a ship before?”
“This is the first time she has been on the sea.”
“Have you traveled by motorcar?”
“Never. She drives our horse carriage. She has always been very strong.” Waves of panic washed over Marco. What if he lost her, as he had lost Stella?
He barely listened to Dr. Brissot when he said, “I cannot order the ship back to Le Havre for one sick passenger in third class. I’m very sorry.”
“May I see her?”
Dr. Brissot opened the door to the hospital room. Enza was curled up in the bed in a fetal position, holding her head. Marco walked over to her and placed his hand on her shoulder.
Enza tried to look up at her father, but her eyes filled with terror as she was unable to lift her head or focus her gaze.
“Oh, Enza.” Marco tried to soothe her, hoping his voice didn’t give away his fear.
Enza searched for the strength to tell her father she felt like a spoke in the wheel of a runaway carriage. Nausea rolled through her in waves. Sounds were deafening, each wave against the ship’s hull shattering within her ear like explosions of dynamite, rock smashing against rock without reprieve.
Enza opened her mouth, but no sound came out.
“I’m here,” Marco said. “Don’t be afraid.”
Night after night, Marco lay on the cold metal floor beside Enza. He slept only briefly, awakened by nurses, the clank of the engines, and Enza’s agonized moans. Utter exhaustion gave way to brief nightmares as the terrible days crept by. Dr. Brissot’s reports offered little encouragement. The medicines he usually prescribed for extreme motion sickness failed to have any effect on Enza. She became weaker and weaker, dangerously dehydrated. Soon her blood pressure began to plummet. Tinctures of codeine, a syrup of black cohosh, seemed to only make Enza worse.
Toward the end of the nine-day journey, Marco finally fell into a deep sleep, where he dreamed he was back in Schilpario, but instead of the green cliffs, the hillsides had been torched by fire, and the gorge was filled with black water. Marco had gathered his family to safety on a precipice, but below he saw Stella drowning in the floodwaters. Enza jumped in to save her, and she too began to flail in the black water. Marco dived into the gorge headfirst, hearing his wife and children on the cliff screaming to stop him, but it was too late.
Marco awoke in the hospital cell, feverish and disheveled. A nurse gently tapped him. “We’re in the harbor, sir.”
Marco could hear the muffled sounds of the cheers from the Rochambeau’s passengers above, gathered on deck as the ship docked in lower Manhattan.
There was no celebration for Marco and Enza, no lingering first gaze at the soft turquoise majesty of the Statue of Liberty or awe expressed at the view of the cityscape of Manhattan. There was only the scratch of Dr. Brissot’s fountain pen against the paperwork to save Enza’s life once the ship was safely in the harbor.
“I’ve made arrangements for signorina to be taken immediately to Saint Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village. They may be able to stabilize her. You have to process through Ellis Island with the others.”
“I must stay with my daughter.”
“You’d be an illegal alien, sir. You don’t want to risk that. They’ll pick you up and send you right back to Italy without your daughter. Follow instructions to Ellis Island, and then join her at Saint Vincent’s. They’ll be doing everything they can for her. We will file her paperwork through the hospital.”
Dr. Brissot bustled off to attend to his other patients, and Marco was asked to leave the room as the nurse and two of the ship staff placed Enza on a gurney to transport her off the ship.
As Enza was carried off on the stretcher through the narrow doorway, Marco reached out to touch her face. Her skin was cold to the touch, just as Stella’s had been the last morning her father ever held her.
The nurse pinned the ship’s manifest to Enza’s sheet, per standard regulations, then handed Marco a slip of paper with the address of the hospital. In the bright sunlight, Enza looked worse, and waves of panic overtook Marco as he watched her go. He turned to the nurse in desperation.
“Is my daughter dying?”
“I don’t speak Italian, sir,” she replied briskly in English, but Marco understood her meaning. The nurse had avoided telling him the terrible truth.
As Marco stood on the interminable line at Ellis Island, he began to