutz.