“If you have flaws, then all those other women you see on magazine covers must also have flaws,” he said, looking at her hard.
Madison smiled. “True. They do, and they learn how to cover them. Lighting helps a lot. Ever see the sixties model Jean Shrimpton? She had big bags under her eyes, but when she was lit properly . . .” Madison trailed off and looked at the riverbank they were passing. Thomas was right: She left modeling because she had wanted to, not for Roger.
She turned back to him. “Why don’t we talk about you?” she said. “What made you choose medicine?”
“When I was a kid I saw a cousin of mine drown. I was only nine at the time, but I decided at that moment that I wanted to learn how to keep people alive.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Before Roger, I had to watch my mother die. It took her four long years.?
?
Thomas was silent a moment as he rowed. The water was calm and the sunlight made everything sparkle. “Is that what you did during your college years?”
Madison shook her head at him. “I’m beginning to think that you’re clairvoyant.”
“Naw,” he said with a one-sided grin. “Just years of reading mystery stories. I like to watch people and figure them out. I like to look at clues and see what they add up to.”
“Oh? The first time you met me you thought I was going to try to extort money from you. Or was it your sister I was going to blackmail?”
Thomas ducked his head to one side, and she thought maybe he was hiding a blush. “I was distracted by the look of you.” Before she could say anything in reply to that, he said, “So what else do you want to know about me? I’m a very interesting fellow. I’ve been everywhere and seen a lot.”
She thought he was teasing her. “In medical school? Isn’t that the place where you’re not allowed to sleep for years at a time?”
“I’m thirty-one, so I’ve done some things other than sit in a classroom.”
At Madison’s age of twenty-three, thirty-one seemed old. Very mature. “Tell me,” she said, and there was a little catch in her breath, “I’ve been in Montana and New York and that’s it. But I’d like to go to . . . to . . . ”
“Name a place,” he said as he moved the boat around a tree that had fallen halfway across the river.
“Tibet. Petra. Morocco. Some tropical island somewhere. The Galapagos to see the turtles.”
Thomas didn’t so much as smile. “So give them to me in order of preference and I’ll tell you all about them.”
“You’ve been to all those places?” she asked, one eyebrow arched in disbelief.
“All of them that you named. So where do you want to start?”
She thought for a moment. “Australia.”
“The wet part or the dry part? City or outback? Where the orchids grow or where they mine opals?”
“Anywhere,” she said breathlessly, eyes wide.
So for the rest of the day, Madison listened to Thomas talk about where he’d been in the world and what he’d seen. And she never gave her feet a thought. But as the sun set, Thomas pulled the raft to the side of the river, saying that they could camp there, and when Madison stepped out, pain shot up her legs.
Thomas saw her wince, and saw her limp. He told her to sit down on a flat rock, pulled her foot onto his lap and untied her shoe. “I should have noticed that your hiking boots were really worn out,” he said, his scowl more pronounced than usual. “Look at that!” Holding up her foot, he showed her the blisters on her heel and her toes. “Do you know that these could become infected?”
“They’re just blisters,” she said.
“A former president’s son died from a blister he got while playing tennis,” was Thomas’s answer as he put her foot down, then opened his pack to remove a first aid package in a plastic bag.
Madison couldn’t help but laugh. “Haven’t we made some medical advances in the last few years?”
Thomas didn’t laugh as he poured clean water on sterile gauze, then cleaned the blood from the ruptured blisters. “Not really. In fact, I’ve just seen in England that they’re going back to using leeches.”
“Tell me,” Madison said eagerly, then listened intently as Thomas described how leeches were being used to drain the excess blood from such things as amputated fingers that had been reattached.
When he’d finished his description, which Madison found to be fascinating, Thomas said, “Have you ever thought of doing something in the medical world?”