And still she had to admit that it was a distraction to have him sitting there in the bright sunshine, his wrists and forearms in plain sight. The human body was no mystery to her, after all, and should not demand so much of her attention. Just a few days ago she had spent hours operating on the hand and forearm of a brawny sixteen-year-old with an arm shot full of splinters, pulling them out of muscles and tendons. She knew how a man’s wrists and arms were put together, and there was nothing unusual about Jack Mezzanotte. His wrists, broad as they were, twisted and flexed in exactly the same way as her own.
Which only sidestepped the fact that she was attracted to him in every way a woman could be attracted to a man, and he was leaving tomorrow for Chicago. A week or ten days, no amount of time at all. He would be back before she even began to miss him. But she hated the idea of his being gone, which made her realize, once and for all, that Jack Mezzanotte was nothing like Karl Levine, or more exactly: that she had been one person with Karl, and was becoming someone else with Jack.
She had liked and admired Karl for many reasons. He had a slow, thoughtful manner that masked a hot intelligence. He made her laugh. He was kind. He was unattached and not interested in a permanent relationship because his primary interest in life was medicine, and it demanded all his energy and attention. He knew that she would be in Vienna only a short time.
Before she had known him a week Anna had decided that he was her opportunity to experience that act which was at the center of so much of a woman’s life.
Most important, she realized now, was the fact that they were both utterly consumed by work, which meant they had something else in common: ignorance. Two people who knew everything about the anatomy and physiology of the human body, about procreation and sex except, as it turned out, how to make it work. To mean something. She came away mystified and confounded both, with more questions than answers. Just looking at Jack gave her ideas about those unanswered questions.
She had left Karl to go on to Berlin without hesitation or qualms, and he seemed to have recovered just as easily. At the New Year she had had a card from him, all collegial politeness, and she had felt only a moment’s guilt that she had not thought to write.
“Dr. Savard?” Sister Mary Augustin touched her shoulder, and Anna saw that the Foundling and its hospitals had come into view. It was an impressive sight, a central large brick building of some eight stories with two connected wings, and on either side of those wings, separate brick buildings, each four stories high.
“On the far right is St. Luke’s, the new children’s hospital.” Mary Augustin pointed with her chin. She seemed to think Anna had never been here before, but the girl took such enjoyment in sharing information that it would have been mean-spirited to stop her.
“St. Anne’s—the lying-in hospital—is on the far left nearest us, and in the center the offices and classrooms and the orphan asylum itself. The convent and the new chapel are behind the main building; you can’t see them from here. This is where I trained.”
Anna hadn’t thought to ask about her training, but clearly Mary Augustin wanted to talk about it.
“Two full years,” Mary Augustin said. “And then I was assigned to the orphan asylum at St. Patrick’s, just before this new hospital opened. I haven’t been back since.”
Anna told her, “It’s been a while since I’ve been here too. I’m looking forward to touring the hospital.”
Over his shoulder Jack said, “Where do we start?”
Mary Augustin looked surprised at this question. “Everything at the Foundling begins and ends with Sister Mary Irene,” she said. “Nothing happens without her approval.”
• • •
THERE WAS A cradle in the vestibule of the main building, one Jack had heard about but never seen. A cradle like any other, at first glance, but for as long as the Foundling Hospital had existed—first on Twelfth Street and eventually in this out-of-the-way spot—there had been a cradle like this one where anyone could leave an infant, for any reason. Young girls without husbands, women with too many children to feed or no place to sleep, distraught husbands and fathers, anyone of any faith could leave an infant here to be taken in by the Sisters of Charity. Most of them didn’t identify themselves, and few ever returned to reclaim their children.
There were other orphanages for those who didn’t want their children raised Catholic, but it was Jack’s guess that for many, baptism was not too high a price for what they got in return: a place to leave a child and know it would be well taken care of.
They followed Sister Mary Augustin through a set of doors and down a hallway to an office where a young nun sat at a desk, copying out a passage from a book with medical illustrations. The conversation between the sisters was so quiet and brief that he had no idea what was happening, beyond the fact that they both left the office without a word of explanation.
Anna immediately bent over the book on the desk to look at it more closely. “Earlham and Jones,” she said. “Childhood Diseases.”
“You sound doubtful.”
She tore her gaze away from the book to look at Jack in surprise. “Not at all. This is a standard text, though the edition is quite out of date. She’s reading about damage to the inner ear and causes of deafness. Many children are written off as idiots because nobody thinks to check their hearing.”
“I’m familiar with that,” Jack told her. “My sister Bambina—the youngest—didn’t speak until she was three. Everybody thought she might be deaf, but then one day when we were eating she turned to me and said that if my fork touched her plate even one more time, she would stab me in the hand. And she said it so clearly and with such passion, there was no doubt she meant it. We all sat there with our mouths hanging open.”
Anna liked this story, he could tell by her smile.
“I think Bambina and I would get along,” she said. “But her name doesn’t suit her, does it. Baby?”
“Baby Girl,” Jack corrected. “It’s not all that unusual a name in Italy.”
She was trying not to pull a face. “But it doesn’t suit an assertive woman who stands up for herself.”
“You’d rename everyone if you had the power,” Jack said.
“No I wouldn’t. Your name suits you.”
“And your name?”
She gave him a half grin. “It is a solid, no-nonsense, appropriate name for a physician who happens to be a woman.”
Then Mary Augustin was back. Jack noted how animated the little sister was, as if this were a long wished-for homecoming. Which, he supposed, it must be, for her.
“Sister Mary Irene can see us in an hour. I’m supposed to give you a tour in the meantime. If you’d like?”
To turn down this offer would have wiped the smile from Mary Augustin’s face, and so Jack followed the two women out into the hall.
• • •
AT THE DOOR of the new children’s hospital Anna paused to gather her thoughts. Small infirmaries like this one were sometimes well run, but most she had come across failed the most basic test: strict adherence to antisepsis procedures as developed by Pasteur and Lister. The sisters were excellent housekeepers, but the first outbreak of measles or diphtheria would make the difference between a thorough dusting and maintaining a sterile environment painfully obvious.
At the opening of the door they were met with the familiar smells of carbolic acid, rubbing alcohol, vinegar, and potash soap. It made Jack wince, but to Anna it was familiar and comforting both.
The hall was wide and high-ceilinged, and the large windows were fitted with screens. All in all, a pleasant, bright, airy setting superior to most hospitals, including the New Amsterdam.
Sister Mary Augustin said, “There’s a separate department for the contagious and two small surgical suites. I need to find the charge nurse.”
Then she went off once again, and they were left waiting outside a w
ard. Jack turned to Anna.
“What illnesses would they treat here?”
She listed the most common for him: ear, eye, and sinus infections; birth defects from cleft palates to spina bifida; breathing difficulties; influenza and the contagious diseases from measles to typhoid that killed so many children.
He was looking through glass panes set in the double doors to a small ward where Anna counted seven cots arranged in a semicircle around a nursing station.
She said, “The standards here are very high. It’s a relief.”
“Not always the case?”
She could feel her cheek muscles give an involuntary twitch. “I’ve gotten myself into more than one difficult situation because I pointed out what should have been obvious. A Dr.—well, call him Jones at—a hospital that will remain nameless—shouted names at me when I said that his shirt cuffs would contaminate any bedside he visited.”
“He called you names?”
“He was outraged and especially inventive. He called me a trouble-monger and a devil-dealer.”
Anna wore such insults as a badge of honor. As if she were made stronger by such run-ins and must give herself credit.
“What are these children here for?” he asked her.
“They do some surgery, children born with umbilical hernias and the like. Most are here because they were born too small and frail and have breathing difficulties or seizures, heart irregularities. And infections, of course. Most of them will die of infections because they have no natural immunity.”
She said Most of them will die with perfect calm. Jack supposed that someone who worked with children like this had to build a wall in order to survive at all.
“But every once in a while,” she went on, “one of them will surprise you and fight like the devil.”
“Do you see that more often in boys or girls?”
She looked away as if she had to sort through data before she could answer. “Both, I think. All races, too. There’s no predicting where the spark will show itself. It’s what keeps me going, knowing that sometimes the least likely will pull through.”
“I wonder,” he said, feeling his way carefully, “why you chose to work with sick children when you could have been treating old ladies with gout.”
She laughed outright. “Really?” she said. “You really wonder about that? Because I thought you knew me better. I would die of boredom or frustration or both.”
He said, “I do know you that well. I just wanted to hear you put it into words.”
Sister Mary Augustin came back with a man in a surgeon’s tunic, but even without it Jack would have recognized him by his hands, which were much like Anna’s: scrubbed so often and so hard that they struck other people as overused.
Mary Augustin introduced them to Dr. Reynolds, who had just come out of an emergency surgery.
Jack supposed it was inevitable that they get into a discussion of a six-month-old infant with something called an intussusception. It had to do with the abdomen and intestines. He picked out words like ileo-ileac and tumor and linea semilunaris and then, oddly enough, telescope. Anna had forgotten all about him, but Jack understood what it was to get caught up in the details of an interesting case. More than that, he considered jealousy one of the great flaws of his countrymen. And it didn’t hurt at all that Dr. Reynolds was short and bald with a paunch like a small melon.
They were on to a discussion of another case, all three of them walking into the ward toward one of the nursing sisters who was leaning over a cot. The infant in question might be ill but it was not weak, Jack thought, given the power of its lungs.
He wandered off to explore and found a ward where a small group of children were very mobile. All of them had some kind of dressing—he saw some plaster casts and slings—but otherwise they could be his own nieces and nephews. One of the nursing sisters came to the door, asked some questions, and then invited him to come in.
“The run-arounds always like company, but be aware, they will climb you like a mountain and wiggle their way into every pocket.” Run-arounds was a good name for these small bumbling dynamos. She was right; every child in the room was headed in his direction, all of them as eager and indiscriminately affectionate as puppies.
• • •
SISTER IRENE WAS the kind of woman you would pass on the street and not notice at all, unless you met her gaze, which was keen and directly unsettling. Jack doubted that children ever found the courage to lie to her, not with that gaze focused on them. There was nothing cruel or insensitive in her, Jack thought, but she would not tolerate much nonsense, which was why she reminded him of his mother. And with a place like this to manage, that was understandable.
Nor was she willing to sit quietly to talk. As soon as they arrived at her office she was off again with the three of them in tow, asking and answering questions as she left the building to cut across a soggy lawn and continue on around the north side. There she stopped, where they could talk while she watched the construction workers fitting windows and laying roof tiles to what looked like a new chapel.
This time it was Sister Mary Augustin who told the story of the Russo children, so concisely that Jack suspected she had written it out beforehand and memorized it.
“You’re looking for two boys who went missing a little over a month ago, on the Hoboken ferry docks, do I have that right?” Sister Irene was looking at Anna.
“Yes,” Anna said. “I realize that the chance of finding them is slim, but I made a promise.”
“Promises made to children are rarely taken so seriously.”
“Nevertheless,” Anna said. “I will persist.”
“For how long?” asked the nun.
“Until every reasonable avenue and most less reasonable avenues are exhausted.” Her tone was matter-of-fact, without any defensive edge. Jack had the idea that she respected Sister Mary Irene and that her admiration was founded at least in part in their similarities. They recognized something in each other, much in the same way he had understood Oscar from the day they had been introduced.
“Come along, then,” she said. “And we’ll see.”
• • •
ANNA WAS SO accustomed to disappointment that at first she didn’t really take Sister Mary Irene’s meaning, and had to ask her to repeat herself.
“I believe the younger boy was here.” She stood over a ledger that lay open on a lectern. “He was brought in by a patrol officer on Easter Monday, no identifying papers of any kind. Abandoned, it seemed at the time. I expect somebody picked him up in the confusion on the dock.”
“Is the patrolman’s name in the record?” Jack asked.
“Officer Markham,” she told him, her gaze still running over the written page. “There’s no mention of his precinct here, and I haven’t come across his name before. But I assume you will be able to track him down.”
Sister Mary Augustin spoke up. “You say he was here?”
“Yes.” She spared a smile for the younger sister. “We had him for just two days before he was transferred to Father McKinnawae’s care. I remember the case now. A pretty child, very robust compared to the babies we see every day.”
Anna said, “Who is this Father McKinnawae?”
“His name is on the list Brother Anselm gave us,” Jack reminded her. “He built that newer home for newsboys on Lafayette, we went there in mid-April, I think.”
She did remember. The Mission of the Immaculate Virgin was a new building, larger even than the newsboys’ lodging on Duane. All ten stories were overrun with boys without families or homes. They hadn’t met Father McKinnawae but one of his assistants, who had been polite but less than welcoming. It was then that Jack had told her that they would have to postpone visiting Catholic institutions until they had credentials that would open the right doors, which it seemed they did, now. Just before he was to leave for Chicago.
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“The Mission of the Immaculate Virgin,” Anna said. “Yes, they were helpful. But there was no sign or record of the Russos.”
Mary Irene said, “If Father McKinnawae took responsibility for the boy, it was because he had a family in mind to adopt. That’s something you’ll have to ask him directly. I have to warn you, though, that he’s unlikely to be helpful if that’s the case.”
“Would we find him at the mission on Lafayette today, do you think?” Anna asked.
“Unlikely,” said Sister Mary Irene. “He bought a farm on Staten Island and he’s building dormitories, getting it ready for the orphans. I suggest that you write to him first and explain your situation. Make sure he understands that the children were lost during the confusion on the ferry dock. And I have to remind you, it’s possible that this is not the boy you’re looking for. We took in fifteen abandoned infants that week alone, and we are only one institution.”
She looked at Anna over the rim of her glasses. “I believe that’s as much as I can do for you, Dr. Savard.” To Sister Mary Augustin she said, “I am glad to hear that you are doing so well at St. Patrick’s, but we felt your loss and still do.”
Anna saw Sister Mary Augustin swallow and then nod, unable to respond in words.
• • •
MOST OF THE way back to the city they debated whether to share this new information with Rosa. Jack thought it would be better to wait until they had confirmation; Anna swayed back and forth between agreeing and disagreeing. Many people withheld information from children out of a misguided understanding of what they most needed. She knew this from personal experience.
Mary Augustin said, “Are you going to write to Father McKinnawae, or go to see him?”
“I’ll write first.”
She was confused by this; Anna could see it, and felt compelled to explain.
“I will go straightaway if Father McKinnawae answers my letter with real information about the boys. Otherwise it must wait. I’m on night duty most of this week, and a trip to Staten Island requires at least one full day.” She was oddly relieved to realize that this was all perfectly true: unless Father McKinnawae had more news to share than any of the other dozens of people she had written to or visited, Staten Island could safely wait until Jack was back and could go with her.