#feb. 12

Christine Jorgensen, the first openly transgender person, arrives home in New York from Denmark, where she received hormone treatments and surgery, February 12, 1953. She said she was happy to be home. "What American woman wouldn't be?" she asked.

A chemistry lab at the Spence School, a private day school for girls at 22 East 91st Street, February 12, 1930.

To ward off the spread of the dreaded typhus, New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Royal S. Copeland assigned several assistants to Ellis Island to examine immigrants. The discovery of a case of typhus aboard the steamship President Wilson, after the passengers had landed, spurred the Health Department to immediate action. Doctors were sent throughout the city to examine the passengers. The photograph shows Dr. Copeland's staff examining immigrants from Ellis Island, February 12, 1921.

Shit. She’d have to rethink everything now. If she just leapt at them, fists pounding, like she had formerly planned, she’d be gunned down in two seconds. She could try taking them out one by one, but the alley was too narrow to hide her in the shadows and there were three of them. If she could somehow sneak up on the lot of them while their backs were turned she might have a shot, but the pudgy one kept looking over his shoulder.

Back-to-back then. That might work. It’d take some tricky sound maneuvering, but if she could convince them that there was more than just her waiting in the shadows, they might take a more protective stance. If she could get them to position just right, she could drop down from above and hopefully take two of them out with her. They did seem dumb enough to fall for it as well. It was a hell of a long shot, but she needed to take these guys out, and she needed to do it before they could get any farther in their sweep of the street. There were things here that they didn’t need to find.

Her plan set, she silently drew a handful of rocks from deep within her pockets. When she had stashed them there earlier this day, she certainly hadn’t envisioned such a fate for them. Although they weren’t large enough by a long shot to knock any of the men below out, they would still make a pretty decent racket banging up against a trash can or a street gutter or the wall of a Chinese take-out.

At the first clatter, the three men stiffened and whipped their guns around, looking for the source of the noise. Just as they had calmed down, she threw the second stone in the opposite direction. Again the men tensed, drawing closer together instinctively yet still slowly moving down the alley. One more… At the third stone the men did what she wanted, retreating back-to-back in the middle of the alley. She had been right. They were stupid enough to ignore the much more easily defended position of backs against the wall in favor of human comfort and misperceived notions of what was ‘safer.’

With three quick, precise steps, she flung herself off the building. Her aim had been true; she was positioned to land in the small space between the three men, their one ironically unguarded front.  A sharp jab to the temple (please let me hit hard enough) sent the skinny one slumping to the ground, the gun falling loudly to the concrete but thankfully not misfiring at the impact. She didn’t have time to wonder whether he was dead or merely unconscious. She sent the same jab to the pudgy one, but he twisted at the last moment and received a knuckle to the eye. Instead of falling, he went stumbling sideways. The last man – the one with the broad shoulders – had received a kick to the space between his shoulder blades that sent him lurching forwards.

She had a split second to decide between targeting the pudgy man or the broad-shouldered man. Proximity chose for her; she had snaked around the closer pudgy man in a half-second. There was no time to balance herself for a punch strong enough to knock him out, so she’d have to settle for stunning him. His eyes widened but she gave him no time to raise his weapon before she clapped her hands over his ears. Another sharp hit to the back of his hand caused him to release his fingers and drop his gun. Though he was reeling from the blow, his balance now all but destroyed, she kept him between the broad-shouldered man and herself. She was thought that the meat shield would keep the other man from shooting. She thought wrong.

A muffled sound came from the gun, and for the first time she noticed that its barrel was unusually long. The three men had equipped their weapons with mufflers. She would be getting no help from anyone in the surrounding area. In front of her, the pudgy man was slowly sinking, and in shock she noticed the red pouring out of his back. The broad-shouldered man had no qualms about killing a companion who stood in his way, and the idea sent a sickening shiver down her spine. Still, she had to move. In a few seconds her cover would be on the ground bleeding to death and she’d be left wide open. She had seconds, maybe less.

There. A shop’s overhang lay close to her, easily within her grasp if she leapt for it. If she could just get to the roofs, she could maybe find some kind of projectile to aim at him, or at least regain the element of surprise. The pudgy man was still falling when she leapt for the overhang, grasping it firmly and using the momentum to swing her body up and over onto the roof before the broad-shouldered man was able to take aim at her. She didn’t stop on that roof, but silently leapt to the neighboring one before dropping to her stomach. The broad-shouldered man was still in the alley, and from the edge of the roof she saw him stoop to pick up his tall companion’s guns, his own having a half-empty clip. Then his gaze rose to the tops of the buildings. When he didn’t immediately start firing, she assumed he couldn’t see her.

One man was left. One’s good. I can take one. She wouldn’t be able to use the same stone-throwing trick; there was no way he’d fall for it again. She also couldn’t elicit help from any of the inhabitants of this section of the neighborhood. This man had proven to be ruthless, and she wouldn’t put it past him to harm anyone else who came between him and his target. She’d have to sneak up on him somehow, now that he was on high-alert and – damn it – he was pressing his back to the wall of the building across from her. Apparently the guy had grown a few brain cells in the last minute. She’d have to scratch her plans for sneaking up on him. There was no way she could get the drop on him again, and if she tried to leap to the next building, she’d be shot down. She had been able to surprise the group with her leap the first time, the broad-shouldered man with her sudden leap to the overhand the second time, but trying for a third time would be pushing her luck. She had to find some sort of throwing weapon.

A brief scan of the roof yielded no plausible projectiles. Then she realized what she was lying on. The roof was tiled, possibly for style, possibly because it was cheaper, but several of the tiles looked loose. She quickly army-crawled backwards into the center of the roof, where she was sure he couldn’t see her, before rising to her hands and knees. Testing her theory, she found she was able to pry a couple tiles off the roof. She had a weapon. Now she just needed a target.

She immediately narrowed her options down to his hand or his head. By hitting his hand, she might get him to drop his weapon. However, based on her earlier experience with the pudgy man, these assailants seemed trained to hold on to their weapons. She hadn’t been able to get the pudgy man to drop his weapon by disabling his balance – it had taken that attack combined with an incredibly forceful attack directly to his hand to get the gun free. In addition, she wasn’t entirely sure she’d be able to hit the hand precisely, as it was a smaller and more easily moved target. The head, however, couldn’t be easily moved unless one moved the entire body, and action that would be easy to follow with another tile. In addition, if she aimed just right she could get his eyes, effectively blinding him. The head was the way to go.

Creeping back up to the edge of the roof, she snuck a quick peek at where the broad-shouldered man was situated. Thankfully, his eyes were locked to the section of the roof that she had jumped up onto. The slight movement of her head peaking up in his peripheral view had gone unnoticed.  Gauging the situation, she decided she’d have about two seconds to rise to her knees, aim, and throw before he fired at her. After that time she’d need to return to her stomach, roll to another portion of the roof, and leap down to finish the job.

With another quick breath, she rose to her knees, all the while taking aim. This sudden movement did not go unnoticed by the broad-shouldered man, and as he turned she let loose. The first tile grazed his ear, but the second hit its mark just as he pulled the trigger. But she was already long gone from that spot, rolling across the roof before falling to the ground. In a few quick strides she was beside him, slamming her fist up and into his chin and slamming his head up against the wall behind him.  He was out cold in less than a second, his gun joining the others on the ground.

She stood for a moment, breathing heavily and attempting to return her heartbeat to a normal rate. Then she knelt, collecting only the gun tacky with blood and shoving it with a slight shudder under her waistband. Then she pulled from her pocked a stack of zip ties. She ignored the pudgy man (dead men can’t do any more harm), but zip tied the wrists and ankles of the two unconscious men.