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he was a captain and that his last name was Ravenel—a name that sounded oddly familiar. My gaze slid to the space on theform for a first name. Cooper. And he was from Charleston, South Carolina.
    He hadn’t said enough the previous night for me to determine whether he had a Southern accent, but in my newly awakened imagination, I thought that he would and that his dropped consonants and slurred vowels would sound wonderful emerging from those lips.
    I clenched my eyes, reminding myself to remain focused, inordinately thankful that I was alone in the room with nobody to witness my foolishness.
    â€œVictorine.”
    The word startled me, and I almost dropped the chart on the wounded leg. His eyes were open but still glazed from fever and morphine, and although I knew he was oblivious to his surroundings, the way he was looking at me made me feel again as if he
knew
me.
    I placed the chart back on the table and moved closer to him. “Captain Ravenel? Can you hear me?”
    â€œVictorine,” he said again, his eyes focused on my face, the name filled with hope and wonder, making me want to answer
yes
. But for the first time in my life, I couldn’t speak. None of my resources, or my authority as a medical doctor, gave me whatever it was I needed to answer the longing in the soldier’s voice. It unnerved me, made me feel the loss of something I never knew existed.
    He continued to look at me as I recovered my composure and slipped back into my Dr. Kate Schuyler persona. “Captain Ravenel, you’re in a hospital in New York City. Your leg is badly hurt, but we are doing our best to save it.”
    As if he hadn’t heard me, his hand gripped mine, and I knew I couldn’t pull away even if I’d wanted to.
    â€œIt’s you,” he whispered, his eyes settling on my face.
    A sensation like hot chocolate sliding down my throat cocooned meso that I was aware only of this man, and me, and the heat of our clasped hands. My logical mind tried to reason with me, to tell me that Cooper Ravenel was in a feverish delirium and had no idea who I was. But there was something in his eyes that made me cling to the fallacy that there was something more.
    â€œI’m here,” I managed to say. “I’m here to take care of you.”
    â€œI know,” he said through dry lips.
    I knew there was a glass of water on his bedside table and that I should give him some to drink, yet I couldn’t look away or drop his hand. Not yet.
    His words rushed out, like they’d been held back for a long, long time, his sentences broken in the middle as he fought for the energy to speak them. “I’ve been . . . waiting a long time . . . to meet you.” With great effort, he lifted his other arm and touched my hair. “Take it . . . down.”
    Since medical school, I’d worn my long hair twisted into a tight bun and held securely with a large comb at the back of my head. My hair was my only vanity, and I couldn’t cut it even though I knew it would be so much easier than putting it up every morning. But it was long and dark like my mother’s, which had framed her face with a pronounced widow’s peak just like mine, and I remembered how as a little girl she’d allowed me to brush it before bedtime, giving it one hundred strokes, until it crackled. Nobody at the hospital had ever seen it down; to allow them to do so would have seemed like a nod to my femininity, an admission of weakness. I clung to that thought, the word
no
hanging on my lips as he reached for me.
    â€œTake it . . . down,” he said again. Before I could pull away he reached up with his free hand and dislodged the large comb.
    I reached up with my hand to keep it in place, but I was too slow. It fell below my shoulders, almost to my waist, long enough for him tograb and pull a handful toward his face and breathe in deeply, keeping me pinned to his