Bonds of Earth Read Free Page A

with him before you went overseas?”
    “Yes, mum.” That much was at least partly true. He’d sweated for Paddy since he’d gone to live with him at the age of twelve, because if he hadn’t pulled his weight, Paddy wouldn’t have fed him. As it was, there’d been more than a few nights when Paddy had drunk so much of his paycheck that there wasn’t enough food for Michael, Margaret, and Paddy’s six children besides. When the settlement house do-gooders had quit dragging him back three years later, he’d escaped to work for himself.
    She asked him more questions, and he answered them easily, embellishing in places and omitting in others, telling her the things she would want to hear. While she droned on about the requirements of the position, he let his mind return to his last job interview, nearly two years ago now.
     
    Doctor Randolph Parrish of the American Convalescent Hospital in Somerset sits behind his huge oaken desk, one finger tapping the side of his nose as he studies the report. Short and rotund, he has the appearance and mannerisms of a jocular Christmas elf and the steel-gray gaze of a Viking warrior. Michael finds himself drawn to the contradiction.
    “ You want to join my staff, then, do you?” Parrish says, raising his eyes to contemplate Michael.
    “Yes, sir.” Michael does not say that he has requested this transfer because he’s only a few short steps from madness. Parrish deals with shell-shock victims every day; he can recognize the signs of a man who is heartily sick of the trenches.
    “Your record as an ambulance driver is commendable,” Parrish says, “and you have completed a year of medical school?”
    “Yes, sir. In Dublin, before the war.”
    “Where did you study massage?”
    Michael launches into the carefully prepared speech. “I’m mostly self-taught, sir, though I did study the Ling methods, as well as some of the more modern techniques.”
    “Hm.” Parrish nods thoughtfully. “Do you have any experience with electromechanotherapy?”
    “No, but I did use hydropathy in my work. I’ve read Doctor Baruch’s writings and attended one of his lectures at Columbia.” Michael doesn’t add that he’d snuck into the medical building and stood at the back of the hall while the real students looked askance at him and his threadbare suit.
    Parrish flips through the papers in his hands. “I don’t recall seeing references from your massage work.”
    “I spent over three years working at one of the finer men’s clubs in Manhattan,” Michael replies smoothly. “Unfortunately, the letter of reference my employer sent never reached me overseas.” A brief flash of anger accompanies this statement, but he tamps it down swiftly. The truth is that the word of the man who transformed Michael from ignorant tough to idealistic young medical student would be worthless to a man like Parrish. It is equally true that no amount of anger will change this fact. Worse, his physical therapy experience is all in the baths, and although he spent long nights applying the techniques he learned in long days of self-study, he knows that the merest whisper of his years at the Saint Alex will lose him more than this position. A self-confessed invert is doomed to prison at best and a mental institution at worst, where the alienist’s latest “cure” will be only too joyfully inflicted upon him.
    “Will you be going back to medical school afterward?”
    The question takes Michael by surprise, and suddenly he is trapped by that sharp gray gaze. It seems as though Parrish can read every one of his secrets as easily as the headlines of the morning’s Times. “I don’t know,” he says, surprising himself with an uncharacteristic display of honesty.
    Parrish leans back in his chair, folding his hands over his ample belly. “The men on this ward have need of an experienced masseur. More than that, however, they have need of a man who is committed to their recovery, more so in most cases than