by Jill Barnett
"What are you doing back?" he finally asked, his voice purposely hard and snide, something that took a great deal of effort since inside he still sang because she was standing there.
She leaned against the doorway, appearing not the least bit affected by his remarks, even smiled a small quirk of a smile before she said, "It's good to see you too."
He stopped himself from wincing, and since he couldn't seem to come up with anything mean enough to say to her, he decided to be silent. A few pregnant seconds meandered by, then he found the strength to glower at her.
"Well, here's what we have to work with," she said to someone behind her as she stepped into the bedroom.
A big bear of a man came into view. He had graying blond hair, a nose as big and misshapen as an Idaho potato, and a mouthful of grinning teeth that were whiter than a country snowdrift. His cheeks were apple-red, looking chapped by the sun and wind, and his gray suit fit his wide shoulders like an oat sack. But the thing that caught Montana's attention was what the man held in his mammoth fist—a black leather doctor's bag.
Montana swore loudly.
"This gentleman, with the four-letter vocabulary, is my husband, Dr. Karlson." Addie looked at the huge doctor as if they shared a private joke, and that really pissed off Montana.
"I told you to leave!" He gave Addie the angriest look he could muster. "I don't need another doctor! I just need to be left alone!"
"If you'll leave us alone, Addie, I'll examine him." Dr. Karlson walked toward him.
"What in the hell are you doing calling my wife by her first name?" Montana suddenly felt strength run straight to his fists. He also felt the intense need to bash the man's potato nose into his face.
The doctor pulled up a chair and sat down, dropping the bag next to him. Then he leaned back and silently scrutinized Montana until he could have sworn the big man could read his belligerent mind.
"Do you want to walk again, Mr. Creed?"
"No." Montana gave him a look filled with the same sarcasm as his voice. "I want to spend the rest of my life in this damn bed."
The man smiled, and Montana had the feeling he'd heard those words before. The doctor waited a moment then said, "I promised your wife I'd examine you. I will not let her down, so you can cooperate or—''
"What's my wife to you?" His upper body stiffened with jealousy.
The big man was silent. Montana wanted to kill him, and wondered if maybe he could pull himself to the edge of the bed so he could try.
"Your wife is a friend, and in one short week is someone I've come to respect. I want to tell you something, Mr. Creed. Your wife sent me a letter about you." The doctor pulled a crumpled up piece of paper from his coat pocket. "Listen to this:
"Dear Dr. Karlson:
I am writing to you about my husband, whose back was injured from a fall. This has been really hard on him because he's a young, strong man who is used to doing for himself. I have heard that you have a clinic where you teach people to walk again. I would like to come to visit your clinic for the purpose of learning your techniques. I want to teach my husband to walk again. He's a proud man who won't be easily handled. If I can learn, then maybe I can help him without his knowing it. That might save his pride and our happiness. We have a small farm in Alameda County, only half a day from San Francisco. It seems since we're so close that maybe God had something to do with this, and I hope you'll agree.
Awaiting your response,
Mrs. Adelaide A. Creed
Bleeding Heart, California"
Dr. Karlson folded the letter and put it back in his pocket. Then he looked Montana straight in the eye. "She doesn't know I brought the letter. Your wife wanted me to examine you and let her know if there was any chance of the techniques working for you. She didn't want to get your hopes up, she said." He stood, locked his huge hands behind his back, and paced slowly.
"You know, Mr. Creed, I don't think there's a man alive who wouldn't give everything to have a woman like her. From the minute I agreed to help her, she jumped into learning everything with more determination than I've seen in patients who wanted to walk more than anything in the world. Addie was like that. She wanted this for you, more than anything in the world. When I told her that you were lucky to have her, she just laughed and said she was the lucky one, and that she loved you."
Montana continued to stare at the tantrum-stained wall, feeling loathesome and small and petty. He didn't even know if he could look this man in the eye. He didn't want to hope that the doctor could help. He was too afraid, because if it didn't work, he didn't know if he was strong enough to deal with the defeat, again. The knot in his gut twisted and he closed his eyes for a brief, settling moment. Addie's face smiling up at him on a moonlit night flashed through his mind. Somehow he dredged up the nerve to look at the doctor. "What do I have to do?"
"Let me examine you, and then we'll talk."
Montana jerked the covers off his bare, useless legs, scowling at them. They looked the same as they always had, long and muscled, but the muscles didn't work. His gaze moved upward to his thighs, still looking powerful from years of working and riding. He couldn't tighten them. Then he stared at his flaccid genitals, and was filled with a desperate feeling of hopelessness and weakness. He couldn't feel anything, do anything; in fact it was as if everything below his waist belonged to someone else. After a long moment he looked at the other man. "Go ahead."
Dr. Karlson closed the bedroom door behind him and turned to Addie.
"Well?"
"There's a chance," he told her. "He has some sensation below the injury, which indicates that this could very well be temporary. But I told him what he had to do. You can't do it for him, Addie. You can stimulate the muscles, you can massage them and help him, but you can't do it alone. He has to try himself. He has to learn to use those muscles, and you've seen firsthand the pain he'll go through."
Addie nodded, remembering the struggles of the people in Dr. Karlson's clinic. Men who cried from the pain of struggling to stand up, one woman who was drenched with sweat from only a fifteen-minute session on a bar walker, a child who laughed and giggled all day because she was finally ticklish again on one small toe. That child's joy had been the catalyst for the patients of the clinic. Within two days most of them had progressed farther because of the hope given them by the little girl's laughter. And Addie wanted Montana to hear that laughter.
Dr. Karlson rolled a high, cane-backed invalid chair into the hallway. Addie put her hand on his arm. "I'll take that inside."
He searched her face for a moment, then asked, "Are you sure you're up to it?"
"You think it'll be that bad?" she asked.
He nodded, a tinge of a smile playing at his lips. "Remember Ezra Crowley?"
She shuddered. "Don't remind me. I didn't know such words existed." The man was a banker who'd fallen down a flight of stairs. He'd arrived at the clinic the day before Addie had begun her brief training stint, and Dr. Karlson had sent her to the older man for a baptism by fire. It wasn't easy, but by the time they'd left this morning, Ezra Crowley was racing down the corridors in his invalid chair, pinching the nurses and sending the nuns into hiding.
"I've left your husband the book with the exercises. It's lying on the night table. He didn't touch it while I was in there. He had some questions, most of them doubtful and challenging. It's going to take him a while. I've met his type before. He's about as hard-headed as they come." Dr. Karlson gathered his things and waited.
"I know," Addie said walking him to the front door. "Custus will take you back to the train station." She held out her hand. "Thank you, for everything."
The big man smiled back at her. "You're pretty special, Addie." He gave her hand a pat. "It's too bad you're already taken."
She laughed. "You wouldn't have time for me if I wasn't. Besides, Melda Potts has a fancy for you, I think."
Melda Potts was the female version of Ezra Crowley, and the good doctor laughed, then waved good-bye and walked
to where Custus sat in the wagon.
Addie closed the front door and walked to the hallway. She grabbed the invalid chair, took three deep breaths and rolled it into the bedroom.
"Goddammit, Addie, get that thing out of here!"
Chapter 27
Addie settled a little deeper into the stuffed chair, dislodging the tooled-leather book that lay open in her lap. The crisp pages fluttered closed and she sighed. She couldn't concentrate. Pulling the spectacles from her nose, she let them drop, the chain around her neck keeping them within easy reach. She rubbed the bridge of her nose and let her head drop back against the lace tidy that protected the chair's back. It was late, and the crickets chirruped from outside and an occasional rush of the wind in the eucalyptus leaves spilled indoors, like they used to, before their world fell apart.
It had been another long day, one where Montana's moods had been mercurial. She had cracked open the door and seen him thumbing through Dr. Karlson's book. The sight had given her such hope. Maybe he would try. But when she'd gone inside and tried to massage his legs, he'd bullied her almost to tears. She didn't know how to deal with him. One minute he'd be pensive and quiet, and the next belligerent and rude. She'd only had a week of training, and while some of the patients had acted like Montana, she wasn't as affected as she was when it was the man she loved who was doling out the hurt. She closed her eyes and vaguely felt the edge of sleep start to fall over her.
The crash of breaking glass sent her reeling out of the chair. She ran to the bedroom, where she found Montana struggling to sit upright while he stared with disgust at the shattered remains of the bedside lamp, now burning on the floor. She grabbed a pillow, beating out the flames before they spread. Then she stood there silently, clutching the smoky pillow to her chest and remembering the spills from before. She awaited Montana's violent reaction. It didn't come.
Curious, she looked at him. His eyes were on the spill, staring blankly, his shoulders and neck muscles ridged with tension, and she followed the ridges down his arms to where his hand held the sheet in such tight, knotted fists that his knuckles were stark white and his hands shook. All of his pride was slowly being destroyed, eaten away by his inability to control his body. The angry tension he felt was born of shame, the shame that he could do so little for himself.
She ached for him, ached for him to walk that cocky, arrogant walk that had set her teeth on edge when they first met. She ached for him to dance, like a mating turkey on a quiet moonlit road. She ached for him to ride like a stormy wind on Rebecca's horse or to pedal her cycle around the farmyard, his long legs sticking out like a rock crab. But God only knew if it would ever happen, so she moved closer and placed her hand on his white-knuckled fist.
Montana turned his troubled, hurt, fear-filled eyes toward her. She stepped closer and, Lord above, he finally reached for her. "Oh God, Addie…'' He pulled her against him, burying his face in her neck, and he held her as if she were his miracle.
He whispered her name over and over against her neck, and she felt him swallow several times. She swallowed too, but her tears came anyway, spilling down her flushed face as she rocked with him.
"I'm only half a man, Addie." His voice was a raw rasp, but the words in his admission bored straight to her heart.
"Not to me, my love, and even if you never walk again, I'll still love you. No matter what happens, you'll still be my husband—only dying can change that, and if you die," she sniffed a short laugh through her tears, "I'll kill you." His arms tightened around her and she took a deep breath, just letting him hold her and draw from her what he needed.
Long moments later Montana pulled back, still holding her in the close circle of his arms. "I might not ever be able to give you children."
It killed her to see him like this, scared and human and vulnerable. And she knew he was most vulnerable with her. His doubts were about them, not just him. Now more than ever he needed her reassurance, so Addie shrugged, ignoring the fantasy image—brown-haired boys who loved horses and little wisps of girls who loved books—the children they might have had. "I have my chickens, the cattle—I named them, incidentally," she admitted with a tentative smile.
He looked down at her, exchanging smiles. "I know." Then his face grew serious again. "I won't be able to make love to you, the way a man was meant to love a woman."
"You can hold me, and as long as you still love me in your heart and your mind, that's enough for me."
He was quiet again, then he took a deep breath. "When we married, I made you a promise." His eyes, still unsure, searched her tear-streaked face. "I'll never dance with you again." His look told her how important that one thing was to him.
"Oh Montana…'' She shook her head at him. "It's not the dancing, or the physical loving. And children are gifts from God anyway. It's the needing, the holding, the loving from deep within that's important. It's having someone to talk to, to share things with. It's not being alone anymore, and it's knowing that you're loved by someone, just because you're you."
She placed her right hand in his and her left hand on his shoulder, positioning their upper bodies as if they were standing, getting ready to waltz across the room. She looked up at him, her chest lightly touching his. "Is this really any different just because our legs aren't moving?"
Relief and love and tenderness freed the tightness in his face, and he even smiled again.
"There's no music," she said, just like she had on that moonlit night. She snuggled her head against his chest and soon his chin rested on her head and his hand squeezed hers. They both remembered. Then his chest rose and fell with a few deep and ragged breaths.
A moment later he whistled their waltz, until they both drifted to sleep.
* * *
"Open this for me, would you?" Addie handed Montana a mason jar with a towel around its lid.
Montana turned the tight lid and handed it back to Addie.
"Thank you." A secretive little smile quirked about her lips before she turned and left the room, her steps as spritely and happy as if she had just won a blue ribbon for chicken raising.
An hour later she marched back in, carrying all the fixings for a bath. She spent over an hour washing him and rubbing his dead muscles over and over. Then she left again, still smiling.
It wasn't much longer before she came in to change the sheets. Instead of rolling him around like a Christmas sausage, she made him lift up, use his arms and strain to pull his body around so she could tuck in the sheets. This time she whistled her way out of the room.
He wasn't stupid. He knew what she was doing, though he wondered if her antics were all in vain. He'd read the book Dr. Karlson had left. It had pages about muscle stimulation, massage, and instructions explaining why it was important to keep the patient moving and keep up the strength in the upper body and arms.
A month of this and he'd resigned himself to her manipulations. In fact there were times when he laughed to himself. She was so proud of her sneaky therapy that he let her continue, sometimes just to see how far she'd go. She was the light in his black life, and no matter how hopeless he believed his situation to be, he would never try to send her away again. He needed her, and there were times when he actually believed that even useless as he felt he was, she needed him.
There was a companionship between them. Sometimes she'd just be sitting next to the bed, reading, yet they were together and the sense of peacefulness they shared was a whole new kind of emotion for him. The only chigger in their relationship was the invalid chair.
It sat like an Armageddon next to the bed, waiting. Addie had prudently stopped suggesting he try it, although he saw her gaze drift toward it more than once. He probably should have appeased her, but the chair was the one thing that still horrified him.
Montana felt, deeply, that if he sat in that chair, then he was accepting his paralysis as final, that he'd never walk again. He still wasn't ready for that acceptance. He needed the one internal speck of hope that flickered in the recesse
s of his mind—the hope that maybe the doctor was right, that maybe he could walk again, be whole again.
But he seldom let himself think of that hope, especially when he looked at his lower body and the useless appendages that weighed him down, kept him in the bed. When he looked at them, his rational side told him the hope could never be, and for the first time since Addie's return, Montana slumped back into desolation.
Addie stood over the stove, stirring the corn syrup and sugar and such that would boil into candy. She'd come across the taffy recipe in her aunt's book and she'd had the best idea. Pulling taffy was a great upper body exercise, and she intended to put it to use on Montana that very day. She had to keep him busy, otherwise he might fall into that depressive slump again. He'd been becoming more and more quiet the past day or so, and that worried her.
She turned the candy in a pan to cool, pulling a spatula through it again and again until it was cool enough to handle. She grabbed the butter that would keep the candy from sticking to their fingertips and, with the pan of taffy propped on her hip, she left the kitchen.
She slowed in the hallway, puzzled by the odd sound that came through the half-open door of the bedroom. It was a muffled, slapping sound. Very quietly she moved to where she could see into the room.
What she saw was so awful that she almost dropped the candy.
Montana sat in the bed, the covers pulled aside. But that wasn't what shocked her. It was his actions and, oh God, his tortured, angry face. Over and over his fists punched into his legs, socking them as if he could beat them into working again. His face was contorted and thrown back, and tears streamed down his cheeks. The more he beat his legs, the more he cried.
And so did Addie.
She stepped back from the door, afraid a loud sob might escape her. She didn't want him to know she'd seen him. It would kill him, but seeing him like that almost killed her. She glanced down at the candy, her great idea. It now seemed stupid. For the first time she wondered if maybe there was no hope. She had told herself she had enough belief for both of them, but that belief was sagging. The longer there was no progress, the more her hope dimmed. But she couldn't take the chance that he might see her doubt. Montana still needed her faith, even if she had to hide the fact that it was weakening.