hand.”
“Thumb tucked next to your hand,” I said again, demonstrating the position with my fist.
“Left hand. Thumb tucked. Pull up.”
I gave the handle a swift crank, and the motor sparked to life, popping and humming with the contented symphony of a working Ford Model T.
“Let’s go.” I patted the hood and scampered toward the driver’s seat. “The APL is on the hunt again, and I don’t want anyone stopping us from heading down to Southside.”
A D D I E A N D N E L A never tired that night, never stopped wanting to fetch one more patient. We carried the sick out of their houses on the sturdy canvas stretcher and delivered them to the comfort of Nela’s home, where the fireplace burned and patients seemed to heal. Liliana had regained her strength enough to help tend to those whom we parked in the rooms upstairs. Mrs. O’Conner from next door brewed steaming cups of tea and bubbling pots of soup in the kitchen. Benjie played records on a Victrola in the front room. I didn’t recognize the music that he chose, and instinctively I wondered if Daniel knew the names of the songs and the musicians. I almost even said aloud, I bet you anything Daniel Schendel knows that tune and could cite the title and artist in less than two seconds .
Eventually, morning broke out in patches of pale pink light. We passed a row of tired-looking houses with roofs that sagged as much as my shoulders, and the entire world struck me as a sickly thing in need of a strong shot of whiskey. Everything ailed. Even the cornfields in the distance looked unseasonably withered and brown for the first weeks of October.
“My eyes are getting bleary,” I told Nela and Addie when the road ahead of me rippled into a snaking black ribbon. “I desperately need to stop and go home.”
“Just one more patient.” Nela squeezed her warm hand over my right knuckles on the steering wheel. “Please, Ivy. We’ve got to save at least one more before our shift ends. Please.”
I sighed. “One more. But that’s all I have left in me before risking a crash.”
I drove the ambulance to a flu-marked house, one-story tall and paneled in wide red planks. A pair of floppy-eared dogs whined at us from the front windows. Nela and Addie fetched the stretcher while I knocked on the door below the scarlet letters of the influenza sign.
Behind me in the street, the Halloran’s Dry Goods delivery wagon rattled by. I smelled the eye-watering stench of death and decay and guessed, with a heavy weight in my stomach, that the vehicle now delivered the deceased instead of merchandise. I returned my eyes to the little red door in front of me, not wanting to see any bodies where bolts of cloth and cooking utensils ought to have been.
No one answered my knocks, but the dogs barked from within. Their nails scratched against the floor on the other side of the wood, and from somewhere deep in the middle of the house, a child cried.
“Open the door,” said Nela from the far end of the stretcher on the front path of broken bricks.
I did as she asked.
A dark hallway, lit by a flickering kerosene wall lamp, greeted us. One of the hounds, a skinny pup with a swollen belly and protruding ribs, turned and pattered toward the back of the house on tiny paws. We followed her down to a small bedroom in which a young black woman in a nightgown lay in bed with her right arm draped over her forehead. A baby with a thick head of hair slept in a crib below the window, and the ripe stench of soiled diapers hit my nose. The other child, the one I had heard bawling from outside, continued to wail in another room.
The woman turned toward us with dark eyes that bulged from a gaunt face. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s all right, Mrs. Landers,” said Addie. With Nela’s help, she lowered the stretcher down beside the bed. “I’m working with the Red Cross now. I took over my sister Florence’s duties. We’re here to transport you to a medical facility where you
“Thumb tucked next to your hand,” I said again, demonstrating the position with my fist.
“Left hand. Thumb tucked. Pull up.”
I gave the handle a swift crank, and the motor sparked to life, popping and humming with the contented symphony of a working Ford Model T.
“Let’s go.” I patted the hood and scampered toward the driver’s seat. “The APL is on the hunt again, and I don’t want anyone stopping us from heading down to Southside.”
A D D I E A N D N E L A never tired that night, never stopped wanting to fetch one more patient. We carried the sick out of their houses on the sturdy canvas stretcher and delivered them to the comfort of Nela’s home, where the fireplace burned and patients seemed to heal. Liliana had regained her strength enough to help tend to those whom we parked in the rooms upstairs. Mrs. O’Conner from next door brewed steaming cups of tea and bubbling pots of soup in the kitchen. Benjie played records on a Victrola in the front room. I didn’t recognize the music that he chose, and instinctively I wondered if Daniel knew the names of the songs and the musicians. I almost even said aloud, I bet you anything Daniel Schendel knows that tune and could cite the title and artist in less than two seconds .
Eventually, morning broke out in patches of pale pink light. We passed a row of tired-looking houses with roofs that sagged as much as my shoulders, and the entire world struck me as a sickly thing in need of a strong shot of whiskey. Everything ailed. Even the cornfields in the distance looked unseasonably withered and brown for the first weeks of October.
“My eyes are getting bleary,” I told Nela and Addie when the road ahead of me rippled into a snaking black ribbon. “I desperately need to stop and go home.”
“Just one more patient.” Nela squeezed her warm hand over my right knuckles on the steering wheel. “Please, Ivy. We’ve got to save at least one more before our shift ends. Please.”
I sighed. “One more. But that’s all I have left in me before risking a crash.”
I drove the ambulance to a flu-marked house, one-story tall and paneled in wide red planks. A pair of floppy-eared dogs whined at us from the front windows. Nela and Addie fetched the stretcher while I knocked on the door below the scarlet letters of the influenza sign.
Behind me in the street, the Halloran’s Dry Goods delivery wagon rattled by. I smelled the eye-watering stench of death and decay and guessed, with a heavy weight in my stomach, that the vehicle now delivered the deceased instead of merchandise. I returned my eyes to the little red door in front of me, not wanting to see any bodies where bolts of cloth and cooking utensils ought to have been.
No one answered my knocks, but the dogs barked from within. Their nails scratched against the floor on the other side of the wood, and from somewhere deep in the middle of the house, a child cried.
“Open the door,” said Nela from the far end of the stretcher on the front path of broken bricks.
I did as she asked.
A dark hallway, lit by a flickering kerosene wall lamp, greeted us. One of the hounds, a skinny pup with a swollen belly and protruding ribs, turned and pattered toward the back of the house on tiny paws. We followed her down to a small bedroom in which a young black woman in a nightgown lay in bed with her right arm draped over her forehead. A baby with a thick head of hair slept in a crib below the window, and the ripe stench of soiled diapers hit my nose. The other child, the one I had heard bawling from outside, continued to wail in another room.
The woman turned toward us with dark eyes that bulged from a gaunt face. “What are you doing here?”
“It’s all right, Mrs. Landers,” said Addie. With Nela’s help, she lowered the stretcher down beside the bed. “I’m working with the Red Cross now. I took over my sister Florence’s duties. We’re here to transport you to a medical facility where you
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