Now Sophie reached for an envelope, and looked up to see Rosa watching her closely.
“Almost forgot,” she said. Then she cleared her throat and read:
April 3, 1883
Reverend Thomas M. Peters, Rector
St. Michael’s Church
West 100th Street
Manhattanville
Dear Reverend Peters,
At midday on Monday, March 26, Tonino Russo, age seven, and Vittorio Russo, age three months, arrived at the Christopher Street ferry terminal in a larger party of recently orphaned Italian children. An accident on the dock caused great confusion, and during this time the boys disappeared without a trace. I am writing to you regarding the search for these two brothers.
Both boys have Italian complexions, dark curly hair, and very blue eyes. There are no other distinguishing marks.
As the founder of the Sheltering Arms you see too many lost and homeless children to remember them each; nevertheless, I write to ask you to please keep these boys in mind. If you or anyone on your staff have seen any children fitting this description, alone or together, I would be thankful for word from you at your earliest convenience.
I am a graduate of the Woman’s Medical School and a physician registered at Sanitary Headquarters, but my concern for the Russo brothers is personal. At your request I am ready to provide further information as well as professional and personal references.
Sincerely yours,
Dr. Sophie élodie Savard
When a letter had been signed and the envelope addressed, it went into the pile in front of Rosa, who was as attentive as a bird watching over a nest. But with every completed letter came questions.
“Will he write back?”
“I would think so,” Anna told her. “But maybe not right away.”
“Unless he knows where my brothers are.”
“Of course,” Sophie said. “In that case he would write to us immediately.”
“Or come to the house,” Rosa suggested. “He might just bring them here.”
Gently Sophie said, “We can hope for that, but you know it’s not likely.”
Rosa knew no such thing. She was making order out of chaos by pure force of will.
“I am certain we’ll hear back,” Anna said. Her tone was firmer than Sophie’s, something that did not escape the girl.
There was a moment’s hesitation. “But how do you know?”
And that was the issue, of course. They knew almost nothing and might never learn more. They could make no promises beyond the one Anna repeated now.
“We will keep trying until we succeed, or we all decide together that we’ve tried long enough.”
Tonight they had written letters to the Sheltering Arms Home, the Eighth Ward Mission, the Ladies’ Aid Society of the Emmanuel Baptist Church, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, and the Home for Little Wanderers.
With every letter Anna wondered if they were helping or harming the little girl consumed by guilt and sorrow and an anger she couldn’t put into words.
When they had finished for the evening, Rosa went off to Margaret, who would see that the girls were bathed and put to bed.
“I wish somebody would do the same for me,” she said to Sophie as she reached for her own mail, still to be read and answered.
“No, you don’t,” Sophie said. “You’d break out in hives if somebody fussed over you.”
Anna ran her eyes over a letter written in an educated hand on very fine linen paper. “A referral,” she said. “From Dr. Tait.”
Sophie sat up a little straighter, and Anna went on. “A Mr. Drexel wants me to take over treatment of his wife when they arrive here from England.”
“That’s good news,” Sophie said.
“It might be,” Anna said. “If Dr. Tait remembered to tell him I’m female. He forgets that kind of thing, even if nobody else does.”
Sophie rested her cheek on a fist and struggled to contain a yawn. “If only they were all so unconcerned with gender.”
Anna would answer the inquiry, but she knew from experience what would happen: Mr. Drexel would first talk to his wife’s original physician at Women’s Hospital. Dr. Manderston would steer him back to Women’s Hospital and one of his male colleagues. Anna told herself it didn’t matter; her income was sufficient to her needs; she didn’t lack for patients, and never would. The male doctors at Women’s Hospital had little use for her or for Sophie or any of the other women who had studied medicine and taken up its practice, but most of them were conscientious physicians. If not especially insightful and dismissive of advances they themselves could take no credit for.
“I’ll never lack for work where I am,” Anna said. “I see us shuffling up and down the halls forty years from now, snapping at student nurses and torturing medical students.”
“What a lovely picture.” Sophie laughed. “But I hope there will be more to life than the New Amsterdam Charity Hospital.”