“I know,” he said through dry lips.
I knew there was a glass of water on his bedside table and that I should give him some to drink, yet I couldn’t look away or drop his hand. Not yet.
His words rushed out, like they’d been held back for a long, long time, his sentences broken in the middle as he fought for the energy to speak them. “I’ve been . . . waiting a long time . . . to meet you.” With great effort, he lifted his other arm and touched my hair. “Take it . . . down.”
Since medical school, I’d worn my long hair twisted into a tight bun and held securely with a large comb at the back of my head. My hair was my only vanity, and I couldn’t cut it even though I knew it would be so much easier than putting it up every morning. But it was long and dark like my mother’s, which had framed her face with a pronounced widow’s peak just like mine, and I remembered how as a little girl she’d allowed me to brush it before bedtime, giving it one hundred strokes, until it crackled. Nobody at the hospital had ever seen it down; to allow them to do so would have seemed like a nod to my femininity, an admission of weakness. I clung to that thought, the word no hanging on my lips as he reached for me.
“Take it . . . down,” he said again. Before I could pull away he reached up with his free hand and dislodged the large comb.
I reached up with my hand to keep it in place, but I was too slow. It fell below my shoulders, almost to my waist, long enough for him to grab and pull a handful toward his face and breathe in deeply, keeping me pinned to his side.
“It’s how . . . I always thought . . . it would be,” he said, and I heard the soft cadences of his words, his accent touching briefly on each syllable, just as I’d imagined.
As if unaware that he was hurt, and lying in a hospital bed, he moved to sit up, grimacing as the pain coursed through him.
His words startled me, making me forget where I was. Who I was. “How do you know me?” I asked, transfixed by his eyes and his accent and the way he breathed in the scent of my hair.
His eyes drifted closed, and I wanted to protest, not ready to stop staring into them no matter how inappropriate it was.
His lips moved again. “I’ve always . . . known you,” he said, his words slurring as he fell back to sleep, my hair sliding from his grasp.
I became aware of footsteps on the stairs leading up to my attic room, and for once I was grateful that the elevator didn’t come this far. It was too quiet and I would have been aware of visitors only right before they entered.
As it was, I’d just finished twisting my hair in a knot and fastening it to the back of my head with the comb when the door was thrown open without a knock. I knew it was Dr. Greeley and didn’t give him the satisfaction of turning around with surprise. Instead, I leaned forward toward the washbasin Nurse Hathaway had brought up the previous night, and dipped a cloth into the water before gently dabbing at Cooper’s face. He was drenched in perspiration from the fever, and it was warm in the attic despite the electric fan I’d purchased at Hanson Drugstore and guarded greedily.
“How’s the patient?” he asked, his tone carefully guarded. It wouldn’t do for a doctor to want a patient to deteriorate. He picked up the chart and began to scan the latest notations.
“No change, which means he’s not getting worse,” I said optimistically.
Dr. Greeley grunted, then replaced the chart on the bedside table. He crossed his arms, lifting one hand to his chin. I was sure he thought it made him look scholarly, but I had the feeling that he did it to hide the slight paunch he’d begun to develop despite his relatively young age of thirty-one. “But he’s not getting better, either.”
I shook my head. “He’s been here less than twenty-four hours. He’s feverish, but I can tell he has a strong will. That will go far in his recovery.”
He looked bored. “Medicine heals, not wishful thinking. Eventually his leg will have to come off. I’m keeping operating room one open just in case.”
I focused on wiping Cooper’s face, glad my hands were otherwise occupied so I wouldn’t be tempted to throw something at the doctor.