A Fierce Radiance (18 page)

D
ear Claire
,
I’m writing to you from New Haven. I arrived yesterday afternoon.

At 3:25
AM
, Sunday morning, March 15, 1942, at the Yale University Hospital, James Stanton was writing a love letter to Claire Shipley. He sat in the corner of a hospital room observing the penicillin treatment of a patient who was approaching death. He wrote the love letter to fill the hours. He also wrote it to grasp at the future while another life came to an end far too soon.

The patient was a female, thirty-three years old, suffering from hemolytic streptococcal septicemia acquired after a miscarriage. Her fever was spiking to 107. She was delirious. She’d received her first dose of penicillin on Saturday afternoon. Yesterday.

A description of the facts, nothing more. Only what was necessary to know for the purposes of the experiment. This was Jamie’s defense.

But of course he did know more, the Yale staff providing detail upon detail. She was one of their own, after all. The staff took this test personally. Her name was Anne Miller. She had young children. Her husband, Ogden Miller, was the director of the athletic department at Yale. She was a trained nurse. She was slender, blond, lovely. At thirty-three, she was in the glory of her days. She was dying.

I’m here to observe a medical test.
Jamie was learning to pay more respect to the government’s code of secrecy regarding penicillin devel
opment. He kept the letter in his notebook, so anyone observing him would think he was simply writing a report on the experiment. Which he was also doing, on pauses from the love letter.

I hope you are well.
He certainly did hope she was well; he didn’t know what he would do if she wasn’t. Suddenly the polite, throwaway cliché—
I hope you are well
—became fraught with anxiety. How easily she could become the woman on the bed before him. Like this woman, she could miscarry a child, their child, their hope turned to despair.
I miss you.
Another easy euphemism, charged with meaning.
I wish I could see you soon.
This morning at breakfast, for example. And at lunch and at dinner for the rest of his life.

At any moment, without warning, Claire could contract an incurable infection. At any moment and without warning, he, too, could contract an incurable infection. He wanted to pray that it wouldn’t happen.
I’d like to see you as soon as possible.
He felt like praying although he couldn’t imagine a God. Even the small amount of human suffering he’d seen as a doctor had made him doubtful about religious faith. And yet his love for Claire felt sacred, a blessing upon them both, a gift of grace they’d been granted beyond deserving or comprehension.

4:00
AM
. Time for the next injection. A medical student, covering for the night, came in to give the shot. The student looked young, so smooth-cheeked that Jamie wondered if he’d even started shaving. And the student look scared. His hand shook as he prepared the syringe. Jamie looked away. He didn’t want to make the young man more nervous than he already was.

The physicians in charge here were guessing with the doses, Jamie knew. They preferred their own guesses to his recommendations. Well, it was their experiment, and he didn’t have authority over them. This was their territory, and he respected professional boundaries. Nonetheless he had to be here. He was the government and military representative. The penicillin had been manufactured by the Merck
company. The Merck representative, sporting a dashing black mustache that contrasted with his conservative tweeds, was also observing, pacing the room as his company’s product was put to the test. Jamie found the man’s pacing irritating. He wished the man would sit down and find something to occupy himself, such as writing a love letter.

I’m glad I’ve been able to spend so much time with Charlie.
Several weeks before, they’d taken Charlie and his friend Ben ice-skating at Prospect Park in Brooklyn. That was Sunday afternoon, February 15, the day that the supposedly invincible British outpost of Singapore fell to the Japanese. When he and Claire heard the news, the shock was as great as the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Jamie remembered, could still almost feel, the fragility of Charlie’s hand within his own as they ventured onto the ice. Ben, more experienced, skated on the other side of Jamie with his hand touching Jamie’s arm—touch and away, touch and away, as Ben recaptured his skills. Within ten minutes, Ben and Charlie both were circling with abandon, sprays of ice sparkling off their skates in the sunshine. Watching Charlie, proud of him for overcoming his initial fear, Jamie realized that he felt a growing affection for the boy. He saw Claire in Charlie’s wide cheekbones and curious gaze and, most of all, in his endearing combination of vulnerability and courage. As he fell in love with Claire, he was also coming to love her son.

After Charlie and Ben were safely occupied, Jamie was able to turn his attention where he preferred it to be, on Claire. She stood at the side of the rink, bundled against the wind, hat low, thick scarf covering her mouth and nose. The expression around her eyes revealed that she was hiding a smile beneath her scarf as she welcomed him to her side. He wished he could sweep her up and carry her away to a deserted cabin somewhere in the mountains. But he couldn’t. Not right then, at least. He’d have to be satisfied with teaching her to skate. He suspected she was pretending to a lack of knowledge, but he didn’t mind, because pretending or not, she pulled his arm around her, leaned close
to him, and let him guide them across the ice. They stayed near the railing, and more than once, she slipped or feigned slipping and they fell against the wall in a laughing embrace.

A week later, on the night of the twenty-third, they were together for the president’s fireside chat. This was a momentous occasion, not simply for the speech, which didn’t begin until 10:00
PM
: Tia came to dinner at Claire’s. He wanted his sister to feel part of this new life he was creating. The evening was informal and relaxed. Tia brought an apple pie she’d baked from their grandmother’s recipe, and it was a great success. Tia reviewed Charlie’s homework, played a game of tug with Lucas (Tia had loved dogs when they were kids). There was much laughter at the dinner table—exactly as he’d hoped, as if they’d all known one another for years. He’d urged Claire to invite her father to dinner also, so they could finally meet, but on this Claire refused. She wasn’t ready, she said, explaining that her hesitation was entirely about her father, not about him. She’d told Jamie a few details about her father, but he sensed she was holding back painful memories, and he didn’t press her for more information.

Charlie asked to stay up late to hear the president’s speech. Despite her concern for his reaction, Claire allowed him to. Obeying the president’s widely publicized instructions, Claire bought a map of the world, and after dinner she spread it on the kitchen table. Before the speech began, Charlie showed Jamie and Tia the places in Europe where his father had been posted. Jamie was pleased that Charlie freely talked about his father, as if Charlie considered Jamie and Tia to be part of his family already.

At ten, the president began. First FDR talked about the early days of the Revolutionary War, when the patriots were close to defeat. He spoke about the struggles at Valley Forge. Then he turned to the present. He knew that they, all the Americans listening to him, could hear the worst without flinching.

“What does
without flinching
mean?” Charlie asked.

Claire explained it to him. At that moment, Jamie loved her more than he imagined possible. She was brilliant, beautiful, self-possessed, yet helpless as they all were against the forces of the world. Calmly she explained to her curious eight-year-old the meaning of “without flinching.”

The explanation meant that they missed the president’s first several sentences about how bad the situation was around the world. Maybe that was for the best, because Claire, Jamie, and Tia already knew. No need to frighten Charlie with every detail. The Japanese controlled the Pacific. Europe had been conquered. The enemy was getting closer. A Japanese submarine attacked an oilfield near Santa Barbara, California. Off the coast of New Jersey, a Standard Oil tanker was sunk by a U-boat. Even
Life
magazine was presenting educational maps on the most likely ways for the enemy to invade the United States, the Japanese coming through Alaska and down the western coast, the Germans through the Gulf of Mexico and up the Mississippi.

A noise startled him. Jamie checked his watch. 6:00
AM
. He must have drifted off. The corridor outside the room had begun to stir, orderlies wheeling carts, nurses chastising underlings. Jamie had spent most of his adult life in hospitals.

A nurse came in, checked the patient’s temperature and vital signs, took blood. On her way out, she looked at him and saw he was awake.

“Mrs. Miller’s temperature is normal.”

Jamie said nothing. Her tone was like an accusation. The Merck rep had finally stopped pacing and fallen asleep in a chair. His soft snoring provided a rhythm to the silence.

“What do you think about that?” she asked, a challenge. She looked about seventeen, soft and pretty. Of course she had to be older.

“Too soon to tell,” he answered. Don’t be fooled. Don’t hope. Keep your perspective. He wanted to tell her this, but her steady, questioning gaze disarmed him. She wore an engagement ring. The diamond
was small but bright in the half-light of early morning. She had a complexion that he could only describe as rosy. She wanted answers that he couldn’t give her.

“Her fever’s been over 104 for days. Yesterday morning it was 107.”

Most likely the young nurse wouldn’t dare to speak to a resident physician this way. Because he was from the outside, she risked barraging him with questions.

“What happens next?” she insisted.

He heard laughter in the hallway, early morning greetings exchanged. He smelled coffee and cigarettes. He wanted to reenter the stream of daily life outside the door. Instead he was bound here, out of time, waiting for death. “I don’t know.”

Jamie realized he sounded impatient, even condescending, which he didn’t feel. Yet he had no comforting answer to give her. He needed to keep comforting answers away from himself, because they were always proven false.

“She lives next door to my sister. I looked after her children once on New Year’s Eve. Is she going to be okay?”

“Just take the blood to the lab.” That impatient tone again. He wished…in equal measure he wished he could pat her shoulder and tell her everything would be fine, and he wished she would go away and leave him alone. The nurse supervisor would tell her to buck up and get a grip on herself, which is what he would have said to a junior physician at the Institute. Instead he forced himself to show her that she, too, was part of the forward process. “The results of the blood work will provide good information.”

This at least he knew, the step-by-step requirements of medical routine, this he could cope with for himself and recommend to others as they searched for reassurance.

She turned and walked out. He was alone again. Well, not actually alone, for the Merck man slept on, and the patient…he allowed
himself to glance at the patient, the disheveled blond hair, the ghostly pallor, lips tinged with blue, thin arms, skin hanging loose. She’d been ill for over a month, and she’d lost a good deal of weight. On the bedside table was an informal photograph of her with her husband and children, all of them laughing. Once she’d been a beauty.

Claire Shipley. He had to center his thoughts away from here, and he centered them on Claire. He pulled out his letter once more. Found his pen. Where had he left off? Ice-skating with the boys in Prospect Park. Wasn’t that where he was?

I’m even more pleased to spend so much time with you.
How far could he let himself go in a love letter? He didn’t feel he could write,
I wish I was
(actually, “were” was probably the correct form)
lying on your bed right now
,
waking from sleep naked beside you and turning to you and entering you
,
feeling your breasts beneath my chest
,
both of us still half in dreams.
Or maybe he could say that. Maybe that was exactly what he should say. Be honest and forthright about his passion, about his craving for her. But it wasn’t simply passion he was feeling. He wanted her to know that he was feeling much more than passion. Not to dismiss passion, though.

The woman on the bed moaned. No doubt her husband would arrive soon, after he’d made breakfast for their children and situated them with relatives or a neighbor for the day. Maybe he’d take them to church before he came here to visit his dying wife. Jamie put up a roadblock in his mind: he wouldn’t let himself think about the husband, the children, the miscarriage. Wouldn’t let himself think about Claire suffering a miscarriage of their baby. Wouldn’t think about what a child of theirs would look like, or what kind of person their child would grow up to be.

He mustn’t get ahead of himself. After all, he couldn’t judge Claire’s feelings. Well, maybe he could. The way she’d taken his hand on the subway coming home from Prospect Park, concealing their hands under a fold of her coat so that the boys wouldn’t notice. Such a simple act of
tenderness. At home, she’d cooked them dinner. Afterward, when he was drying the dishes, she’d slipped her arms around him, resting her head against his shoulder, her breasts soft against his back. They’d stood that way for several minutes, until they heard the clamor of boys and dog racing down the stairs and into the kitchen. He had to tread carefully with Charlie at home. He didn’t want to create for her a problem of loyalty or priority. He didn’t want to force her to choose between them. Although he and Claire took advantage of the limited private moments they could find, naturally he wanted more. The presence of Charlie slowed everything down, even though he was coming to love Charlie.