The ocean breeze kicked up a storm and then calmed itself against Mary's window. She stared out into the sea with longing. If only, she thought. I could leave. Three years earlier, she had been sent to North Brother Island as a carrier of Typhoid Fever. It tortured her to remember it, but she did.
"Please! I was never even sick!" she had pleaded. It seemed as if her screams were only in her mind. But that day, her lungs burned with pain, and her eyes burned with tears. That was the day she was sent to North Brother Island. Everyone on the boat streets looked at her with disgust. She was a human, not some sort of pest. Any other day, she wouldn't have allowed it. But that day felt like she was made to take these insults.
Mary snapped back into awareness. She willed herself to step back from the window of her small cottage but she couldn't. There was something about the sky that enticed her. The early morning was a dreary gray, yet it couldn't help but pound a feeling of hope into her stomach. Mary didn't want it to go away. It had been two years since she had hope.