With Every Breath (25 page)

Michael Wells was a promising young man whose interest in tubercular research had caused them to cross paths several times over the past few years. That didn’t mean Trevor intended to turn over his research to the boy. It took years of working with tubercular patients to sense the quirks and fluctuations of the disease, and he had no intention of turning the helm of his ship over to an untested boy who was just learning the ropes.

“You can’t fire me,” Trevor snapped. “I’m paying for the study from my own funds.”

“It was my influence that persuaded the Washington Memorial Hospital to open one of their floors to you. I’m withdrawing my patronage, and you’ve got three weeks to clear out. Your patients and your staff may stay, but you need to go.”

Trevor flexed and clenched his fingers, wishing he had a pencil to fiddle with. “What does Michael Wells have to say about this? I can’t believe he would support my removal.”

“Since the navy paid for Dr. Wells’s education, it hardly matters if the move has his approval. He has agreed to take over the study.”

Trevor stood, bracing his hands on the edge of Barrow’s desk to lean over and glare down at the man. “Removing me might spare your reputation in the newspapers. Maybe it will please the government bureaucrats you bow down before, but what about the men in the ships? In the army barracks? What is your obligation to defend them when compared with your own reputation?”

He straightened and stalked over to the door. He swallowed back the anger and turned to face Barrow once more. The man was a doctor, and yet he cared more for his reputation than the lives of those who were falling victim to the most insidious disease in centuries.

“I could take lessons from you in safeguarding my reputation. Had I gone into surgery or the university, I would have garnered far more glory. Both would have been safer and more prestigious, but I chose a disease of the poor, of the immigrants and prostitutes and factory workers.
Of
the soldier
. And I will keep fighting for them, even if you won’t.”

The slamming of the door gave him a temporary surge of satisfaction, but it couldn’t solve the problem. In three weeks he would be ousted from the study, unless he could solve the mystery of who wanted to destroy him.

* * * *

For two days the newspapers were full of lurid details about the raid at her parents’ house. Kate’s mouth went dry when her name was splashed across the pages, noting the “special friendship” she shared with Dr. Kendall and the fact that the damning box of medical records was found in her bedroom. Some of the newspapers even printed the names of prominent boarders who were forced to loiter on the street as their private rooms were searched.

What a disaster. The only glimmer of hope came from the
New York Times
. That wasn’t surprising, since Harvey Goldstein, a journalist working for the
Times
, was a boarder at her parents’ house, and he’d gotten to know Trevor through the dinners at her mother’s table. His article was the first to suggest the hostility was a result of a paranoia whipped up by people afraid of a contagious disease they didn’t understand.

Amazingly, the next day the local newspapers sheathed their claws as well. Kate couldn’t resist gloating when Trevor arrived at the office.

“You see? Your friendship with Harvey Goldstein brought a fair newspaper article in New York and prompted the other papers to soften their tone. You should listen to me more often.”

Trevor sat at his desk and pinched the skin on the bridge of his nose. “Kate, your voice is already burned like acid into my frontal cortex.” He rummaged through his medical bag, then rolled his office chair to her side of the office, holding a thin stick with a cotton swab at the end. “It’s time for your monthly check. Open wide.”

She opened her mouth, holding her breath as Trevor swiped the back of her throat with the dry cotton swab. It always felt
so awful to have that stick down her throat, but it only lasted a moment.

Immediately after swiping Kate’s sample onto a glass slide, Trevor repeated the procedure for himself. He slipped both slides into labeled envelopes and carried them to the laboratory for Henry to test.

A shaft of anxiety pierced her. Trevor’s immune system was different from hers. He was more vulnerable to catching the disease, and the knowledge that Henry was about to look at Trevor’s sample set her nerves on edge.

“I need to make a house call,” Trevor said, grabbing his overcoat. He didn’t say whom he was going to see, but when he slipped a mask into his pocket, she had a suspicion.

“Mrs. Kendall?”

Trevor nodded.

“I thought you said she wasn’t contagious?” Kate always found it strange the way patients suffering from tuberculosis could go through long dormant periods when they were incapable of spreading the disease, but then it could morph into a highly contagious germ capable of spreading by a single sneeze.

“Last week she became contagious again,” Trevor said bluntly.

Kate bolted to her feet. “And you’re still willing to treat her?”

“Yes, Kate. I’ll treat any patient who needs my help, whether contagious or not.”

After he left the office, slamming the door behind him, Kate put a hand to her forehead. Her head had begun pounding. Trevor tested himself every week, even as he marched off to treat a woman who could be infecting him. Only ten yards away, Henry was examining the slides collected from the employees at the clinic.

She couldn’t bear waiting any longer. Rising from her chair, she walked over to the laboratory. Henry’s nose was buried in
the
Washington Post
, and she had to call his name three times before he jerked his attention to her.

“Sorry, Kate,” he mumbled as he pushed the paper away. “The Princeton football season isn’t going well, and their upcoming schedule doesn’t look promising.” Henry’s greatest pride in life still seemed hinged on the three years he played football for Princeton. Kate wished she had nothing more serious to worry over than football scores.

“I was hoping to learn the results of my lab test.”

“I’ll have a look right now,” he said, then reached for the sample with her name on it. He opened the slide and used an eyedropper to plop a single bead of purple dye onto the sample. If any tubercular bacillus lurked on that slide, the dye would make it easier to see. Henry pushed the slide into place under the microscope and adjusted the lens to the proper angle.

“You’re all clear,” he said.

Kate pasted a tight smile on her face. “Could you test Dr. Kendall’s sample as well? He would like to know.”

Henry looked confused. She’d never made such a request in the past. After a moment, he shrugged and repeated the same procedure for Trevor’s slide. It seemed Henry took forever as he adjusted the dial, twisting it forward and back as he studied the sample. His face contorted while he squinted through the eyepiece.

Kate held her breath. Maybe Trevor had lied about his health. Maybe that was why he was so comfortable treating patients who were contagious, because if he already had the disease again, it wouldn’t really matter, would it? Her mouth went dry as Henry straightened.

“His sample is clean too,” he said simply.

Relief at hearing the news almost made her dizzy.

She returned to her office and plunked down at her desk, turn
ing to look at Trevor’s empty chair. She was trembling. Was she going to hold her breath each time she saw him carry his slide to the lab for testing? The last few days they had done nothing but squabble over petty things rather than discuss the real issues that lay between them. He nagged her to use a letter opener to open her correspondence rather than ripping it open like she always did. She criticized the way he incessantly rapped his pencil while he was reading. It even annoyed her the way he wasted time by washing his hands both before and after each meal.

Working alongside him had been easier when she didn’t know he returned her feelings. When he kissed her that morning, it had been the most tender, heartbreaking moment of her life. She wanted to hold and comfort him. She wanted to lean against him and have him tell her that everything would be all right, that her fears were baseless.

But her fears were not baseless, and nothing Trevor could say would convince her otherwise. At this very moment he was tending a woman whose breath contained a germ that could kill him. How could he risk his life like that?

She rose from her chair. It was time to save Trevor from himself.

* * * *

The library of the surgeon general was housed in a grand building on the National Mall. Located only a stone’s throw from the Smithsonian, the towering building was a fortress of red brick and classical lines. In addition to the medical library, the building housed the Army Medical Museum, a research wing, and the office of the surgeon general.

And today Kate intended to use all those facilities to get answers to her questions. Pestering Trevor for more insight into his condition had been hopeless.
“Short of removing my
left lung and slicing it open for a public viewing,
I have no way of knowing if there’s any
permanent damage,”
he’d said when she tried to glean more insight into his condition.

The surgeon general’s medical library was her best bet to find out what Trevor was up against. The cavernous space of the library soared three stories high, with books stacked to the ceiling. Rows of narrow metal walkways and staircases were used for accessing books on the upper levels. The rest of the floor space was dominated by oversized worktables. But the best resource in the room was the librarian.

In addition to being a librarian, Louis Spiegel was a medical doctor. With a thick mustache and rectangular spectacles, Dr. Spiegel was patient and helpful, though the knowledge he imparted made Kate’s blood run cold. He guided her to the other side of the building, where the medical museum housed thousands of specimens and the odor of formaldehyde tinged the air. The librarian showed her cross sections of healthy pink lung tissue compared with tubercular lungs. The damaged lungs looked as if filled with pockets of brown grit. Bulging white scar tissue surrounded each of the cavities. No wonder the patients at the hospital were so short of breath.

“If someone survived tuberculosis, are they at greater risk of contracting it again?”

Dr. Spiegel gestured to the sample of ravaged lung tissue. “Someone whose lungs once looked like that would have greater difficulty throwing off the disease again. I’m afraid there are too few people who have survived it for us to have much insight.”

He accompanied her back to the library, where they spent an hour poring over the medical literature. Pride rushed through her when they stumbled across a number of articles written by Trevor, although there were plenty of other articles that underscored the grim prognosis of what they were battling. There was
no cure in sight. Doctors hadn’t even begun to understand the disease, and everyone was blindly groping in the dark.

Then she stumbled across an article that made her want to tear her hair out because of how stupid she had been. She held the journal up so that Dr. Spiegel could read the title. “Is this true?” she asked.

“I haven’t read the article, but it certainly seems like common sense.”

If Trevor were here, she’d be tempted to throw the journal at his head. The article spoke of the dangers faced by doctors and nurses who treated tubercular patients. It stated that medical professionals faced far greater risk of contagion than the general population. It recommended medical personnel with compromised lung health be assigned duties where they had no contact with tubercular patients.

Why was Trevor continuing to work with people who could infect him? Surely Nurse Ackerman or Henry could draw those samples, so Trevor didn’t have to be in personal contact with the patients.
She
would take the samples if it would keep Trevor safe. His commitment to finding a cure was admirable, but every day he set foot inside the clinic was a danger to him. Trevor was smart enough to work in any medical field he chose. He could teach at a college or pick another disease to study. He didn’t
have
to work with tuberculosis.

She sat back in the chair, staring out the window at the sunlight glinting through the trees. She would simply have to persuade Trevor to abandon tuberculosis in favor of a safer career. If he would be willing to do that . . .

A whole new world of hope began unfolding inside her. They would be so good together. Every day would be filled with the joy of working alongside a man who challenged, excited, and thrilled her. She loved him. She loved his intelligence and his
commitment to medicine. His heroism and his humor and the way his eyes came alive when he looked at her. Yes, he might be stricken with tuberculosis again, but so could any person. If he would take reasonable precautions, she could be brave enough to risk a life beside him. As soon as he shifted into a different line of medical research, there would be nothing standing in their way.

Trevor’s brilliance and passion for medicine were too valuable to waste on the front line of the battle against tuberculosis—not when there was a whole world of medical discovery just waiting for the right person to take up the calling. He could study cancer or diseases of the heart. There were so many other paths he could take, all of them important and in need of further research.

Her biggest challenge was going to be convincing Trevor of that fact.

* * * *

Trevor’s eyes were grainy from lack of sleep as he stepped off the streetcar and headed toward the hospital. He’d spent most of the night before on the southeast side of town, distributing serum to the people who had probably never seen a doctor in their lives. Or in Barrow’s charming turn of phrase, Trevor had been “slumming with the dregs of society.” He didn’t care what others thought of the people he treated. They had pain in their lungs and little kindness in their lives. He had firsthand experience with the agony of tuberculosis and wouldn’t turn his back on anyone who suffered with it.