A Fierce Radiance

by Lauren Belfer

  On Bedford Street, purple crocuses were pushing out from the dirty snow in one of the window boxes. The houses on this block of Bedford were older than his house, almost as old as the Revolutionary War, and their sidewalks and front stoops tilted at odd angles. Halfway down the block, a black-capped chickadee poked around in a flower pot amid the curled and dried remains of a geranium. The chickadee found a treat and flew off happy, with a sharp beat of its wings. Then without warning Charlie felt the catch in his throat. He expected to feel pain, but he didn’t. Catch exactly described what he felt.

  At dinner, he had trouble swallowing. He concentrated on the mashed potatoes. His mother was away, doing a story in Vermont about cows. She’d be home in a few days. Uncle Jamie arrived in time for dessert, homemade applesauce with raisins. After dinner, they played chess. Because of Uncle Jamie being with him, Charlie completely forgot that he was having trouble swallowing. But later, when he was lying in bed after turning off his light, it came back to him. He realized also that his eyes and nose were watery, and his muscles ached. He had a headache behind his eyes.

  He didn’t want to tell Maritza that he was sick. If he did, she’d put hot mustard plasters on his chest and make him go to school wearing garlic or a ball of camphor in a bag around his neck. Even though he wasn’t the only sick kid at school with garlic or camphor, and although maybe it even helped, he hated it. When he had scarlet fever, she put onions on the windowsill. Thank goodness no one had been allowed to visit him.

  The next morning, his head felt too heavy to lift from the pillow. When he didn’t go down to breakfast, Maritza came upstairs to find him.

  “Where are you, Charlie?” As usual, she wore a flower-printed skirt and blouse with patterns that didn’t match. She made all her clothes, and some of his, in her sewing room downstairs. She filled the doorway. Her white hair was covered with a blue scarf, and the blue matched her eyes. Her face was round and wrinkled, her voice gentle.

  “Still in your bed?”

  He nodded. She pressed the back of her wrist against his forehead and made a noise like “stzaw.” She kissed his forehead to confirm her findings. “Poor baby.”

  He didn’t like being called a baby, but when he was ill, he did enjoy being treated like one, so he felt resentment and appreciation simultaneously.

  “Stay.” She left him. Sometimes she spoke to him as if he were Lucas. Today he didn’t object.

  Soon he heard Jamie’s step on the stairs. When he arrived at Charlie’s door, his hair was still wet from his shower. He was dressed in his uniform. He carried the medical bag he stored, locked (as Charlie and Ben had discovered one afternoon when they tried to open it), in the corner of Charlie’s mother’s bedroom closet. “So, young man. Maritza tells me you have a fever. How do you feel?”

  “My legs ache. And my back. My nose is stuffed up. My eyes are watery. And I can’t lift my head.”

  “Interesting.” Jamie examined him. Charlie noticed that Jamie blew on the stethoscope to make it warm before listening to his heart. Dr. Crawford never did that, and the stethoscope got icy cold in the winter. “Do you have a headache?”

  “Sort of. Behind my eyes.”

  “Sore throat?”

  “Mmm…no, I guess not.”

  “Details, please.”

  “Kind of uncomfortable. But not sore.”

  Jamie examined his throat, felt for swollen glands, looked in his ears. He took his temperature. “It’s 103.2. Impressive.” He cleaned the thermometer, put everything away, snapped his black bag shut. “Well, my Charlie, you have influenza. Not much to be done about that, except spend the week in bed. Think you can manage to get through a week in bed?”

  Charlie considered this. He’d miss shop, which he really liked, especially now that his class was making models of German and Japanese planes for the air force recruits to study. But he had a spelling test on Monday and this would be a good excuse to get out of it. “Okay.”

  “Good.” Jamie gave him a long slow smile that said, don’t worry, everything’s going to be all right, being sick can be fun if you approach it the right way. “I’ll tell Maritza to look after you.”

  “Tell her no mustard plasters or garlic.” The strength of his protest brought Charlie up to sitting. “And no camphor.” He fell back from the effort. “Please, no camphor.”

  “Maritza has her own tried-and-true way of doing things, and far be it from me to interfere. Where she grew up, they didn’t have doctors or proper medicines. Apparently garlic, hot mustard, and camphor did just as well. A fact I try to bear in mind every day.”

  Claire returned from Vermont on Saturday to find Charlie still running a fever above 103. She told Mack that she needed to take some time off to stay home with her son. Reading aloud to Charlie, playing card games with him…the days passed quickly. Jamie was in Washington, hoping to return soon. Maritza brought Charlie juice and made him soup.

  At first, his illness followed the expected pattern. For two days he felt worse, then for one day he felt truly terrible, and then gradually he began to improve. His fever receded. Claire consented to the removal of the mustard plaster and the bag of garlic. She’d already gotten rid of the camphor, which, she’d told him secretly, she didn’t like, either. Soon he could sit up in bed and focus his eyes. He regretted admitting this when Claire had him start the homework his teacher had dropped off.

  On the following Saturday at 10:20 AM, the expected pattern fell away. Claire always remembered that moment, the dividing line between before and after, although there must have been signs, if only she’d recognized them. Looking forward to a midmorning cup of tea, she happened to glance at the clock on Charlie’s bedside table. 10:20 AM. Charlie began to cough, a raw, brutal cough that sounded like it would burst open his insides. When the cough finally calmed, he wheezed to catch his breath.

  Within a few hours, his fever spiked to 104. With Jamie still in Washington, Claire phoned Dr. Crawford. At six, he arrived. Dr. Crawford’s appearance always surprised Claire. He was built like a jockey, small, thin, soft-spoken, with a hard edge of determination. Dr. Crawford had announced his retirement last year, but with younger doctors heading to the war zones, he kept up his practice in their absence. Dr. Crawford had always been generous to Claire and Charlie, and Claire regretted the three flights of stairs he had to climb to reach her son.

  Dr. Crawford listened to Charlie’s chest, asking him to breathe in and out, in and out, until another coughing fit interfered. Claire wished she could plug her ears to block out the sound of his coughing. Stethoscope held upright, Dr. Crawford waited patiently. When the coughing stopped, he continued the examination. He tapped between Charlie’s ribs and listened carefully for reverberations. He pressed the side of his hand against Charlie’s ribs and asked Charlie to breathe. He was testing for fluid in the lungs.

  “Step into the hall with me for a minute, would you, Mrs. Shipley,” Dr. Crawford said calmly, as if nothing were amiss. He walked as far as the guest room, and she followed. He took a deep breath, and gave a long exhalation. “Pneumonia,” he said. “In both lungs.”

  The word hit Claire like a punch. Pneumonia could be fatal. Often it was. The Old Man’s Friend, it was called, because it brought death. It was never called the Young Man’s Friend. Never the Child’s Friend. “Should we take him to the hospital?” Claire asked.

  “We can take good care of him here,” Dr. Crawford reassured her.

  “Better, in fact.”

  That’s what Emily’s doctor had said. Those words exactly. We can take good care of her here. Better, in fact.

  “I’ll arrange for a nurse. I assume that’s all right? Mrs. Shipley? Claire?” He demanded her attention, when her daughter filled her thoughts: Emily’s eyes, hair, cheeks, Emily running, jumping, sleeping, all of this pressing into Claire’s mind.

  “Yes. A nurse. Yes.” Claire wouldn’t ask questions about details and cost. If Dr. Crawford wanted Charlie to have a nurse, he would have one. Claire would
ask her father to pay. She wouldn’t stand on pride now. Her mother had paid for Emily’s nurse.

  For the next days, Claire entered a kind of suspended animation as Charlie’s condition became worse and worse. He became the beginning and end of her world. Everything else dropped away.

  Dr. Crawford treated Charlie with sulfapyridine, but days passed, and it had no effect. He drew a blood sample, took it to St. Vincent’s Hospital for testing, and returned the next day with a serum treatment.

  The serum, too, had no effect.

  Claire tried to reach Jamie, but Vannevar Bush’s secretary said he was visiting research labs in the South. She didn’t know his exact schedule, but would try to get a message to him.

  Claire sent a telegram to her father, who was in Cincinnati on a business trip. Charlie has pneumonia, the telegram said. Rutherford cut short his trip and returned home. He was shocked when he saw Claire on the stairs, her hair uncombed, her clothes unkempt. He was even more shocked when he saw Charlie. He’d visited just six days before, when Charlie had appeared to be on the mend. They’d played tic-tac-toe. Now Charlie was lying upon three pillows, propped up to keep fluid from accumulating in his lungs. His skin was white. Deathly white, as the saying went. His fingernails were a strange bluish black. Rutherford glanced sharply at Claire and was about to ask her if she’d noticed the color, but she looked dazed.

  “You should lie down, Claire,” he said.

  “I’ve been telling her to lie down all day,” said the officious nurse, coming into the room with warm washcloths to bathe Charlie. “I’ll need to ask you to leave now, so I can wash the patient.”

  “What is your name, nurse?”

  This question seemed to offend her. “My name, sir, is Cynthia Burns, but you may call me Nurse Burns.”

  “Very good, Nurse Burns. You can bathe my grandson later,” Rutherford ordered.

  “I beg your pardon—”

  “Later.” He dismissed her with a wave of his hand.

  With an exaggerated sniff and toss of her head, as if making a record of her displeasure in case her abilities were ever challenged, the nurse left them.

  Rutherford turned to his daughter. “Claire, I want you to lie down.”

  Claire dutifully followed her father’s instruction, acquiescing without a word, retreating to her bedroom on the second floor.

  Rutherford watched her go. How had the situation reached this awful state, he wondered. Someone needed to take charge here. And yet, as he sat in the rocking chair at the foot of Charlie’s bed and watched the boy thrashing and twitching, as he listened to Charlie’s wheezy, rattling breathing that came so very fast, Rutherford understood that this course of events was beyond anyone’s control. No one could take charge, because no one could control what was unfolding within Charlie’s body.

  But it was impossible that his grandson would die. Rutherford wouldn’t allow it.

  He placed his hand on Charlie’s ankle. He rubbed the boy’s foot.

  Without speaking, Charlie moved his foot toward Rutherford’s hand, to tell him he liked it, to ask him to keep doing it. Rutherford felt tears coming. He fought against them, because he wouldn’t allow Charlie to see or hear him cry.

  Penicillin. Obviously. It wouldn’t have worked against the influenza (caused by a virus, not bacteria), but against the pneumonia that had now set in, it would work. Rutherford should have thought of this the moment he received Claire’s telegram. His fears had overwhelmed him. And he wasn’t accustomed to this option. Who was? Certainly not old Dr. Crawford. Penicillin was new, but it was there waiting, and it would cure Charlie.

  Bursting with his idea, he called to the nurse, who’d been sitting in the guest room reading the Daily News. “Watch the boy.” He went downstairs, and found the phone extension in Claire’s study. He sank into her desk chair with a weary thud. Stanton, wherever he was, still hadn’t been in touch with Claire, so Rutherford had to act on his own. First he called his office, demanded of his secretary a list of phone numbers that he then wrote down in his meticulous print on the small pad he always kept in his jacket pocket.

  “What are you doing?” Claire said behind him. She swayed on her feet. She’d been in a deep sleep and had been woken by her father’s voice on the phone.

  “Saving Charlie.” His first call was to his own company, Hanover. He asked for the chief penicillin researcher: “Get me Dr. Bryant,” he said to the switchboard operator.

  “May I ask who’s calling?” she said.

  “Edward Rutherford. His boss.”

  “I’ll connect you, sir.”

  Rutherford waited what seemed like a long time. Finally: “Bryant here.”

  “Dr. Bryant, my grandson has pneumonia.” Hit him hard and fast, Rutherford decided, before doubts set in. “I need you to pack up some penicillin for him. I’ll send a messenger for it in an hour.”

  A pause. Then Bryant spoke in a whisper: “I don’t have any stockpiled, Mr. Rutherford. Only enough for the current experiments.” He stopped. “I’m talking from the phone in the lab, sir. The MPs are patrolling.” Pause. Rutherford could imagine the scene, which he’d witnessed often enough: the young MPs following their orders and standing over the penicillin scientists one by one. “Okay, they’re on the other side. Look, I could start putting something aside. A small amount tonight, a little more tomorrow. Maybe by the end of the week there’d be enough to start treatment…”

  “That’s too goddamned—” Rutherford stopped himself from shouting. The poor man was only doing his duty. “Thank you.” He hung up. He turned to Claire. “You know some of these people at the other companies, the bigger companies, don’t you, Claire? And in Washington?” He showed her the list on the pad.

  She nodded.

  “You can telephone them, can’t you, Claire?”

  She nodded but couldn’t find the strength to move.

  “I’ve got the phone numbers. It’s better coming from you. You’re his mother. You have priority over everyone else.”

  Again she nodded.

  “Come here, darling. I know you can do it.”

  He helped her to the chair, got her settled. She might have been sleepwalking. He struggled to hold himself back, not to pressure her with the urgency he felt. If she broke down, then for certain Charlie would not be helped. He explained to her what to say. “Here’s the first number, sweetheart.”

  And so she placed the calls. Although each call was different, each was the same. George Merck, John Smith, Vannevar Bush…she actually reached them, that was the first miracle, but they would not, could not, help her. Bush’s secretary was still trying to track down Jamie. Ask Chester Keefer, everyone said. Call Chester Keefer—he’s the one who controls distribution. If he says so…. Maybe, maybe, maybe…the guards are watching, armed guards, the permission must be official.

  Gradually the problem dawned on Claire: by now, clinical trials had shown that penicillin cured pneumonia. In fact, penicillin was the best possible cure for pneumonia. This was proven scientific fact. And that was the terrible irony: if Charlie had contracted a more unusual disease, he might have had penicillin immediately. To see if it worked. Its use on an unusual disease fell under the category of scientific investigation, gaining knowledge applicable to military needs. Penicillin was made available for that. But for pneumonia, even Chester Keefer would be hard-pressed to release it. Not that they didn’t want to give their penicillin to Charlie.

  “I’d like to help him,” said John Smith at Pfizer. “Truly, I would. But I can’t.”

  Chester Keefer was unavailable, his secretary said. Twice Claire called, between other calls. Still unavailable. Maybe later. Maybe. Fifteen minutes later, she placed the call to Boston once more. The operator phoned her back when the call went through.

  Finally, suddenly, she reached him. “Hold on, please,” his secretary said.

  “Mrs. Shipley. I’m so sorry I missed your calls.”

  Claire was almost struck dumb. She wished she had t
he strength to push and prod and order him, but she didn’t. She had barely the strength to stay polite. Barely the strength to explain her predicament. But she did explain it. She did ask. On hearing the answer she expected, she graciously thanked him and hung up the phone.

  “What did he say?” her father asked her.

  “He said, ‘Please, don’t ask me to play God.’”

  “‘Don’t ask me to play God’? What sort of a goddamned thing is that for him to say?” Rutherford howled, losing his otherwise staunchly guarded control.

  “I don’t know.” Claire would cry now for certain. She’d held back from crying, for better or worse, all through the telephone calls. But now, her father yelling at her, she too would lose control. “I don’t know.”

  Seeing what he had done, Rutherford withheld what he was going to say next. He put his hand, ever so lightly, upon her shoulder. He tried, ever so haltingly, to console her. Not only her, but also himself.

  Another idea came to Rutherford. An idea he wouldn’t have risked, except his grandson’s life was at stake, and this was the only idea he had left.

  Don’t ask me to play God. Upstairs, Charlie didn’t have the energy to open his eyes or to speak, but he did hear his grandfather shouting. Don’t ask me to play God. In the yearly Christmas pageant at school, someone always played an angel, and often a real baby played the infant Jesus, but no one ever played God. Maybe it wasn’t allowed. How would you play God, if someday it was allowed? Charlie tried to conjure an image in his mind, a white beard, and white hair, but that ended up looking like Santa Claus, and he didn’t think God looked like Santa Claus. He tried again. God. A tall man, he thought. But why? God could be medium-size. More common. Charlie’s father was medium-size, he remembered that; his father was just about the same height as his mother. And after all, God created man in His own image. But that could simply be a metaphor, a word he’d learned this year in school. Maybe God could look like anything He wanted to. Charlie imagined that all the beautiful creatures he’d ever seen in the world were actually God in a different form. He saw a scarlet tanager, brilliant red, flitting through green leaves. Then he himself was a scarlet tanager, taking flight, rising above the tree line, Central Park spread far beneath him as he flew toward heaven.