by Dale Mayer
“You’ll be doing that in no time,” a familiar voice said.
He looked up to see Fiona walking toward him, two cups of coffee in her hand.
He grinned and asked, “Is one of those for me?”
“It so is,” she said with a grin. She motioned to the man he’d watched. “Don’t worry. You’ll be doing that soon too. It just takes time and practice.”
“I can’t imagine,” he said. “Dennis helped me this morning.”
“Dennis will help you anytime you need it,” she said. “He’s a very giving person.”
“He is, at that,” Finn said. “I was figuring out whether I should eat before therapy or not.”
“It’s your first session?”
“Well, we’ve done the testing,” he said with a half nod. “Today is the start of the exercises.”
“Well, they won’t go too crazy on you then,” she said. “I’ll stop by afterward at the end of my shift to see how you’re holding up.”
“So you can cheer me on or hold my hand in commiseration?”
“To see if you need pain meds,” she corrected with a half laugh.
He winced at that. “It’ll be bad, won’t it?”
“Maybe not,” she said. “But, if you didn’t need help, you wouldn’t be here.”
“It’s my back,” he admitted.
“It won’t be just your back then,” she said. “Once a muscle is damaged, other muscles are called into play. In this case, you’ve got a lot of back injuries that pretty well affect your entire body.”
“Right,” he nodded. “And what do I do if I have an accident?” he asked bluntly. There was silence for a moment. He glanced up to see her studying him and again found that warm glow. He flushed. “Yes, I’m worried about humiliating myself,” he muttered. “Yes, I’m worried about acting like a fool. And, yes, I’m afraid of making a mess and having to get help,” he said. “Is that so wrong?”
“Not only is it not wrong,” she said, “I’m really happy you managed to voice that.”
He could feel the heat getting stronger on his cheeks. He shrugged uncomfortably.
She chuckled. “And, like so many men, you don’t like to talk about such things.”
“No,” he said, “I prefer to avoid those conversations than to talk about them.”
“So you can either tell your therapist that you have a colostomy bag, so that you’re both not surprised, or you can expect that they will have done their job and will have read your chart,” she said firmly, “and will be expecting that bag to be there and will also be working on the muscles that are required to keep the bag functioning properly.”
“I don’t know how much is required,” he muttered. “I’m just worrying.”
“About leakage?” she asked.
He hated to even discuss it, but he nodded quietly.
“And again, doing the exercises, you could find that is a problem.”
“Which is exactly why I brought it up,” he said. “You know, if it was a guy I was talking to now, it wouldn’t be quite so bad.”
At that, she laughed. “We have lots of male therapists,” she said, “but I don’t think you’ll be that lucky.”
Finn groaned and asked, “Why?”
“Because you have one of our new therapists. She’s tiny. She’s bouncy. She’s bubbly, and she’s got a mean streak in her.”
He stared at Fiona in shock. “So that really won’t help my cause, will it?”
“Part of being here is to get adjusted and to be happy and to understand where you are physically,” she said. “You cannot hide from this forever.”
“I don’t want to hide from it,” he said. “I want to hide it from everyone else.”
She nodded. “Heard and understood. But don’t expect miracles.”
And then, realizing the time, he struggled to his feet, grabbed his crutches and said, “Wish me luck.”
“You won’t need it,” she said in a gentle tone of voice. “Remember. It’s a bodily function, and it’s also one of the greatest gifts you got. That surgery saved your life. Learn to work with it, not against it.” And, on that note, she sat back and sipped her coffee.
Chapter 5
Fiona stopped by late in the afternoon to find Finn in his room, sitting on his bed, despondent, covered in sweat and looking like hell. She rapped on the open door and stepped inside.
He looked up at her, flashed her a half smile and said, “If you want conversation, I don’t have it in me.” He shifted on the bed and collapsed flat, his head on his pillow. “I’m done,” he whispered. “Just bury me now.”
She chuckled out loud. “If I had a dollar for every time I heard a patient say something similar …”
He lifted a hand and waved it at her. “I know. You’d be a millionaire by now, right?”
“Absolutely,” she whispered. “So, do you need pain meds.”
“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “It’s more muscle cramps than pain.”
“Where?” she asked, stepping to his side.
He shifted, rolled over until he was sideways and said, “My back.”
She could actually see the knots cramping. He groaned as one spiked and bunched up under her fingers. She gently helped him so he lay on his stomach, then straightened out his frame so that she could get at the muscles and gently started massaging. Using pressure and tension, she pulled and stretched out the knots. When she was done, she asked, “Anything else?”
But there was no answer. She leaned over to see his breathing was strong and steady, his eyes closed. She smiled and stepped back. She’d check on him later and see if he needed anything. For the moment, what he really needed was rest and recuperation. He might also miss dinner, which may or may not be a good thing in this case. She headed to the cafeteria, grabbed herself a half sandwich and a salad and said to Dennis, “Finn crashed. He might be looking for food a bit later.”
“Okay,” he said. “It’s always tough when they first get here, isn’t it?”
“Sometimes I think it’s tough right through to the day they leave,” she admitted. She smiled, her gaze meeting Dennis’s with the same understanding that he showed everybody else. He’d been here a long time, and so had she. Not quite as long but almost. Smiling, she took her dinner to a table and sat down.
Almost immediately Dani sat down beside her. She smiled at her friend.
“I hardly ever see you these days,” Fiona said teasingly.
Dani just rolled her eyes. “We have so many people coming and going,” she said. “It’s getting crazy.”
“Plus the addition in progress,” Fiona reminded her friend.
“And the addition,” Dani agreed. “How is Finn doing?” she asked bluntly.
Fiona smiled. “As far as I can tell, it’s been a bit of a shock arriving here,” she said carefully. “I just gave him a massage and helped him to crash. He had his first real PT this afternoon, and he’s exhausted. I just warned Dennis that he might need food in a bit.”
Dani’s face immediately closed down, slightly pinched with worry. “He’s been a good friend. I offered him a bed a while ago, but he wasn’t ready.”
“I’m not sure he’s ready now either,” she said bluntly, “but he’s trying to get up to snuff fast.”
“He’s always been like that,” Dani said. “Came from behind and took over very quickly. I know that he always had a bit of a self-confidence issue, so I think his injuries probably made it a lot worse.”
“I think his colostomy bag is his biggest hang-up,” Fiona said. “I’ve known several women with them, but I haven’t really had personal experience with too many men.”
“And yet, it’s such a marvel of modern medicine,” Dani said with a smile. “I guess it’s that whole male-ego thing again, isn’t it?”
“I would think so. But, as he becomes more comfortable dealing with the changes to his body, I think he’ll become a little more comfortable around other people too.”
“And, of course,
being in a place like this, we’re fairly blasé about it,” Dani said. “But, for him, he’s not quite to that level yet.”
“No, but I think the faster he gets there, the better off he’ll be,” she said. “Bodily functions are bodily functions, and there isn’t an easy way to deal with them when things mess up.”
“Isn’t that the truth,” Dani said. “Maybe I’ll check in on him after I eat and see how he’s doing.”
“And maybe take him back down to the animals, if you have a chance,” Fiona said. “Or I should. Let’s see how he is when he wakes up. I know he was pretty exhausted when I found him, not to mention had lots of muscle cramps.”
“The animals are a huge help,” Dani said with a tender smile as she looked across the deck. “Lovely is absolutely lovely,” she emphasized.
“I think the animals would help Finn too. Animals are so very natural in their own skin,” Fiona said. “It would make a massive difference if people could be the same.”
“More than that,” Dani said, “the more that he realizes we don’t care about his supposed limitations and that we accept him for who he is, I think the better off he’ll be all around.”
“Only when he starts to accept it for himself,” Fiona corrected. “Then he’ll be perfect.”
As the days had gone by, Finn was wrapped up in this roller coaster of tears, burning depression, feelings of hopelessness. There were smaller triumphs too but also more defeats. Only his visits with Elliot kept Finn from sinking too deep. So far he’d kept the depth of his emotions from his friend, but it had been hard. Sometimes almost impossible.
When he woke up on his one-month anniversary, it almost blew him away with what he’d accomplished, but it highlighted just how much he still had yet to do. His team had spent the last few weeks doing one thing: strengthening a specific set of muscles in his back so that he could sit properly. He hadn’t realized how much he was forcing the rest of his body to compensate for the weak muscles until they’d taken pictures and shown him how he slouched to the side while sitting.
He’d thought nothing of it, only that he was finding a comfortable spot. It was odd now, as if he were finding a place for all his organs so that they would rest naturally inside. He was missing a few parts, and others weren’t quite the same anymore. It had never occurred to him how much overall adjustment was needed for that. But he’d managed for a half hour to sit straight, not even conscious of what he was doing, before he started to slump.
And then his therapist had come along and had given him a hard poke, reminding him that his posture was once again falling. He’d straightened but had hurt himself in the process. The only damn good thing about his time here were the massages.
That had to be the best benefit of being injured. He didn’t know if other places did them, and he hadn’t gotten anything like that at the hospital. But here, after a heavy workout, his therapist gave him a hard rubdown. Several times he’d had muscle cramps, and a couple times he’d fallen asleep on her.
He’d been embarrassed at the time, but she never said anything, making him realize she was used to that reaction. Same with Fiona. It almost made him sad. He wanted to be special, and yet, he didn’t want to be special in a needy way. He didn’t want to be special in an injured way. He wanted to be like a special man. And all that seemed so damn far away. He wasn’t even sure it was something he could feel.
When Fiona came in that morning and took his blood pressure, she frowned at it and said, “Looks like you didn’t wake up on the right side of the bed.”
“Just woke up feeling a little bit happy and then immediately depressed,” he said, giving her a small smile and turning his gaze out the window. “It’s been a month since I’ve been here. Do I ever get a couple days off?”
“In the beginning, you’ll get half days off,” she said, “unless you overdo it or are recuperating from something. In that case, your team will shift your schedule.”
He nodded and continued to stare outside.
She clipped her notebook together and placed her tablet down with such force that it had his head coming around. “You look depressed,” she said. “Why don’t we go outside and visit with the animals?”
His gaze went back to the window, where the early morning sun was dappling across the trees. He nodded. “I can get out there myself though,” he said. “Go do your shift.”
“I can do my shift if and when I want to,” she said, her arms slowly crossing over her chest. She studied him for a long moment. “This isn’t a pity request.”
At that, he frowned. “I never thought that you were saying that out of pity,” he said carefully. “That would be a really terrible thing.”
“It would, wouldn’t it?” she said cheerfully. “I just thought that maybe you would feel a little happier if you could get outside in the sunshine.” She quickly whipped his wheelchair up to the side of his bed and said, “Come on. Let’s go. We’ll play hooky for an hour.”
He grinned at her. “Only if it comes with coffee.”
“That can be arranged,” she said.
He still wasn’t dressed—he was in his boxers as he slipped into the wheelchair.
She looked at him and said, “You’ll be cold.”
He snagged his T-shirt from the top of the dresser and some shorts, putting them on quickly, and then rolled his way to the hallway. “Are you coming?” he called back, laughing.
She grinned. He caught the bright twitch of her lips as he went around the corner. That made him feel better. If he could make her feel better, maybe it would make him feel better. Then he realized that she was probably trying to make him feel better, and that would make her feel better too. He sighed, and it came out a little too heavy.
“No, none of that,” she said.
“I just realized you didn’t look like you had a good morning either,” he said.
“Nope, I didn’t,” she said. “One patient who I have worked with for six months thought he was going home this week, and he found out last night he has to stay for another two weeks. He’s pretty upset.”
“I can imagine,” Finn said with feeling. “It’s hard enough being here, but, if your family’s on the other side of the country and you’re looking to go home, well …”
“Exactly the problem with him,” she said. “He’s got two little girls and a wife. They’ve flown out once, but they don’t have the money to keep making the trip.”
“Ouch,” he said. “That hurts. Kids grow up so fast, and six months is huge.”
“So true,” she said. “So he was very off this morning. I tried to cheer him up, but he’ll take a little bit of time to get out of this funk.”
“And, of course, his funk affects your funk.”
At that, she laughed out loud. “Well, I wasn’t in such a funk. I didn’t sleep well last night.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said cheerfully. She spun his wheelchair with a backstep, turned him at the corner and said, “Let’s go get coffee.” Instead of going into the line, like he’d been heading, she wheeled him around to the far corner where the coffee service was, and there they stopped, picked up two hot cups of fresh brew, and she motioned him outside.
They went down a long ramp, and he said, “I’ve never even been in the pool yet.”
“No,” she said, “you don’t get to go into the pool until the therapists say you’re cleared for it.”
“That’s a bummer,” he said as he studied the clean blue water. “It looks absolutely perfect right now.”
“Talk to your therapist,” she said. “Chances are you could go in now.”
“It’s supposed to be good for sore muscles, isn’t it?”
She laughed. “It’s not me you’re trying to convince. Convince your therapist,” she said. “I don’t have the right to give you permission to go in there.”
“Drat,” he said amiably. “I’m talking to the wrong person.”
“You are,” she said. “Now, if
the hot tub would calm you down and ease some of your back pain, then maybe, but that’s not really your problem.”
“Muscle knots,” he said instantly. “It would help with the muscle knots.”
She laughed. “Now, if you’d said that first, I’d have jumped on it immediately.”
He was still carrying both cups of coffee as they went past the pool and patio area around to the back where there was a heavy gravel path. It went all the way around the building so that people could come for a walk, whether rolling along on wheelchairs or on crutches. Using whatever mobility they could, this was a space for them. “A lot of thought’s gone into this place, hasn’t it?”
“You have no idea,” she said. “Dani and her father have done so much here.”
“Speaking of which, where’s the major?” he asked. “I saw him the first day across the room, and I haven’t seen him since.”
“He was at a conference,” she said. “He should be back today.”
“Good, I want to see him,” he said. “I doubt he remembers me, but I certainly remember him.”
“Was he already back from the war then?”
“Yes,” Finn said, his voice dropping. “He was a very angry man with a lot of issues.”
“Good, then you should see him now,” she said. “He’s completely different.”
They stopped at the side where the horses dotted the fields on the hillside.
He asked, “How many does she have right now?”
“Hi,” Dani said from off to one side, where he hadn’t seen her. “Five, and I’m boarding four right now.”
He grinned at her. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?” He looked and motioned at her jeans. “Have you been out riding or just communing with the horses?”