by Lynn Shurr
Despite the worry, despite the fear, Connor Riley’s loved ones slept past noon. They returned to the hospital in a group including Stevie Dowd and a petulant Merrilee who had used the morning to contact a babysitting service. Their group broke in on two other visitors and the tail end of a conversation. Joe Dean Billodeaux and Andy Mortenson sat in the small bedside chairs making the furnishings look even tinier.
“I wanted to win it for you so bad, Con. I’ve never missed a kick that easy in my entire career.
I’m so sorry.”
“We wouldn’t have been at the Bowl without you, Andy, so throw away the violins and keep the golden toe in good shape for next season. Okay?” Andy Mortenson nodded, then said, “You bet,” when he realized Connor could not turn his head toward him.
Joe Dean stabbed a plastic spoon in and out of a half-cup of chocolate pudding remaining on a lunch tray shoved to one side.
“I’d like to kill that Damon Suggs.” He twisted the spoon and the handle snapped.
“Nurse Nannette is going to be upset. She was planning on taking that spoon home to her son, the spoon she fed Connor Riley with,” Connor said lightly.
“Is Nurse Nannette the big blonde or that cute little brunette? Maybe she’s a Cajun gal, lonely, a long way from home, who could use some company from the bayou,” Joe Dean inquired, his interest piqued. “Either one can spoon feed me any day.”
“Neither. She’s the black one who weighs about the same as you, only stands a foot shorter. That woman sure can shovel pudding whether you want it or not.”
“Well now, that killed my fantasy fast, fast. I’ve been thinking of giving up my sex life anyhow. You know, do a celibate season like you almost did. Bet I could last all the way through the Super Bowl. You’d better be around to see the miracle.” Joe Dean squirmed on this seat. “I lit a candle for you this morning and made my promise to St.
Jude. Don’t have to start the celibacy thing until we’re playing football together again, though. I mean, St. Jude can’t make all things happen—like a whole year without sex. That would be truly impossible, at least for me.” Joe Dean tossed the broken spoon into the waste can as Nurse Nannette rolled into the room.
“You have more guests, Mr. Riley, so these two have to go no matter how handsome they are, and even if they do claim to be your brothers. Out, out!” She waved the football players into the hallway and made room for the family.
Merrilee was the first to the bedside. “I wanted to stay last night, Connor, but Kevin made me take the children home.”
“Sure. Thanks for coming.” Connor accepted cheerful greetings from his parents and Kevin, both sides putting on a good show of confidence. Everyone in the room ignored the fact that Connor’s hands and legs were strapped into place and turned their eyes from the catheter bag filling with urine through a tube.
Stevie took a deep breath and placed herself at the foot of the bed where Connor could not help but see her. He took one glance, then studied the ceiling again. “I told you to go home, Stevie. I don’t want you seeing me like this.”
She pulled up a chair and seated herself.
Resting her arms on the bars at the foot of the bed, she answered, “Make me go home, Connor Riley, because I’m not leaving until you can.” Merrilee gasped. “How can you be so cruel when you know he’s—you know he can’t move.”
“He will move. The sooner he focuses on that the better, Merrilee. And I’ll be here to see it.” Nurse Nannette, back on patrol, announced,
“Only two of you at a time. What say we start with the parents? The rest of you get some coffee or read a magazine in the waiting area.” She shooed Kevin, Merrilee and Stevie into the hall.
“I could use another cup of Seattle coffee. You?” Kevin nodded at both women.
“Tea for me, dear. You know how coffee upsets my stomach when I am expecting,” Merrilee said sweetly.
“Guess I forgot. Stevie, you want anything?”
“No, I’m good, Kevin. Thanks anyhow.”
“We’ll be in the waiting room, honey.” They moved past the accident victim. The old man in the oxygen mask had gone away in the night, whether to another floor or another realm, they did not know. Kevin continued on to the elevators while Stevie and Merrilee peeled off into the deserted waiting room. Stevie flopped down in a lounger, her long legs hanging over the edge of the seat. Merrilee, however, assumed a stance with her hands on her hips and her pregnant belly thrust nearly into Stevie’s face.
“I know what you are up to.”
“Huh?”
“You couldn’t have Kevin so you stalked poor Connor until he noticed you. As if that ‘collision’
shown on television was an accident. You intentionally got in his way. Once you got your hooks into him, I’ll bet you thought you got the better deal—a rich football player instead of a hard-working engineer who is away all the time on projects.”
“Connor is gone a lot.”
“For half a year. The rest of the time, he leads a life of luxury.”
“So?” Stevie shifted her position from lounging to upright just in case Merrilee decided to jump her.
“So now Connor isn’t such a great catch. He won’t be making piles of money. He won’t even be making love to you. He will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Sure, you can stick around and live off of him and play at being his nurse. That would be very convenient. When Kevin comes to visit his crippled brother, you’ll stick out those big tits of yours and try to lure him away from me.” Stevie stood up and towered over the smaller woman. “I have no designs on Kevin. He dumped me for you. If anything, I’m relieved I didn’t marry him.”
“You’re just saying that to shut me up. Please, I can’t compete with your long legs and blonde hair and great career. I’m a wonderful mother. I stay at home with my kids. I breast-fed all of them until they turned two. My boobs look like tube socks when I’m not nursing. I have stretch marks on top of stretch marks.”
“Look Merrilee, I’m pushing thirty and my tits and ass aren’t nearly as high as they used to be, so don’t feel bad.”
“Kevin follows your career.”
“He does?”
“Yes, he buys Sports Illustrated every week.”
“Along with a couple of million other people.”
“He Googled you right after you moved in with Connor.”
“Probably to make sure I hadn’t turned into a gold digger. He has his brother’s best interests at heart.”
“I’m begging you for the sake of my children, don’t take Kevin away from me.” Merrilee began to sniffle.
“Once more let me say I have no interest in Kevin. And Connorwill walk again. I’m staying here until he does. I suggest if you are so worried, you take your husband home with you.” Stevie balled her fists. “Hey, what’s going on in here?” Holding two steaming paper cups, Kevin Riley loomed in the doorway. He had a slight smirk on his face as if he had overheard and enjoyed two women bickering over him.
“Oh, Kevin! Stevie said the most terrible things to me.” Merrilee rolled her big belly against her husband’s body and buried her head in his chest.
She let the tears fall. “She doesn’t believe Connor will walk again. We should bring your brother back to New Orleans where people who really care about him can watch over him.”
“I don’t think Stevie said any such thing. Your hormones are taking over again, babe. The doctor says Connor can’t be transported right now, and you know Dad and I have to get back to work. Let Stevie take care of my brother. I know she’ll be great at it like she is at everything.”
She was, too. The couple who owned the house on the water allowed Stevie and Mrs. Riley to stay in their guest rooms when the situation was explained to them. They’d seen the accident on television at the lodge in Snoqualmie where they’d holed up to avoid the Super Bowl congestion like New Orleanians fleeing to their wilderness camps during Mardi Gras. Renting their place more than paid for the vacation and the next mo
nth’s house payment.
Darin and Jennifer Ames were inclined to be generous and sympathetic, even if they were not big football fans. Still, they had heard of Connor Riley.
“The hunky one with the blond curls, right?” Jennifer guessed.
“The curls are gone for now. They had to shave them for the surgery, but he’s still a hunk. My hunk,” added Stevie.
Mrs. Riley smiled at her possessiveness. And why not, Stevie thought. At the end of this tragedy, Kristen Riley might have the joy of seeing her younger son settled and possibly adding a few more grandchildren to the family, as if five weren’t enough.
Not wanting to impose any longer than necessary, Kris Riley and Stevie took a short-term lease on a condo near the rehabilitation unit where Connor would be sent upon release from the hospital. They’d waved good-bye to Keith and Kevin Riley who had to get back to their business and to Merrilee and her brood at the airport as soon as Connor had been taken out of the ICU.
The doctors were satisfied with Riley’s progress.
They kept reminding him what a very lucky young man he was. Those strong neck muscles probably saved his life when a lesser man might have died.
His prime, athletic body continued to heal rapidly, they claimed.
At this comment Connor snarled, “Then why can’t I feel anything but a little prickling?” Time, the doctors said, it takes time.
He wasn’t much more pleasant to his mother and Stevie. When Kris Riley gently teased him about his shaved head, he growled, “I feel like godforsaken Samson. All my strength is gone.” When Stevie asked the therapist to show her how to massage his muscles, Connor said, “I don’t want you looking at me under the covers while my body turns to mush.”
He wanted an aide to feed him, not Stevie, not his mother. He wasn’t their damned baby.
The hospital’s psychologist counseled the women that anger was not unusual and definitely better than despair. “Connor shows a fighting spirit. People who despair succumb more often to infections and side effects. The power of the human mind cannot to be underestimated.”
The breakthrough came quite suddenly one morning when Mrs. Riley had gone for coffee and Stevie worked with the therapist slowly bending and pumping Connor’s legs, massaging the muscles of his calves and thighs. After only a few weeks of lying immobile, Connor’s muscles had softened, lost bulk.
As she dug her fingers in trying to stimulate the nerves and tissues, Stevie’s mind drifted. She shut out Connor’s ranting for her to go home and leave him alone and went back in her mind to the last time they had made love.
She remembered the strength of his legs scissoring her more tightly against him when she rode on top, their endurance when he pumped into her. She shut her eyes as she stroked up and down his thigh. Something soft but growing harder bumped against her hand. Stevie opened her eyes and looked, not at Connor, but at the therapist, sturdy, no-nonsense Mrs. Jessup, who days ago had prompted Stevie to call her Jessie.
“Jessie?” she questioned.
“Oh, that happens. That part of the body doesn’t seem to be connected to the other parts in men. It has a mind all its own. The will to survive, I guess.
Those who are permanently confined to wheelchairs can have sex and conceive children. An erection must hurt with a catheter in, though.”
“Don’t talk about me like I’m not in the room,” Connor snapped. “Stevie, stop whatever you are doing down there. What if my mother walks in?”
“I’m only massaging your leg. This one,” she said poking him hard in the calf.
“Hey, that hurts. Quit it. You had impure thoughts showing all over your face. You looked like you were going to come any min—” Stevie pinched. His leg jerked. Connor stopped complaining. “Stevie,” he said quietly, “It hurts. It really hurts.”
All the tears she had not cried for him while trying to be strong wanted to come out at once. She bent over the hellacious gear keeping his neck and head immobilized and kissed Connor Riley on the lips, the cheeks, his closed eyes. “Oh, Connor!” Connor gave his mother a small wave of the fingers when she entered the room. Mrs. Riley dropped the paper coffee cups and started crying as she stood in a spreading puddle of hot mocha. Stevie took credit for all of the tears she mopped from his face, but she suspected some of them belonged to Connor.
“Can you move your toes, Mr. Riley? That’s great. I see your fingers are working a bit, too,” Jessie observed. “Good, good. Progress will come fast now, but remember, you still have to stay immobile until that neck heals. Now, you’ll be able to help us exercise these legs so it won’t be so much work for Stevie and me.”
“Yeah, you two-hundred pound side of beef. You can move your own legs from now on.” Stevie tried to sound tough, but her voice wavered. She felt another tide of tears rising.
Forgetting his mother’s presence, Connor smiled up at Stevie. “Hmmmm, sex in a wheelchair. Why Miss Jessie, I think you are putting ideas into my head. One other thing, though. Could you take the catheter out? It’s damned uncomfortable.”
Chapter Thirteen
Progress came swiftly, but not swift enough for Connor Riley. He stopped telling Stevie to go home and started haranguing his doctors to allow him to return to New Orleans. The doctors retorted that Seattle had some of the best medical facilities in the world and he was a lucky man to have been incapacitated here. They held him for eight interminable weeks until everyone from the neurosurgeon to the physical therapist made certain their patient could travel. Once out of the head and neck brace, Connor took his first steps held up by two sturdy male nurses with Mrs. Jessup looking on.
“You’ve lost weight and muscle mass, Mr. Riley.
Keep that in mind. Go slowly. Sit down when you must, and for God’s sake, don’t fall trying to be independent.”
“Yes, ma’am…Miss Jessie.” Connor stooped and gave his middle-aged therapist a peck on the cheek.
She blushed. He looked at the two male nurses. “For you guys, I got nothing.”
Laughter felt wonderful to him. Trying to comb back his bristly blond hair was a hoot. Holding Stevie to his chest and feeling her warmth against him outranked feeding himself and using a urinal ten to one on the fabulous scale. They would go home together and make love again. Of that, he was certain.
The day Connor Riley returned to New Orleans did not pass without its little humiliations, however.
His mother insisted on calling in a hair stylist to do something with his chopped locks.
“You know there will be cameras, Connor. There always are around you. Just relax and let Mr. Brice give you a new look,” Kris Riley fussed.
Unable to resist, Stevie photographed the ordeal, capturing every grimace as Mr. Brice evened, moussed and mussed Connor’s hair into standing up in pricks on the top of his head. The hairdresser waxed eloquent over working with a natural blond who had wonderful texture and built-in highlights.
He knew Stevie’s color photography would pick up the red in his face from neck to scalp. She got a good shot of his expression of horror when he looked in the mirror, too.
“I look like a marine gone gay,” he groused.
Deeply offended, Mr. Brice pouted. The hairdresser recovered when Mrs. Riley escorted him into the hall to hand over his check, plus a mighty tip, and add an apology for the all the trouble and the insult.
Back in the room, Connor said loudly to Stevie,
“I’d rather look just like a marine—or a football player, okay?”
The wardrobe he chose to wear home consisted of new running shoes, black jeans, a black turtleneck with a high collar to cover the marks of surgery and a black Sinners jacket that would be way too warm back in New Orleans. He tried to talk Stevie out of her Sinners cap, but Kris Riley whisked it away before her son could smash the hat down on his head and wreck his new do.
Riding out to the cab in the wheelchair rubbed against the grain of Connor Riley, but he understood rules had to be followed. He gave Miss Jessie a smacker that
left her blushing again and a grin and a wave to the rest of the staff who had formed an entourage behind the chair wheeled by his mother.
Stevie brought up the rear without complaint hauling a duffel bag of get-well cards and letters, red devils—handmade and store-bought in cloth, clay, and china, one knitted by a granny in a nursing home—and hundreds of other tokens of luck and good wishes from fans and teammates that had blanketed the walls of his room.
Connor caused some trouble at the airport when he refused another wheelchair ride and disappointed many aides in waiting, but his mother diplomatically asked for a motorized cart for the three of them to negotiate the crowds. A well-meaning stewardess, who obviously cared nothing for football, made the situation worse as the three settled into the wide, comfortable seats in first-class by asking pleasantly if Connor was a big Sinners fan on the way to a game.
“I play for the Sinners, and it’s the off-season, lady,” he said through gritted teeth. As the flight attendant scurried off to bring him an orange juice, Connor turned to Stevie and asked, “Do I look that bad, that strange to people?” Stevie considered the question by making an imaginary lens with her fingers and focusing on Connor. “It’s the hair. People remember you as Goldilocks. And you are thinner. Those great Viking cheekbones are standing out. Marcello would say you have wonderful potential as a male model.”
“Why doesn’t that make me feel better?” He snatched his orange juice from the attendant.
“I’m so sorry I didn’t recognize you, Mr. Riley,” she fluttered.
The woman was attractively over thirty, very slim, nicely made up, and obviously knew a hundred complex ways to tie scarves and placate passengers as part of her job.
The attendant went on, “The man two seats behind you says you are quite famous and wonders if you would autograph his cocktail napkin—for his son, of course. I don’t follow football very much, but I’ll be looking for you this fall now that I know who you are. Do you live in New Orleans?”
“Mandeville,” Connor mumbled as he signed the napkin. Like a man used to sleeping on planes or one just out of a long convalescence, Connor closed his eyes and slipped into sleep as easily as he evaded defensive players.