Die Once Live Twice (27 page)

Jonathan did not have to wait long for his fears to be validated. Within seventy-two hours of the parade’s conclusion, nearly one hundred and twenty civilians were dead. The onslaught had begun. Five days after the parade, Philadelphia’s Public Health Officer finally issued a mandate banning all public gatherings. It was too late. Hundreds of patients filled the hospitals and over one hundred and fifty a day died. Some died within twenty-four hours of their first cough. They were the lucky ones, Jonathan thought. The disease that had killed nearly one in six soldiers in Europe during September was now running free among civilians. Like the close quarters of military camps, cities provided an environment that was all too accommodating to the disease. Jonathan worked twenty-four hours a day, and pleaded with Marion to join him to be his nurse. “At least we can be exhausted together,” she said, and took the next train.

One morning in early October, Jonathan donned a freshly washed white lab coat and buttoned it slowly. Painfully, he recalled thinking as a young man that this lab coat was like white armor that physicians wore as they crusaded against disease. Today, these visions seemed a fairy tale. His coat was defenseless against the disease that plagued the hundreds in his wards. Even worse was the white cotton mask he had to wear during rounds. He viewed the mask as a barrier to his patients, with whom he was, after all, trying to instill calm in the storm of fear. He felt as if he were hiding behind a disguise. Nonetheless Jonathan knew he had to openly display precaution against this savage disease. Martyring himself for the sake of humility would save no one.

As Jonathan descended the stairs from his third-floor office of the Pine Building, the echo of his heels on the black marble steps provided an ominous accompaniment to the scene he was expecting to see. He had heard the wagon carts before sunrise winding their way along the rough pavement behind the building to collect the dead. He knew for every one that had died that night, four more would be coming through the door this morning. He reached the ground floor of the east wing and entered the ward. The beds were now separated with heavy white linen cloths that hung from the ceiling, reminding him of the black-and-white ivory chess board in his library at home. His king was in checkmate.

Six nurses in long white dresses covered chest to toe with aprons, their faces covered by masks, moved silently and swiftly among the beds, dodging the nuns dressed in full black habits and white masks. The Sisters of Charity had been granted permission to act as support to the nurses, since the war had taken most of the able-bodied medical personnel overseas. Their devotion was a great comfort as they tended to the sick without fear.

“Good morning, Doctor Sullivan. I trust you are well today?” The ward nurse came over to greet Jonathan and give him a report.

“Yes, thank you. The situation?”

“Fifteen deaths last night. They have been removed. We have five more who have turned blue. It’s only a matter of time. Six have broken their fever and may be out of danger by tomorrow. There are nearly forty more outside the door waiting to be seen.”

Jonathan cursed under his breath. The death count had stopped being tallied. It was impossible to keep an official count anyway. Morgues no longer answered the calls of the devastated families. The dead lay where they died, their families too sick to move them, or even care they lay next to a corpse if they themselves were afflicted. Not until the survivors in the house could finally stir from their beds, days after their own infestation, could they remove the deceased. Children who lost both parents had begun to roam the empty streets in search of help and food. Chances were likely they would starve because those who supplied and sold the food were dead. There was no one to help.

“Do your best to keep them cool and hydrated. Give codeine to those coughing, to stop it before it gets too bad. I’m going to make rounds at the emergency hospital.”

He turned to Marion, who had joined them. “Stay here and help out with these nurses while I go down the street. I’ll be back this afternoon.” Marion nodded and smiled wearily.

Jonathan saddled his horse and rode quickly up Spruce Street and then Broad to the emergency hospital on Market Street. Though it was ten in the morning, the streets were deserted. Jonathan liked the eerily barren streets because it meant that fewer would be infected today. Jonathan tied his horse near the side entrance. The back entrance he normally used was blocked by morgue wagons. Donning his mask, he walked up the steps and opened the large wooden door of the colonial-era building and entered the same type of ward he had just left at Pennsylvania Hospital. Row after row of temporary cots were lying in the open rooms. Windows were open, the standard procedure in pneumonia cases. Nuns were a grateful presence here as well. What amazed Jonathan most was the sight of medical students working side-by-side with the nurses and nuns. Medical schools had reassigned the senior students to function as doctors to replace those gone in Europe.

Jonathan found the head nurse and made rounds of the patients, inspecting the feet of each one. Those whose toes and feet were turning blue were marked for dead by a simple cross on the papers that hung by a thin metal wire at the foot of the cots. The priests, now working overtime, would administer last rites whenever they could. Those not marked for death were kept cool by wet cloths, given water and offered food, which was rarely taken. Jonathan repeated his orders for those in pain to have morphine and codeine in hopes that it would also lessen their coughing spells. The nuns fed the patients and cleaned their faces of the blood oozing from their noses. Jonathan’s helplessness intensified as he realized his efforts were no more beneficial than the sympathy and comfort offered by the nuns. Vaccines, serums, medicines—nothing of modern-day science was useful as a remedy.

Jonathan finished his rounds that day as he always did, visiting the ward of those who were recovering or that he knew would recover. These patients gave him hope, renewing his faith that some would live. They had lived through what was killing thousands worldwide each day. It helped him keep his glass-half-full optimism flickering. He knew full well that nearly half of the patients he saw in the sick ward that morning would be dead by tomorrow, their places taken by others, with still more collapsing on the lawn awaiting admittance.

As he walked down the front steps he lowered his mask, only to replace it as the morgue wagon rolled by. Brow furrowed, frustration mounting, he climbed on his horse and gave the reins a quick jerk to turn him back towards Pennsylvania Hospital. The afternoon haze had turned soft and golden as Jonathan gratefully rode in the fresh air of autumn. He rode like a lone warrior through a city destroyed and seemingly abandoned. Riding past a small group of A-frame houses near the hospital, his spirits temporarily lifted when he saw two little girls holding a rope for a third girl to jump. He slowed his horse, listening carefully to the sweet youthful voices singing their cadence of jumps:

I had a little bird

And its name was Enza

I opened the window

And in-flew-Enza

Jonathan’s blood turned cold as he spurred his horse on.

Every day continued the reign of terror, with thousands sick and fifty patients dying a day. It seemed the entire city of Philadelphia was sick and he could do nothing to help the patients. Even more frustrating, he could not enforce change in the course of this disease. The decision as to who lived and died never depended on what he or any of the other doctors did. More people were dying with this flu than had died of the Plague.

His research funded no knowledge on the causative organism. All he could grow in his cultures were bacteria from the pneumonia of the patients, which was the same result his colleagues in New York were experiencing. In his heart he knew that these bacteria were nothing more than scavengers of a ravaged host. The villain was a virus. Blaming bacteria was like blaming the miasma for the London cholera epidemic in 1854 when all the time it was the water supply. This germ was the strongest enemy ever encountered by man.

In the third week of October, nearly five thousand people died. Seven hundred people a day. Almost thirty people an hour. One person every two minutes. What truly stunned Jonathan was the awful truth that this death toll was happening in every country of the earth.

Wednesday evening of that third week, Jonathan and Marion rested on the oaken benches in the foyer of Pennsylvania Hospital. They removed their gauze masks for the first time all day. Both were fatigued beyond their endurance limits. Jonathan’s mind was washed out of possibilities for treating the patients or arresting the epidemic. “I am a failure, Marion.” He was hunched over and looking at his shoes. “Every day of my career I have toiled searching for cures for disease and then Nature unleashes her power against me. She is telling me medicine will never be dominant over disease. She has more secrets than I can hope to discover. Whenever we learn one or two new things, she demonstrates to us who rules.”

Marion draped her arm across his shoulders. “You can’t take this all upon yourself, Jonathan. Welch, Flexner, and Paul Lewis are all working around the clock and are no closer to a cure today than you. You are out here among sick patients risking your own life. Now come, you need sleep.”

“I have some more samples to go through tonight, so I’m going to stay here. Why don’t you head home before it gets too late?” Jonathan said quietly.

“I will. But do try to get some sleep.”

As they made their way back to the grand court so Jonathan could ascend to his laboratory, they walked past Benjamin West’s masterpiece,
Christ Healing the Sick in the Temple.
The painting never failed to stir Jonathan, and tonight it was a beacon guiding him back to his duty. He gazed longingly, appreciating each masterful brushstroke depicting Christ standing among a crowd of sick and demented, on their knees, imploring the Lord to save them. The artist captured the divinity and humanity of Christ as he greeted them with arms open, palms up, so as to lift their illnesses from their bodies. The aura created by the halo above Christ’s head reflected His success. Jonathan ached for a similar miracle here in Philadelphia.

He stepped closer to the painting, crying out loud to it, “Lord, why have you forsaken us? What have we done to deserve this wrath? Guns causing death in Europe and germs delivering misery everywhere. Our world is reeling in suffering. If you had the compassion to heal the sick in the temple, why not heal us? I cannot heal and I am your servant for healing. I beseech you, Lord, show mercy on us.”

Jonathan’s faith in God was renewed when the armistice ending World War I was signed on November 11. That same week in Philadelphia there were no deaths from the flu. It was if God had indeed heard Jonathan’s plea. The Great Flu was finished in Philadelphia. The piles of bodies and the mass graves that could not be dug fast enough three weeks ago were a part of the history of Philadelphia now. Jonathan and Marion went from a state of helplessness to one of uselessness, for there were no new patients. The cause of its ending was as mysterious as its beginning, but Jonathan knew there was a medical explanation. Viruses were known to mutate, to change overnight. The virus might change from one which infects animals, like pigs or birds, to a human pathogen. The virus that caused the greatest human epidemic ever may have simply mutated into a harmless form. However, Jonathan preferred to believe God decided his children on earth had sustained enough war and shut down the guns and germs at the same time.

Jonathan and Marion returned to their home in New York City for Thanksgiving. This year the meal was a true celebration, giving thanks for being alive. Everyone had friends and family who’d died. Jonathan and Marion hosted Phil Spanezzi and Danica, who were now married. Their priest, Father Padraig, came, as did Lucia and Angelo, who brought his fiancée, Maria. Audrey, the Russian-Jewish nurse, came alone. Rabbi Yassel Radulovic, who had converted his temple to a hospital, did not. He was a victim of the flu. Working with Audrey, he’d sometimes tended to the needs of patients twenty hours a day. Audrey felt one of the patients had coughed or sneezed into his beard, which was uncovered, and he likely inhaled the germs from his beard.