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said—”
    “Dr. Baker isn’t in charge here. She shouldn’t have made promises.”
    Mary felt his words like a fist to her gut. She leaned out the window as far as she could. “Hello!” she cried at the street below. She waved her arms so someone might see her. She shouted again but her voice was choked, and Dr. Soper had his arm around her waist. “Help me,” she said to the other women as Soper and the guard dragged her across the room, into the hall, and then pushed her ahead of them to a private room farther down the corridor, where Dr. Soper continued to brace her from behind, and a nurse struggled to open a small vial and pass it under Mary’s nose.
    “I don’t know why you always insist on making a scene, Miss Mallon,” Soper muttered in her ear as they struggled. She could feel his breath on her neck, the sharp point of his chin where it pushed into her scalp.
    “Relax,” the nurse whispered. “Just relax.”

TWO
     
    Just as Dr. Baker had warned, after two weeks of testing at the Willard Parker Hospital, Dr. Soper told Mary that since she would not agree to have her gallbladder removed, the Department of Health had no choice but to transfer her to North Brother Island. There were facilities on the island where researchers could continue testing, “in a calmer, more focused atmosphere.” She could notify her friends and family when she arrived on the island, but not before. Soper watched her every chance he got, and when he turned away Mary felt space to breathe for a moment, until he turned back. She would not beg—they had enough power over her already. Soper had forbidden anyone at Willard Parker to give her a means to contact her friends—no more promises to post messages—and Mary clung to her composure by reminding herself that Alfred must have seen the newspaper articles. A night nurse had shown Mary the article that was in the Sun , and said there were others; her capture was mentioned in almost every major paper. The papers didn’t have her real name—they referred to her only as the Germ Woman—but Alfred would figure it out. It was possible, she thought, that he’d already tried to come to her. That he’d shown up at the hospital demanding to see her, but had been turned away.
    “Isn’t that a Consumption island?” Mary asked.
    “Riverside is a Tuberculosis hospital, yes. But they’ve seen Typhoid, too. Diptheria. Measles. Everything.”
    Mary shivered. “How long?” she asked.
    “A few weeks,” Dr. Soper said. Mary told herself that she could put up with anything for a few weeks. She’d let them test her and when they got whatever it was they needed from her, the ordeal would be over, and she’d never have to see Soper again.
      •  •  •  
     
    From the first hour of her arrival, North Brother Island seemed to Mary too flimsy for the roiling East River. It was as if a jagged corner of Manhattan had broken off and floated away before getting caught in the prehistoric rock that lurked just below the surface of the water. North Brother was a little skip of land, an oversized raft made of dirt and grass where the dying went to wait their turn. It was located just above Hell Gate, that point in the East River where half a dozen minor streams met head-on before rushing out to sea, and only a fool would dip her toe in the water there. The entirety of North Brother would barely be big enough for a respectable estate if it were anywhere but New York, but in New York, or at least in Manhattan, where even the very rich live within arm’s length of their neighbors, it was a rarity: a stretch of space that was quiet, and private, and where everyone there was meant to be there, adult men and women whose names appeared on the roster of approved persons the ferryman kept under the bench seat of his small vessel, protected from the spray.
    There were no automobiles on North Brother, only a single horse, and that one old and mangy, retired from pulling a sanitation cart and