My own experience was one of delirium and long nightmares of drowning. Over and over, I would slide down a thick hemp rope toward water. Hour after hour, I tried to climb that rope, desperate to keep my head above the surface. My leaden arms would fail me. I’d slip beneath the water, and then I’d awaken myself: coughing, coughing, coughing.

I, who never wished to be a bother to Mumma, called and called to her in my dreams, but she never came. Around me, fellow sufferers groaned and wept. I heard muffled voices—masked doctors, nurses, hospital attendants, I realized later. Those poor heroes and heroines must have been overwhelmed and exhausted, trying to care for hundreds of patients who were hemorrhaging from the nose and throat. It was an inferno worthy of Dante, for them, and for us.

Whenever it became clear that patients might survive, they were removed from the hospital to make way for others. “Poveretta,” Mrs. Motta cried as I was carried up to my room in her boardinghouse. “Poor little t’ing! I make a bath. You want I wash your hair?”

It was such a comfort, feeling her soapy hands gently rinse away the waxy sweat and stink of illness. That good woman nursed me with motherly tenderness, as though I were her own, but when I asked why my own mother did not come, or why I had not been taken home to Cedar Glen, Mrs. Motta never answered my questions. “You rest now,” she’d say firmly, and then she’d leave me alone to sleep.

Only when my recovery seemed assured did she hand me the stack of telegrams that had been delivered while I lay ill. Douglas. Lillie. Their boys. Uncle John. Mumma. All of them were gone.

“I’m sorry, signorina,” Mrs. Motta said, wringing her hands as I read the messages, one after the other. “I’m real sorry.”