The Vines by Shelley Nolden (ebook and pdf reader .TXT) 📕

From Ulrich, she’d learned much about her abilities. And limitations. Because of his first experiment after Otto disappeared in 1936, she knew that her body could wipe out most common infections. Over the two years that had followed, he’d continued to probe her physiology. And then, after the war, Ulrich had further expanded the scope of his work.

He’d employed the methods developed by his colleagues during their transplantation experiments on the “Ravensbrück rabbits”—eighty-six female concentration camp prisoners. Unbeknownst to the world, Cora had become the eighty-seventh lapin. Seeking to pinpoint the source of her immunities, Ulrich inserted tissue from her organs into infected hosts. Since he no longer had access to a pool of expendable human subjects, he used the livestock at Lab 257.

When that effort produced no conclusive results, he reversed the process by implanting bovine and swine tissue into her. After a month-long incubation period, he removed the samples and returned them to their original—subsequently infected—hosts, in the wild hope that the animals would acquire her special traits.

Months later, undaunted by failure, Ulrich moved onto other hypotheses influenced by his Nazi colleagues.

In 1950, the veterans received their diplomas, and the idyllic island community departed with them. Forced to relocate, Ulrich moved his family to Long Island to split his time more easily between Plum Island and North Brother. During those two years, with no one around to hear her cries, he’d ruled over both Riverside and her.

On July 1, 1952, the day the hospital reopened, Ulrich, with his family in tow, became a resident doctor, while maintaining his affiliation with Lab 257. The very next day, he registered Cora as an addicted juvenile whose treatment plan required isolation. And whose “heroin-induced schizophrenia” meant no other doctor would believe her “fantastical claims.”

In addition to testing environmental influences, he embarked on a side project to determine the effects of trauma on her vitality. While installing apparatus that enabled her isolation cell to double as a gas chamber, he explained that he’d observed a correlation between stress and accelerated aging in the Jews. “I began collecting data,” he said as he secured his mask, “so they could serve as my control group for you.”

Gas flowed into the room, and she choked backed her screams to keep from inhaling the poisonous vapors. Each time her body began to convulse, and she was sure that death had finally arrived, he would turn off the spigot.

After seven stints in solitary confinement, Cora still looked eighteen years old, which taught them both something: Her cells were tougher than her psyche.

Now, a whole new form of isolation—and torture—was about to begin. Cora shook her canteen, and the last few drops landed in her mouth.

The American flag, affixed to a pole in the corner, flapped in the wind.

Two years ago, she’d watched Kennedy’s inauguration on the television from the doorway to the crowded commons room in the staff house. She would have voted for him, but the island hadn’t contained a polling station. Not that she could have registered: she’d lost her citizenship with the filing of her death certificate. The convicts on neighboring Rikers Island had more rights than she did.

During the ceremony, Ulrich had sat near the TV with Angela and their young daughter. Every time the camera panned to the crowd blanketing the National Mall, they searched for Rollie, who’d volunteered in Kennedy’s grassroots campaign.

When the president had implored, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country,” Ulrich had winked at Cora and grinned with those straight, pure white teeth. Otto had viewed his ability to resist tobacco, coffee, and liquor as a testament of his faith, whereas Ulrich abstained simply because not doing so would be a sign of weakness.

Although Ulrich had never said it, she knew he wanted to use her to develop a biological weapon for which the United States—or he alone—would possess the antidote. With her in complete seclusion, he could extend her deadly disease count without fear of triggering an outbreak.

The door to the physical plant banged open, and two mechanics exited the building. They didn’t bother to lock up, which would save her the trouble of having to break in.

For weeks, she’d been hoping that the moving crew would leave behind the large backup battery stored there. The unit could power her space heater on the cruelest of days. The Farmers’ Almanac had predicted the winter of 1963–1964 to be brutal.

The taller of the technicians tossed a cigarette to his greaser partner, and they lit up. “About time they pulled the plug on this shithole.”

“Where’d they take all them junkie teens?” The greaser took a drag.

“Some other shithole.” He chuckled. “You got a new gig yet?”

The greaser pulled a pair of shades from the breast pocket of his jumpsuit. “A lead or two, but what I’d really dig is another place like this, with easy chicks.”

Guffawing, they ambled toward the dock.

Cora pressed her fingernails against the cement bordering one of the bricks and wished she could hurl it at them. Some of the girls sent here had been keen on messing around, but others had been raped by staff or other patients. Or both.

When she’d first learned that Riverside would specialize in treating teenagers, she’d fantasized about making friends. Out of the couple hundred that would come, she’d hoped that at least a few would be willing to hang out with her from a safe distance.

The teenagers who’d been treated for communicable diseases hadn’t prepared Cora for how different these addicts would be from Sophia and her friends at Wadleigh High. How she missed them! By now they were nearly eighty years old, if even still alive.

Riverside’s cold-turkey treatment approach had seemed to make the kids crave heroin even more. A few had been friendly, and one handsome, sweet fellow had taken an interest in her. To keep him from coming too close, she’d had to pretend that she wanted nothing to do with