A Death-Struck Year by Makiia Lucier Read Free Book Online

up. Switching on the lamp, I checked to make sure Jack’s old baseball bat still leaned against my night table within arm’s reach. My bedroom was decorated in soft greens and yellows, with a small fireplace and a window seat piled high with pillows. I looked around to make sure nothing—or no one—lurked where they shouldn’t.
    My satchel sat by the door. After climbing out of bed, I padded barefoot across the wooden floor and fished the newspaper I had yet to read from the bag. The room was chilly, my fire having died out hours ago. I rushed back across the room and flung myself beneath the covers.
    A package of shortbread cookies lay open on the night table, and I helped myself to one. I’d found Mrs. Foster’s list of grocers in a kitchen drawer by the telephone. But the provisions I’d ordered, including ice for the icebox, would not be delivered until morning. There were plenty of packaged foods and canned goods in the pantry, though. My dinner had consisted of shortbread cookies, canned peaches, and a glass of water. Grace was right. This was as close to camping as I was likely to get.
    I unfolded the
Oregonian,
smoothing it onto my yellow quilt. Influenza and war dominated the front page. MAYOR ORDERED TO CLOSE UP CITY. TICONDEROGA SUNK, SCORES KILLED. WOUNDED MARINE ROBBED. I read one unsettling story after another before a tiny article near the bottom captured my attention.
     
NURSES ASKED TO RESPOND :
RED CROSS APPEALS TO WOMEN TO ENLIST .
The American Red Cross has issued an urgent plea that all graduate nurses, practical nurses, women with nursing experience, and Red Cross nurses’ aides enroll for immediate service in combating the Spanish influenza. Also needed are members of the community willing to canvass neighborhoods, distributing prevention literature and helping to locate and transport unattended cases to area hospitals. Those with automobiles are particularly encouraged to make themselves known. The Red Cross is mobilizing every possible resource from the Atlantic to the Pacific. To this end, it asks that all available nursing material in and around Portland enroll at the Public Auditorium.
     
    Unattended cases.
    I stared at the words until they started to blur. What did they mean? Were people lying in their homes with no one to care for them? Too ill to telephone for help? Children too?
    I leaned against my headboard, watching as lightning flashed across the sky, listening to the deep roll of thunder. Common sense told me not to even consider it. I was in enough trouble as it was. Others would help, surely. Wouldn’t they?
    I read the article a second time, feeling as if it had been written for my eyes only. I didn’t have any nursing experience. Absolutely none. But I had two automobiles. Jack’s Packard was parked in our old carriage house, alongside the Ford that Mrs. Foster used for the market and other errands. Last summer Jack had taught me how to master the Ford’s testy hand crank and how to keep from rolling backwards down Marquam Hill. It had taken some doing, and it was the only time I’d ever heard my brother scream, but I could drive either car now, easily.
    I shoved the newspaper beneath my bed, then turned off the lamp and pulled the covers to my chin. I stayed awake for hours. In the darkness, I no longer thought of Dr. Frankenstein’s monster or of burglars creeping up the stairs.
    I thought of my parents.
    Of my mother and father, and that last terrifying night in the carriage. Twelve years had passed, but I still knew exactly what it was to be an unattended case.

Chapter Seven
    Saturday, October 12, 1918
     
    “First name?”
    “Cleo. C-L-E-O.”
    “Last?”
    “Berry.”
    “Age?”
    “Seventeen.”
    The nurse paused. “Seventeen?” she asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Hmm.” She tapped her pencil against the tabletop.
    I forced myself not to fidget. It was midmorning. The rain had finally stopped, though the clouds overhead were dark and gloomy.
    I stood just outside