“I didn’t know it when I snuck in there, but yes.” Tom chuckled,and his grip relaxed, though he didn’t release her. “Luke took me to the horse he’d intended to ride himself, helped me on it, and started teaching me how to ride as if this had been his plan for the day all along. I should have been scared, being up so high on a powerful animal I didn’t know. But I did know Luke. And I trusted him.”
“How remarkable,” Elsa mused aloud. Luke had told her that he’d had no idea that Tom had looked up to him. But if this was Tom’s first memory of him, she understood completely.
“Although,” he added, “I did fall off.”
Before Elsa had time to respond, another voice caught up to them. “Hey, what are you trying to do, make me look bad while I’m not here? I caught you before you hit the ground, don’t forget.” Grinning, Luke filled the doorway to the library, his hair wet and dripping onto his bare shoulders and chest.
Tom dropped Elsa’s hands, a sigh of palpable relief whooshing out of him. “What areyoutrying to do, showing up half-dressed with a lady present?”
Elsa’s cheeks heated, and she looked away, but not before she noticed a shirt in Luke’s hand, and that he was wearing different trousers than the ones he’d had on before he left.
“Sorry, Elsa. I thought you’d be taking lunch in the courtyard, so I came around from the other direction,” he explained. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”
“But you mean to makemeuncomfortable, is that it?” Tom’s teasing must mean he was feeling more like himself.
“Other than having to stoop through most of it, that tunnel isn’t so bad to get through, but I came out the other side dirty and smelly. So I rinsed off in the river since I was smart enough to bring a change of clothes after we got caught in that storm Monday. But I might have cut my back on some rocks. It stings a little.” He turned to let them see. “See anything? I don’t want to bloody a clean shirt.”
At this, Elsa shed her schoolgirl shyness and directed him to step into the library, where the light was much better by the windows. She moved close enough to get a good look at the cut on the left side of his lower back.
“It doesn’t look deep,” she said, relieved he wouldn’t need stitches. “It just needs to be cleaned and covered.”
Tom fetched their first aid kit from the other side of the room.
“Figured.” Luke curled an arm around and tried to reach the cut himself. “Right about there? Pass me a cotton ball, would you?”
“Nonsense.” Elsa laughed, and Tom held the kit open for her. “No matter how strong you may be, some wounds we can’t reach by ourselves.” She cleaned the cut and bandaged it, glad to be of use. “There’s no shame in letting someone help.”
Luke pulled on the clean shirt he’d been carrying, then turned around to face her. “I’ll have to remember that.” The twinkle in his eye said,So should you.
CHAPTER
12
NEW YORK CITY
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 1926
If there was no shame in letting someone help, as Elsa had told Luke yesterday, then there ought to be no shame in visiting a doctor.
But there was, no matter how hard she tried to deny it.
For the last two days, eugenics had been haunting Elsa. She had not been born with a defect, and no one could call her feebleminded. Polio had not been her fault, but according to eugenics, her constitution must have been weak for her to have succumbed to the disease at all.
So far, she had not been the “burden on society” that eugenics enthusiasts so abhorred. If she became much worse, however, she would be. She pictured herself in a rolling chair again, just as Archer had suggested, dependent on others to push her around. She would never go on expeditions to Hudson Bay or the South Seas. She may not even be able to walk in her own strength through Central Park.
This bleak possibility, along with her words to Luke aboutallowing others to help, had driven her to make an appointment for after work today.
Still, Elsa could scarcely believe she was in Dr. Stanhope’s clinic.
Her fingers drummed the hobnailed arm of the leather chair. At least this consulting room felt more like an office, and not at all like a cold and clinical examination room, or like the hospital room that had been her home for the better part of a year. On the wall hung framed degrees. In a mirror above the bookshelf, Elsa saw her reflection.
She looked small, even to herself.
She looked scared.
The last time she had seen this doctor, she’d been a child, and he was the man who always brought bad news. Whenever he came to call, Elsa didn’t always know what he’d said to her parents or teachers, but she knew how she felt in his wake.
She felt the same fear now. She was afraid she wouldn’t get better than she’d been feeling these last few weeks. She was afraid he would tell her she’d only get worse. That she would be a burden after all. Again.
