A White Wind Blew

Chapter 1

Waverly Hills Tuberculosis Sanatorium

January 1929

Dr. Wolfgang Pike could always tell when the rain was near. He felt the stiffness in the morning first, soon after the roosters had begun to wake the hillside, and by afternoon it had become a constant ache in the bottom of his right calf. His ankle had all but locked up, and no amount of massaging could loosen the muscles and bones of his withered right foot-his heel had been raised in a permanent tiptoe since age eight, when polio rendered the foot nearly useless and transformed it into a weather vane. On the morning of Tad McVain's arrival at Waverly Hills, the ache was nearly crippling.

Not a drop of rain had fallen at Waverly for twenty days. The woods were full of gnarled, naked tree limbs, and the dry air carried with it a crispness that led to watery eyes, bloody noses, and a tickling in the back of the throat. But these blue skies would not endure. Already the cumulus clouds skittered above the bell tower, blotting out the sun, and when the first drop plopped against the rooftop, it set loose like hail all over the grounds, pinging off the gutters and walkways like machine-gun fire. Torrential rain pelted the trees, the rooftop, and the grassy knoll that led down to the woods.

The sanatorium's buildings were under attack, it seemed, the rain coming down in sheets past the screened-porch windows, the entrances turned to mud within minutes. Nearly five hundred patients watched from their beds on the porches, and many cheered the sudden change in weather. Men and women in the cafeteria stopped eating and stared out the first-floor windows. At the children's pavilion, all the kids clamored to play in the storm. The teenagers hiding out in Lover's Lane quickly hurried back to their rooms, laughing and drenched and plotting how to sneak back to their beds. The pumpkin patch flooded. The pigs snorted and rolled in the deepening mud.

Later Wolfgang might have called it a warning. But even aspiring priests are mortal and cannot tell the future. It was already a busy day; he had just witnessed the second death of the morning, and he'd only just begun his rounds. He watched the downpour from inside the nurses' station, a small bricked structure on the rooftop that contained a handful of rooms for housing Waverly's mental patients. To get down to the fourth-floor stairwell he needed to cross the open area of the rooftop, and his skeletal umbrella provided little protection. But he didn't have time to wait, so he stepped out into the hard rain.

Normally the rooftop of the five-story sanatorium would be crowded with heliotherapy patients and children, and one could see the city of Louisville miles away, even the Ohio River and the spires of Churchill Downs on a clear day. Today visibility was a mere fifty yards, at best, and he was alone up there. He hurried away from the mental ward into the deluge, no longer protected by the length of the looming bell tower, his footfalls barely steady on the tiles. Careful to avoid the slick leaves, he braced his left hand on the brick-and-stone wall that bordered the rooftop and squinted into the wind, dragging his right foot. He passed an empty seesaw and the three rocking swings behind it-rooftop playground equipment so that the children could get closer exposure to the sun. It saddened him to see them unused.

A door slammed behind him. Wolfgang looked back toward the nurses' station. The wind had blown the door open, sending it crashing into the brick wall. Nurse Rita appeared in the doorway, holding on to her white cap as she reeled the door back in. Above her the bell tower touched the low-lying clouds and a rumble of thunder enveloped the property. Thunderstorms in January were not the norm in the River City, but neither were twenty deaths in a single day, which had occurred on three different occasions since Christmas, when the temperatures lingered in the single digits and the patients, no matter how thickly they were bundled, could not find warmth on the solarium porches.

One of the mental patients screamed-the sound cut through the noise of the storm-and Wolfgang moved away from the shrill voice. It was not deep enough to be Herman's voice. He could tell it was Maverly Simms, the fifty-year-old woman with schizophrenia and with TB in every part of her body except her tortured brain. She'd most assuredly just noticed that her roommate, Jill, had died. Jill was a mute, prone to violence against others and to herself, but for whatever reason, Maverly's bouts of hysteria and rants of senseless drivel had calmed Jill. So they'd been placed together, and the situation worked well for three weeks. But Jill had passed away during the night.

About thirty minutes earlier, Nurse Rita had called Wolfgang up to the rooftop to help prepare Jill's body. Maverly had been awake but far from lucid when Wolfgang arrived with his black bag. She'd been in her rocking chair, staring out at the rain and approaching storm clouds, whispering softly, "Maverly at Waverly. Maverly at Waverly..."

"Maverly." Wolfgang's voice had drawn no reaction from her.

Nurse Rita stood next to Maverly's rocking chair and then turned at the sound of Wolfgang's voice. "It's like she's catatonic, Doctor." Rita had a pretty face and innocent dark eyes. She was young and, in Wolfgang's opinion, not seasoned enough for her current duty. Wolfgang had questioned Dr. Barker's decision to put her on the rooftop. Unfortunately for Rita, Dr. Barker liked to throw his staff right into things. "Baptize them by fire," he always said. And indeed, when Wolfgang had arrived this morning, Rita had been crying. Her jaw trembled. Her hands were clinched into tight balls, her fingernails pressing hard into the meat of her palms. Wolfgang approached her but kept his eyes on Maverly.

"Has she said anything yet?"

"No." Rita glanced at Maverly. "She's just been sitting there, staring out her window. Talking to herself."

"Come on, then." Wolfgang shifted Jill's body on the bed and started the cleaning process. "Lincoln's on his way to remove the body."

Wolfgang knew that tuberculosis didn't discriminate. It invaded the bodies of the young and elderly, black and white, men and women, sane and not so sane. From a sneeze, or a cough, by speaking or a kiss, airborne particles containing tubercle bacilli floated unseen in search of another host to infect. They became established in the alveoli of the lungs and spread throughout the body, sometimes quickly. The entire process with Jill had lasted only a few months-just long enough for her to be missed.

After a moment of silence, Rita wet a rag and dabbed Jill's lips before cleaning her fingernails and combing her silver hair. Wolfgang propped her head up on pillows, closed her eyes, and put in her false teeth. It was important to get the newly deceased in the best possible condition before another patient noticed her.

"I want my cakes," a man screamed from Room 502 next door. The voice was loud and booming, as if in competition with the thunder and rain.

Wolfgang sighed, scratched his head. "Herman?"

Rita nodded, fingertips to her forehead. It was not the first time Herman had ranted about wanting cake, just the first time of the morning.

"Ignore him." Wolfgang placed a hand on Rita's shoulder on his way out. "He'll stop eventually."

Rita took a deep breath. "I'll be okay."

Wolfgang trusted that she would be.

***

Wolfgang reached the stairwell and lowered his tangled umbrella. He smoothed his hands over his dark wavy hair and black beard-a beard he'd trimmed regularly ever since he'd started it as a teen, never allowing it to become too thick in the fifteen years he'd had it, yet full enough to keep his face warm during the cold Waverly winters. According to some of the...