by Dale Mayer
Five days later, Finn found himself crippled with cramps again. Fiona had brought Chickie with her to stop by his room, but the tiny dog was staying because he wanted to.
Finn’s heart broke when he thought about how small this little dog was, curled up against his chest like he was home. “How old is Chickie?”
“I have forgotten, actually,” she said. “I think he’s four or five. Stan has done a lot to keep him alive and thriving. But we have a very strict rule about not feeding him because the wrong food will upset his stomach immediately.”
“Which is just another problem along with his back legs,” he said.
“Right. But he is a well-loved mascot,” she said as she worked Finn’s leg.
At one particular spot, he gasped and rolled his face into the pillow, feeling the pain shuddering up and down his back.
She whispered, “Sorry. It’s really not wanting to loosen up.” Finally, she stopped, and she said, “You’re in your boxers. How about we get you into a bathing suit and get you to the hot tub. I can keep working on it down there.”
He rolled over, gasping. “Just the thought of getting into the hot tub …”
“Not a problem. I’ll help you,” she said. She walked over to his chest of drawers, pulled out a pair of swim trunks and held them out. He nodded, reaching for them. She walked over and snagged the wheelchair, came back and said, “Do you need help getting changed?”
“Nope. I’m done,” he said, throwing off the covers and picking up Chickie again.
She helped him, half-lifting, half-sliding him into the wheelchair. And, with him still hanging on to little Chickie in his arms, she quickly wheeled him down the hallway. But she didn’t go the normal way. He was surprised to find himself inside an elevator. He looked up at her. “I didn’t even know you could go this way.”
“Normally we can’t,” she said, “but this time I think it’s necessary.”
“Good,” he said, “the faster, the better.”
Before the doors even opened, he realized he was already at the pool level and close to it. She walked up to the nearby hot tub, parked the wheelchair, put on the brakes, lifted the little dog from his lap and put him on a pile of towels at the side. Chickie hopped off immediately, running to the edge of the water at the pool.
Fiona said, “Now, slowly, I want you to get up and get into this warm water.” She helped him up the hot tub steps and then, stumbling, half-falling, he let himself collapse into the hot tub. He groaned as the warm water eased up over his body and splashed his face. He let himself sink to the bottom for a moment before coming up slowly to get a breath. He opened his eyes to see her staring at him.
“Glad you came up when you did,” she said. “I did not want to have to go in after you, fully dressed.”
He smiled and asked, “Can you come in?”
“I can if I need to,” she said, “and, if we keep working those legs, I might have to.” She glanced around and said, “But I can’t leave you alone.”
He looked at her in surprise.
She said, “There are rules.”
Just then a big male walked over. He looked at Finn, smiled and said, “I’m Shane. I’ll stand watch, if you want, Fiona. Actually, I’m already dressed for the water, if you want me to go to work on those legs.” He took a couple steps, already in a bathing suit, sat down on the edge of the hot tub and said, “I could see from the way you went in how your legs are all twisted up in pain.”
Finn nodded, gasping. “I guess therapy was too much.”
“Well, I’m a therapist too,” Shane said, scolding him. “You have to tell your therapist this. Otherwise, there’s no way for us to know. We can adjust your treatments.”
“I’ve already told him that,” Fiona said from the side. She watched as Shane carefully worked on Finn’s legs. She nodded, seeing some of the tight lines on Finn’s face relax, and asked, “You okay?”
He nodded, gasping, and said, “I will be now. This water’s heaven-sent.”
“It’s perfect for this,” Shane said. He carefully worked out the knots; then he looked over at Fiona and said, “We’re good here. I’ll get him back up to his room.”
Finn lifted a hand, waved at her and said, “Thanks.” He watched as she walked away. When he could, he sighed deeply and tried to shift his position, feeling the pain once again jarring his back. “It’s my back and my legs,” he whispered.
“Yep,” Shane said. “We don’t get simple injuries here. And everything is connected. People tend to forget that.”
“I think it’s my fault,” Finn said. “I was pretty eager to get through my therapy today, and I pushed it.”
“Pushing it to a certain extent is what we want. But overdoing it is the opposite of what we want.”
“It’s a fine line though,” Finn said. And then, to his embarrassment, he felt and remembered his colostomy bag. “Oh, no.” He reached down and said, “I don’t think this is supposed to get wet.”
Shane looked at it, shrugged and said, “Why not? Everybody else does.”
Finn felt the shock run through him. “Everyone else?”
“I think we’ve got six guys here with them right now,” he said. “A couple are permanent. Others are waiting for their guts to heal until they can have surgery to fix things permanently. They are what they are.” He was completely casual about it all.
As this was the first time Finn had been in water since he’d had the colostomy, Finn stared at the bag laying against his skin and said, “It’s pretty ugly.”
Shane looked up at him in surprise. “Not really,” he said. “It’s pretty normal. There are different bags you can get. Ones that aren’t quite so big, ones that aren’t quite so obvious maybe,” he said, “but honestly, it’s a miracle.”
“Everybody keeps saying that,” Finn said, “but it still seems like quite an eyesore. And, for anybody who’s not used to it, it’s pretty embarrassing.”
Shane grinned at him. “You mean, it’s embarrassing for you. Nobody here’ll care. They’ve all got their own problems, missing pieces and body parts that have been redirected. That”—he nodded toward the colostomy bag—“that’s nothing.”
Relaxing, Finn sank back and said, “Yeah, but I wonder if the women think so.”
“My buddy is married, and he’s got one,” Shane said with a laugh. “I don’t think he gave a damn, and I know his wife sure as heck doesn’t.”
Finn loved to hear that. “I think, when you get to that stage, you’re probably okay,” he said, “but I imagine accidents are pretty embarrassing.”
“Accidents can happen no matter where your feces exit your body,” he said. “Sure, to you it’s not sexy, but that doesn’t mean that a woman will look at it the same way.”
Finn didn’t want to keep thinking about it. “The stump is bad enough,” he said.
“Around here it’s not like you even got a war wound if you don’t have a stump,” Shane said with a laugh. He started to rub long, lean strokes up and down the rippled muscles of Finn’s leg. “See if you can stretch that out a little bit now.”
Finn gently extended his leg, waiting for the pain to surface. But, when fully extended and his toes pointed, expecting it every second, he realized no cramp waited around the corner.
“Wow,” Shane said. “That is so much better. Let’s get the other one into the same shape. You can’t have just one leg massaged. Gotta do the other one too.”
“Well, the other one doesn’t cramp,” he said, shifting so he could get out the leg that had the stump. “I don’t know why.”
“Because it’s not connected at the other end,” Shane said, chuckling. “The leg that cramps, the tendons and muscles have connections at both sides. Here, they’re damaged at the one end, so it won’t cramp the same way. But that doesn’t mean that they cannot be stiff and sore.” He gently dug his fingers in, working the muscle all along the length, trying to ease up some of the stress. “And part of the problem is because that leg’s te
nse, you tighten up on the good leg to compensate.”
“I guess,” he said. “I never thought of it that way.”
“Your body is a fantastic machine,” Shane said, “and it will do what it needs to do. The trouble is, if we interfere, we get emotions that make us react, and, as soon as we do that, the body has to compensate. It’s a fine-tuned machine, and, as soon as it gets out of tune, then things have to happen in order to get it back to being a well-maintained body again.”
“Got it,” Finn said with a smile. “It’s amazing just how much more normal that feels now.” He shifted his other leg and then extended his leg at the knee. “Wow, I hadn’t realized just how bad that cramp was.”
“Who’s your therapist?”
“Nicole,” he said, “but it’s not her fault.”
“Well, it is, and it isn’t,” Shane said. “I’ll have a talk with her.”
“I don’t want to get her in trouble,” Finn argued.
“But, if you don’t tell her the kind of aftereffects you’re having,” Shane said, “you’re the one who’s in trouble.”
As it was, they didn’t have to tell Nicole anything. She walked along the pool on the other side and saw Finn in the hot tub. She came racing over as her gaze went to Shane massaging the one leg. “Finn, are you okay?” She crouched at the hot tub.
Shane quickly explained. She shook her head. “You should have told me,” she scolded.
“So everybody keeps telling me,” Finn said with a half a smile. “I figured I was doing fine. Didn’t realize that the cramps were something I was supposed to let you know about.”
“Has it happened before?”
“Yes, every day.”
There was a moment of silence, and then she just swore at him. Very gently, very politely, she said, “You have to tell me these things.”
He waved a hand at her. “Consider yourself told,” he said. “I gather the therapy is too much, and I’m weaker than I thought.”
“No,” she said, “that’s not it at all. It has to do entirely with the exercises we do, and that’s something I need to know.”
He nodded and smiled.
“I’ll get you a drink and some relaxants to help those muscles,” she said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Make it a whiskey,” he called out.
She laughed and said, “In your dreams.”
He grinned and said to Shane, “One of the nice things about being here is the casualness of it all. The fact that I can tease her and sit here in a hot tub like this, it’s huge.”
“It is,” Shane said. “I’ve been here for years, and I can’t say there’s any other place I’d want to work.”
“You’re lucky,” he said, closing his eyes. “I don’t know what I want to do anymore.”
“But you’re the artist, aren’t you?”
Finn’s gaze popped open. “I don’t know who told you that,” he said. “I used to dabble, but I don’t know that I’m any good at it. And I haven’t done it for years, so I’m sure that I’m beyond rusty.”
“Uh-huh.” Shane didn’t say anything more but started working on a different muscle path that had Finn crying out. “Yeah,” Shane said, “I’ll ease up, but these knots need working out. You’ll feel the next one since we’re getting closer to the knee.”
He kept working while Finn twisted in reaction. When he could, he gasped. “How come it’s okay for you to hurt me, but it’s not okay for the cramps themselves to hurt me?”
Shane laughed. “Because I know what I’m doing. The cramps are a reaction to the previous work. You won’t get cramps from this. I’m taking the cramps away. Besides, no matter how odd this feels, I’m not really hurting you.”
“I didn’t know I had knots in there,” he gasped out, grabbing his knee as Shane worked lightly right up against the bone.
Finally, Shane was done. He shifted back slightly and said, “Now kick your legs out as if you’re swimming.”
Finn tried to kick and was surprised to find how fluidly his legs moved. He stared at them in surprise. “Wow, that’s amazing.”
“Your structural integrity is compromised too,” Shane said with a frown. “Has anybody worked on that?”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about, so I’ll say no,” he said.
“In that case, we book you for it too,” Shane said. He stepped up, held out his hand and said, “I want you to stand normally.”
So, in the middle of the hot tub on his one good leg, he stood. But because they were in the water, it wasn’t an effort to balance.
Shane said, “Now close your eyes and just stand, relaxed.”
Finn did feel a little odd, but Shane walked around him several times and said, “Open your eyes now.”
Finn did.
“Now I want you to try to take a step forward.”
“You mean, a hop?”
“Yes and no,” he said. “Imagine that you had your foot there, and I want you to take a step and then quickly take another step. Because you’re in water you should be okay.”
He did as he was instructed.
“Okay, now raise your arms out to the side.” And with Finn’s arms up parallel, Shane once again walked around him and took a look. “I want you to sit here and rest a bit,” he said. “I’ll grab a tablet so I can take some notes, and I’ll take some photos too.”
Finn looked at him in surprise. “Photos while I’m sitting here?”
“Yes, but then we’ll do some more when you’re standing upright. And I’ll show you how you’re compensating.”
“Well, of course, I have to compensate,” he said. “I’m missing my lower leg, for crying out loud.”
“Yep, you sure are,” Shane said. “But you’re compensating for a whole lot more, so hang on. I’ll show you in a minute.”
Chapter 7
Fiona walked away, determined to check on the men later. But she had other rounds to do—plus medications to sort, shipments to open up and inventory to mark off. While she stood here with a clipboard in her hand, going over the medications and checking them against her digital database, Dani came in. Fiona looked up and smiled.
Dani held up a large sketchbook and another smaller one.
“Oh, wow, are those for Finn?”
“They so are,” Dani said. “I also picked up a case of pencils for him.”
“A case?” she asked cautiously. “Not one?”
“I remember Finn having favorites,” she said, “something about not all pencils being equal when it comes to sketching.”
“Well, I don’t sketch and don’t know anyone who does,” Fiona said, “so I bow to your expertise. Maybe we can deliver these to him later. I left him in Shane’s care. He was having a lot of muscle knots so we got him to the hot tub.”
“Oh, good,” Dani said. “That hot tub has come in handy for a lot of people.”
“Isn’t that the truth. And, if we know Shane at all, he’ll be all over Finn for his structural integrity.”
“Right, Shane just came back from his latest course, and, if he can help at all, then I’m sure Finn wouldn’t mind.”
“I’m sure it’s more than a case of wouldn’t mind,” Fiona said. “I think Finn is eager to do whatever needs to be done, and that’s probably how he ended up in trouble in the first place. A little too anxious, a little too eager, and working a little too hard, without letting people know where he stood.”
“That’s common here,” Dani said. “Way too common.”
“Right? Anyway, if you want, you can give him the art supplies,” Fiona said.
Dani shook her head. “No, I think you should.” She turned and walked out again.
Fiona waited until the end of her shift because she still had lots of work to do, and, even then, she didn’t get it all done. She signed off after her shift, consulting with her replacement over a couple files.
As she stood to leave, she smiled and said, “I have one delivery to make.” She picked up the sketchbooks
and the pencils and walked out. She had no idea how Finn would take this and wasn’t sure if she should say it was from Dani or not but figured it couldn’t hurt. Fiona didn’t know if, at this point, he’d get angry or be happy about it. She knocked on his closed door but got no answer. She frowned and walked to the cafeteria to see if he was there and then headed over to the railing, where she could study the pool and the hot tub below to see if maybe Finn just hadn’t made it back to his room yet. Shane was there, but he was working with a different patient. She called out to him. “How’s Finn doing?”
“He’s fine,” he said. “He went to have a shower and a nap.”
She nodded and realized he was likely still asleep. She didn’t want to disturb him, but he might be just resting at this point. At his door, she tapped again ever-so-lightly and listened, but still, she heard no answer. She carried the sketchbooks back to her place, dropped them on the couch and then went for a quick shower and a change herself.
He’d be awake for dinner so she could see him then. She dressed up particularly nicely in a dress again and braided her hair and then stepped outside to visit with the beautiful little Lovely. She gently stroked the llama’s soft ears, loving the trusting soul so eager for affection. Appie was a little more distant but came over anyway. Fiona didn’t have any treats for them, and she definitely didn’t have any feed for them.
She wondered who looked after that, but nobody was around to ask. She could ask Stan, but that would mean going back inside, and that almost felt like work. Instead, she went for a long walk in the pasture as Appie and Lovely walked beside her. It was so nice to be outside to enjoy the green grass and the sunshine. She sat on a large rock, perfect for sitting, and enjoyed the beautiful view. It was really a special location.
She should have brought a cup of coffee with her, something to help her relax and destress from her day. Today wasn’t that bad; it was just work, and sometimes work was, … well, work.
Inventory was always irritating because she kept missing bottles and then would find them in places where people hadn’t put them back. And, of course, as soon as medications went missing, alarm bells went off. Missing medication was something they had to keep a strict eye on. Of course, all the medicine cabinets were locked, but she knew perfectly well that many of the men in her care could unlock it easily. These patients came with such a varied set of skills that the staff made sure to keep track of medications a little closely than they might at another location, and there would always be at least one difficult patient.
