The Second Life of Mirielle West

by Amanda Skenandore

  A mule brayed behind her, and a wagon rumbled past. She watched until it too became a cloud of dust, then trudged back to the boxcar.

  She returned to find the nurse cowering before the railroad deputy.

  “I thought he was right here. I . . . I cannot keep my eye on all of them at once. I’m their nurse, after all, not their jailer.”

  The deputy’s pale brown eyes flickered from the nurse to Mirielle. His expression puckered with disgust. He spat and turned back to the nurse. “Just get the rest of your goddamned lepers back inside and don’t let any more escape.”

  The nurse waved Mirielle into the car. Only the rasping man on the stretcher and the woman with the headscarf were inside. Had the Mexican man fled? Mirielle guessed by the nurse’s stricken expression he had. She followed her gaze to the expanse of desert beyond the tracks.

  The dust she’d seen earlier had settled. Had the man managed to outrun the wagon? Mirielle found herself hoping he had. Soon the wagon took shape amid a newly blooming cloud of dust. As it drew closer, Mirielle saw the Mexican man shuffling behind, struggling to keep up with the pace of the mules. A rope stretched between the wagon’s undercarriage and the handcuffs about his wrists. His face was bloodied and swollen, his pant leg ripped. It fluttered about his calf, parting with each step to reveal a long gash down his shin.

  The nurse shooed Mirielle away from the doorway as the wagon approached. The train’s engine had been stoked, and steam billowed from the chimney. The wagon stopped beside the boxcar, and the railwaymen untied the runaway. They tried several times to unlock his handcuffs, but blood had gotten into the lock, and the key wouldn’t work.

  “Ain’t got time to fuss with this,” the railway deputy said as he and the others hoisted the man into the boxcar. “They’ll have to cut them off when you get to where you’re going.” They rolled the door closed as the handcuffed man was still wiggling his way inside like an inchworm, nearly smashing his foot.

  He crawled to his corner and struggled to a seated position. The handcuffs had chafed his skin raw. Dirt, blood, and drying spittle rimmed his lips. Mirielle waited for the nurse to tend to his wounds—the gash on his leg, the cuts and bruises on his face, the cactus thorns buried in his flesh. But the man on the cot, whose breathing had grown raspier since their departure in California, claimed her attention.

  The Mexican man coughed and smacked his lips. He’d likely breathed in more dust than air as he struggled behind the wagon. Mirielle fled his gaze but could not ignore the continued hack of his cough. She tottered to the barrel of drinking water in the corner. Its dark, glassy surface trembled with the movement of the train. She’d avoided drinking from the barrel for fear of catching the others’ sickness. The man’s dirty lips would only foul it more. But they were still two days out from Louisiana, and neither one of them could go without water for that long.

  Mirielle took a deep breath, filled the ladle, and drank. Then she refilled it and took it to the man, spilling half the contents on her dress as the train rocked and listed.

  He cupped the ladle in his soiled hands and drank. “Gracias.”

  Mirielle met his eyes and nodded. He might be a leper, but he was also a man and didn’t deserve what the railwaymen had done to him. She fetched him more water, then found the handkerchief she’d discarded and wiped the blood and dirt from his face. Her heart hammered as she worked. Fear-tinged sweat crept along her hairline. It was hard to tell whether age or disease had caused the deep creases in his skin. Either way, she was careful not to touch him without the handkerchief.

  Next, she carefully plucked the thorns from his legs. Mirielle certainly wasn’t a nurse, but she knew a thing or two about cacti from outings she’d taken with her son in the California hills.

  The man winced but otherwise didn’t make a sound. How long had he been a leper? How many times had he tried to run? His graying hair suggested a man well into his fifties. His hardened eyes suggested a man older still. One who knew the meanness of the world.

  At least they had that in common.

  CHAPTER 5

  After two and a half days, the train finally arrived in New Orleans. Mirielle and her traveling companions waited inside the boxcar while voices of disembarking passengers drifted past. Then their car was uncoupled from the others and pushed to a barren section of the rail yard. The door rolled open just as an old, war-model ambulance squealed to a stop before them. U.S. MARINE HOSPITAL was stenciled in fading white paint across its side. Two men in plain wool work suits jumped down from the front seat, eyeing Mirielle and her companions before conferring with the nurse. They moved the sickly man from his cot to a stretcher and carried him to the ambulance. Mirielle was too tired from the harrowing train ride to do anything more than follow behind.

  The western horizon glowed orange like the fruit-laden citrus trees at home. The rest of the sky had drained of color. The ambulance had only just lurched into motion when the crackle of fire rose above the motor’s din. Smoke tinged the air. A sharp turn and their boxcar came into view through the window. Flames crawled up its sides, incinerating any trace of them and their germs.

  * * *

  Mirielle’s legs were stiff and eyelids drooping when the hours-long ride from the train station ended. She stumbled out of the ambulance and looked around. The Louisiana air was damp and colder than she’d expected. The darkness of this desolate place unnerved her. She longed for the streetlights, flashing marquees, and lighted storefronts of Los Angeles. There, you could see and hear and feel life pulsing all around. Here, it rustled and croaked in the shadows, subdued and menacing.

  The ambulance’s headlamps cast their light on a towering plantation home, the kind Mirielle had read about in novels and seen in moving pictures about the antebellum South. It glowed like a specter in the surrounding darkness, a jutting veranda and corniced pillars casting long shadows across its white façade.

  “This is the hospital?” she asked the driver, as he unloaded her luggage.

  “Nah, ma’am,” he said in a heavy drawl. “That there’s the administrative building and sisters’ residence.”

  Before she could ask whom he meant by sisters, two women with lanterns shuffled from the plantation house. Their dresses looked like something her grandmother would have worn, overly starched and oppressively long. Beads clattered from their belts. Perched upon their heads was some strange ornamentation one could scarcely call a hat. It looked like a giant seagull with outstretched wings.

  “One stretcher case and thems three who can walk,” the driver said to the women.

  “Very good,” one replied. “Take him straightaway to the infirmary. We’ll see to the others.” The woman turned, gracing Mirielle and her companions with a closed-lip smile. Raising her lantern, she regarded each of them in turn, her brow furrowing when her eyes lit on Mirielle. At last she said, “This way.”

  She started across a wide side lawn toward a distant hedgerow. Beyond the hedge lay a vast cluster of buildings, just visible in the muted moonlight.

  “Excuse me! When will the porter be round for our bags?” Mirielle asked.

  The woman turned around. Her gaze fell on the pile of luggage at Mirielle’s feet and her lips flattened. “We haven’t a porter, my dear. This is a hospital, not the Hotel Ritz.”

  “I’ll say,” Mirielle whispered under her breath.

  “Take whatever you can carry. I’ll send an orderly for the rest in the morning.”

  “The morning? What if it rains or wild animals climb inside?”

  “What sort of animals did you have in mind?”

  Mirielle glanced at the shaggy outline of trees in the darkness. “I don’t know. Wolves, bears, snakes.”

  The woman gave a mirthless laugh. “We haven’t any bears or wolves here, and God willing it won’t rain. Now grab what you need and come along.”

  And snakes? The very idea made Mirielle’s skin prickle. She looked down at the hatboxes and valises and trunks, trying to decide which to tak
e. She wasn’t sure where Charlie had packed what. Her pajamas were likely in one of the trunks. Her hairbrush in one of the valises. Her toothbrush and dental paste in—

  The woman gave a loud ahem. “We haven’t all night.”

  Mirielle grabbed two of her bags, hoping one of them contained her nightly ablutions, and followed the two absurdly hatted women along a dirt path. They passed the waist-high hedgerow and shuffled up a ramp that led to a covered boardwalk with screened-in sides. Lamps with cheap industrial shades dangled from the awning. The walkway branched and turned in so many directions Mirielle felt as if she’d landed in a maze. Buildings of various shapes and sizes butted up to the walkway, their whitewashed siding set aglow as the moon slipped free of cloud cover.

  The group split at one of the intersections. The Mexican man followed the quieter woman down a long corridor, his wrists still shackled and gait limping. Mirielle trailed the others on a serpentine path, arriving at last at the ladies’ infirmary. Hospital beds lined both sides of the long narrow building. A few were occupied with sleeping figures Mirielle was loath to look at. The rest of the beds were empty, made up in the stark, precise manner one would expect at a nunnery. Fitting, she realized, as now that they were inside, she could see the strand of beads dangling from her guide’s waist was a rosary.

  “We’ll begin the intake process in the morning,” the woman said, showing Mirielle to a bed.

  “We can’t start now? I’m in an awful hurry to get home.”

  “The doctors have long since retired for the evening. We wake them only in cases of emergency.”

  “This is an emergency! I’ve been misdiagnosed. I don’t belong here.”

  One of the patients sleeping nearby stirred. The sister frowned. “I’m afraid you don’t get to decide what is and what is not an emergency. Try to get some rest, and we’ll speak again in the morning.”

  Before Mirielle could argue further, the woman turned and left. Mirielle watched her go, glaring at the back of her winged hat. She rummaged through the bags she’d carried. The first contained an assortment of gloves, scarves, and jewelry. Inside the second, Mirielle found half a dozen pairs of shoes and, wrapped in cloth and tucked away at the bottom, the silver-framed photograph that used to sit on her vanity. Thoughtful of Charlie to pack it, even though she wouldn’t be gone from home for long.

  The sweet faces of her family staring back at Mirielle through the glass made her weary body ache anew. She sat, the thin mattress bowing beneath her. She slipped off her shoes, dragged the scratchy cotton blanket atop her, and fell asleep with the photograph cradled to her breast.

  * * *

  Mirielle awoke the next morning to find the same woman who’d escorted her to the infirmary the night before pulling up a stool beside her. A crisp white smock was draped over her gown. The giant hat atop her head was as stiff as plaster. Mirielle sat up and smoothed her disheveled hair. She must look the part of a hobo, so wrinkled and dusty her dress. Must smell the part too.

  “Is the doctor in yet?” she asked.

  “He’s assisting in the operating room, but I expect him here presently.”

  “Ma’am, listen, like I told you last night—”

  “You may call me Sister Verena.”

  “Sister, there was a misunderstanding in California. The doctor there couldn’t tell his head from his ass.”

  Sister Verena frowned. “However accurate your vulgar assessment may be, I still must complete the intake form.”

  “Is there a nurse I can talk to? This medical stuff may be beyond your—”

  “I am a nurse. Head nurse.” She looked pointedly at Mirielle and readied her pen. “Now, may we begin?”

  Mirielle flapped her hand in assent and turned her head to the window. The sky outside was cloudy, painting the gnarled trees and stringy moss in diffuse gray light.

  “How old are you?”

  “Thirty-two.”

  “Where were you born?”

  “Los Angeles.”

  “Have you ever lived overseas?”

  “I already told the doc in California all this. Nothing in my history is out of the ordinary.”

  “That’s for us to determine. Have you ever lived abroad?”

  Mirielle turned back to face her. “No, never. And while you’re at it, write down that I never had a family member who was a leper or knew a leper.”

  “Are you married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Children?”

  “Yes.”

  “How many?”

  “Three—er—two.” Mirielle glanced down at her folded hands. “Two.”

  Sister Verena scratched down her answer. She asked a few more banal questions then said, “And what name would you like to go by here at Carville?”

  “What name? My name. Miri—”

  “Most patients prefer to take a new name. We’re very guarded with our records, but with so many residents and personnel and visitors, well, word could inadvertently get out. For families on the outside, the stigma can be devastating.”

  “I’m not a patient or a resident!” Mirielle didn’t realize she was shouting until the others in the room craned their necks to look at her. She lowered her voice and bit out, “I don’t have this disease.”

  “Very well,” Sister Verena said, straightening the edges of her papers and putting down her pen. “We’ll call you patient three-sixty-seven for now.”

  CHAPTER 6

  An orderly brought Mirielle breakfast—eggs, grits, and canned peaches—on an enameled stoneware plate. Certainly an upgrade from the cold food served on paper plates on the train. Lunch came too before the doctor finally arrived. He donned a white jacket over his black officer’s uniform and strode to her bedside with a broad smile. Sister Verena followed a step behind. When he sat down on the stool opposite Mirielle’s bed, she could see the fatigue in his red-rimmed eyes. The front thatch of his thinning brown hair stood on end like the head plumes of a quail.

  “Welcome to US Marine Hospital Sixty-Six, ma’am,” he said, extending his hand. “Carville, if you like. I’m Dr. Jachimowski, but most residents call me Doc Jack.”

  As Mirielle shook his hand, she realized he was the first of the many doctors and nurses she’d encountered over the past several days who deigned to touch her. His warm palm and unfaltering smile eased the tightness that had wound about her rib cage. “Pleased to meet you, Doctor. Are you the resident expert?”

  He chuckled. “I’m one of them. Dr. Ross, the Medical Officer in Charge, spent decades fighting the disease in India and is one of the foremost leprologists in the world. He deals mostly with administrative matters, but you’ll see him around from time to time. We have other specialists too—an ophthalmologist, a dentist, an orthopedic surgeon—who come up regularly from the city. We also—”

  “Yes, but you can tell true leprosy from other ailments. I mean, you must see it all the time. You’re the man who can prove those blockhead doctors in California diagnosed me wrong.”

  His smile tottered. “Yes, I’m your man. Let’s take a look. Nurse, can you bring us a screen?”

  Sister Verena set up a folding screen around the bed, and Mirielle undressed at Doc Jack’s behest. He examined her skin while Sister Verena took notes in Mirielle’s chart.

  “Flat, reddened macule on the left lateral shoulder, approximately five centimeters diameter . . . flat hypopigmented macule right flank three centimeters . . . flat reddened macule lower right thigh, medial aspect, one and a half centimeters . . .”

  Each time he called out a new finding, Mirielle’s pulse revved like an over-gassed engine. Seven lesions in total, where the doctor in Los Angeles had found only five. “Couldn’t these be birthmarks or poor circulation?”

  “Hmm,” Doc Jack said, in a way that offered little reassurance. “We’ll know soon enough.”

  He produced a small stick with a wisp of cotton at one end and asked her to close her eyes. “Let me know when and where you feel the cotton touch your
skin.”

  “Yes, my forearm,” she said almost as soon as she’d closed her eyes. “Right forearm.”

  “Good.”

  Then came the tickle of cotton on her left calf, her right palm, the small of her back. She felt like a schoolgirl again, standing before her teachers reciting the capitals of the forty-five states. Right shoulder. . . right cheek . . . the number of seconds between each touch lengthened . . . then nothing. “Are we done?”

  “Almost,” the doctor said.

  She screwed her face in concentration and waited. Sister Verena’s pen scratched atop her paper.

  “Left knee,” she almost shouted when she felt the brush of cotton again.

  “Are you sure?” Doc Jack asked.

  “Yes . . . er . . . I think so. Can you do it again?”

  “We’ve got all the data we need. You can open your eyes.”

  Mirielle wrapped her arms around herself, feeling for the first time self-conscious of her nakedness. “Can I dress?”

  “Not quite yet. I’m going to take a few tissue samples from the spots I found, just like they did in California. It shouldn’t hurt more than a little.”

  Sister Verena wheeled over a small steel table with a scalpel and several laboratory slides on top. Mirielle watched the doctor cut a small slit in the discolored spot beneath her thumb and then scrape the blade along the wound. It didn’t hurt at all. Nor did the next or the next, though Mirielle’s stomach roiled, and she had to look away. Only when he cut into her earlobe did she feel the sting of pain, and then only a little.

  “All done,” Doc Jack said, wearing his friendly smile again. “You can go ahead and dress. Nurse Verena, will you take these slides to the laboratory?”

  “Yes, Doctor.” She wheeled the table away, Mirielle’s slides rattling against the steel.