She wasn’t in the hall for a minute when Dr. Albertson emerged from the conference room and asked if he could help her. He strolled into the office suite where Soper was waiting and she followed, not glancing toward the seating area.
“George!” he said, shaking Dr. Soper’s hand. “I’ll be right with you. Miss Mallon wants to see me.”
Dr. Albertson told her to have a seat in his office, and Mary passed to him the lab results from Ferguson.
“May I close the door?” she asked.
“Well, yes,” Dr. Albertson said, surprised.
He listened to her from beginning to end. She knew, she told him. She was no fool. She knew they were keeping her prisoner to study her for reasons they kept only to themselves, and couldn’t possibly admit to the public. Dr. Albertson just listened until she was finished.
“Mary,” he said kindly. “There is a good reason the Ferguson results came back negative. I’m going to call in Dr. Soper and he’ll help explain.”
“No!” Mary said. “He started all this. It’s made him famous, hasn’t it? What he said about me?” But it was too late. Dr. Albertson was already waving him inside.
“What’s this?” Dr. Soper asked as he entered the office and took the envelope Dr. Albertson passed to him.
“Ah,” he said simply when he was finished. “I see.”
“The samples must be tested immediately, Mary,” Dr. Albertson explained. “Or else the bacteria die. You’ve just told me that you often can’t get the sample out in the mail for a day, and then it might take three days to get to Ferguson. It’s no good. It’s not possible to test that way. And what’s more, they would know that if they really are scientists, as they claim. Have you already paid them? The results are meaningless.”
“You’re just saying that because you want to keep me here. What are your results, then? Why has no one told me the results from the lab here?”
“I can tell you, Mary, that so far, your blood and urine come back negative, but your stool comes back with a positive result roughly sixty-five percent of the time.”
“That’s not true.”
“Mary.” Dr. Albertson held up one of his hands, and Mary remembered that he’d always been kind to her. “I’m on your side, believe it or not. Don’t misunderstand — you do manufacture and carry Typhoid bacilli in your body, but I don’t think you should be held for that reason. You are not wrong when you talk about how valuable you are to our work. However, at this point we know that there are many healthy carriers out there, and it’s unfair that you should be here while the rest of them are conducting their lives.”
Dr. Soper bristled. “Or they should all be held. Or they should be taken case by case. In any event, Dr. Albertson explained it clearly, I think. These results are worthless.”
Mary looked at him and was so furious that she spat when she spoke. “You’re a liar,” she said to Dr. Soper.
Dr. Soper continued as if she hadn’t responded. “What I find interesting is that you dismiss our test results completely, give them no credence whatsoever, and yet you wholly believe these private results. So which is it, Miss Mallon? Do you believe in the science or don’t you?”
“You are a vile person.” Mary’s whole body shook as she said it.
“Mary,” Dr. Albertson offered, taking the envelope from Dr. Soper and returning it to Mary’s hands. “Why don’t you take these and think about it for a day and then come back when you have more questions? We can talk about all of this at length.” He gave her a look that said he was sorry to have called in Dr. Soper. He hadn’t understood. “I know it’s disappointing.”
“I want to see all the doctors. I want to see them right now.”
“I’m sorry. We have several new Diphtheria patients as of this morning. And Dr. Soper has come to give a lecture. Come back tomorrow morning. I’ll organize a group of doctors and we’ll all talk about this.”
“Oh, I’ll be back tomorrow. You can count on it.”
But she didn’t go back the next day, because she imagined them in wait for her, ready to punish her for taking investigative steps on her own. She was not a carrier. She had not made anyone sick. And yet, from time to time she felt a fissure in her certainty, like a reminder string wrapped around her pinkie that she’d forgotten about entirely until, at the end of a long day, she glanced down and noticed it there where she’d left it.
• • •
Though she had not yet replied to Alfred’s last letter, she decided it was time to break the silence.
Dear Alfred,
Thank you for the seeds. I have been thinking about how to respond, but right now I need your help with something important. I need you to go to the Ferguson Lab on W. 72nd Street and ask someone there to send more details on the testing they did for me. I’m going to write to them as well, but I think they need to see a person standing in front of them. Tell them that the doctors at Riverside won’t accept the results. Please, Alfred. Try to remember everything they say. Then write to me right away.
Mary
She didn’t know if the letter had reached him, if he’d been sober enough to read it, if he cared about her at all anymore, until two weeks later when the small rectangle came through the mail with Alfred’s writing on the front, saying that he’d been to the lab, not only once but twice, but no one there would talk to him about her. “What’s happening?” he wrote.
Alfred,
Thank you for trying. I had an idea that these private results would force the doctors here to set me free, but they’re ignoring them entirely. I don’t want to believe them, but there is one doctor here who seems to be on my side and he’s the one who told me the results are worthless. I feel sick thinking of all the money I gave them to do the testing. I had relaxed for a while but now I’m going to work harder to find a way out of this place. You think I’ll be here forever, but I won’t be, Alfred. I’m going to be home soon.
Mary
For a week or so she went back to old habits, waiting by the pier to watch the mailbag be carried into the hospital. And then, when she realized Alfred had resumed his silence, she armored herself against the hurt by writing more letters to lawyers, doctors, anyone who might help. Time was slipping by quickly, much more quickly than when she first arrived. Another new year arrived. Another winter turned into spring. The mailman rarely made his way down the path to her hut.
Then in June 1909, as Mary was making her way from the water’s edge in bare feet, John Cane came rushing across from the hospital with a letter in his hand. “For you,” he panted. “I told them I’d deliver it.” He watched her study the return address: O’Neill & Associates. “What is it? They said you’d want to see it right away.”
“You are so nosey,” Mary said as she slid her finger under the flap. They were right. It was a letter from a lawyer named Francis O’Neill. He’d been working on a case in Texas for the past two years, but now he was back in New York City and a letter she’d written to a colleague had been passed on to him. He wanted to meet with her. “I’ve read all the press,” he wrote, “and I’d like to hear your side. The case I was involved with in Texas was also a medical-legal issue. If your situation is as I understand it, and you have not yet secured other representation, then I am confident I can win your freedom.” He understood that she was not allowed visitors, but if she told the hospital that he was her lawyer they would have to make an exception.
Still in her bare feet and clutching the letter in her fist, she ran up to the hospital, gave the head secretary the name Francis O’Neill, and wrote back to him within a half hour asking him to come, please come.