A Fierce Radiance

by Lauren Belfer

  Jamie felt like he was being sucked into a vacuum, the oxygen suddenly exhausted around him. With great clarity he thought, I’ve heard about this, this void, from friends who’ve survived raids.

  And then he experienced exactly what had been described to him: the vacuum, the power of the blast overwhelming him, lifting him, rendering him weightless. The deafening sound of the explosion, and then the eerie, dark silence.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  This way to the remains,” a bulky police office shouted to the group waiting in line.

  Remains was a better word than bodies, Claire thought, following the group into the stone-vaulted, makeshift mortuary. Men in rubber aprons lined up the charred bodies in rows of fifty or more, covering the floor. The workmen left pathways between the rows of corpses. Stopping, staring, stepping onward, stopping, staring, stepping onward, the living walked up and down the rows and searched for the bodies of their loved ones. The Allies had invaded North Africa three weeks earlier. Claire felt she was witnessing the aftermath of war right here.

  Boston, Massachusetts, Sunday, November 29, 1942. The day after the Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire. On Saturday night, the club had been packed with a raucous crowd, rumored to be a thousand strong, celebrating the upset victory of the Holy Cross football team over Boston College. A busboy holding a match for guidance while changing a lightbulb had set an artificial palm tree aflame. At least that was the story the newspapers were giving. The fire spread with astounding speed, and in the panic, dozens were trampled. Bodies were piled six feet high behind the blocked entrances. Hundreds were dead, hundreds more injured.

  The camera was Claire’s shield. Most of the dead no longer looked human. They looked like ancient, blackened tree branches fallen in a forest. Or like heaps of misshapen, molten metal. You spotted two parallel shapes with dark bands at one end and realized that you were looking at legs, and that the bands were the tops of stockings. Or you noticed a twig covered with a curling imprint and realized you were looking at a hand and forearm clad in a long lace glove. In this forest of the fallen Claire suddenly came upon a body that was perfect, a pale young woman who might have been asleep, lipstick in place, blond hair brushed. She was like a blessed saint amid the wreckage.

  Seeing Claire pause, a mortuary attendant offered gruffly, “Asphyxia.” The attendant was muscular and ruddy. The rubber apron barely concealed his broad chest. “Smoke eats lungs,” he added. In the space beside the saint, he arranged a heap of charred fabric into a shape that could almost pass for human.

  Claire first learned about the fire at six that morning, when she answered the phone at home and heard Mack’s voice. “You’re going to Boston. Stop at the office for what you need, then get to the airfield.” Along the way, she read the newspapers with the first reports.

  By the time she reached Boston, in a torrential rain, the area around the nightclub was under martial law. The civil defense authorities were using the incident as a dress rehearsal for dealing with a German bombing attack. She showed her ID and gained access to the cordoned-off blocks teeming with fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars. She showed her ID again to get into the ruined, smoldering club. Volunteers were still bringing out the dead, piling up bodies in the backs of trucks and in empty storefronts. Ambulances came and went in a blaring stream, taking survivors to hospitals. The reek of smoke and ash filled the air, choking her. She wrapped her scarf around her nose and mouth as a filter. Inside, firefighters searched the wreckage, tossing chairs and tables into a corner. On the bar, clean glasses stood at the ready, waiting for avid patrons to sidle through the Saturday-night crowd to order a drink. The scene became disconnected, like a dream. Shoot it like a disconnected dream, Claire told herself, an image here, an image there, because if you try to take in the entire scene, the horror will be overpowering and the reader will turn away. A Life writer was with her, but she stayed out of his way and he stayed out of hers. Claire took her own captions.

  In the afternoon she had come to this makeshift mortuary. The real mortuary had been overwhelmed by the bodies. She knelt down to the level of the dead to photograph the faces of the living as they searched for their loved ones. One small token of identification, that’s what the families looked for. A gold bracelet. A diamond ring. An emerald brooch. A St. Christopher’s medal. Military ID tags. Any distinctive item that hadn’t melted or been disfigured by the flames. The stench was overpowering. The living covered their mouths and noses with handkerchiefs. At first the stench had made Claire gag. But she got used it. She didn’t know which was worse, the gagging or the getting used to it.

  After five hours, she felt she was going blind, no longer able to focus the camera. She had to take a break, smoke a cigarette, drink a cup of coffee—anything to escape. On her way out, in a corner of the mortuary’s vaulted entrance hall, she saw one more shot: a four-foot-high pile of hats. ALL HATS FOUND AT THE SCENE, a handwritten note read. Gray felt with a black band. Naval dress. Coast Guard. Magenta velvet with black face veil. Red felt with a sweeping gray feather charred at the tip.

  Hats without owners, reeking of blood and smoke and burned flesh.

  She sent the day’s take back to New York with the writer. Mack instructed her to stay in Boston to await developments. On Tuesday, a bellhop knocked at the door of her hotel room after dinner with a telegram from Andrew Barnett. “Proceed to Massachusetts General Hospital, meet Catalano.”

  Hearing from Barnett reminded her of their last conversation. After the ransacking of her home, Claire had gone on with her work, but she’d felt vulnerable, especially now, when she was traveling and Charlie and Maritza were home without her. Whenever she put her key in the front door, she felt a flash of hesitation. Her home had always been her refuge. The place where she felt safest. Now she had doubts. Her only choice, however, was to move forward, and that’s what she did.

  So Nick was covering for Jamie. She’d been doing a good job, she thought, of not worrying about Jamie. She hadn’t heard from him in weeks. She assumed…well, she had to assume that he was doing his job. She hoped he was in North Africa, part of Operation Torch, rather than Guadalcanal or New Guinea. Either way, he wouldn’t be at the front lines. Clinical testing for a new medication would take place behind the front lines—wouldn’t it? In a secure place where patients and doctors could be safe, day after day. Wasn’t that right?

  She didn’t know. The front lines could be fluid, moving back and forth as different groups, different commands, made progress or retreated. She refused to allow herself to worry. Obviously he didn’t have time to write. Or the mail wasn’t working properly. But Nick’s taking Jamie’s place brought her up short, making Jamie’s absence more immediate and more frightening.

  When she arrived at the hospital, Claire discovered that no one at the front desk knew Nick Catalano’s name. No one had a record of Claire’s name, either. She was barred from going upstairs to the burn ward. She was already on edge, and this roadblock made her angry. “I’m here under official orders.”

  “Sorry, ma’am,” explained the well-dressed receptionist, her white hair in a stylish perm. “I don’t know what to tell you.” She was probably a volunteer, Claire realized.

  “Call the hospital director.”

  “I have my rules.”

  “I need to speak with your supervisor.” Was there another entrance, on the other side of the building?

  A slight, round-faced man in a bow tie approached her. “Is it Mrs. Shipley, by chance?”

  “Yes.” She didn’t make herself polite.

  “Ah, good. I was told to be on the lookout for you. I’m Dr. Chester Keefer.”

  He put out his hand. Claire had no choice but to shake it. She’d heard his name in meetings with Barnett. Keefer was in charge of the national clinical testing program for penicillin, under the auspices of Vannevar Bush’s operation. He was a prominent physician here in Boston. He carried himself with a studied diffidence that made him look more like a professor than a
clinician.

  “The medication is arriving by ambulance,” he said, overly composed. He turned to the receptionist. “It’s all right,” he said to her.

  “Mrs. Shipley is with me. I’ll vouch for her.”

  “Thank you, sir,” the woman said.

  Claire took a deep breath. She calmed herself. Had she sounded so angry with the receptionist that Dr. Keefer now felt a need to pacify her? Apparently so.

  “Shall we wait for the medication together?” he asked.

  “Certainly.” She forced her voice to match his tone. “Thank you for asking.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  She felt they were in a pantomime of politesse. In the grungy waiting room, they sat side by side.

  “Did you know that the medication is being brought from the Merck Company in Rahway, New Jersey?” Keefer asked. “Thirty-two liters, in a metal container. The ambulance is traveling with a police escort on the Boston Post Road. And through this driving rain. How difficult for the drivers. Terrible. Who knows if the medication will be efficacious when it finally arrives? Of course flying would have been even more risky, no doubt about that.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Well, tonight we’ll see if our medication can help burn victims. I do hope so. The medication has never been tested on burn victims. Staphylococcal infection. That’s what we need to protect our patients from.”

  He never used the word penicillin, she realized. Always he used a code word.

  “In military attacks,” he explained, “burn victims are everywhere. At Pearl Harbor…well, I have trouble bringing myself to speak of the hundreds, the thousands, of burn victims after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor…”

  As he spoke on, without waiting for her response, Claire comprehended that for all his diffidence, and despite his unfalteringly kind-hearted and soothing demeanor, he was filled with worry. He expressed the worry by talking. Talking and talking, as if he were in a lecture hall, or a confessional.

  “Burns…if the patient survived the initial event, infection was the killer,” he said. You had to seal the skin immediately. Staphylococcus aureus was the most common culprit. Tannic acid was the treatment. Pouring tannic acid across gaping flesh. Horrifically painful. You gave the patient morphine before you started. A good deal of morphine. You needed several trained assistants for each patient. To hold the patient still. Because of the pain. If the patient survived the treatment, the burned area formed a thick protective coating.

  They had to find something better than tannic acid. Maybe this medication would be the answer.

  He turned to Claire, a peculiar expression on his face. His everyday mask of teacher and physician was gone. “Have you heard that I’m in charge of clinical trials for this medication? For the entire nation?”

  “Yes, I have heard.”

  “But do you know what that means?” He didn’t wait for her to guess. “It means I have to decide who receives the medication and who doesn’t. Every day telegrams come to me. Dozens of telegrams. Every day. From physicians across the country. Begging me for access to this medication. Telling me about this patient or that patient, this mother or son or husband who will die without it. Life stories, in telegrams.” He stopped. He studied the floor. Rubbed his forehead. When he spoke again, his tone was slower. Quieter. “But there’s so little medication to go around, Mrs. Shipley. Whatever we have, it’s not enough. And it’s supposed to be for the military only. But at the same time, it needs to be tested, on a variety of diseases. More diseases than we can locate in the military at any given time. We have to test it on civilians who have the particular conditions we’re interested in, to find out if it will work. Mrs. Shipley, the system is set up so that I have to decide who will receive the medication and who won’t. I, Chester Keefer, have to decide who will live and who will die.”

  “I’m sorry,” Claire replied. What else could she say? It was 3:00 AM. She felt herself swaying from lack of sleep. He, too, must be reeling from fatigue. His defenses were gone.

  “How can they expect me to play God?”

  He seemed to want an answer from her.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “Will God forgive me?”

  She wasn’t a confessor. How could she offer him absolution? In her middle-of-the-night daze, she, too, felt God’s judgment upon him.

  He turned away. He was silent for a long time. Then, “I wish James Stanton were with us. He would help me with this.”

  Of course he would, thought Claire.

  “On a few occasions over the past months, when I couldn’t be reached, he was the one who had to play God.”

  “Tell me about him.” She wanted to see Jamie through Keefer’s eyes.

  “A great man,” Keefer said. “One of the great unsung heroes of the war. Well, someday this will all come out. A tragedy. When I heard—”

  “What tragedy?” she interrupted.

  Keefer gazed at her in confusion. Slowly the confusion turned to comprehension. “Oh, my dear, of course you had no way of knowing. Were you and Dr. Stanton acquainted?”

  What was he trying to say? “Yes, we were. We are. We’re close.”

  “Oh. I’m so sorry.” He stopped, clearly thrown and unable to go on. “I…” He put his hand on her shoulder, offering his sympathy.

  Was he saying that Jamie was dead? It wasn’t possible. She would have sensed it, felt it, inside herself. She would have known. She didn’t believe it. “What are you talking about?” she asked softly.

  He stared at her, seeming to question whether he should go on. Then, soothingly: “As far as we’ve been able to find out, it was a bombing raid on a hospital. Communications have been intermittent since then. My understanding is that there were no survivors.”

  No survivors. That didn’t refer to Jamie. No survivors was never a phrase that would apply to Jamie. “It’s not possible. I don’t believe you.” And she had her proof: “I never received a telegram.”

  Gently, Keefer said, “Are you listed as his next of kin?”

  Was she? She didn’t know. She couldn’t say. Who would he have put down as next of kin, if not her?

  “Maybe officially he’s listed as missing in action,” Dr. Keefer said.

  But if a man was missing in action, a telegram arrived from the War Department saying so.

  “His journey was considered secret, that’s probably why…”

  “You’re wrong about this, Dr. Keefer. Your information is incorrect,” she said firmly, making herself believe it. Keefer didn’t know what he was talking about.

  Work. She had work to do. She was a soldier, too, and she had to keep on, she had to do her work. That’s what Jamie would want, and that’s what she was going to do. This discussion was interfering with her work. 3:15 AM. Where was the ambulance with the medication? She would get through her assignment and later, much later, she would learn the truth and believe it. Or not.

  “Yes, yes,” Dr. Keefer said. “I’m sure you’re right. The rumors that go around, the false reports, it’s outrageous. So,” he said, as if they were beginning an entirely new discussion, “do you know Dr. Nicholas Catalano?”

  “Yes.” She would place herself in this conversation and nowhere else. This was what Jamie would want. Her thoughts would focus right here, and nowhere else.

  “Dr. Catalano’s the one who’ll be here to test the medication. That’s why he stayed behind, when Dr. Stanton went to the front. For just such an eventuality. He’s traveling in the ambulance with the medication. I’ve never met him. I’ve heard only the best. They needed someone objective, to supervise the test. You understand what I mean, objective?”

  “Yes.”

  “Someone who doesn’t work for the commercial companies,” he explained anyway. “Someone who’s not beholden. I realize his expertise is in vaccines, but green mold was never my specialty, either. Green mold makes for strange bedfellows, eh?” He smiled wanly. “I’m glad you’re here with me tonight,” he a
dded. “Makes the hours of waiting go by more quickly.”

  “Yes.” He was feeling sorry for her, Claire sensed. She didn’t want his pity.

  At 4:25 AM, the ambulance arrived. Police lights filled the waiting room. The scene turned into chaos. No one noticed Claire Shipley. She worked unencumbered, and she didn’t stop working, because to stop working was to be overcome with fear. She let the chaos envelop her, her camera freezing it shot by shot. The metal container of penicillin was wheeled in, strapped to a gurney. It was covered by a navy and green plaid blanket. Black watch, Claire thought—that was the name of the plaid. She thought about the plaid to stop herself from thinking about Jamie. A thick wool blanket, to keep the penicillin warm through the cold, wet night. Nick Catalano was looking older, his blond hair going gray at the temples. He kept one hand on the container as the orderlies pushed the gurney down the corridor, the protective touch of possession, like a father safeguarding a child. He glanced in Claire’s direction, but he didn’t seem to register her presence.

  Crowding into the outsize elevator, an elevator big enough for two or three stretchers side by side, they went upstairs. At the proper floor, they pushed themselves out, rushed down a hallway, the director of the hospital raising his arm like a beacon and leading the way.

  They turned: the burn ward. The beds stretched into the distance. In each bed was a survivor of the Cocoanut Grove fire: men at one end of the ward, women at the other, a makeshift barrier separating them. The resident doctors strode forward to greet Nick and Dr. Keefer. The residents reported that the patients had been given fluids, had been stabilized as much as possible. The residents began to present their plan for penicillin testing. Nick interrupted and presented his plan: 5,000 units injected intramuscularly every four hours. The residents protested; they had worked out a plan, this was their hospital, the testing would follow their plan. Playing God, Dr. Chester Keefer interrupted and announced that they would proceed with Nick’s plan.