by Dale Mayer
“I did,” he said. “Probably most of us did. But we also know you were miserable. Is that how you want to be all the time?”
“But I won’t be like that all the time,” she argued. “It would be a settled issue.”
“And that would make it worse,” he said. “Right now, you have an easier time of walking away because you’re not really walking away. He’s still here, so that’s still something that you have an option to proceed with. But, once you make that decision, then it becomes that permanent kind of a thing, and it’s very hard to open that door again.”
“I know, and I don’t even have any real reason for feeling this way.”
“Sure, you do,” he said. “Your feelings don’t need to be validated by anything other than the fact that they exist. What you must do is figure out why they exist and make a decision to move forward or not.”
“I really love him, you know?” she said softly. She wrapped her arms around her chest, feeling the chill even though they were out in the sunshine. He reached an arm around her shoulder, hugged her close and said, “And that’s the only answer there really is.” He stepped away and called out as he left, “I’ll have it ready for you at noon. Don’t come in through the main part of the cafeteria. Just knock on the door, and I’ll give it to you.”
“Okay,” she said. “Thank you.”
He gave her a big grin. “We’re going to have a lot of weddings around this place,” he said, “and I can’t wait.” With that, he disappeared.
She walked back to her office and thought about what she was trying to set up, wondering how she would get Gregory’s agreement. The easiest way would be to just ask him. And maybe he’d be okay with that too. She had to do her rounds anyway.
Meredith quickly took care of patients and stepped into his room. He had just returned from a session with someone—she hadn’t checked her tablet to see who it was. He looked up at her in surprise. She held up her tablet and said, “Checkup time.”
Obediently he sat down and let her go through the motions of doing what she had to do every day.
“Are you ready for lunch?” she asked.
“I was planning on it,” he said. “I’m feeling a bit stifled inside.”
“Well, I have a plan,” she said.
“What’s that?”
She hesitated.
He looked at her and raised an eyebrow and said, “What’s up?”
“We need to talk,” she said.
Immediately his smile fell away. He stiffened, nodded and said, “Yes, we do.”
“So, meet me at the elevator, maybe in twenty minutes?”
He frowned, considered her face for a long moment, then nodded. “That sounds ominous. Is there some bad news I need to know?”
She gave him half a smile. “I wouldn’t do that to you.” And she turned and walked away, but her stomach was hurting, and her palms were sweaty. It bothered her that she was making such a big deal out of it all, but she really needed to know where she stood, and she needed to know where he stood because she couldn’t do the hot and cold anymore. It was just too devastating and too traumatizing to her sense of well-being.
Meredith finished her work and waited for the last five minutes to go by. It seemed super slow, but she was also terrified that something would happen or somebody would come in and take her away, and she wouldn’t be able to meet Gregory.
Finally, she headed to the cafeteria and knocked on the door. Dennis met her there, handed her a large basket and said, “Enjoy.”
And he closed the door in her face.
Time alone was one thing. Time alone with lonely thoughts was something else altogether. What was she up to? Did he even want to know? Hell yeah, he did. It was killing him. Twenty minutes was nothing, but it was also a lifetime. He went over every possible option and still came up blank.
That had been their relationship so far: clarity followed by confusion. And this was no different. Moodily he sat in his chair and stared out the window, waiting for the time to pass. This trip had brought him so close, and yet, in many ways, he was still so far away from getting what he desperately wanted.
They were friends. Dare he hope they were good friends? But he hadn’t told her about his reason for being here at Hathaway House. Would she appreciate hearing it or consider his actions in a negative light?
He knew they couldn’t go on like this. Someone, somehow, needed to clear the air between them.
And it might as well be today.
Chapter 15
She met him at the elevator on time. He took one look at her and saw the basket in her hands, and his gaze lit with pleasure. But almost immediately the light disappeared from his eyes. “So is this good news or bad news?” he asked again.
“I don’t know,” she said, “but I figured that, of all things that we needed to do, it was to come to an understanding.”
“Agreed.” He gave a clipped nod and rolled the wheelchair into the elevator. They went down to the bottom level, and there was Racer, sitting in somebody’s arms, just staring outside. He looked at Racer, smiled and said, “I don’t get to spend enough time with the animals.”
“Once you start the heavy PT regime, it’s hard to do everything. It takes about six weeks to get adjusted.”
“Well, I should be there then,” he said. “Actually it’s been longer.”
“Well, we’ve had some setbacks, haven’t we?” She headed out and down. He followed her, rolling at her side down to the pasture, and then she remembered something. “Oh, your prosthetic came in,” she said.
His face lit up with joy. “So, maybe this afternoon with Shane …”
“I think so,” she said. “That should make your life easier.” She took him to a lovely spot, where they could sit and watch the animals and talk in private.
“What will make my life easier,” he said, “is solving the problem between you and me. And the problem between you and me goes way back. The thing is, we’ve both apologized for who we were in the past. But we haven’t addressed anything about who we are right now.”
She pulled out a small blanket then sat down in a grassy spot. “Do you want to sit there in your wheelchair, or do you want to sit down here?” she asked.
“I want to come down there with you,” he said. He locked the wheelchair, stood up on his good leg and made several hops before he finally collapsed on the grass beside her. He sat up, looked around, and said, “This is really nice and private.”
“And I figured we needed that.”
“Yes,” he said, “I agree.”
She opened the basket, laid out the small tablecloth and unpacked lunch.
“Wow, Dennis went over and above,” Gregory said as he eyed the wine, a couple glasses and what looked like big platters of food.
“Yes,” she said. “I think he enjoys things like this.”
“I don’t imagine he gets too many opportunities.”
“No, I’d say mostly when there are problems,” she said with a half laugh. Gregory opened the wine, poured her a glass, and handed it to her. She set it gently off to the side as she unwrapped what looked to be croissants stuffed with smoked salmon, also some biscuits and jam, a fresh fruit platter and even some gourmet cheeses. In the warm sunshine, a gentle breeze easing the heat, both of them sat apart, yet both were so aware of each other.
At this point in time, they sat here gently and ate.
“So what do you want to talk about?” he asked, not looking at her.
“Us,” she said bluntly.
“Is there an us?” he asked.
“There could be,” she said, “but I don’t want to be going back and forth. I don’t want to be apologizing for what was before. I don’t want to even be thinking about what was before.”
“Is it that easy?”
“Maybe if we’re both determined to move forward, yes,” she said quietly. “You’re a very different person since you’ve arrived here.” Immediately after she said that, she sensed him withdrawing. Sh
e shook her head. “No, I don’t mean physically. I mean emotionally.”
He looked at her in surprise. She nodded. “Yes, your body’s changed. I’m a nurse. That doesn’t bother me in the least,” she said with a wave of her hand. “I get that, for you, it’s huge, and I’m sorry. I’d have done anything I could have to save you from this. But there isn’t anything I could have done. There isn’t anything I can do other than to help you become the best and strongest that you can be.”
She waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. She took a bite of her sandwich, washed it down with a drink from one of the bottles of water and said, “Emotionally you’re deeper, richer, stronger than I ever thought you would be.” At that, she saw his shoulders straighten. She nodded. “Not what you expected me to say, I presume.”
He shook his head slowly. “No,” he said. “I think we tend to see only the deficiencies in our own selves. We rarely look for the good things.”
“When you arrived, you were cocky, arrogant, confident, and I knew that you would take a beating … because I’ve seen it happen before. Many arrive here thinking that they can ace their time here. We have those who are closed off from accepting help, and we have those who arrive open and willing to try, and then we have those who are full of themselves. They think that they’ve already been through rehab, so how hard can it be?”
At that, he snorted. “They haven’t met Shane,” he muttered.
At that, she laughed out loud. “And you’re right there. Shane is a force to be reckoned with. But he runs a hell of a team, and he’s the boss. What he says goes, and everybody else toes the line because he’s good at what he does.”
“As I’ve come to find out,” he said. “If he had said that weeks ago, I may still have been on the disbelieving side of life, but I do believe it now.”
“Exactly,” she said, “and, in the process, I’ve learned a lot about who you are inside.”
“Is that good or bad?” he asked hesitantly when she didn’t speak again.
“Good.” She looked over at him and smiled. “I’m also learning a lot about myself.”
At that, he frowned at her. It was swift, deep and a bit hard.
She shook her head. “I still like myself,” she said, “but I don’t like who I was back then.”
“I thought we weren’t going there.”
“Which is why we have to have this talk,” she said. “Back then I was shallow, insecure, full of myself and thought too much of myself. I wanted you to leave your love and come be with me and make me your passion instead. And that was wrong. I’ve already told you that I’m sorry for all that. And then you came to me and said that I wasn’t allowed to walk away and that you didn’t want to have closure.”
“I didn’t want there to be closure from us, so you could walk away from what we had,” he said. Then he stopped, confused. “That’s bringing up the past again, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “Which is why we’re here,” she said in a dry tone. “I would like to state for the record that I admire who you are, and I respect the journey you have traveled, and I’m incredibly heartened by the man I see before me now.” She reached across, slid her fingers into his and added, “He’s a very different man than the one I knew five years ago. But this one is vastly superior.”
His fingers clenched tightly on hers. “This one’s damaged,” he said, his voice harsh but low. “Have you forgotten that?”
“No, I mentioned it earlier,” she said cheerfully. “You’re the one who sees the damage. I just see a challenge that you have already aced. I think it’s incredible how far you’ve come and so fast. Shane thinks you’ve done an unbelievable job. He said that, when you got rid of that anger, there was a hollowed-out space inside though.”
“That was where the anger used to be, but that anger filled the void from where you used to be,” he said. “So, in truth, that void is still there.”
She looked at him.
He reached up gently, brushed his thumb across her lips and said, “Unless you’d like to come home again.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Is that where I will be? Is that my home?”
“I don’t know,” he said, “that’s definitely where you belong though.”
She smiled and whispered, “Yes, please.”
He reached across and gently kissed her. It was a baby’s breath of a kiss, just a gentle stroke of lips on lips, skin against skin, but it was heart against heart and love against love.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a more lonely five years in my life,” he said, “but, when I woke up in the hospital and realized how damaged I was, how broken, it finally came to me how much I’d lost because I knew that you would never accept what I was now.”
She opened her mouth, but he pressed a finger against it to stop her from speaking. “No, it’s my turn,” he said firmly but gently stroked her arm. “I needed to come and see you, see what this place could do for me, so that I might get back on track and be as whole as I possibly could. And, yes, I needed to do it for myself,” he said impatiently. “But I also needed to do it to see if anything was left between us.”
“Well, that was darn lucky for you that I was here,” she said, laughing. But then her smile fell away. “It was a coincidence, wasn’t it?” He gave her a secret smile as she shook her head. “There’s no way you could have known.”
“Couldn’t I?” he asked. “Did you keep track of me all these years?”
“Well, I would search for your name every once in a while, but it’s not like anything ever came up.”
He laughed at that. “True,” he said, “often nothing does come up. But, in your case, I had heard about Hathaway House. While on the website, when I was studying the staff, … guess who’s on the team photo page?”
She stared at him in shock and sagged back slightly. “You’re right,” she said. “I am up there.”
He nodded. “And then I had to figure out if you were still single and whether you had anybody permanently in your life. And, of course, I can’t tell you how many phone calls I made anonymously, asking if you were the woman I was looking for, saying the one I was seeking was married and had been living in California five years ago.”
At that, she laughed. “And, of course, they would have said that, no, I was single.”
“Exactly,” he said, giving her a fat smile. “And that’s what I needed to know.”
“Are you saying you came here for me?” she asked in a daze.
“I came here on a hunch and a prayer that maybe, just maybe, you would let me back into your life,” he said gently. “Even if I don’t deserve it, I want it. I fought for it. I came here, and I’ve done the damnedest I could to put myself forward. … Never expecting the progress I’ve made. Or Shane. Or his plans that kept us apart. But the real goal in all of this was to have you back in my life.” He looked at her and smiled almost nervously. “So, what’s your answer?”
She teased and asked, “What’s the question?”
He held out his hand. “Shall we take that path forward? See who we are to each other now? Take it to the end of the line, hopefully, seventy years down the road when we’re both old and gray and shorter, curled up in matching rocking chairs together? And, if we’re lucky, making a much better job of it than we have done so far?”
She leaned forward, brushed her lips against his and whispered, “I’d like nothing better. So my answer is yes.”
And when he finally wrapped his arms around her and held her close—the Gregory she knew from five years ago now merged with the present-day Gregory—made the moment absolutely perfect.
Epilogue
Heath Hankerson had fought his surgeon hard to sign off on his transfer to Hathaway House. As he was healing at a tremendous rate, the surgeon had finally been persuaded to let Heath sign on with somebody else, and that had let him take the open bed at Hathaway House.
“I’ve heard a lot of good things about Hathaway House,” Dr. Macklin said. “I’m surprised you g
ot in. But then, the fact that you did means maybe this is where you need to go.”
“I think it means exactly that,” Heath said in a quiet voice. “I want this opportunity. I’ve heard some pretty decent things myself.”
“A lot of other good rehab centers are around the country though,” Dr. Macklin said, as he studied Heath’s face with care. “You could probably pick and choose.”
“That’s exactly it. And I have done exactly that. And I’m choosing Hathaway House.”
“In that case, there’s nothing more to talk about,” the doctor said. “You’re progressing well, and I would like to get regular updates. We’ve done a lot of surgeries, so it’ll take quite a bit of time to recover. At this point I have no idea how well you’ll do, but I’m hoping for a full recovery.”
“I know it’s up to me now.”
“I’ll write up detailed notes for the physio team there to continue the work you’ve been doing.”
“I’d appreciate that,” Heath said.
“Wouldn’t hurt you to send me an email every once in a while too,” Dr. Macklin said. And then he laughed. “I still get emails from patients I treated twenty years ago.”
“That’s because you care,” Heath said with a grin.
“I do. It’s not easy. We see people in pretty rough shape when they initially come in. We do the best we can, and sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn’t. At a certain point, the medical technology can only do so much for you. In this case, you’ve done pretty well though. Now it’s up to the physio and to your own will to be better.”
Heath nodded, and, just as he slowly moved out of the office, Dr. Macklin called out behind him.
“Do you have a specific reason for going to Hathaway House?”
Heath turned, looked at the doctor, and smiled. “Well, Houston was always home. I don’t have any family left, but something is drawing me back there. As for why Hathaway outside of the location …” He pondered for a moment and then said, “I guess the only answer I really have is just this gut feeling about it.”