The Impossible Girl

by Lydia Kang

  “Thank goodness Mother isn’t home. Why on earth are you wearing men’s clothing? What happened to your hair?” She was an equal mix of shock and excitement as she reached over and touched the shorn hair that lay flat and sweaty against Cora’s forehead.

  “How much time do we have before your mother comes home?”

  “A few hours. Mother is attending a Ladies’ Aid Society meeting.”

  “That’s what I need, then. A few hours. And a bath. And maybe . . . a dress.”

  “A dress!” Suzette sat back. “Well, that’s the easiest part, I’ll allow. Tell me everything.”

  So, Cora did. It was as fantastical a story as could be imagined, except that it wasn’t imagined. Perhaps the novels Suzette read helped temper her shock over the macabre subject matter. Suzette, to her credit, didn’t leave, or turn Cora out of the mansion, but asked pointed questions here and there.

  “So, it was true, all this time. About your two hearts.”

  “Yes,” Cora said, misery drawing her mouth down. She pointed to the right side of her chest, below her breast. Her shirt was crinkled and stained there. “It’s here. I feel it beating when I’m tired. And it runs fast when I run too. And there are people out there who would rather have it in a glass jar, on a shelf, than in my chest.” She let her hands fall limply into her lap. “I had to lie to you, Suzette. About all of this. It was the only way to be safe. And now I need your help.”

  “I don’t understand,” Suzette said.

  “I need to leave this life behind. I need to leave my name, and my body, and even that inheritance that we share. I don’t want any of it.”

  “How?”

  “Somehow, I need to make the world think that I’ve died. Without dying.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Just leave town! Surely the rumors will abate.”

  “I would, Suzette. But look at me. I can’t change the way I look. I can’t presume to disappear into a city of people who know at a glance that I’m different. The rumors will spread to Boston, and Philadelphia. They’ll follow me. And even if they don’t, there will never be peace. So, I’m going to make my own peace, and kill this life.”

  Suzette stood. She paced about the parlor, her silk skirt rustling behind her as she turned and turned again. “Well. If you’re going to die, why, we need to get you to a doctor, don’t we?”

  The suggestion made Cora stiffen with fear, until Suzette explained herself.

  Yes. Of course they needed a doctor.

  But first, Cora had to be subjected to a very long scrubbing in a bathtub with the help of the maid, who admonished Cora for her dirty fingernails. Afterward, Suzette gave her one of her older dresses to wear—a lovely pearl-gray silk, with pink lace and pearl buttons on the bodice and puffed sleeves—and except for being a tad long, it fit well. As for the hair, there was nothing to be done. Cora refused to go back home to get her wig, and Suzette proposed using the explanation that it had been shaved due to a fever recently—doctor’s orders. Suzette found a lovely piece of white ribbon to grace her short hair and tied a bow just above her left ear. The maid exclaimed that it was “charmant,” and Suzette agreed, it would do.

  As Suzette called for the barouche to take them out, she looked over at Cora. “Don’t worry. You’ll be the prettiest corpse this town has ever seen.”

  Cora winced. “Pretty is less important. Corpselike is more important.”

  “Well then, I have some excellent powder you can use, to pale your skin. And I’ve some other ideas as well, but first, we must go. Quickly.”

  As the barouche made the short trip to Fourteenth Street, Cora wondered if Alexander had been taken care of at one of the dispensaries, or even taken to the hospital at the Bellevue Establishment, or New York Hospital. When she had gotten out far enough from town, she would send a letter to let him know she was well. But her intent was not to allow Alexander to follow her. He had his own life to live; perhaps their separation was a blessing cloaked as a tragedy.

  Who knew where Leah was. Likely on a stagecoach bound for gold country, or elsewhere. If all went well, she would never see Leah again. Perhaps, Cora thought, she really ought to go to Paris. Leah hated all things French, and Cora had always wished to learn more of the language. The only foreign language that Charlotte had taught her, really, was flash, and that didn’t exactly count.

  The barouche stopped suddenly. “Here we are,” Suzette said. “I hope she’s in.”

  Cora nodded, and they stepped out of the carriage. She had to be extra careful of her dress—it might be the last one she wore, if things didn’t quite go as expected. There was no sign outside, as Dr. Blackwell had said, and so they went inside and upstairs to the second floor. The wooden floor and plainly plastered walls were scrupulously clean, and on only one of the doors was a sign:

  ELIZABETH BLACKWELL, MD

  Suzette and Cora looked at each other.

  “You do realize,” Suzette said, trying and failing to hide a grin, “that this is the most absurd thing that I have ever done, or will do. It’s like I’m inside one of those novels I read all the time.”

  “It is like a terrible dream,” Cora said, then frowned. “Though I am sad that we won’t have more absurd adventures in the future.”

  “Perhaps not. Perhaps,” Suzette said. She turned back to the door, and rapped with her knuckles. The door opened, and Dr. Blackwell appeared, in her usual plain dark dress that covered her properly from neck to wrist.

  “Well! Miss Cutter! And Miss Lee! To what do I owe this visit? Goodness, what has happened to your hair, Miss Lee?”

  “I’m afraid my cousin here is ill,” Suzette said, and they were ushered inside. “Very ill, indeed.”

  “I see! Or rather, I do not. Excepting your hair, my dear—I don’t see that you look ill, except that you are a touch pale.”

  “We have a very peculiar problem, Dr. Blackwell,” Cora said as she sat down next to Suzette in front of the table where Dr. Blackwell sat. “You see, I have a physical ailment that has drawn unwanted interest. It would be easier to show you than tell you.”

  Dr. Blackwell folded her hands together on the table. “Very well.”

  She ushered Cora into another room, where Cora disrobed and put on a long white shift. On the other side of a partition, she sat on a slim table covered with clean linen. Dr. Blackwell brought out what looked like a tiny trumpet attached to a flexible tube. “It’s a Golding Bird. The latest in stethoscopes.”

  Dr. Blackwell listened to her upper heart and both lungs, then palpated her stomach. She listened with the Golding Bird, and then examined her again. She looked at Cora’s eyes, her throat, her skin, her pulses by her ankles, wrist, neck. She noticed how her hands were thick from hard work, and her neck bruised, though she didn’t ask why.

  “You seem normal enough, and healthy,” Dr. Blackwell said finally.

  “Here,” Cora said, pointing. “Put your stethoscope here.”

  Dr. Blackwell knitted her eyebrows together, then pressed the bell-like end of the stethoscope over her right ribs. Her eyes widened, and she lifted the bell and listened again.

  “It sounds like a . . .” But she wouldn’t finish her sentence. She lifted her hand and raised it just above the skin of her ribs. “May I?”

  Cora nodded. Dr. Blackwell laid her calm, warm, and dry fingertips over Cora’s second heart. And then she listened to her hearts again, and listened some more. She had her lie down, then stand up, all the while listening.

  “I don’t quite know what to say. It’s just beneath the rib cage. Same pulsations as your heart. I can’t understand how the vasculature could support . . . There wasn’t a distinct systolic and diastolic phase, but perhaps the valves are malformed. I can’t imagine how the connection to the inferior vena cava would look . . . or if it’s simply an accessory heart . . .”

  “I can tell you, it’s not just a benign accessory organ,” Cora told her. “I’ve had a severe apoplectic attack in the past.”

  “At yo
ur age?” she said, surprised.

  “Yes. As a child.” Cora slipped off the examining table and went behind the screen to change again. Suzette helped her with her corset and to tie on her petticoats.

  Once they were seated again at the table, Dr. Blackwell began writing on a piece of paper, dipping her quill.

  “I should think that gentle exercise in addition to a cardiac tonic would suffice. Stagnation is your enemy, Miss Lee, so I would recommend an occasional bleeding—”

  “Oh,” Cora interrupted. “I don’t need medicine to get better. I need medicine to get worse.”

  “Pardon me? I believe I misheard you.” Dr. Blackwell’s smile faltered.

  “You know of my line of work?” Cora said.

  “Yes. A shame that you should have to take up such a position.”

  “Well, I took the position on purpose, to know if and when I might become a very wanted specimen for the anatomical museums and cabinets in this city. And that time has come.”

  “Oh!” Dr. Blackwell put her pen down. “But surely, you don’t mean . . . Who would ever . . .”

  “I have been followed, propositioned, and attacked. Twice, now that I can admit that Jacob is me,” Cora said. “And I don’t know if I’ll be lucky enough to survive the next assault. This is why I need your help.”

  “What exactly do you need?”

  “I need to die, Dr. Blackwell.”

  Before Cora and Suzette left, Dr. Blackwell wrote down directions for the druggist. Cora hoped the drugs would not affect the baby. But so far, she had not miscarried after her attacks. It was a strong little creature. She had decided not to tell either Dr. Blackwell or Suzette, for she couldn’t take the chance that either of them would stop her plan. Her child wouldn’t be born without a price on its head.

  Dr. Blackwell handed over the directions and said, “I hope to see you again someday, Cora. Alive, well, and unfettered by your fear.”

  “One can only hope to outlive fear,” Cora said.

  “And one can hope to live outside the shadow of death.”

  Cora nodded. If she survived this, there would never be any resurrection work for her. Never again.

  Suzette and Cora walked quickly to the nearest druggist’s shop, only two streets away. The shelves were stacked with dark brown bottles of various sizes and shapes. Behind the counter was a wall of glass jars filled with herbs and powders. Ceramic jars were beautifully labeled with blue glaze: mumia, or ground Egyptian mummy, smelling of bitterness and earth; leeches, with air holes in the lid; opium, aloes, and nux vomica. The odor of earth and herbs and illness permeated every corner.

  Cora handed the slip of paper to the elderly man behind the counter.

  “Foxglove,” he read out. “Hawthorn. Skullcap. Tincture of belladonna, and opium.” He read the note critically and looked up at Cora. “Is this for you?”

  “No, indeed. My father. He has dropsy. A weak heart,” she said.

  “You’re not to give these to him all at once,” the druggist said, his face wearing a severe expression of worry.

  “I understand. He’s been taking these for some time, depending on his symptoms. We didn’t like Greene’s Apothecary,” Cora said. “They cheated us,” she added, repeating an oft-heard complaint of said store.

  “And that shall never happen here!” The druggist busied himself measuring out the medicines, and Suzette waited, looking nervous. To several paper packets, he added a small bottle of tincture of belladonna, another of tincture of opium, and handed the packages to Cora. Suzette slid money across the counter. And then they left.

  “Where will we buy the ice?” Cora asked, entering the barouche.

  “I’ll send Jane out for it. There is an ice house several blocks west of our home. They deliver to us when we’re making sorbet in the summer.”

  Back at the mansion, the maids seemed relieved that Cora hadn’t somehow reverted to her bloodstained men’s clothes. Suzette looked at the large clock in the foyer and frowned.

  “We don’t have much time. I don’t know if this is going to work. Are you sure there is no other way?”

  “No,” Cora said.

  “Can you not just go far away?” Suzette said.

  “I can’t. I won’t have to look over my shoulder all the time, and I can make a new life for myself. I can become a maid somewhere, and maybe a governess. Or a teacher.”

  “Or a doctor,” Suzette said, not smirking at all.

  Cora sighed. New careers were for those who had the luxury of calm wonderings. “We should do this. Now. We’re wasting time.”

  Suzette nodded but frowned. She called a maid into the salon and asked for tea.

  “Leave the tea aside—we would like to steep it ourselves,” she instructed her. “And order ice. Twice the usual amount.”

  The maid curtsied and went on her way. Within ten minutes, she had brought out a large pot of boiled water in a warmed teapot, cups, milk, sugar, and a small dish of tea leaves. When the maid went away, Suzette took the tea and wet it with a splash of water, and Cora withdrew the medicines from her reticule. She sprinkled the foxglove, hawthorn, and skullcap herbs into the steaming pot. The steeping water turned brown and smelled absolutely medicinal. Cora’s nose flared over the pot.

  “Well. This won’t be pleasant.”

  Suzette poured two dark cups of the infusion, then dumped the rest out in the side of the fireplace, scooping any sign of the herbs into the fire, where the wetted clump hissed and smoked. She then added the wet tea leaves to the empty pot.

  “How will they work again?” Suzette asked.

  Cora sipped the first cup as quickly as the temperature allowed, grimacing as she swallowed the bitter liquid. She paused before picking up the second cup.

  “The foxglove, hawthorn, and skullcap will slow my pulse. Hopefully to the point that anyone looking at my neck or touching my wrist won’t feel a heartbeat.” She started sipping the second cup. “The opium tincture will sedate me and slow my breathing. And the belladonna drops, you have to put into my eyes. They’ll counteract the opium, which would constrict my pupils, and instead make them look large.”

  “Why?” Suzette asked, confused.

  “People’s pupils are very large when they are freshly dead,” Cora said.

  “I would say I’m impressed that you know these things, except they’re horrid,” Suzette said.

  “A skill I’ll be leaving behind shortly.” The tea made her queasy, and for a moment, she held her belly, hoping her child wouldn’t mind. She had no choice—she would be chased to the grave if she didn’t do this, and they would both perish. She took the brown bottle of opium tincture and measured out the drops into her now-empty cup.

  Before lifting the cup, she held her chest. Her hearts began to thump erratically. They skipped beats here and there, sped up a touch, then followed with more yawning gaps, as if a drunkard were knocking on a door while succumbing to sleep.

  “I can feel the effects already,” Cora said.

  Suzette reached out and touched her hand. “Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” Cora said. “Remember, run the ice bath first. As soon as I’m in it, send all but the last letter out, and be sure your servant delivers them personally.” Suzette had finished writing the letters. They were addressed to three physicians that Cora often worked with, as well as Dr. Blackwell—who promised to do the final assessment and keep the other doctors from touching her body beyond the very minimum. There were also letters to Frederick Duncan and Theodore Flint, so they could pay their final visit, and only one unsigned note by Cora herself, addressed to Alexander. She promised she would contact him later, and that she was safe, but said nothing else. Someday, she would send a more thorough explanation.

  The last letter was for her graveyard boys, sent to the Duke, whom she trusted the most. They would not find out about her death until well after the fact, for she did not want them at the graveyard to guard an empty casket and risk their lives. And she also did not want to k
now if they would try to sell her body. Cora would be heartbroken if they did. She would rather not give them the opportunity to even consider it.

  There would be no funeral. There would be no graveyard service. Suzette would demand that Cora be quietly and inconspicuously buried in the family plot at the Evergreens, and that a guard be posted to prevent any disturbance of the casket. If anyone did open the casket, they would discover several handfuls of soil Suzette had taken from the ferns decorating her room, as well as an old dress and torn undergarments—the exact contents of a pillaged casket. It would appear as if another resurrection team had beaten whoever chose to dig her up.

  But Cora would not be inside. She would be recovering, hidden, in Suzette’s bedroom for as long as Suzette could hide her. When Cora was fit enough to walk, she would take a small bag of clothes and a tiny cache of money, and catch a stagecoach to Philadelphia, or Baltimore. From there, she would write to Suzette, who would somehow procure another bit of money. Her name would change, and Cora would no longer be Cora. After the second letter to prove she was safe, Cora would never write to Suzette again.

  Cora put her cup of opium down. “I don’t know how to thank you, Suzette. I shall be losing you all over again. I was never so happy to have family back in my life until we met.”

  “Or rather after that,” Suzette said, laughing softly. “I hated you when we first met.”

  “Yes, you did.” Cora’s smile vanished. “I do hope you find happiness with your husband. Or your friends! I don’t know if I shall ever marry. I’d be too afraid.”

  “So, you’re sure to leave that young doctor behind? Mr. Flint?”

  Cora nodded. She thought of how he had talked about the race to claim her body with Duncan, at Madame Beck’s, and their last fight. If Flint wanted to be her lover, or even her friend, he had failed miserably. She thought back to their first meeting—how brash and confident and wickedly naive he was. She missed that Theo.

  A toast to you, Theo, she thought, picking up her teacup. No broken hearts for you to sell to the highest bidder.

  Before she drank the last of the opium tincture, she said, “Remember to tell the maid the ice is to soothe my fever. Don’t let them touch me and see that I’m not warm. Run the ice bath, send off the letters, and set the extra ice in the bed for me to lie on, when the visitors come.”