by Paul Boor
Sealy continued, more calmly. “Word is, they weren’t meeting your price for your grisly supplies, Van Horne. Paid you nothing. And you in such dire straits, financially speaking. They’re saying that the ice merchant’s attack was foiled by his own blundering, and he’s lucky he didn’t burn himself to a crisp.”
A gent with a heavy accent spoke up; Nicolas recognized the mustachioed Frenchman, Pierre Bonferri, preening his mustache at the far end of the table. “Mon Dieu, Van Horne! And how could you forget zee sack of money? Not like you at all, is it?”
“Gad, what lies you’ve been fed, Pierre . . . gentlemen,” Nicolas countered. “Whoever’s misled you is the one responsible for this fire. And he tried to kill me, too.”
Bonferri raised an eyebrow. “Kill?”
“He tried to trap me in the building.”
“Mon ami, your word of honor—it wasn’t you who set zee fire?”
“My word. As I explained to Mr. Sealy here earlier, I’ve been pursuing a criminal element ever since my first visit to this island. Whoever set this fire wanted me dead and the medical college destroyed in one fell swoop. Fortunately for me, they were foiled on the one count.”
When there was no response, Nicolas decided on a different tack.
“You must understand, gentlemen, one of Galveston’s finest citizens was injured in tonight’s heinous assault. Dr. Francis Keiller, the famous professor. And property, valuable property, was senselessly destroyed.”
The table was stilled; trails of cigar smoke rose unwavering to the ceiling. Furtive glances were exchanged.
“Even if we believed you, Mr. Van Horne,” Sealy said softly, “it’s not us who burnt the damned college.”
“Perhaps you know who did, Mr. Sealy—and I’d solicit your help in getting the culprit.”
More silence.
“Ah, you’re right,” Bonferri admitted with a shake of his head. “It’s gone too far. Damage to valuable property? Now that’s unforgivable.”
Sealy shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Certainly there’ll be an investigation,” he said, looking off. “Our city constable will be on the case.”
“You mean your cousin, Hutch?” the elderly gent with the goatee asked.
“I . . . I’m sure justice will be done. I’m sure.”
The gentleman with the goatee frowned and turned to Nicolas. “You seem to know all about that place, sir. Would you kindly tell us about these experiments?”
“Yes, do,” another diner added. “It’s rumored they perform vivisection on imbeciles and such.”
“I’ll be glad to explain,” Nicolas said, leaning wearily on the table. Bonferri pulled a chair from the next table and Nicolas fell into it, suddenly hit with a wave of fatigue like he’d never felt. Keiller’s words “organ damage . . . a wee reaction” replayed through his mind.
Summoning all his energy, he straightened and told them in detail of Keiller’s theories, the scientists’ dedication and hard work, and their hope for a cure for yellow fever. At his mention of the dread disease, concern creased the men’s faces one and all. Heads shook.
“It’s true, mon ami,” Bonferri said. “Not a family on the island escapes Mr. Jack.”
“This Keiller fellow,” Nicolas continued, “believes a certain particle causes the disease. The scientists have come to understand this particle through experiments . . . experiments on guinea pigs and horses kept at their barns.”
Nicolas hesitated as he considered the impact of his next disclosure.
“And it so happens”—his gaze was steady—“I have joined them in an experiment, personally, of my own free will. I’ve exposed myself to this particle of the professor’s.”
“Sacré bleu!” Bonferri stared in astonishment. “You exposed yourself?”
“Yes, to test their cure.”
“Yellow fever?” Sealy muttered. “Of your own free will?”
“If I prove that their antidote works, gentlemen—and I have confidence it will—come summer, the treatment will save your entire city. Merchant and stevedore, rich and poor alike. And Galveston will be famous as the place where the cure was discovered, all because of your medical college.”
“You’ve a point there,” Bonferri said with a nod. “For years, I tell you, I’ve heard these tales of body snatchers and vivisection. Who cares, anyway? The college is full of dedicated medical types, and they’re fine gentlemen. I’ve always said that. We’re lucky to have them in Galveston. Doctors searching for cures, students . . . and such lovely nurses.” Bonferri contemplated the nurses for a moment. “Come to think of it”—he grinned—“I’m quite in favor of the college.”
The elderly gent spoke up with a shake of his pure white beard. “I’m not so sure. Mother Nature has her laws.”
“That’s humbug,” Bonferri scoffed. “It’s a new age we’re in. Man can change nature’s laws, and why in hell shouldn’t we?”
Nicolas jumped at Bonferri’s lead. “I, for one, gentlemen, intend to back the medical college to the fullest, with all resources at my disposal, as you once did, Mr. Sealy.”
Bonferri rose from his chair and looked around at his colleagues. “Van Horne’s right,” he said, giving the table a rap. “We need to be leaders in this, gentlemen, not followers.”
Nicolas stood on unsteady legs. He pitched back, caught himself, and shut his eyes against the bright gaslight of the chandelier. His skull throbbed. The anti-toxoid would have adverse effects, Keiller said. But will it work in time? Before the particle takes over?
Bonferri offered a hand. “Mon ami, you’re looking poorly.”
“Perhaps it’s the smoke I’ve inhaled. Nothing serious.”
As he wobbled, exhausted and near fainting, Nicolas recalled one last bit of information he needed to impart. He’d contrived a clever ploy that just might unhinge one or another of these self-satisfied gentlemen.
“One other thing about their skullduggery,” he said. “During the attack, the criminals broke the professor’s insect cages and released his most dangerous mosquitoes. The deadly yellow fever particle is loosed on the town, gentlemen.”
“Oh, come now, Van Horne,” Sealy countered. “It’s March. There’s no yellow fever this time of year.”
“That may change, gentlemen. Certainly for the criminals it will. The scientists are sure the attackers were bitten during their crime and will soon fall ill. As for the rest of the town, well, we can only hope.”
Faces dropped. Chairs scraped.
“You’re not at all well, Van Horne,” Sealy said, looking particularly agitated as he stood and took Nicolas’s arm. “My carriage is waiting. Let me have my man assist you to your lodgings.”
At Trudeau’s front doors, Hutch Sealy helped Nicolas slide onto the smooth leather seat of his personal brougham. “This business of the blasted college,” he said, before sending his coach off. “You’ve made some good points, Van Horne. I suppose we mustn’t have assassins running loose in our city. I’ll ask around to see what I can learn. You get some rest.”
Nicolas requested Sealy’s coachman help him climb the stairs to the flat, where he found Schuyler pacing. An ashtray on the kitchen table overflowed with half-smoked cigarettes. His son Schuyler. His only living son. But was he really his son? The ghastly words of Thomas Chubb flooded back. Had Thomas’s revelations from the other side of the grave made his son a stranger?
“What the hell happened?” Schuyler asked when he saw the sorry state of his father. “Look at you.”
Nicolas stepped to the window. Schuyler joined him. It was near midnight; the streetlamps had been lit for hours. Clouds covered a full moon like mottled bruises.
“Damn, Father. Were you crazy enough to join the firefighters?”
Afraid of what he might see, Nicolas snuck a sideways look at his son. It was the youthful Ruth Stuyvesant’s clear, intelligent eyes that struck him first, light hazel eyes full of humor and goodwill. But Schuyler’s gentle eyes were set, Nicolas realized, in a broader, fu
ller countenance than his own, with something flamboyant, sensitive, and complicated about it—like Thomas Chubb.
“No, I was caught in the damned fire,” Nicolas explained. “I’ve just been questioning the downtown businessmen about it.”
No, he’d not allow Thomas Chubb’s horrid secret to matter. Not in this lifetime. He’d simply take that secret to his own grave, untold.
“What did they tell you?” Schuyler asked.
“Nothing. At first, they blamed me.” Nicolas paused, framing his words carefully. “But there’s more I must tell you, Son. I’ve taken an experiment on myself, a very important experiment.”
As Nicolas recounted how he’d come to this point, he watched concern grow on Schuyler’s face until his son could no longer hold his tongue.
“You’re so blasted headstrong, Father! Obstinate, that’s what you are. Contrary. What about Abby and me, huh? What will we do without you if this crazy experiment of yours should fail?”
With his head pounding so, Nicolas could think of no reasonable reply.
88
Second Treatment
Foghorns sounded through the night. Nicolas never slept; he saw first light come creeping onto the island under a blanket of wintry fog. His mind was full of fog too, hazy, cottony, and his skull throbbed with each throaty bellow at sea. Was this pulsing of blood at his temples an effect of the treatment or Yellow Jack’s first onslaught? Nicolas tried to shake the thought from his aching head.
In the tiny kitchen Schuyler spread crusts of bread with marmalade. There was cold coffee and no butter for the crusts. The plate sat before Nicolas untouched.
“You’re making no sense,” Schuyler said, pushing away his own meager breakfast. “I told you it was an insane idea. Come along. I’ll accompany you to that damned infirmary. You’d never make it on your own.”
Nicolas held tight to his son as they groped their way through the fog to the corner trolley stop. They heard the trolley’s rancorous approach but saw nothing until the car broke through the bank of fog and screeched to a halt dead in front of them. Nicolas stretched out on one of the trolley’s long, wooden benches. Out the window, a blank wall of whiteness crackled with electricity and resounded with the plosive clatter-clip of passing carriages.
The fog cleared for a moment at the hospital stop, revealing the Medical College of Galveston in the early dawn light. The building’s once-stunning pink sandstone was coated with a black, tarry residue; the front doors were boarded shut; the shattered windows of the top floor gaped like the ragged mouth of a Halloween jack-o’-lantern . . . then, the sight was again lost in the fog.
Schuyler took Nicolas’s arm and they inched their way across the street. The intricately decorated wrought iron fence of the Ursuline Sisters of Charity infirmary loomed out of the fog. At this early hour, the gates of the hospital’s massive security fence were just being unlocked by a caretaker.
Schuyler threw the front doors open on an onslaught of human activity and brilliant electric light. Nurses in crisply starched aprons and caps raced to and fro; gurneys rattled by; orderlies swept down the hall behind wheelchairs of polished hardwood and cane.
Seeing all this, Schuyler backed toward the iron gate, mumbling to himself, “Oh, no. Definitely not my cup of tea. Good luck, Father.”
Renée arrived on the ward with two bottles of anti-toxoid. “It’s all that’s left, I’m afraid. I’ll entrust you to our able physicians to find a vein, while I cobble together a purification system.”
A bed was readied, the red tubing unfurled and a bottle hung. The fluid was murkier than he remembered from his first treatment. Nicolas’s arm burnt with the crude preparation. He closed his eyes when the first shiver hit and let the drip of the anti-toxoid waft him to a distant place.
During his conscious moments, Nicolas sensed that beds were made, nurses fussed, gurneys rolled by. The orderly checked his nearly empty bottle but left it hanging.
Now the orderly busied himself at the next bed. Where was the second bottle? What was he doing? Hanging Nicolas’s second bottle of precious grey stuff at the next bed? A new patient?
Nicolas willed his eyes wide open, struggled to sit up and see who lay in the next bed. A stocky man in street clothes, his back to Nicolas, blocked the view. The orderly nodded and stepped away. The bottle was hung, running briskly. Then, the visitor turned and shot a fleeting glance at Nicolas.
“Mr. Sealy?”
The man ignored him, but those greying side beards were unmistakable. Hutchinson Sealy, Galveston’s most prosperous financier, was visiting a patient so tall, his black socks stuck from under his bedsheet.
Nicolas tried to speak again, but the anti-toxoid had numbed his lips. He flopped back onto his pillow. Nicolas’s mind, and his memory, worked well enough to recognize the tall, ugly son of Hutch Sealy and recall the man’s nasty confrontation with Renée at the Cotton Exchange. Nicolas understood he shared the ward—and the precious anti-toxoid—with Galveston’s link to the slave trade, Hutch Sealy’s son Trey.
When Nicolas came to again, Trey Sealy slept soundly in the next bed. His father was gone. Renée was at Nicolas’s bedside, unhooking the tubing and flushing it with clear fluid from another bottle at the bedside table. She set the bottle down and began rolling the tubing into neat loops. “Ah, good. You’re conscious again,” she said with a fleeting smile.
“In the next bed . . . that’s Trey Sealy, isn’t it, Renée?”
“Yes.”
“Have you notified the constable?”
“I went to him, but he refused to look into it. Said he needed ‘more evidence.’ For now, the culprit needs treatment.”
“The scoundrel. He tried to kill me. He should be in jail.”
“His treatment went better than yours.”
“Better?”
“You’re having a bad time of it.” She sighed, the exhaustion in her voice obvious. “Oh, Nick, everything’s gone wrong.” She threw the tubing down on the stainless steel table. “I’m doing all that’s possible, but your veins are difficult, and you’re prone to these adverse reactions . . .”
Nicolas saw tears at the corners of her eyes. “Will there be enough?” he asked. “Divided between us like this?”
She picked up the tubing and began rolling again, tighter and tighter. “I’ve made a makeshift lab in the hospital dispensary. God, I wish I could do more for you, Nick, but I took an oath to treat all men as equal—from the finest of gentlemen to the lowest of scoundrels.” She set the roll of tubing on the bedside table, leaned over, and placed her hand over his. “Now I wish I’d never taken that damned oath.”
With a grim look, Renée set off between the rows of beds. While the other physicians felt his forehead and prodded his belly, Nicolas tried to concentrate on the faint sweet smell of apple blossoms that hung in the air.
Once the doctors were satisfied Nicolas had weathered the treatment, he was told to dress. Trey Sealy slept soundly in the next bed, snoring, his mouth agape, his hawklike, pockmarked face in complete repose. The picture of innocence.
“There’s nothing more to be done,” the physicians told Nicolas, “until tomorrow’s treatment—if there is one.”
Nothing more to be done.
89
Jaundice and Delirium
Schuyler helped his father to a chair at the kitchen table. He lit cigarette after cigarette as he paced in circles around the flat’s tiny kitchen, a thin trail of smoke rising to the ceiling behind him. “I can’t believe this, Father. Look what you’ve done to yourself.”
“It’s the final stage of their cure, Son.”
“They’ll not cure a blasted thing. Quacks and charlatans, that’s what everyone says.”
Nicolas had no strength to argue. He bundled himself directly into bed. In the deep of the night a chill shook him. He was drenched in sweat. Suffocating. He threw off the blankets, staggered out of bed, and vomited thin, bilious strands into the chamber pot.
Schuyler came w
ith a lamp and turned its wick full.
“My Lord, you’re turning yellow!” he cried. “I must get you back to that wretched place.”
Nicolas slumped to the floor, then everything faded. He had a dim memory of a hurried ride, again in Sealy’s carriage, and of a high, vaulted ceiling viewed from a gurney clattering down a long hospital corridor. Then, moans. Bed after bed of woebegone men that came in every shade of yellow. Foul-smelling bedside slop buckets filled with dark fluids. As the gurney rolled down the aisle, the small metal plaques at the foot of each bed flashed past: LIVER WARD. . . LIVER WARD.
He was wheeled to a bed near the end of the row. Sheets were unfurled; nurses in white wrestled him into a hospital gown—white was everywhere, as if the room had suddenly filled with freshly ginned cotton.
Physicians leaned over him, mumbled Latin phrases, wrote in small notebooks, and nodded knowingly. Icy hands poked his belly. He was doused with alcohol; its vapours choked him and he retched into the bucket at his bedside until he was too weak to retch any more.
Then, a gentle hand was on his shoulder, and he heard Renée’s voice in solemn discourse with her colleagues:
“I favor astringent. We’ve got to break the fever, no matter what caused it.”
“One thing isn’t clear, Dr. Keiller. Is it yellow fever or your treatment?”
His stupor deepened with evening. The moaning on the ward grew faint. When the weak light of morning was at the windows, the orderlies and nurses again shuffled across the hardwood floor, and the groans grew louder.
Nightfall followed dawn. Had it been days or weeks?
He had strange, intense dreams. In one, he was trackside at Saratoga; the horses were running and the summer air smelled of turf and well-lathered horses het up for the start. He was laying a bet on a pretty stallion when he spoke to a young woman in line. She was fetching, but she kept her distance, a lovely voice from the end of a long tunnel:
“Nick . . . oh, Nick. If only . . . if only I had . . .”
