Judges

Chapter Twenty Five

Fall 1906

"Mother, I don't want to go to the hospital."

"Jerome, your uncle, is in there. He is being quarantined. I need to visit him, he is my brother."

I sigh as we walk to the large, dark old building.

"Mother, if he is contagious, shouldn't we stay away?"

"I just want to visit, child, that's all."

We walk into the hospital, and a nurse guides us to the quarantine wing, a long hallway with a glass window separating us from a large room full of beds facing the window, pushed close together. The room seems dark and depressing, even though it has plenty of windows.

Maybe it is just the aura of death.

"Your man, Jerome, is here. Please do not wake the men, they must get their rest." The nurse leaves us in the depressing quarantine section.

"I'm going to read. Don't go in the room."

She sits on a bench opposite the window, occasionally glancing up from her novel to look longingly at her brother who lay unconscious on the bed facing the window.

I sit on the bench for what seems like forever, before quietly getting up and walking to the door to go in.

Everything is a blur, I don't know what I'm thinking or what impulse causes my hand to turn the knob of the door, and I slip inside.

I walk down the rows of silent men, one of whom looks dead.

I stop in front of Jerome's bed and stare at him. He looks serene.

"Augusta! What are you doing?"

My mother screams and bangs on the glass, and she looks over to the open door and runs to it, and throws herself into the room, coming at me fast to rip me away from the infected men.

"They are contagious!"

The noise wakes over half the men, and some begin to cough and spit up blood. Jerome's eyes blink open in shock, and he sucks in his breath as he watches the scene unfold.

My mother runs to me, and I stumble backward, almost falling onto the bed.

My mother reaches me and pulls me away, just as Jerome coughs and spits up blood, directly at my mother, who flinches as she moves and both of us back up against the wall as blood pools on Jerome's blanket.

My mother drags me out of the hallway without a goodbye to Jerome, and as we leave we hear nurses screeching about a disturbance in the quarantines. My mother's hair was ruffled, and we made our way home in silence.

We both know Jerome most likely had spread the disease to her, but neither one of us say anything, for hope that he hadn't. When we arrived home, we never spoke a word of the event to my sister or father.

She died, a month later, because of it.

I would feel guilty for the rest of my life.