"Good morning. For those of you who don't already know me, I'm Dr. Huntley. I know that if and when any of you ever feel ill, you tell your counselor and your counselor arranges for you to see Miss Rudko or Miss Southworth, the camp nurses, and if necessary, you see me. Well, I want to encourage you to continue with this same procedure during the days and weeks ahead. Any sign of illness, promptly notify your counselor, as you always would. If you have a sore throat, if you have a stiff neck, if you have an upset stomach, notify your counselor. If you have a headache, if you think you have a fever, notify your counselor. If you don't feel well generally, notify your counselor. Your counselor will get you to the nurse, who will look after you and who will be in touch with me. Because I want you all to be well so as to enjoy the remaining weeks of the summer."
Having spoken no more than those few calming words, Dr. Huntley sat down and Mr. Blomback stood again. "I want all you campers to know that before the morning is over I am going to phone each of your families to tell them about this development. In the meantime, I'd like to see the head counselors in my office right after breakfast. Everyone else," he said, "that's it for now. Today's program is unchanged. Regular activities. Go out into the sunshine and have a good time — it's another beautiful day."
Marcia rushed off to Mr. Blomback's office with the three other head counselors, and Bucky, instead of going down to the waterfront, which he'd had every intention of doing upon leaving the dining lodge, found himself running to catch up to Dr. Huntley before he stepped into his car, parked by the flagpole, and drove back to town.
Behind him he heard his named called. "Bucky! Wait a minute! Wait for us!" It was the Steinberg twins, racing to catch him. "Wait up!"
"Girls, I have to see Dr. Huntley."
"Bucky," said one of the twins, grabbing his hand, "what are we supposed to do?"
"You heard Mr. Blomback. Just go on with your activities."
"But polio — !" When they tried to reach out to hold him around the waist and nuzzle for reassurance against his broad chest, he instantly backed away for fear of breathing into the two identical panic-stricken faces.
"Don't you worry about polio," he said. "There's nothing to worry about. Sheila, Phyllis, I have to run — it's very important," and he left them there unconsoled, cringing up against each other.
"But we need you!" one of them called after him. "Marcia's with Mr. Blomback!"
"This afternoon!" he called back. "I promise! I'll see you soon!"
Dr. Huntley had opened the door to his car and was just getting in when Bucky reached him. "Dr. Huntley, I have to talk to you. I'm the waterfront director in the boys' camp. Bucky Cantor."
"Yes, Bill Blomback mentioned you."
"Dr. Huntley, I have to tell you something. I came up from Newark a week ago Friday. I'd been working there in a playground in the Weequahic neighborhood, where there's an epidemic of polio. Donald Kaplow and I were working out at the waterfront together after dinner for two nights. We've had lunch side by side every day. We pass each other in the cabin. I sat next to him at Indian Night. Now he's come down with polio. Doctor, am I the one who gave it to him? Am I going to give it to others? Is that possible?"
By now Dr. Huntley had stepped out of the car, the better to catch the overwrought words being spoken to him by this perfectly vigorous-looking young man. "How do you feel?" he asked Bucky.
"I feel fine."
"Well, the chances are slight that you are a healthy infected carrier. Though it could happen, it would be a very uncommon abnormality. Most usually, the carrier stage coincides with the clinical stage. But to ease your mind," the doctor said, "to be a hundred percent sure, we should take you in for a spinal tap and draw off some spinal fluid for analysis. Certain changes to spinal fluid are indicative of polio. We should do that right away, this morning, to put your mind at rest. You can drive with me to the hospital, and then we'll call Carl to drive you back here."
Bucky raced down to the waterfront to tell the staff he'd be gone for the morning and to put one of the senior counselors in charge till he returned, and then he met Dr. Huntley, who was waiting for him in his car for the ride into Stroudsburg. If only the test revealed that he was not the person responsible! If only he were about to be proved blameless! Then, when the examination at the hospital was over and everything certified to be okay, he could stop off at the Stroudsburg jewelry store on the way back to camp to buy the engagement ring for Marcia. He hoped to be able to afford something set with a genuine jewel.
Later that day, the cars began to arrive to take campers home. They continued arriving into the late evening and on into the next day, so that within forty-eight hours after Mr. Blomback had announced to the camp at breakfast that one of the counselors had come down with polio, more than a hundred of the two hundred and fifty campers had been removed by their parents. The next day, two more boys in Bucky's cabin — one of them Jerome Hochberger, the big boy in the fur coat who had played the bear on Indian Night — were diagnosed with polio and the entire camp was immediately shut down. Another nine of the Indian Hill campers fell ill and had to be hospitalized with polio when they got home, among them Marcia's sister Sheila.
3. REUNION
WE NEVER SAW Mr. Cantor in the neighborhood again. The result of the spinal tap administered at Stroudsburg Hospital came back positive, and though he displayed no symptoms for almost forty-eight hours more, he was rushed onto the contagion ward, where he could have no visitors. And finally the cataclysm began — the monstrous headache, the enfeebling exhaustion, the severe nausea, the raging fever, the unbearable muscle ache, followed in another forty-eight hours by the paralysis. He was there for three weeks before he no longer needed catheterization and enemas, and they moved him upstairs and began treatment with steamed woolen hot packs wrapped around his arms and legs, all of which were initially stricken. He underwent four torturous sessions of the hot packs a day, together lasting as long as four to six hours. Fortunately his respiratory muscles hadn't been affected, so he never had to be moved inside an iron lung to assist with his breathing, a prospect that he dreaded more than any other. And his learning that Donald Kaplow was still in the same hospital, barely being kept alive in an iron lung, filled him with terror and tears. Donald the diver, Donald the discus thrower, Donald the naval-air-pilot-to-be, no longer powered by his lungs and his limbs!
Eventually Mr. Cantor was moved by ambulance to a Sister Kenny Institute in Philadelphia, where, by this point in the summer, the epidemic was nearly as bad as it was in Newark and the hospital's wards were so crowded that he was fortunate to get a bed. There the hot pack treatment continued, along with painful stretching of the contracted muscles of his arms and legs and of his back — which the paralysis had twisted — in order to "reeducate" them. He spent the next fourteen months in rehabilitation at the Kenny Institute, gradually recovering the full use of his right arm and partial use of his legs, though he was left with a twisted lower spine that had to be corrected several years later by a surgical fusion and a bone graft and the insertion of metal rods attached to the spine. The recuperation from the surgery put him on his back in a body cast for six months, tended day and night by his grandmother. He was at the Kenny Institute when President Roosevelt unexpectedly died, in April 1945, and the country went into mourning. He was there when defeated Germany surrendered in May, when the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August, and when Japan asked to surrender to the Allies a few days later. World War II was over, his buddy Dave would be coming home unscathed from fighting in Europe, America was jubilant, and he was still in the hospital, disfigured and maimed.