Page 22 of The Cabinet of Dr. Leng

Constance turned to Joe. “This is Paddy Murphy,” she told her brother. “He’s helping me get you off the island.” She paused, uncharacteristically struggling for words. “I know how strange all this must seem. But please—trust me. Once you’re safely away from this awful place, I’ll explain everything.”

Joe had instinctively shrunk back at the appearance of the burly coachman, but now he allowed Constance to again take his hand as they pushed their way through the thicket of laurels to the other side, then ran toward the lonely shore where they’d hidden the boat.

Keeping to the darkest patches, they hurried along. Joe remained silent. Constance could now see guards running toward the workhouse from both the penitentiary and the Octagon. As the guards and keepers began grabbing and tackling stray prisoners, sounds of scuffling, shouts, and curses reached her ears. The Octagon siren kept up its wail, and kerosene torches began to grow more numerous, fireflies in a velvet night.

They descended a small bluff to the spot where the boat was hidden. Now, the sound of baying dogs added a new note to the confusion of noise.

“Hurry,” Constance said to Joe. “The boat’s right here.” She released his hand, expecting him to jump in—but instead, he whirled around and began running northward along the shore, into the darkness. With a curse, Murphy dropped the oars back into the rowboat and took up the chase. Constance, much fleeter, ran after the boy as well, and with her superior speed made a looping circuit to cut him off between the shore and the bluffs. She quickly gained distance on the undernourished and underexercised youth, overtook him, and turned back to face him.

Joe, a look of surprise on his face, halted and tried to veer inland, but Murphy anticipated the move and blocked his way. Joe stopped and looked around with desperation. A rotting dock jutted into the river, sagging over the black water. He sprinted onto it, leaping over broken pilings and yawning holes, until he reached its end. There he stopped.

Constance was terrified he might jump. But he didn’t. She indicated to Murphy he was to stay back.

“Joe,” she called to him down the ruined dock. “Come back. Let us take you away from here. I’m…your aunt. I’m here to help Mary and Constance, as well. I’ve gone to a lot of trouble to free you, out of respect for your dead parents. If you stay here, this place will kill you. Please, Joe, trust me long enough to get you to safety. If you still want to leave then, I won’t stop you.”

If this made any impression on the youth, it didn’t show—just as he’d shown no obvious recognition of any family resemblance in her face. He glanced over her shoulder in the direction of the institutional buildings, gas lights coming on. Then he turned toward the water, edging up to the very last plank of the dock.

“Joe,don’t!” Constance shouted. “The current is strong. If you jump, you’ll force me to come after you. I know you can’t swim.”

Now the boy turned back. Constance took a step away from the base of the dock, and another. Slowly at first, Joe walked down the ruined dock. Once again, Constance held out her hand. Another hesitation. Then—as a desperate person might commit himself, for better or worse, to the only option still left—he grabbed her hand and held firm.

A few minutes later, they were back at the boat, the sounds of baying dogs growing closer. Shortly thereafter, they were a mere dot on the East River, heading for Manhattan under cover of darkness.

15

December 2, 1880

Sunday

THE EMINENT SURGEON WALKEDdown the stone hallways of Bellevue Hospital, the familiar smell of bleach, ammonia, and fecal discharge enveloping him. He moved at a stately pace, being passed by many people in a greater hurry—nurses, orderlies, residents from the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, maintenance workers. The surgeon, who held a distinguished consulting position, displayed no such urgency, satisfied to drink in at leisure the atmosphere of suffering and sickness that surrounded him.

Other hospitals and famous clinics had vied for his attentions, but the eminent surgeon had chosen Bellevue. The fact that it was the oldest public hospital in the United States, or that it led the way in such progressive developments as sanitary codes and vaccination regimens, mattered little to him. What had been most important was its size—providing him with an almost limitless variety of the human specimen in all its variations of illness. He moved down the corridor with purpose, not unlike a cook strolling through a greengrocery, mind open to the many possibilities at hand.

The surgeon had spent years learning his profession at schools of medicine in both Heidelberg and Oxford. He had initially specialized in general surgery before being drawn to problems of the mind. These, he felt, were riddles worthy of his curiosity—for it was the mystery of insanity that most captivated him. At Heidelberg he had focused on the diagnosis and treatment of mental alienation, recently reclassified as “psychiatry.” His special interest was surgery of the brain, to ameliorate symptoms of madness, sexual deviance, and psychosis. During his extended period of education and clinical practice, he had developed certain private ideas about the human nervous system and how it related to mental health and, especially, the aging process.

And so it was toward Bellevue’s asylum that he was headed. From the first floor, he descended a series of steps to an iron door, which opened to him, and then a second door, deeper down. Here, in the subterranean levels of Bellevue, the odors and noise were far more intrusive. He passed an orderly’s office and guard post and entered the most fortified wing of the hospital, home to the violent and dangerous.

As he started down another corridor, lined with barred doors not unlike a prison, a medical student addressed him. “Good morning, Doctor,” he said. “Here to make your Sunday rounds?”

“Just looking in on the results of last week’s procedures, Norcross. Would you care to join me?”

The medical student, flushing with pleasure at being singled out, led the way down the hall, stopping at several locked doors. Without going in, the surgeon listened while Norcross updated him on the patients strapped or manacled within—how they were recovering from surgery, the state of their vital signs, and whether or not there had been any improvement in their condition. Two cases in particular showed improvement. The surgeon recommended continuing the hydrotherapy with ice water for one and a mixture of ergot and ferrous iodidebis in diefor the other. A third inmate was deemed unchanged, while a fourth was clearly expiring. The surgeon gave the student orders to have the body removed immediately upon death and taken to the college; corpses for the anatomy classes were always in short supply.

“Now then, Norcross,” the surgeon said. “Any new arrivals you think might be of interest?”

“Only one, Doctor,” came the reply. “The night before last. If you don’t mind my taking the liberty, I fear this one might be beyond even your curative powers.” He paused a moment. “You can hear for yourself, Doctor.”

The doctor paused, listening to the larynx-shredding yells and shrieks that were sounding from the end of the passageway, muffled by thick walls.

“Put that way, Norcross, you present me with a challenge,” the surgeon said. “We must always hold out hope formens sana in corpore sano. Please, lead on.”

They went down the hall, past whimpering skeletal figures crouching semicatatonic against the walls, or struggling wildly against straitjackets. And always the yelling increased in volume until they came to the final cell. A man dressed in tatters raged against the cuffs and chains that held him fast between two walls. The two medical men stood well back from the iron bars so that the spit, sweat, and bloody phlegm flung out from the cage did not reach them.

“Engage him in conversation,” the surgeon told the student dryly.

“I’m sorry?”

“Humor me.”

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