Cole

by Dale Mayer

  Dr. Herzog was very patient and listened to Cole explain how wrong he was to stop his meds without telling anyone and how it wasn’t Sandra’s fault and that he didn’t want her getting into trouble. The doctor smiled at Cole. “I agree with you. However, she was reprimanded, and notice of such is in her permanent personnel file.” When Cole grimaced, Dr. Herzog added, “However, in my letter I count Sandra as one of my best nurses.”

  When Cole launched into more arguments about how unfair this was to punish Sandra for Cole’s mistakes, Dr. Herzog raised his hand. “The people who matter know Sandra’s heart. Even though she has one strike in her file, she’s already redeemed herself with her updated protocols. Just like you, Cole, have one strike in your file and have already redeemed yourself with your updated actions and mind-set.”

  When Dr. Herzog checked his watch and said he had to leave, Cole felt drained. And frustrated.

  He would try again. He picked up his phone and called Dani.

  Chapter 12

  Several days later Sandra realized something really was wrong between her and Cole, and she wasn’t just imagining it. She stood in his doorway and studied him. He had deliberately looked out the window as if to avoid her. She’d let him get away with it earlier but not a second time.

  “Cole, may I come in?”

  He turned, gave her a fake laugh. “Oh, I didn’t see you standing there.”

  She leaned against the doorjamb, waiting for his permission to enter, and asked quietly, “What’s wrong?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing. Just tired. That’s all.”

  Only he’d said that yesterday too. At first she’d believed him. But not now. Taking a chance, she strode in. “I don’t believe you.”

  He opened his mouth to say something, but she quickly interrupted.

  “Yesterday you said the same thing. Now you’re ignoring me. Have I done something to upset you?”

  His startled gaze focused on her. “No. Not at all.”

  “Then what? Why?” She motioned to the doorway. “I thought we were getting somewhere as friends.” She swallowed painfully. She’d rather be upfront and honest. “I thought we were better than just friends.”

  His gaze softened. “It’s me, not you.”

  She gave a sarcastic laugh and turned toward the doorway. “Right. Normally that’s the woman’s line.” She walked out into the hall. She could feel herself shaking with hurt even while she tried to understand his attitude. Something was obviously bothering him, but what was it? And what did it have to do with her?

  To bury the pain, she buried herself in her job, focusing on every detail, keeping thoughts of him, of them, at bay. There was no them, not really. He was just a patient, someone she’d once been friends with.

  And that sucked.

  Cole watched Sandra walk out, feeling like an idiot. His heart was full of regret, and he didn’t know how to get back on track. He’d come here to pull himself together, but right now, he’d hit yet another major obstacle in the road. Instead of moving forward as a cohesive unit, emotionally and physically, he was breaking apart, becoming less than what he had been. He hadn’t meant to hurt her feelings. He’d never do that. He really cared about her. The hurt in his heart right now made him realize he wanted more than he’d first assumed. For that reason alone, he needed to be the best he could be. She deserved nothing less.

  There was a hard knock on his door. He found Brock standing in the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest, a frown on his face—not a welcoming look.

  “Trouble?” Brock asked.

  Maybe it was the timing, maybe it was Cole’s lack of defenses. Maybe it was the new understanding about where he was right now, but he nodded. Normally he wouldn’t speak about his personal problems. But over these last six months since the IED explosion, a lot had happened to change that. He could no longer be an island. He had the support of his medical team here. He would love to have Sandra’s support plus he needed his friend’s continued support.

  “Just a really ugly realization.” He leaned back on his bed and gave Brock a weak smile, who now looked the epitome of vibrant life and health. “Didn’t I always compete with you? Always try to do better than you?” he asked his friend.

  Brock chuckled and walked inside. He grabbed a chair, which he pivoted and sat on backward to stare at his buddy. “Not only did you always view me as competition but you always had to be of equal value.” He shook his head. “No matter how I tried to convince you that you would find greatness just as you were, you didn’t see that.”

  Cole shifted his gaze to the window. “Sometimes you have to wonder what makes a man who he is.”

  “Don’t wonder. Accept who you are and work on changing what needs improvement. Not only did you always try to compete and to do better and to be the best,” Brock said with a grin, “but you also used to hold me up as some sort of a role model. I was never that. I was never above you. I was never better than you or smarter or faster. Yet, you seemed to think that, and you always worked harder and harder to beat me.”

  Cole smiled. “Those were the days, weren’t they?”

  “They were. But you know something? I’m happy with these days too,” Brock said. “I sleep in my own bed, and I have a whole new future. I have a beautiful relationship. I’m not fanatical about fitness, but I care enough to work out and to stay in shape. No, I’m not doing the same work, but I’ll find something else.” He shrugged. “The pressure is off right now. I hadn’t realized how wearying it was being in the navy, doing what we did. We were always primed to be the best, to be in the best shape and to be ready to take on the world. Now I get to relax. I don’t think I ever did that before. It never seemed like I wanted to. But I do now. Life operates at a new pace, and I like it.”

  “It’s not the life we used to live,” Cole said. “I feel different inside. When I first arrived at Hathaway, I still had that same strong drive to do bigger and better things. But there was a panic behind it. Almost a frantic need to prove I could do this.” He nodded sheepishly. “And yes, I still had that sense of having to do at least as well as you did.”

  He motioned toward Brock, adding, “But it’s also obvious this is one challenge I have to tackle differently. I don’t need to be better than you,” Cole said, “but I sure as hell don’t want to be any less physically. I don’t want poor results. I know this part is completely under my control, and yet in another way, I have no control. I can’t get around the physical disabilities. Also, I was careless and hurt someone and caused trouble on my first arrival,” he admitted. “I never once thought about anybody else. I never considered I would get somebody else in trouble.” He shook his head. “I don’t know how to fix this.”

  Brock raised an eyebrow. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  Cole winced. “It’s not very pretty.”

  “Nothing about any of what we’re going through is pretty. From soiling the bed because we had no control when we woke up from surgery, to having catheters stuck up our dicks, to having nurses who wash us until we are capable of handling our own physical needs,” Brock said in a harsh voice. “I’ve been there too, buddy. But you and I are both past that. There shouldn’t be any embarrassment for either of us anymore. We know each other as well as we know anybody, so give. What the hell’s going on in that head of yours?”

  “It’s stupid.”

  “It’s all stupid. That also means it can and should be sorted out. Do you think I was any different when I came here, completely riddled with guilt that I wasn’t blown up on the job? That I was injured in a car accident at home? Look at all the tours I did in Iraq and Afghanistan. How many opportunities I had to get some horrific physical injury. But no, I came back and got messed up driving from point A to B. I took it out on everyone,” he admitted. “So don’t tell me about stupid. I was stupid. Now let’s hear your stupidity and see if we can get rid of it, and then hopefully you can heal that much more.”

  “I want to get better,” Cole admitted ru
efully.

  Brock grinned. “Have you noticed something? It’s like there are these little bars. We climb up to a certain point, and then something comes that we must deal with, and the bar falls a bit, and then we climb a little bit higher. The higher I went, the more I saw how much my personality and internal issues had to do with it. I felt like I was less than a man and not capable of being what Sidney needed,” he said, shaking his head. “Wow, that was a big one.”

  Cole stared at him with rising hope. “I’ve been wondering about that myself.”

  “Sandra?”

  Cole nodded. “We’ve been dancing around a lot of issues,” he said, “but I hurt her, and this morning I brushed her away because I didn’t know how to deal with what was in my head.”

  “From the beginning of your rehab, forget about everything else. Deal with one issue at a time,” Brock said. He crossed his arms on the back of the chair. “We used to do this in the military. Hash out ideas, hash out our problems, hash out the little things so they didn’t become bigger issues. Do it now.”

  Cole took a deep breath. “A few days ago I went for a short walk, feeling antsy. As I was coming back to my room, I went the long way around, past the offices. I was having some trouble with my prosthesis, so I stopped and leaned against a wall to fix it and overheard part of a conversation.”

  Brock nudged him along. “About you?”

  “Indirectly, yes. But directly about Sandra.”

  Brock settled back. “Okay.”

  Cole continued. “About her making a mistake in her job or not having done her job properly or however it was worded. I don’t remember because once I understood what it was all about, I felt really, really bad.” He motioned with his hand around the room and added, “I did mention it to her at one point, weeks and weeks ago, but she brushed it off.”

  “She brushed what off? What did you do?”

  “Remember when I first arrived, and I had that setback?”

  Brock nodded. “Yes.”

  “Of course that setback was my fault because I was doing too much, too fast, right?”

  Brock shrugged. “If you say so. I don’t know the details. I know I didn’t get a chance to see you. You were here and not doing so well, and then you were gone.”

  Cole winced. “I was so sure I knew what I needed. So sure I could handle everything that came at me. So sure that if you could do it I could do it,” he muttered. “So sure that I stopped taking all the medications Sandra brought me.”

  “Without talking to anybody about it?” Brock leaned forward and stared at his buddy. “Without discussing this with your doctor or Sandra?”

  Cole shook his head. “Exactly,” he said. “Obviously it was wrong.”

  Brock settled back. “Wow.”

  “Exactly, wow.” Filled with a sense of relief now that he’d gotten the worst of it out, he tried to explain further. “I don’t understand what was going on in my head, but I thought it was a good idea. I was on a medication cocktail at the time. I hadn’t had any improvement for a long time, from my perspective, and the pills didn’t seem to be doing whatever it was they were supposed to. I knew I was still on some antibiotics and a few other things.” He winced. “Now, of course, after the setback, and after the warnings the doctors gave me, I know I shouldn’t stop taking prescription medicine suddenly.”

  “You had a lot of internal injuries too. When you got here, they were a little afraid it was too early for you to be in rehab as it was.”

  Cole nodded. “Plus, I had trouble with blood coagulation.” He smiled, embarrassed. “Let’s just say it was not my brightest move. The fact that I did it for three days in a row and then collapsed and had to be rushed to the hospital, well, that was the height of stupidity.”

  Brock nodded. “All because you figured you knew better.”

  “I know.” Cole lifted his hands in a bewildered gesture and then let them drop in his lap. “I figured I was here now for recovery, and I didn’t want anything left over from the previous hospital, including the meds, and that I could do this alone. I thought, I can be strong. I can be fit. I can be better than everyone.”

  “Instead, you did something that worked against you and your plans.”

  Cole gave a bark of laughter. “Yeah, when you look at it that way, it doesn’t sound so smart, does it?”

  “Buddy, I hate drugs of any kind. You know that. But when I’m here, and I’m recovering from a multitude of various surgeries, and they tell me I need to take something, I take it. I mean, if I was working with bombs and you told me to put this wire on this detonator and to hold my thumb there and not to take it off, you sure as hell know I’ll do that until you tell me it’s safe to take my finger off.”

  “I know. Believe me. I know. I had lots of time in the hospital to figure that out,” Cole said. “It was quite an awakening to see how much of a brain fog I had been in about what my condition was and what my future looked like.” He shook his head. “I look back now, and I want to slap myself for being so stupid.”

  “So, what’s this got to do with Sandra?”

  The corners of Cole’s lips turned down. “She’s the one who hands out the medications every day.”

  Brock looked at him for a long moment and then slowly nodded. “So, she’s probably been given a reprimand for not having noticed or not having stayed behind to make sure she saw you take your medications.”

  Cole nodded. “Something like that. I did mention it to her, and I did apologize way back when, and she seemed to brush it off. However, in the hallway, I heard them talking about how she’s doing her job since that event.”

  “And about you?”

  “About me and other patients. I got the impression it was whether she had changed up her procedure enough since the warning to get her off the hook.”

  Brock winced. “Sandra’s been here a long time.”

  “All I had to do was talk to the doctor to find out how many of them were necessary, and why I was taking them, and which ones I needed to take, and which I could try to get off,” Cole said. “But to go off drugs like that—it’s not safe to go cold turkey.”

  Brock sighed.

  “Yeah stupid I know, I’ve figured that out now.”

  “You always were a bit of a hard-headed ‘jump first and think later’ guy. But right now, I presume you’re feeling crappy about what you did, and added to that, you might have gotten Sandra into trouble. Even if it’s a done deal for you, it might not be over for her.”

  Cole slowly nodded. “It’s not. Even though I spoke to Dr. Herzog to straighten it all out, I was too late. When I came back here the second time, all I wanted to do was to forget about that horrible start. Everybody joked about my restart, and yet it doesn’t appear that Sandra got her reboot. I never meant to get her in trouble, Brock. You’ve gotta believe me. I would never do that. She’s great at her job. She loves being here. She served all these people so well, and yet here I come along, and in three days, I completely mess up her life.”

  “But it doesn’t seem like she’s holding it against you. She’s been more than friends with you for the last month. She’s been your confidant and something a whole lot closer from the looks of it, and at the same time this has been going on in the background in her world.”

  “And she didn’t share it with me.”

  “That’s another part that’s gotten to you, isn’t it? She knows more about you than you do about her, including that she was in trouble over this.”

  Cole lay against the headboard and nodded. “Exactly.”

  Brock crossed his arms over his chest. “On that aspect, you’re not thinking clearly. She’s in a position where she’s the guardian of your health. She’s the watchdog. She’s got to make sure what she sees and registers as your results on a day-to-day basis is factual and truthful, so she does the absolute best she can to minimize any negative impacts on your health. For that reason alone, she wouldn’t tell you, knowing guilt will have a detrimental effect on you and you
r healing.”

  Cole stared at him. “You see? I know that … but my heart doesn’t like it.”

  “Got it. It doesn’t change the fact, however, that if I were in her position, I wouldn’t have said anything to you either, bro,” Brock said.

  Cole stared at his buddy for a long moment, then slowly nodded. “I guess I see your point. If our situations were reversed, and I thought she would be injured by the information and it would slow her healing, I wouldn’t tell her either.”

  “Do you understand how much of a chance she’s taking, being friends with you and dealing with all of this? She hasn’t had an easy time of it, and now you’ve made it harder on her. Maybe that’s something you should take a closer look at. Because she’s here and available doesn’t mean you can hurt her willingly either.”

  “Not willingly,” Cole protested.

  “Unknowingly or not, your actions have a domino effect on others. Not just her either.”

  “Do you think she did wrong?” Cole hated that he had to ask. He really hated that. He wanted to defend her to the ends of the earth, but he didn’t know what he was supposed to do.

  “No, I don’t. She gave you the medicine, and you’re an adult. You were cognizant and in your right mind. You were under no force, no duress. She shouldn’t be in trouble.” Brock shook his head. “However, you hid what you were doing, so she couldn’t document anything. You didn’t talk to her, so she couldn’t report it either. The worst of it is that she wasn’t as observant as she should’ve been.”

  Cole stared at the doorway. “She put it on the table and left.”

  “That’s all she should have to do. Because, if you don’t want to take it, that’s up to you. Step up and take the responsibility for your healing, or your non-healing, and be responsible for your actions,” Brock said quietly. “She’s paying for the repercussions of your actions. She also must stand up and take the repercussions for her own actions. If it was not in her mandate to stay and watch as every patient swallows their pills, then she won’t be in trouble.”