Chapter 12
CHAPTER
NEW YORK CITY
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 about allowing 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.
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 had setbacks 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.
“As I understand it, your cousin and aunt came to visit your family when your aunt was unwell. Your aunt passed away in your home, and Lauren suddenly became a permanent resident of the household. In effect, you gained a sister, and your parents gained another daughter.”
“Yes,” Elsa agreed. “We all loved her and were happy she stayed.”
“She was fifteen and grieving. She required a lot of attention from your parents after her mother’s death. Attention you craved for yourself. It couldn’t have been easy for you, raised as an only child up to that point.”
Elsa shook her head. “That’s not how I remember it.”
“Then you became ill.”
“Please tell me you’re not suggesting I contracted polio as a bid for my parents’ attention.”
“Of course not. I believe you were genuinely sick. But I also believe that after you were able to convalesce at home, you enjoyed the concern of your parents—who had hitherto been rather aloof, I’d surmise—and didn’t want it to end.
I understand they threw a ball for Lauren while you were still in the hospital. Most children would have been jealous.”
“Dr. Stanhope, what you are suggesting is preposterous. I didn’t even know about Lauren’s ball until a few weeks ago when my mother told me about it. I would never pretend to be sicker than I was for Mother or Father’s attention.”
“I stand by my considered opinion. You dragged out your recovery to gain sympathy from your parents. It was understandable, you being a child, but that didn’t make it healthy.
I advised them against giving in to it. In fact, I recommended they send you to a boarding school to eliminate the temptation for both of you. ”
Elsa stood. “You what?” she gasped.
“With you separated from your parents, you wouldn’t be tempted to act sick, and they wouldn’t be tempted to reward your deception by fawning over you. We had to break the cycle, you see. Your parents argued with me, but in the end deferred to my professional judgment over their own.”
She sank back into the chair, speechless.
“And now your mother is planning Lauren’s wedding. I imagine that takes up much of her time.”
“Mother asked me to help her with the planning,” Elsa choked out. “And I’ve been trying to hide how I’ve been feeling from my parents, not advertising it!”
“Don’t you find it interesting that the recent decline you’ve described lines up with your mother’s new and critically important involvement in Lauren’s life?
” Dr. Stanhope went on as if she hadn’t even spoken.
“You might feel replaced all over again. You might even go so far as to trick your body, to trick yourself in general. Do you want more lumbar punctures? Injections of adrenaline or intravenous serum? As your current brace proves so ineffective, shall we fit you up with one that reaches your ribs again?”
Sweat pricked all over Elsa’s skin as the memories of painful procedures became real to her flesh all over again. She pushed herself up to stand on shaky legs. “We’re through here,” she said simply.
It had been a mistake to come.
Deep inside Central Park, Elsa sat on a bench in The Ramble, watching for movement in the tree canopy, but mostly listening.
After that terrible appointment with Dr. Stanhope, there was no place she’d rather be than right here.
Recording in her notebook all the birds she spotted proved a welcome reprieve and distraction.