Elsa prayed she was wrong. But she had prayed for healing before.
The door opened.
Dr. Stanhope must be in his fifties now, with white hair fanning through black. The lines bracketing his mouth were deeper, his eyes more shadowed by wiry brows and no kinder than she’d remembered.
“Miss Reisner.” He greeted her, then took his chair behind the oak desk.
Her heartrate increased. He could not be taller than five feet ten inches, and yet his presence expanded to fill the room. It was as though every disappointment, fear, and sorrow that had been attached to his visits still hovered about him, taking up space, using the air.
“Thank you for seeing me.” She twisted her fingers together in her lap, wondering if these chairs intentionally sat lower than normal so patients would literally look up to him. “I won’t take too much of your time.”
“Proceed.”
She swallowed, then explained the changes she’d noticed in her condition lately. “I never got over the limp, and my stamina never recovered to the level of my peers,” she added. “But now it’s even worse. Both my leg and lungs seem weaker. Is this normal?” She licked dry lips. “That is, with your other patients with childhood polio, have you seen a slight decline this many years after the illness, and if so, is it temporary, or can I expect to return to at least the level of health I had last year?”
Dr. Stanhope rose and circled to the front of the desk, inserting the tips of his stethoscope into his ears. “Let’s take a listen.”
She stood so he wouldn’t need to stoop to her level. The chest piece pressed against her dress, and she followed the doctor’s directions to breathe normally and deeply as he listened to various locations through her chest and back.
“Clear,” Dr. Stanhope declared, “if weak.” He draped the stethoscope around his neck once more and opened the door to the corridor. “Let’s see you walk. To the end of the hall and back, in your most natural gait. Don’t try to make it look pretty.”
Obediently, she walked the prescribed path, returning to Dr. Stanhope at the doorway to the consulting room.
The doctor cleared his throat and hugged a clipboard to his chest. “I told you not to make it look pretty for me, Miss Reisner, but perhaps I ought to have told you not to exaggerate to make a point. Aren’t you wearing a brace on your left knee?”
Elsa felt the color leech from her face. “I—I did no such thing, I assure you. I’m still wearing the brace, too.”
“I simply cannot believe that your limp has deteriorated this much since I last examined you, which was...”
While the doctor referred to his chart, Elsa supplied, “October 14, 1916. Nearly ten years ago. I was sixteen, and by that point I’d had years of training to relearn how to walk.”
A sigh puffed through Dr. Stanhope’s nose. “You made this appointment to consult with me. So let’s consult, shall we?” He reentered the room and sat behind the desk. Elsa followed, resuming her place, as well.
The momentary shock at the doctor’s insinuation fled Elsa, leaving a scalding anger in its wake. “If I had known you’d suggest I was making this up, I wouldn’t have wasted time coming.”
“Calm down, and we’ll get to the bottom of this. It’s high time, after all. Tell me again when you started noticing a decline,” Dr. Stanhope said.
She told him.
He made a note. “I see. How is your family, by the way? I should have asked after them from the first.”
“Fine. They are all in good health.”
“Including your cousin Lauren? Does she still live with you?”
“Lauren?” The change of subject felt disorienting. “She and I were roommates, along with another friend, up until last month. She’s in Egypt now and engaged to be married shortly after she returns in six months.”
“Ah. A wedding, how lovely. Is your mother involved in the planning?”
“Very much so.”
“I see.” Dr. Stanhope leaned forward and tented his fingers on the desk. “And how does this make you feel?”
Elsa frowned. “I beg your pardon, but I fail to see how that relates to the matter at hand.”
“It has everything to do with the matter at hand. Miss Reisner, when you were sick with polio as a child, your recovery was troubling. Protracted. Once you breached the turning point, it took longer for your body to heal than it should have. You hadsetbacks that I could not account for. Until I considered the family dynamic in your home.”
Heat crept beneath Elsa’s collar. She didn’t want to be here anymore, but her body remained fixed in the chair.
