When We Met

by Marni Mann

Fast and reckless was a life that no longer described me.

  The ache wedged into my throat, and I carefully lifted my head off the pillows.

  Her hand went behind me. “That’s it. You’re doing fabulous. Now, slide your legs.” Her expression was just as encouraging.

  I reached with my toes until the floor was beneath them. My ass was instantly on fire, causing my arms to take most of my weight.

  “How does that feel?”

  “Stiff.” I swallowed. “Miserable.”

  “You’re going to lift with your legs, not your back. Once you’re standing, turn around, and I’ll put the wheelchair behind you.”

  My thighs tightened, shaking as I bore down on my heels.

  Whitney’s arm went around my back, the other holding me in front. She counted backward from three, and at one, I gradually rose.

  “Shit,” I hissed as my spine straightened. The burning was so intense, I was light-headed. She went to turn me, and I shouted, “Don’t move!”

  “Breathe it out, Caleb.”

  “Fuck!” I screamed again, the electricity shooting to my foot and punching my lower back, threatening to take out my knees.

  “Long, deep breaths. You’ve got this.”

  My legs couldn’t take another second of my weight. “Get the fucking wheelchair!”

  Her arm stayed on my back, and I shifted just enough for her to position the chair.

  “Slow,” she reminded me.

  I found the armrests, gripping them with all my strength, and I lowered myself onto the vinyl. Once I was on the seat, my entire body tensed, the torture gnawing with the sharpest teeth. I didn’t know what part of me hurt worse.

  “Goddamn it!” I pounded my fists, the torment far too much to take. “Make it stop!”

  She knelt in front of me, her hands squeezing mine. “More deep breaths. Come on; we’ll do it together.” She sucked in through her nose.

  “Whitney, I can’t fucking do this anymore!”

  She shook my fingers. “Yes, you can.” Her hand went to my cheek, holding it up, forcing me to look at her. “I want you to inhale through your nose.” She paused. “Do it now, Caleb.” When I filled my lungs, she then said, “You’re going to exhale through your mouth.”

  The air came out, but the throbbing stayed.

  “One more time.”

  I followed her directions.

  “And again.” Her hand tightened on my face, thumb stroking my scruff. “The pain will subside. You just need to give your back a minute to adjust.”

  I held her eyes, waiting. The blanket eventually spread across me, the wind from the storm finally starting to die down.

  My head dropped, my energy drained. “Fuck me.”

  “Hey.” She lifted my chin until our stares locked. “Look at what you just accomplished with hardly any help from me.” A warmth grew across her lips. “And you’re going to feel so great once you’re cleaned up; you’ll see.”

  She waited for me to take a few more breaths before pushing the wheelchair into the bathroom, leaving me in front of the vanity while she turned on the water.

  As the glass began to steam, she lifted off my T-shirt and said, “I’m going to keep your shorts on, and I’ll give you some privacy to wash those areas yourself.”

  I could barely focus on what she’d said, finding myself being rolled through the glass door.

  She lifted the handheld nozzle from its holder, stretching the cord to reach me. “This bathroom is a dream. Whoever designed it did a marvelous job.”

  “That would be me.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  I shifted, alternating my weight to find a spot that didn’t punish my back. “When I had my contractor rearrange the sinks and remove the bathtub to make the shower extra large, I never thought I would use it for this.” I glanced down at my lap.

  “This isn’t forever, Caleb.” She sprayed my arms and chest, wetting my hair last. “Some of the patients I cared for after the bombing lost limbs. One was paralyzed from the waist down. You’re one of the lucky ones.”

  “Lucky?” I huffed, almost laughing. “Nothing about this is lucky. It’s fucking hell.”

  “It’s going to get better, I promise.” She squirted shampoo on her hand, massaging my scalp before lathering up a washcloth. She started at my neck, rubbing up and down, and moved on to my shoulders. “Lean forward just a tiny bit for me.”

  The tightness instantly hit, the stinging triggered next. I stabbed my fingers into the armrests, trying to breathe through it.

  “I’m going to take off your bandages and clean your incision.” She held my skin, so the tape wouldn’t pull, removing each side. “It looks fantastic.” She gently pressed the cloth against the area. “No sign of infection. You’re healing perfectly.” She continued to cleanse it. “Would you like me to get a mirror, so you can see?”

  “No.”

  Her motions halted. “Have you seen your incision?”

  I shook my head. “And I don’t plan to.”

  “Why not? There’s nothing scary about it.”

  My frustration erupted. “Because this fucking wheelchair and the walker I have to use and this relentless pain are reminders enough. I don’t need to see the scar too.”

  She came around to the front, bending so our faces were level. “It’s a part of you now. A sign that you withstood a bombing and a ten-hour surgery, and you came out the other side as a hero who had survived something so incredibly tragic.”

  “And what did it leave me with? Half the man I was and living with agony until I die. That’s not a hero, Whitney; that’s a handicap.” The emotion was in my hands and throat. “Maybe one day, I’ll face it. Right now, I can’t even stomach it.”

  She scrubbed my legs, dragging the cloth to my feet. “I wish you saw yourself the way I do.” She cleaned my arms and handed me the rag. “I wish you could see how far you’ve already come.”

  Hope and courage stared back from this beautiful woman’s eyes.

  But it didn’t reach me. Inside, I felt nothing. Not even a sense of pleasure when she had been bathing me.

  “I’m going to leave. I’ll be back in a minute to wash you off.”

  I stared at the sudsy cloth in my hand and wanted to throw it against the goddamn glass, shouting that I needed to get out of this body that I was now trapped in. But that would only cause her to come running back into the bathroom, and I’d be envious that she could move that fast and freely, and then she would have to pick up the washcloth since I was unable to do it myself.

  Instead, I washed my balls and anticipated her return, so I could get hosed down and be put back in my cage, like the fucking prisoner I’d become.

  Eight

  Whitney and I had just finished dinner, and while she cleaned up, I was reading The Boston Globe on my tablet, articles about the bombing still monopolizing the first several pages. No matter how hard I tried to take my mind off the incident and what it had left me with, I couldn’t. The bombing was everywhere I looked.

  But it wasn’t on Whitney’s face as I glanced up from the screen, watching her walk in and take a seat on the chair next to me.

  “How’s the pain tonight?”

  “Steady.”

  She’d worn her hair in a braid since my shower, the long tail hanging over her shoulder. She was playing with the ends when she asked, “Do you want to do some exercises before I leave for the night?”

  Something had been weighing on me since she had agreed to take this job. Now that she’d seen one of my most vulnerable moments, the timing felt right to bring it up.

  “I want to ask you something first.” I studied her face as I spoke, taking in each reaction. “In the note you left me in the hospital, you mentioned that I had saved you. What did you mean by that?”

  She sighed. “Oh boy, we’re going in deep.”

  “We don’t have to if it’s too much.”

  She broke off one of the small flowers from the vase and held it up to her nose. “I s
uppose I wouldn’t have written those words if I wasn’t open to talking about them.” She twirled the short stem, staring at the white petals. “I had a brother, David, who was eighteen months younger than me. They called us Irish twins since we were born so close together. For a little while, we even had the same haircut, thanks to some gum I’d gotten in mine, so my mom had to cut off my long locks.”

  When our eyes finally connected, hers were exploding with emotion, a look I hadn’t understood in the hospital but it was now so obvious.

  “I was twelve at the time, and we were at a playground not far from our house. I grew up in Vermont; it was the middle of winter, and we still went to that park every day.” She stuck the flower in her hair, between the folds, her hands now free and fidgeting. “We were supposed to meet my two other brothers and join the neighborhood kids for a game of hide-and-go-seek. David was standing on top of the jungle gym, and I was hanging from one of the bars. I picked up speed and swung into a pile of snow.”

  Her stare moved toward the open blinds, as though she needed the escape. I knew that feeling all too well.

  “I was yelling at him that we were going to be late, which would forfeit us a round. You know, the end of the world as a kid. He got tired of listening to me nag and bent his knees, getting ready to jump …” She pushed herself up from the chair and went to the windows, looking through the panes until she finally turned toward me. “He slipped and fell backward into the bars, where he hit his neck, dropping all the way to the ground, a spot full of rocks and gravel, no snow. When I couldn’t get him to respond, I screamed so loud, but no one heard me, so I ran to the closest house for help.” Her chest moved like she couldn’t catch her breath, her mind taking her to the playground—likely a place she mentally never left.

  “I remember waiting for him to get out of surgery, pacing the hallway, praying, silently promising I would do anything if he came out alive.”

  As the sun began to set outside, I saw the tears shimmering across her cheeks.

  “Fourteen hours later, the doctor told us David was paralyzed from the neck down and that he wouldn’t ever walk again. He was discharged about a month later. I would go to school, but that was the only time I left his side—I fed him, bathed him, I did everything for him.”

  I could see the rest of the story in her eyes, her pain slapping my chest.

  “A month before my sixteenth birthday, he got sepsis and passed away.”

  “Whitney …”

  She shook her head, acknowledging my sentiment. “Being a nurse was never my dream, but losing David was what sent me to nursing school and then Mass General, caring for patients like him … and you.” She wiped her cheeks, her eyes immediately filling right back up. “You talked about reminders this morning. I have them, too, cases like David’s, day after day. It hurts, Caleb. It hurts something fierce, and sometime throughout all of this, I lost myself.”

  I adjusted the pillow behind my head. When she tried to come over to help, I raised my hand in the air and stopped her, keeping the attention on her. “Why did you take this job, Whitney?”

  She cleaned her face again before answering, “I’ve feared change ever since losing him. It terrifies me, honestly. But if I hadn’t left that hospital, I would have been there forever, whittling away until there was nothing left of me.”

  “But I’m another reminder.”

  She sat at the end of the bed, staring at her hands for a few seconds. “Technically, yes, but when this job ends—and I know it will, one day soon—I’m going to watch you walk across this whole condo without any assistance.” The emotion returned—this time, it was much warmer and without any tears. “Caleb, you’re going to be my success story. The one I’d prayed so hard for, but David never got.”

  I couldn’t reach her, so I held out my hand. She moved closer, and I clenched her fingers, like she had done to me this morning. The hurt was still so present on her face, but it was dying down, returning to where it constantly lived in her heart.

  When I had been screaming out in pain this morning, I never would have known she was silently suffering her own torture. We were in two different places in our lives, fighting the wind and current, aiming for that beautiful horizon. And somehow, we had found each other, and as she’d already said many times, we were going to battle this together.

  “Whitney,” I started, taking in that gorgeous brown, trying like hell to spread a blanket onto her, “David’s accident wasn’t your fault. I’m positive I’m not the first person to tell you that, but I can see the guilt you carry, and I know my words won’t change how you feel, not when you’re weighed down by something that heavy.”

  I brushed my thumb across her knuckles, wanting her to sense this, not just hear it. “Sitting in front of me is someone I admire and respect tremendously, a woman who puts everyone before herself. If you learn anything from being here, I hope it’s the importance of your happiness and that it needs to come first, trumping everything else, even the guilt.”

  There was heat coming off her skin, replacing the iciness I had previously felt.

  “Whenever I’m around you, you identify the fear that’s eating at me, and you push me through it, filling me with this immense amount of courage. My physical therapists, the other nurses and doctors—none of them have that ability or have made me want to push this hard.” I squeezed her. “Only you.”

  Her eyes were finally beginning to light up.

  “I know you’re questioning what feels right and where you belong, but there’s no doubt in my mind that you were meant to be a nurse. Maybe your position will look different; maybe your focus will change. Hell, maybe you’ll be caring for kids in a Third World country. But you have a talent that can’t be taught; it’s something you were born with, and I’m so fucking lucky to get to experience it.”

  I gently pounded our hands against the bed. “You’ve given me life, Whitney. I don’t always verbalize that, but I certainly feel it.”

  A blush spread across her cheeks as she exhaled. “Thank you.” Her grip changed. I was no longer the only one clenching; she was now holding me just as tightly. “That means more to me than you’ll ever know.”

  Silence passed between us, and as I took in her stunning gaze, the pain in my chest dissolved, heat beginning to take its place.

  I knew there would be ramifications, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t stop this moment even if I tried.

  I shifted my fingers, linking them between hers. “Do me a favor, Whitney.”

  She nodded. “Whatever you need.”

  “Take out your notepad.”

  She used her free hand to grab the paper and pen from her pocket.

  “Show me our list of goals.” She placed the pad in her lap, allowing us to view it at the same time.

  I located the line that mentioned cooking dinner and pointed at it. “I want you to cross off family.”

  She scratched out the word in her light-blue ink.

  “And write your name instead.”

  She slowly gazed up at me; the weather that was in my chest was now in her eyes. “You’d like to cook … for me?”

  I nodded. “And I don’t want you dressed in scrubs, like during a time when you’re on the clock. I want you here as my guest.”

  “As in a date?”

  “You can call it anything you want.”

  Her lips parted, and she sucked the bottom one into her mouth, her teeth biting that tender spot.

  Just as she was about to respond, we heard, “Good evening, Caleb and Whitney,” from my night nurse, who was speaking from the doorway of my room.

  Still, my stare never left that rich chocolate, and Whitney’s didn’t leave mine, our hands even sturdier together.

  “I should go,” Whitney whispered. I felt her reluctance, and then she gradually freed our grips. “Can I get you anything before I leave?”

  “No.” And then I decided to add, “Enjoy your time off.”

  When she’d signed my contract, I’d let he
r choose which five days she wanted to work, and the two she’d picked for her days off were consecutive.

  She slowly stood from the bed. “If you need anything, I’m only a text away.” A shy smile spread across her mouth, and she turned, heading for the door.

  I watched each of her steps, the outline of her ass a little more visible in this set of scrubs. I pushed my head into the pillow, fucking groaning as I imagined how it would look in a thong.

  Nine

  “I thought you could use something sweet,” Veronica, my other nurse, said as she set a plate of Oreos on my nightstand.

  I thanked her, fixing my pillow, which she made no attempt to help me adjust.

  She was adequate, but in the weeks that had passed since I’d hired her, I’d learned that she was no Whitney.

  I still had another day before she returned from her two days off, which felt like a goddamn eternity.

  “Let me know if you’d like to take a shower or if you need anything else.”

  I nodded right before she walked out and popped one of the cookies into my mouth. The dryness immediately hit me, not even the creamy center making a difference.

  I grabbed my phone and snapped a picture of the plate, attaching it to a text that I addressed to Whitney, and I began to type.

  Me: You broke me from ever enjoying an Oreo again.

  I finished chewing and was lifting the bottle of water off the nightstand when my phone vibrated, a message showing on the screen.

  Whitney: Ha! Welcome to the Addicted Club. How about I bring some tomorrow? Or if you really want, I can swing by tonight.

  Me: You’re making a very tempting offer.

  Whitney: I’ll see you around seven, and I’ll bring dinner, too, so be hungry. :)

  Me: I hope this doesn’t ruin your plans?

  Whitney: Caleb, you’re not ruining anything.

  I put my phone away and called for Veronica. When she appeared in the doorway, I said, “Let’s do some exercises, and then I’ll take you up on that shower.”