Trapped in the Tunnel by Katrina Hoover Lee

Author:Katrina Hoover Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Katrina Hoover Lee

* * *

Dear Dr. Jefferson.

It was a sleepy Sunday afternoon. Terry and Dad napped in the sitting room. Mom dozed between chapters of a book. Larry sat in the library, reading the book about clocks.

I had only a vague memory of Dr. Bruce Jefferson. Mostly, I remembered a black beard and a long, waving arm, as Dr. Jefferson explained things to my mom.

And I remembered the pain in my foot that night after my amputation. Only my foot wasn’t there anymore.

Dr. Jefferson wasn’t there through the night either. Only the nurse and Mom remained as I battled the pain.

The nurse rubbed and rubbed the blanket where my foot had been. Even though I knew it was ridiculous, it seemed to help.

Should I relive those painful memories by writing to Dr.

Jefferson? But I wanted to know. Had it been necessary, really necessary to cut my leg off?

When I was seven years old, you amputated my leg…

“Gary, listen to this.” Larry came out to the kitchen where I worked on the table. “This Breguet clock maker, he made clocks for the French royal family. And he made a clock that could wind watches.”

I looked up from my letter. He held the book open so I could see the picture. A small clock face peered at me from the center of a jeweled box standing on four small feet.

“See, at the top, you set the watch.” Larry pointed. “And the watch winds on its own. He told his son that he had made a very important invention and that he shouldn’t tell anyone about it. And that he thinks he will have the greatest fame and fortune because of it.”

“Did he get his fame and fortune from making these clocks?”

“Uh… not sure yet.” Larry took a chair beside me and continued to read silently. Whenever he found something especially fascinating, he read it to me out loud.

Apparently, Breguet worked so carefully and slowly that he never accomplished much. He only made twelve of the watch-winding clocks in his lifetime.

“Oh, this one is in Illinois.” Larry pointed back to the picture. “A French prince ordered it in 1832 to decorate his apartment in Paris. Then the prince died in a freak carriage accident ten years later and the clock disappeared until this Mr. Daniels found it for a museum in Rockford, Illinois.”

“Where did he find it?” I erased a mistake in my letter. I was almost done.

“In Paris,” Larry said. From my project in the hospital, I knew this was the capital of France. “An antique dealer helped him find it. It was missing parts, but he fixed it.”

Larry put down his book just as I signed my name: Sincerely, Gary Fitzpatrick. He looked at me with dreamy eyes.

“What if that antique dealer is right? There might be one of these clocks in our neighborhood.”

I shrugged. “I thought you said it was in Illinois.”

“Well, of course, that one is. But there are others.”

“I doubt it. If he’s that famous, they probably know where the others are.

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