“That mother of his,” she said. “She must be keeping him away. Why else would he not come?”

And I had asked myself the same question. Felt a similar hurt.

But then he did come, and with him the doctor from town. The same one who had said coma when my father got hurt. The same one who had taken my mother’s locket in payment for doing nearly nothing, though he had made the trip from town, the climb to our cabin, which was worth something.

“What’s this?” Cate said when they came through the door, Larkin and the portly doctor in his just-so coat and his dinner-plate face. “Larkin, where have you been?” But she looked happy enough when she said it.

“To town,” he said. “To fetch the doctor.” Who had been away, delivering a baby in Rumford. “Right after I left here. Esther thought so, too, that I should go get help. So I told my mother,” who had not been pleased, “and walked down the mountain and out to the road and caught a ride in a rubbish truck,” which explained why he smelled like he did, “and had to sleep under a bridge,” which also explained why he smelled like he did, “until the doctor got back the next day. And then it took us a while to get here.”

“Just in time to tell me all’s well,” Cate said, her voice equal parts relief and apology.

And that’s pretty much what the doctor told her, though he cleaned the wound with carbolic acid (which was one last and awful thing), stitched it up tight, and bandaged it in dressing so white it made my eyes hurt.

And I was sorry I’d been so hard on the man.

He’d managed to do, in short order, what I would never have been able to do half as well.

But he said some kind things about what I had done.

“And you just twelve,” he said. “You’ll make a fine nurse someday.”

Which did not bother me a bit, that he didn’t say doctor.

Perhaps I would be a nurse, as Cate had been. As she still was.

Or a doctor.

Or something else.

The elses, I had found, were everywhere.

Chapter Seventy-One

While he was there, the doctor examined my father as well, listening to his heart, his lungs. Looking into his eyes and ears. Testing his reflexes, which were understandably sluggish. Had him roll his tongue. Close his eyes and stretch his arms out, one at a time, and bring his index finger to the tip of his nose. He was spot-on with his left arm, a little off with his right.

“You may have some problems along the way,” the doctor said. “But you won’t know until you have them.”

“Like what?” my father said.

The doctor shrugged. “Could be some dizziness. Some permanent weakness in your muscles.” He looked at my mother. “No seizures?”