“Good, ’cause I’d like to talk to him, too.”
Charlotte took her clipboard, on which she’d been recording the results of the exam, and left the mysterious Eleanor Ames to Michael. Truth be told, she was glad to leave. She’d been feeling a chill ever since entering the infirmary, and she didn’t think it was just a reaction to the patient’s cold, clammy skin or her frosty clothes. It was as if, for all her years of training, she’d finally been presented with something utterly beyond her experience and beyond her scope.
Apart from the wind whistling outside the window, it was silent in the infirmary. Eleanor took the mug away—a bit of white foam still on her lips—and with her eyes still downcast, said to Michael, “I’m sorry if I hurt you in the church.”
He smiled. “I’ve taken worse hits.”
When he and that other man—Lawson?—had tried to escort her out of the little back room, she had refused to go, and even remembered pummeling Michael on his chest and arms with a flurry of blows that wouldn’t have injured a sparrow. A second later, after having expended her last ounce of strength in the attack, she had crumpled to the floor, weeping. Michael and Lawson had carried her, protesting but unable to offer further resistance, outside, and placed her on the seat of Michael’s machine. Then they had set off back toward the camp with the storm coming on fast.
“I know that you were only trying to help.”
“That’s all I’m still trying to do.”
She nodded almost imperceptibly and lifted her eyes to meet his. How could he ever know, or even imagine, what she had been through? She broke off a piece of the muffin, then glanced around the room.
“Where am I?”
“The infirmary. At the American research station I told you about.”
“Yes, yes…” she murmured, finally eating the tiny piece of the muffin. “But then, is this a part of America?”
“Not really. This—Point Adélie—is a part of the South Pole.”
The South Pole. She might have guessed as much. Apparently, the Coventry had been blown so far off course that they had indeed reached the Pole itself. The most unexplored place on earth. She wondered if the ship had survived the voyage, and if any of the men aboard had ever lived to tell the tale. And if they had, would they have been bold enough to tell all of it? Would they, for instance, have regaled their friends at the tavern with their story of binding the heroic soldier and the invalid nurse in a length of iron chain and hurling them into the ocean?
“The eggs have some melted cheese in them,” Michael said. “That’s how Uncle Barney—that’s our cook—likes to make them.”
He was trying to be kind. And he had been. But there was so much that he could never know, and she could never say, to anyone. How could they even believe what little she had told them so far? Had she not lived it herself, she would have thought it too fantastical to be true. She picked up the fork, and tried the eggs. They were good, salty and still warm. This Michael Wilde was watching with approval as she ate. He was tall, with an unshaven face and black hair that looked as wild and unruly as her younger brother’s used to be when he’d return from flying his kite in the downs.
Her younger brother who had been in his own grave for well over a hundred years already.
Gone. They were all gone. It was as if a death knell were clanging in her head. It didn’t bear thinking of. She took another bite of the eggs.
Even though he was still brimming with questions, Michael did not want to interrupt her meal. Who knew how long it had been since she’d last eaten hot food? Years? Decades? More? Everything about her, from her clothing to her manner, suggested someone from another era altogether.
How would he ever be able to wrap his mind around such a concept?
In fact, it was Eleanor who broke the silence by asking, “And what do the people do here, at this encampment?”
“Study the flora, the fauna, the climate changes.” Global warming? He’d let that wait. Something told him she’d already had enough bad news in her life. “Personally, I’m a photographer.” Would even that make sense? “I do daguerreotypes, sort of. And I write, for a magazine. In Tacoma—that’s a city in the northwest United States. Near Seattle. People in Seattle like to make jokes about it.”
He felt like he was babbling. But as long as he was talking, she was eating, and that made him happy. She wasn’t exactly digging in, more just going through the motions…as if dining were a skill she was trying to remember.
“And the negress? She is a doctor?” she said, with a note of incredulity.
Okay, Michael thought, wherever and whenever Eleanor was from, there was bound to be a learning curve. “Yes. Dr. Barnes—Charlotte Barnes—is a very respected physician.”
“Miss Nightingale does not believe that women should be doctors.”