With Every Breath (32 page)

Tick moved to stand near the front of the clinic, glancing up and down the corridor and nodding his assent. “This will work fine. I can’t see the back door, but the hinges are so loud I’ll be able to hear if anyone goes in or out.”

“Why are you changing the position of the guard?” Nurse Ackerman asked.

“Standard procedure, ma’am,” Tick answered. “It allows the men guarding the facility to have a fresh perspective on operations.”

Nurse Ackerman seemed to bristle at that. “I don’t think the patients will like it. That sitting area is one of the few places they can feel like they’re at home. They shouldn’t have a guard looming over them. They won’t be able to relax.” It was a valid point, even though Nurse Ackerman had never shown such concern for the patients’ feelings in the past.

“I prefer to follow Private Norton’s recommendation regarding the rotation of the guards,” Trevor said dismissively, then proceeded back to his office, slamming the door so loudly they all jumped a little.

It would be a challenge to convince Mr. Walsh this was a delightful place to work—with Nurse Ackerman scowling at Tick, and Trevor acting like a bear with a thorn in its paw.

But after listening to Mr. Walsh outline his former position, and hearing a few of his suggestions for alternative forms of collecting data, she knew he’d be an ideal match. Due to his work at the Naval Hospital, he already understood the dangers of tuberculosis and was willing to accept the risk.

An hour later, Kate offered the position to Mr. Walsh, and he accepted. He would need time to resign at the Naval Hospital but would then begin work at the clinic, one week from today.

Her mission accomplished, she would be free to leave soon, which made the hollow ache in her chest hurt even more.

* * * *

Trevor acted frosty when he heard the news. Standing in the doorway of their office, she spoke to his back, because he continued staring out the window as she outlined her plans for leaving. His shoulders stiffened but he made no comment.

“Did you hear me?” she finally asked.

He turned from the window. “I heard you. I’m disappointed you don’t have the gumption to stick this out, but I’ve got no
time for rehashing old arguments. I’ve informed the orderlies to install an additional bed in both of the wards. Please start a file for two new patients. They will be arriving tomorrow morning.”

Trevor’s strange demand sent the hospital administration into a tizzy. Superintendent Lambrecht made an uncharacteristic appearance within minutes of learning the news.

“Why is he doing this?” he asked while looking at Kate. “A new doctor will be taking over the study next week, and this sort of disruption is entirely unwarranted. Each ward was designed for sixteen beds, not seventeen. I want to know what he’s up to. I don’t trust him.”

Kate had no answer for him. Neither did Henry nor Nurse Ackerman.

Trevor had left the clinic after making his demand and apparently was still gone. Meanwhile, a pair of orderlies carried in metal bedsteads, bumping and clanging as they navigated around tight corners. The patients were forced to rise so that their beds could be moved closer together. Space was so tight they needed to remove the chairs that had been placed between each bed.

“It seems mean to take the chairs away,” Henry said. “How will they visit one another without a proper chair? Some of them are too weak to make it out to the sitting area.”

Kate glanced over at Tick, who had spent an inordinate amount of time closeted alone with Trevor in the past few days.

Tick shrugged. “I expect Dr. Kendall knows what he’s doing.”

* * * *

Strangest of all were the two new patients who arrived the following morning as Kate was making the rounds with Trevor. Both patients seemed much healthier than the typical ones being treated at the clinic. In the men’s ward, Oskar Holtzmann
greeted them with a cheerful smile and a thick German accent, complimenting her on her dazzling red hair.

Oskar’s cheerfulness was in contrast to their new patient in the women’s ward. Marlene Chester was a frazzled woman riddled with anxiety over the well-being of her son.

“Luke has never been on his own,” she said.

“He’s in good hands,” Trevor replied in an unusually kind voice. “The Quaker school will provide him with a solid education during the day, and he’ll have a clean, safe place to live in the children’s dormitory. You understand that, right?”

The tension seemed to ease as she quit twisting the sheet in her hands. “I trust you,” she finally said. “I just want what’s right for Saint Luke.”

For the first time in days, Kate saw a faint smile on Trevor’s mouth. “He’ll have it. No matter what happens, you can be sure of that, Marlene.”

His voice was soothing, and how nice that he used her name instead of a patient number. Everything seemed a little odd, but nothing so much as when Henry provided her with the laboratory reports later in the day. Kate sat at her desk, staring at the reports for their two new patients, certain that Henry must have made an error. She showed the reports to Trevor.

“Neither of the new patients have tuberculosis in their blood,” she said.

He swiveled around. “They have it in their lungs.”

“Yes, but the criteria for your study require their blood to have a heavy tubercular count. Neither patient qualifies.”

Without a word, Trevor crossed the office and took the two curious lab reports from her hands. “You’re not to mention a word of this to anyone. I know what I’m doing, Kate.”

Maybe Trevor knew what he was doing, but something was going on. After months of having the marine guard stationed
at the rear of the clinic, it was disconcerting to have him up front near the nurses’ station. And the two new patients didn’t quite fit in with the rest of the group. Marlene and Oskar were both healthier than the others but never rose from their beds or visited with the others in the sitting area.

In fact, the only time Kate could recall seeing them leave the ward was when Trevor called them in to a private meeting each morning in his office. He never met alone with any of the other patients, and he always made Kate leave the office during those morning meetings with Oskar and Marlene. Trevor was up to something, and Tick knew what it was.

When she pestered him about it, Tick remained tight-lipped. “Just hang on. It won’t be much longer,” he said.

* * * *

Trevor had gathered the evidence he needed, all the players were in place, and it was time to close the chapter on this sordid affair.

It was sleeting by the time Trevor reached the neighborhood where Nurse Ackerman lived with her son in one of the modest eighteenth-century clapboard homes that were common in this part of town. It was a little after lunchtime, though the cloud-covered sky made it seem later. The barren branches of elm trees appeared black against the leaden sky, and the slate tiles were slick as he walked to the back of the home, where the mortuary had been added to the house.

The addition to the house jutted out awkwardly, but it was well constructed and had a professional-looking sign advertising mortuary services. A little bell rang as he opened the door, and Trevor had to dip his head while stepping inside. His nose twitched at the acrid scent of embalming fluid. The spacious room was dominated by three mortuary tables, two of which
held cloth-draped corpses, and the third was empty. The single window in the room was open, a chilly breeze lifting the filmy drapes and easing the stench of the room.

Andrew was busy rinsing a number of beakers in a washbasin. “I’ll be with you in a moment,” he said over his shoulder.

“Hello, Andrew.”

His former assistant whirled around, and Trevor almost gasped at the change in Andrew’s appearance. He had lost weight, and his gaunt face was haunted with shadows. His thinning black hair was carefully combed and his mustache clipped, but despite the careful grooming there was an unsteadiness about him.

Andrew’s surprise was quickly masked as he grabbed a towel and dried his hands. “What can I do for you, Dr. Kendall?” His voice was like sandpaper, thin and raspy.

Trevor walked farther into the room. The front was furnished like a parlor, a cozy space for Andrew to meet with grieving family members, far more comfortable than the dingy facilities typical among undertakers.

“You have a nice place here,” Trevor said, “but it’s a long way from Harvard. It seems an odd choice for a man of your qualifications.”

Andrew cocked his head in curiosity. “Why? I respect the bodies of the people I care for. Each one of them is someone’s father or son or friend. I care for them with the respect they deserve.”

“And the photograph of Mabel Berkin’s naked corpse stretched out on a mortuary slab? Did you send that to me because you respected her?” Trevor’s heart sank. Despite the overwhelming evidence he and Tick had amassed over the past week, Trevor still harbored a tiny flame of hope that Andrew might have no part in the crimes his mother was waging. That flame flickered and then vanished as venom crept into Andrew’s eyes.

“I sent it so you would
remember
,” Andrew said tightly. “Remember what mercury does to a woman’s body.”

“Trust me, Andrew, I’ve never been able to forget it. Why are you trying to ruin me?”

“Because you turned me into a murderer. Someone like you shouldn’t be allowed to tamper with people’s lives. They were
people
, Trevor, not laboratory rats. I helped mix up that mercury solution and stood at your side as you injected it into Rose’s body. I smiled and held her hand while you did that to her. I helped kill her.”

The despair in Andrew’s voice sliced through Trevor’s anger. His tormentor wasn’t some ignorant fool afraid of a disease he didn’t understand, but a colleague who once respected him.

“You aren’t responsible for Rose’s death,” he said.

Andrew acted as though he hadn’t heard him. “Do you have any idea of how much I loved Rose O’Grady? We had such dreams for a life together after she was cured. She trusted me to make it happen. Do you know what it feels like to have every hope for tomorrow rest on the decisions you make?”

Trevor wished he didn’t, but no doctor alive was free of that curse. Andrew braced his hands on the empty mortuary table, his shoulders sagging. “I quit medical school because I can’t treat patients. What if the patient is allergic to a drug I prescribe? Or gets an infection at an injection site? Or maybe a patient had a simple headache, but I misdiagnosed it and did more harm than good? All these things can happen.” He uncurled his fists, and the tension in his voice eased. “So I care for the dead,” he continued. “You doctors look at undertakers like we’re little better than the janitors who scrub your floors. I treat the dead with reverence. Each person I care for is a beautiful, perfect creation of God. Not a corpse! Not a body! It makes me sick the way you research doctors shuffle them off to an undertaker when
you have no more use for them. You shoot them full of poison and study them like animals in a cage. You poke and prod and measure them, and then when they die you open them up and do it all again.” Andrew’s voice turned cold now. “You even call them by a
number
instead of their given names.”

Trevor winced. The barb had found its mark, but if he hadn’t developed that means of protecting himself, he might have cracked like Andrew. “Yes, I do,” he said calmly. “And I will continue to refer to them by their numbers, because it’s the only way I can maintain my sanity in this job.”

“If using patient numbers robs you of simple human compassion, you shouldn’t be allowed to touch another patient as long as you live.”

Trevor hated this. Had it not been for Andrew’s disastrous introduction to medicine in Trevor’s laboratory, he would have finished medical school and learned to treat patients like a normal doctor.

“What is it you want from me?” Trevor asked.

“I want you to quit medicine.”

“That will never happen,” he replied swiftly.

Andrew pushed away from the mortuary table, pacing around the room, weaving between the tables like a tiger in a cage that was too small. “Then I won’t stop trying to destroy you in the press. If you move, I’ll follow. I’ll drive you out of business in whatever city you try to practice. There’s no law against speaking the truth, and everything I’ve told to the press about you is the truth. You can’t hide from me.”

“Rose O’Grady would have died anyway,” Trevor said. “Tuberculosis had gotten in her blood, and there’s never been a case on record where someone has survived that. She was searching for a last desperate shot at a cure. I tried to give her that chance, and I failed. That’s what usually happens with tuberculosis.”

“Is that the lie you tell yourself? Rose died from mercury poisoning, not tuberculosis. She was shaking so hard at the end she couldn’t even swallow. That was
your
fault.”

The snapping of a twig outside the window caused Andrew to startle. “What was that?”

“Probably just a squirrel,” Trevor said, moving quickly to divert Andrew’s attention. “Why did you plant falsified records in Kate’s boardinghouse?”

Andrew shook his head, a smug look on his face. “Who said I planted those records? I wouldn’t put it past you to indulge in medical fraud to prop up your tarnished reputation.”

Trevor rocked back on his heels and folded his arms. Andrew was clever. Of all the chaos he’d unleashed over the past months, breaking into Kate’s house was the only actual crime he committed. It was perfectly legal to talk to journalists and to send angry letters through the mail. Even spilling mercury on his desk could be attributed to a simple accident, and creating a set of falsified records wasn’t a crime until he tried to use them in a legal case. But breaking into Kate’s boardinghouse? That was a crime, and Andrew wasn’t going to own up to it.

“Why don’t you just quit medicine?” Andrew pressed. “I don’t need to see you dragged through the mud and convicted of fraud. Just quit. That’s all I want. Rose will be able to rest in peace if I make sure the man who engineered her death is no longer conducting his sick trials on desperate people as if they’re rats in a laboratory.”