Isabelle and Alexander by Rebecca Anderson (new books to read TXT) 📗

correct one. Bring Doctor Kelley to the city. Let him see your progress. There is progress, isn’t there?” What began as despair mellowed to a quiet entreaty.

“Progress is not definitive,” Alexander said, closing his eyes. “For the past days, I might have been fooled. What I thought I felt could be imagined.”

What had he thought? She clamped her mouth closed, fearing that an interruption might silence his admission. Isabelle wanted to assure him—assure them both—that whatever minuscule sensation of healing he’d experienced was real, but she dared not speak.

“Both the doctors spoke of phantom impulses.”

When Isabelle shook her head, Alexander explained. “Often those who have lost a limb continue to feel pain where there can be no pain,” he said, glancing at her and apologizing for the indelicacy of the sentiment. “I was warned not to succumb to false hope.” He closed his eyes again, then reopened them, looked at her, and looked away. “Today, Doctor Fredericks performed the same tests he does in hospital. The results suggest that sensation is returning to my hands and neck.”

Isabelle felt her breath catch as she remembered him returning pressure on her hand, how she’d caressed him while standing before his seated form. Had he felt it?

He filled his lungs slowly, as if to prepare for a long speech. “If that sensation is returning with the small steps we’ve been taking, you and I, just think how my functionality will return under the ministrations of Nurse Margaret.”

His words were bold. His voice was anything but.

“I can do better,” Isabelle said.

Alexander did not answer. Nor did he meet her eyes.

“I can,” she repeated. “I will learn to push harder, to take you to higher limits. I can do the work so she can be gone.”

Alexander spoke gently. “There is something I need to say to you, and I must know you hear and understand me. Please come closer.”

Isabelle stepped nearer, until the skirts of her dress touched the metal frame of the cot on which he lay.

“You are not a trained nurse,” he said.

“I know. I can learn. I will find someone who can teach me. Doctor Kelley taught me, didn’t he? I can learn more. I can become helpful.”

“No.” Alexander’s word was barely above a whisper, and she saw the hurt in his eyes.

“Why can’t you trust me?” she pleaded.

“It’s not that. I need more help than you can give.”

She could tell this admission pained him.

“I can do better,” she said again.

“Nurse Margaret has years of experience.”

“I don’t like her,” Isabelle said.

With a quirk of his lips, Alexander said, “No one expects you to be her friend.”

“I don’t want her here,” she whispered. “In our home,” she added, feeling the enormity of the presumption of calling it such. She reached for Alexander’s hand and gripped it in both of her own. “Please, please send her away.”

Alexander held her gaze. “If you truly want her gone, I will dismiss her.”

Relief flooded Isabelle. “That is what I want.”

He closed his eyes again. “And I will go with her.”

A gasp.

“Into hospital care.” His clarification did nothing to alleviate Isabelle’s horror at the suggestion.

Her hands tightened over his, and her response came out as a shout. “No!”

He spoke quietly, and it was all she could do to stand nearby and not run in circles about the room, shouting and stamping her feet like an angry child.

“Please,” he said, his voice hoarse from such a long discussion. “Listen to reason. We cannot have it both ways. Nurse Margaret and Doctor Fredericks will make me well if I can get well. That can happen here in this room, or it can happen in an asylum.”

Isabelle’s shock stole any reply from her.

He continued. “Hospital has benefits this home cannot match. ’Round-the-clock care. Large staff. Significant experience. Machinery. Medicines.” His voice lowered, gentled. “Not to mention reducing the concern you need take.”

Isabelle would stay silent no longer.

“Alexander, please.” She knelt at his side and pulled his hand to her heart. “Do not leave me. Please do not.”

Eyes closed, Alexander gave a small, sad smile. “That is the first time you’ve called me by my name,” he said.

“It isn’t.”

He looked at her once more. “I’ve been waiting to hear my name from your lips. I believe I’d recall,” he said, a whisper of the self-possessed composure for which he had previously been known apparent again.

She shook her head. “That day. That frightening, horrible day, I knelt in the field beside your still and sleeping body, and I called to you. I thought if you could hear me speaking, calling you home, pleading with you to not leave me, that you could be well.”

Within the parlor, all sounds of the city seemed far away as she looked at him, eyes shining with unshed tears.

“And now, I kneel again. Alexander, please. I beg you. I beseech you not to go away. Please. Do not leave me.”

Isabelle bowed her head and kissed the hand she held.

“Stay with me.”

Alexander’s warm fingers curled around her hand, returning pressure for pressure.

The compromise the couple agreed upon suited Alexander more than it suited Isabelle, but she realized that any inconvenience in housing Nurse Margaret was surely worth having Alexander stay.

Over the next several weeks, Alexander and Isabelle spent morning hours together. As they continued Doctor Kelley’s regimen of exercises, Alexander would sometimes speak of the sparks of energy he felt bouncing along his muscles.

Isabelle understood this to mean he was feeling sharp, stabbing pains in his arms and his legs, but he spoke of these pains with such hope, such gladness, that she put aside her fear. At some point each day, Isabelle would take his hands in hers and watch for the miracle of his fingers curling about her own.

One morning, Isabelle broached a subject about which she had thus far remained silent.

“Christmas is next month,” she said, her voice shaking with uncertainty. “I realize this is perhaps a conversation we ought to have had previously,” she said, looking at Alexander’s hand as she moved