to Evelyn V. McKnight, one of the ninety-nine patients, there was a cover-up. The hospital—where McKnight’s husband practiced medicine—tried to quash any mention of the hep-tainted medical bags, but ultimately the courts sided with McKnight. In 2014 she and lawyer Travis T. Bennington coauthored The Never Event, which reported that sixteen of the ninety-nine patients—about one in six—progressed to advanced liver disease.
Those odds scared me. Granted, the unfortunate sixteen in Nebraska had suffered from compromised immune systems because of their cancer therapy. But McKnight compiled her statistics after less than fifteen years. The long-term odds of cirrhosis for anyone with hepatitis C are worse. Of the 80 percent of infected people who develop the chronic form of the illness, 20 percent develop cirrhosis after twenty years. By thirty years it’s 41 percent. After that, according to renowned hep C researcher Jordan Feld, it’s likely to go up to 50 to 60 percent. Each year, 1 to 4 percent of people with cirrhosis are diagnosed with liver cancer. That was my big fear. Was I on the way to a cure or something else? I didn’t yet know.
1968–1969
HIPPIE
IN THE FALL of 1968, I hooked up with Peter, who had attended the same high school as I had. He had been popular at Bayside High, while I, except for my camaraderie with groupie friends—mostly from other schools—had been a quiet, studious girl who kept to herself. I would sit in the park across the street from school and pretend to read a book, sneaking looks at the cool kids who lounged against the chain-link fence that surrounded the basketball court. Peter always seemed to be the center of attention. I noticed his broad shoulders, his thick black hair (which began to recede a few years later), and the confident grin on his face. He had thin eyebrows for a boy and a bronze, wide-cheeked face he had inherited from his Indigenous grandmother. He was brawny but not what I’d call cute—my key requirement for boyfriends back then. In fact, were it not for Peter’s bravado and popularity, I never would have hooked up with him a few years later. And I probably would not have acquired hepatitis. But I wouldn’t have had my daughter Jessica, which would have been a giant shame.
During the two years after I graduated, I married a rock musician, had a baby, held several office jobs, painted murals, and lived in Woodstock for a summer, performing in a comedy Western theater troupe. Peter had married a woman and left her with a daughter who had been born with cerebral palsy. He joined the army. After basic training he heard he’d be going to Vietnam, so he deserted.
Around the time he left the army, I left my husband. Kevin had quit his job at the nudist magazine and chosen to stay home in our East Village railroad flat, playing guitar while I worked at an office job. I had to leave Della with a babysitter because he refused to change diapers. When I arrived home each day, Kevin expected me to do all of the housework—or else he would whine or start a fight. He insisted that I darn his socks like his mother had. He would stare at a blank wall for an hour each day, chanting oṃ maṃi padme hūṃ. I asked him why he was chanting.
“I need a new guitar,” he said as he backed away from the wall. “If I chant, the universe will give me a Stratocaster.” I reasoned I had signed up for one child but not for two, so one day while Kevin was out practicing with his band, I left a good-bye note, scooped up my daughter, and took the Long Island Rail Road to my parents’ home in Queens.
Within days I met—or re-met—Peter. I was talking with my friend Diane at a little triangular park near the tracks when Peter arrived with some hippie men. He said hi to Diane, and she introduced us. Peter didn’t remember me from high school. I didn’t mention my fantasies about him. He asked where I lived, and I strategically said, “The East Village,” which was considered very cool. He motioned toward one of the playground swings. “Give it a try,” he said. I hopped onto the child-height seat and raised my legs to avoid the ground. Peter pushed me. I knew right off that he liked me. I flew high, secretly proud of the attention I was getting from the popular boy of my high school years.
Soon Peter and I moved in together, and soon after that we left New York City to live in the U.S. Virgin Islands. We believed the islands were so remote that the army would never find him.
The Virgin Islands are part of the Lesser Antilles archipelago, which comprises many islands and island clusters. Some are sovereign nations and others are governed separately under the dominions of France, the UK, the Netherlands, Venezuela, and the United States. We chose the U.S. territory because we wouldn’t need passports to enter. Peter, our friends Ryan and Harry, toddler Della, and I flew into idyllic St. Thomas just after New Year’s in 1969. We rented a one-bedroom suite for all five of us and slept on air mattresses on the floor. At first I got a job as a secretary. Then I realized Peter’s and Ryan’s night-time jobs at restaurants let them spend their days at the beach, so I became a server at the Pirate’s Pub. It was the hangout for American sailors who hadn’t seen a woman in months. I would come home at three in the morning with black and blue spots all over my backside from where they had pinched me.
But the bruises were worth it. I hung out at Coki Point Beach every day. I spooned sand into plastic buckets with Della, snorkeled through sapphire-clear water chasing angelfish, and wrote letters to hippie friends about the bliss of the islands. Many of them flew down from New York. We rented a second apartment. We shared our paychecks with the new arrivals, who lazed on the beach every day and never found jobs. Ryan, Peter, and I supported seven adult hippies and two babies. When our cash ran short, Peter took on longer shifts at the restaurant, but that didn’t help much.
One day I called my parents from a phone booth.
“Come home and we’ll buy you a restaurant,” my father said.
“We could make money in New York, come back here, and buy some land,” I posited to Peter.
“But the army?”
“We’ll own the restaurant. You can be off the books.”
That sealed it. We would head back to New York City. I was sure we’d make enough money in a year or two to return to the islands and buy our own paradise cottage on a beach.
Soon after we returned to New York, I noticed Peter’s island tan was fading into a yellow tint. His face appeared particularly sallow. He complained of a stomach upset and odd, light-colored stools, which are signs of liver disease. I didn’t know it then, but Peter may have contracted hepatitis.
In our cramped little island home, we had all had just a hot plate and sink, and we didn’t keep much to eat there other than bread, eggs, tinned milk, and sardines. That was about all the few stores on St. Thomas regularly carried. Peter often ate at the busy hotel where he worked. Food was free for staff, and many different co-workers prepared the meals. Health inspections in the Virgin Islands at the time may have been less scrupulous than those in the mainland U.S., so hepatitis could have traveled through the kitchen staff.
When I was diagnosed, I did not yet know the difference between hep A and hep C, and I figured Peter must have picked up hepatitis C from food handling. Was it possible that the demon could have entered my blood through him?
CHAPTER 4
FLUS AND ACCIDENTS
SOON AFTER MY diagnosis, I learned Peter’s jaundice was probably from hepatitis A rather than C. The A disease has similar symptoms to other types of hepatitis, but it usually leaves the body no worse than it was before. Hepatitis A is generally passed through contact with feces. That happens more than you may think. Often preschool children, who have yet to learn the niceties of toilet training, contract and pass along hepatitis A at daycare centers. Their parents might never know their kids were sick. People can
