done found her in Chicago and was with her on the Denver leg, barely able to move from her bunk. She’s from Harlem. We can’t let her die alone on a train platform,” Max bites out. “Someone hurt her, bad. I can’t tell if it’s lady troubles or—”
A storm of activity interrupts him. People call out instructions, feet vibrating through the tiles of the kitchen floor. I can feel this with marvelous accuracy because I’m on the kitchen floor. The back of my head is cold. There isn’t one place that hurts any longer, there are only vibrating waves of please stop, and I’ve lost the reason this is happening to me.
Probably for the best.
When the bellhops get back and a flat half-assembled cot is wedged under my back, I do finally scream. And figure I’ll keep at it even though the matron is trying to hush me.
Next thing I know, I am indeed in a hotel room.
The chandelier is thick with metal leaves, the walls neatly papered. Petite cobalt flowers on a grey trellis. Squinting, I see a basin and pitcher, a desk, a sapphire chintz bench with a cushioned armrest, carved posts at the end of my bed.
My coat is gone, shoes missing, and my dress half shrugged off me. A man’s unsteady hands are setting the coverlet over my lower half.
Then they’re lifting my chemise and I push them away.
“No!” I snarl.
If you ever must see a doctor in an emergency, you see one in our pay, or who knows how fast you would be in the Hudson, my dear young lady, a well-remembered voice that can’t protect me anymore says in my head.
“Miss James, I think is your name?” a gravelly rasp inquires. “Or so Max tells us. I don’t really give a damn what your name is, but I am a physician and must adjust your underthings.”
Blinking, I try to understand what sort of fellow I’m looking at. It’s not exactly duck soup. His face is pale mulatto and as blanketed in freckles as New York summers are populated with mosquitoes. His irises are green, peering from behind what some would call spectacles and I’d call a set of awfully sturdy beer steins. Wire-brush grey hair bristles from his pate. I smell cheap whiskey, a sweet-sour cloud, which may or may not be emanating from him. Since he wears only a robe and pajamas, he either resides at the hotel or else doesn’t plan on running for public office.
“All right, I’m Miss James, then.”
“Dr. Doddridge B. Pendleton. Whether or not you are in fact Miss James—as I said, I don’t give a damn.”
“I’m awfully sorry to be so much trouble.”
“Trouble is the nature of my profession.”
“Where’s Max?”
“Sugar, this ain’t the time for a wide audience, agreed?” The matron sits on the end of the bed. Her thick hair is braided in proud hulking coils, upswept, and streaked with pewter. An upside-down tornado. “I calculate you’re wary of strangers, but so are we, and I can vouch for the doctor’s character. Now. Is it lady trouble?”
A pause. Recalling I’m going to die, I lift my chemise myself.
“It’s twenty-five-caliber trouble.”
The twin wounds have turned monstrous. Fire-breathing dragons guarding a horde.
Dr. Pendleton slides his glasses up and down his nose like a trombone. He exchanges a grim look with the matron, who shakes her head.
Tension spreads in spider-silk patterns, fans weblike throughout the room. The vote against my being here seems unanimous so far, saving only Max. I’m not brainless enough to think we’re in Harlem, but from their faces, this is the moss-draped heart of Jim Crow Missouri with a right jolly banjo strumming in the distance. Not a Northern port city.
“Miss James, was this done by accident?”
Animal fear parches my throat at the slightest reference to Nicolo Benenati.
“Of course it was an accident,” I grate. “This is what happens when a silly girl takes up with a real rat, and I’m paying the piper now. He was drunk, he’s always drunk, God, and he’d spilled me enough times before that I hated the thought of visiting the carpet again. So I ran, and I think he meant to scare me. He always says he loves me when it’s over, but after this—can’t you see? I could have died.”
That’s an old story, and a good one.
Dr. Pendleton blows air past his lips, and yes, the liquor perfume is definitely his brand. “Is this man likely to follow you here? Truthfully, now.”
I force a laugh. “Not in his