A Life Worth Living

by Lorrie Kruse

  “Who was that?” Matt’s mom asked as she dabbed his cheek with a wadded napkin. At least she hadn’t spit on it first.

  “Rex Johnson.”

  Matt’s ears perked up when he heard the group home developer’s name.

  “He’s already got all the rooms filled for the group home, and it’s not even built yet. He’s thinking of building another home next summer. As long as we don’t go over budget and we’re on time with this build, the contract’s ours.”

  Matt did a mental high five.

  “That’s wonderful,” his mother said.

  “Yeah. Wonderful.” His father dropped into his chair.

  Matt’s high took a nosedive. His father had said the job was too big for four men. Matt had insisted they bid on it, anyway, thinking he could prove his worth if he could grow his father’s business into one that could compete with the larger crews. The bid had been tight with four men. It would be impossible with only three.

  Conscious of his father just six feet away, he dug into his cereal with determination. He’d work so damn hard to get better that a colony of worker ants would look like slackers in comparison.

  Milk dripped from the spoon.

  His mother hovered beside the bed, poised to take over feeding him at the first sign of failure. He tightened his jaw. She may as well put her sweet ass in a chair and relax because he wasn’t going to fail. Not at feeding himself. Not at getting better.

  More milk dripped onto the crisp, white sheet. By the time the spoon reached his mouth, only one damp cereal O remained.

  His mother moved closer as he shoved his spoon into the bowl again. Milk splashed onto the table. A trail of cereal littered a path to his mouth.

  Even his two-year-old niece managed better at feeding herself than he was doing. If he couldn’t do something simple enough for a two-year-old to master, how would he ever keep his dad from going over on the build? Why the hell would Crystal want to marry him now, with him like this?

  Stop it.

  He would not fail.

  Milk-soaked cereal splattered the tabletop. He shoveled up another spoonful and lost his load two inches from the bowl.

  “Matthew, let me help,” his mother said.

  “No,” he spat.

  The harder he tried, the more uncoordinated he became. He threw the spoon. It bounced off the edge of the bowl and then clattered onto the table. He closed his eyes and took deep breaths.

  A soft hand touched his arm. “Look at me,” Crystal said.

  She had a dampened Cheerio stuck to the end of her nose. “Would you like me to help you eat? I’m quite good at it.”

  Despite his mood, he laughed. He tapped the Cheerio stuck to her nose. It fell and joined the ones on his mattress. “That you are, babe. And that’s why I love you.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  In Matt’s dream, he knelt on Rex Johnson’s roof and hammered a shingle into place. Crystal sat beside him, looking regal on a simple folding chair. The diamonds in her many pieces of jewelry complemented her silk, floor-length dress, each jewel glistening from the light that reflected off a giant hourglass. Sand filtered from its top chamber at a lazy pace.

  “We need to get this job done before the sand is gone.” His father handed Matt another shingle from their last bundle.

  “Plenty of time,” Matt said.

  “This is an important job.” His father handed him another shingle. “I’m depending on you, Son.”

  “This diamond isn’t big enough.” Crystal held out her left hand, displaying the two-carat jewel in her engagement ring.

  The shingle he’d just nailed down came loose and went sailing through the air. “What?” he asked, wondering what had happened to his shingle.

  “If you work harder, I can have bigger diamonds. And more silk. Silk panties and silk stockings. Silk carpets and silk walls. I want silk all around me.”

  Another shingle lifted free and flew away.

  “Quick,” his father said as he handed Matt a new shingle. “Hurry. I’m depending on you.”

  “A silk car with diamond wheels.”

  The sand in the hourglass swirled like a whirlpool and poured into the bottom chamber. Every shingle curled away from the roof and took flight.

  Matt awoke with a start. Silence surrounded him. The room was cast in shadows as if the afternoon sun wasn’t strong enough to penetrate the windows behind him. Crystal’s folding chair, which was cocked at an angle to the bed, was deserted. The other two chairs were equally abandoned. With no more proof than three empty chairs, he knew they’d left. They’d headed home while he’d been sleeping. No goodbyes.

  A vague memory of the dream clung to him as he stared at Crystal’s empty chair. He was letting her down. His father, too. Every second he spent stuck in this bed with boat anchors for legs was yet another failure.

  Matt’s pity party was interrupted when someone knocked on his open door. “Mr. Huntz?”

  A woman in a wheelchair rolled toward him. The ID pinned to her shirt identified her as a hospital employee. She smiled and held out her hand. “Hello, Matt. I’m Deborah Stryker, the social worker assigned to your case.”

  Matt grunted as he accepted her handshake. Why the hell did he need a social worker?

  “You’ll be starting therapy soon, so we need to decide where you’ll go for rehabilitation. We also need to fill out the forms to apply for Social Security disability benefits.”

  The last four words echoed in his head. He wasn’t disabled. Temporarily broken maybe but not disabled. “I don’t need disability.”

  “I didn’t want to file for disability, either. Flat out refused because I was going to walk again. By the time I realized I needed it, I was so far in debt I lost my house.”

  His house. A duplicate to the one he’d grown up in. All the work he’d put into it, making it into a home for a family of his own. Hours and hours of remodeling after twelve-hour days working on other people’s homes. No way would he let the bank foreclose on his loan.

  Would it hurt to at least consider applying for disability? He opened his mouth. An irrational fear overtook him. If he filed for disability, it’d be like saying he was okay with being paralyzed and then he’d never walk again. Irrational or not, he couldn’t take the chance. “I said, I don’t need disability.”

  “Tell you what. I already filled out the form with what I could find in your file. I’ll just leave the papers with you. If you change your mind, you can finish filling it out.” She set the paper on his over-bed table.

  He couldn’t see the form, but he could feel its magnetic pull. Slowly sucking away whatever hope he had of walking again.

  “Even though you don’t need the disability benefits, you might want to send the form in anyhow.” She flashed a smile. “Sort of like a Murphy’s Law insurance policy. Better to file and not need it than to file at the last minute and then wait five months for your first payment.”

  “Five months? You’re joking, right?”

  “Not at all.”

  He rubbed his leg, searching for proof he didn’t need her stupid form. All he felt was the slick nylon fabric of the running pants some nurse had dressed him in. Didn’t matter. He was not going to file for disability. He’d call the bank and ask for an extension, if he had to. Maybe make interest-only payments for a while. Anything to keep from filing for disability. “I’ll think on it.” He’d rip up the form as soon as she left.

  “Fair enough. Next, we need to decide where you’ll have your therapy.”

  His parents stepped through the doorway. Crystal was a step behind. A sense of peace settled over him at the sight of them, but he couldn’t help wondering why Crystal hung back.

  He was filled with the urge to go to her, to cover her with kisses, to wrap her in his arms and never let go. But his legs remained weighted into place, chaining him down. “Babe, you’re still here.”

  Her smile set his heart soaring. “Do we have to go through this every time I step through the door? Y
es, I’m here. Your parents are here. Somebody I’ve never met before is here.”

  He held out his hand. “Stop being such a smart ass and get over here.”

  She stepped forward and sat lightly on the edge of the bed. He slid his hand into hers.

  Ms. Stryker cleared her throat. “If you’d like, I can come back later.”

  “Sorry. Now is fine. In fact, better than fine.” He tightened his fingers around Crystal’s. “This is something that’s going to affect us all.”

  “We were discussing where Matthew is going to have his rehabilitation.” Deborah Stryker laid some glossy pamphlets on his bed. “There’s a rehabilitation center right here at St. Luke’s. Or there are specialty rehab centers that deal strictly with spinal cord injuries and head trauma.”

  He let go of Crystal’s hand and picked up one of the brochures. The picture on the cover showed a man gripping parallel bars, his legs held straight with braces. Standing. Exactly what Matt wanted, but without the braces. The brochure was for a specialty rehabilitation center in Colorado. Too far away. He set down the leaflet and grabbed a new one. This one showed a woman wheeling up a ramp. The image of the standing man stuck in his head.

  Crystal leaned forward and grabbed the discarded brochure. She put her hand on Matt’s leg and then yanked it back as though she’d been burned.

  Tension knotted his shoulders. He stared at the woman’s picture. What he saw was Crystal’s hand ricocheting off his leg. Didn’t she know he wouldn’t break? That his paralysis wasn’t contagious? That he needed her touch where he couldn’t feel it as much as where he could?

  “Are you done looking at that one?” his father asked.

  “One sec.” Pretending Crystal’s reaction didn’t hurt, he opened the leaflet for St. Luke’s rehabilitation center. Three photos depicted more patients in wheelchairs. He turned to the back. Not a single picture of any patients standing.

  Unimpressed, he handed the St. Luke’s pamphlet to his father and then flipped through the other brochures. He stopped when he saw another man in braces who was standing with crutches. Milwaukee Spine Care Center. Milwaukee wasn’t as close to home as St. Luke’s, but it was a hell of a lot closer than Colorado.

  He scanned the rest of the brochures, comparing the hospitals to the specialty centers. The hospitals seemed to concentrate on teaching skills to adapt to life in a wheelchair. The leaflets for the rehab centers implied a guarantee of resuming a life as close as possible to what he’d had before the accident. What he wanted was a life exactly like what he’d had before the accident, but there didn’t seem to be a rehab center for that. He went back to the brochure for Milwaukee Spine Care Center.

  Milwaukee was two hundred miles from Fuller Lake. Too far for Crystal and his parents to come during the workweek. He’d only get to see them on weekends, and he couldn’t expect them to come every weekend.

  “Where’s the closest one of these specialty places?”

  “Milwaukee.”

  Damn.

  Matt stared at the man standing between the parallel bars and then shifted to the woman in the wheelchair on the ramp. Within a second, his focus was back on the man standing. “How long would I have to be at one of these places?”

  “Six, seven, maybe eight weeks.”

  “Eight weeks,” his mother said, her voice growing louder.

  Eight weeks separated from Crystal. Eight weeks away from his family.

  Or a lifetime in a wheelchair.

  He didn’t want to leave the people he loved, but he’d rather be without them for a short while than spend his life in a wheelchair. He stared at the standing man with crutches. He wanted to be that man.

  “If you’d like, I can check to see which facilities have openings and contact your insurance carrier to find out where they’ll authorize admittance.”

  Her last words echoed off the walls. He looked away from the standing man. “What?”

  “Some insurance companies won’t authorize payments to the more expensive rehabilitation centers.”

  Going to Milwaukee threatened to slip from his grasp. A person couldn’t get worse insurance than he had. He gripped on to one last straw of hope. “What happens if my insurance won’t pay? Does that mean I’m stuck here?”

  “Certainly not. As long as you can pay for your rehabilitation, they’ll accept you as a patient.”

  Rehab that might get him walking again. Rehab that would give him a lifetime of debt, which was already maxed out, and take him away from the people he loved.

  Or he could stay here, close to home. Therapy his insurance would likely pay for. Therapy that apparently would do little more than train him to adapt to his physical limitations.

  The options were like offering a drowning man his choice of a child-sized life preserver or a rubber raft with a leak.

  He fought against the sinking feeling. The four pairs of eyes staring at him made it harder. “And you said it’ll take five months for disability to kick in, if I decide to file.”

  “Yes.”

  His father squeezed his shoulder. “You want to go to that place, we’ll find a way for you to go. We’ll use the house as collateral for a loan, if we have to.”

  “Would this be the same house you just used as collateral for a business loan?” Matt felt his last chance drifting away.

  “I wouldn’t be the first person to have multiple loans against their house.”

  “You can use the wedding money,” Crystal said. “We might be out our deposits, but I can cancel the band and the banquet hall.”

  He eyed his fiancée. Her solution left a foul taste coating the back of his tongue. “What are you saying, Crystal? Are you saying we should cancel the wedding?”

  “No.” Her gaze skated away from his. “I’m just saying we don’t need a big wedding. We’d be just as married if the wedding’s at the courthouse with a family-only dinner afterward.”

  A headache formed between his eyes. He pictured Crystal’s hand springing away from his leg. What if Milwaukee Spine Care Center couldn’t get him walking again? Time apart wouldn’t help Crystal accept his condition. They needed to be together right now.

  But it wasn’t just his relationship with Crystal he had to worry about. There was the construction business. The group home contract. The promise of another contract. All of which meant a full recovery was crucial.

  The headache throbbed.

  He held up the brochure for Milwaukee. “This place, will it get me walking again?”

  Crystal sat ramrod straight, her eyes focused on Deborah.

  “The only thing that will get you walking again is if your spinal cord heals enough. However, a rehabilitation center can offer an improved level of mobility that you might not get with treatment at a hospital.”

  Not quite the guarantee he’d been searching for. But he didn’t need a guarantee. Just hope. A glimmer of a chance. “But I’ll have a greater chance of a full recovery if I go to Milwaukee than if I stay here, right?”

  “A specialty hospital will increase your independence.”

  Why couldn’t she answer the question? Didn’t she know independence didn’t mean squat if it didn’t get the group home built? “Forget independence. I’m talking about walking. Standing. Even just moving my legs. Do I have a greater chance of any of that happening if I go to Milwaukee?”

  “No.”

  Everything around him blurred. In his head, he saw himself far in the future, still in a wheelchair. Before he could dwell on what that meant for his job, he grabbed Crystal’s hand. “We’re getting married once, and only once. I want you to have the wedding we planned.” He shifted his attention to Deborah. The words formed, but he had a hard time getting them past his lips. Just say it. Get it over with. “Sign me up to have my rehab here.”

  “Don’t be hasty,” Crystal said. “This is an important decision. You should think on it for a few days.”

  He laughed to stop himself from giving in to despair. “You think a few days will make
a difference? You think my insurance will magically get better? You think the money fairy’s going to come along and drop a load of cash at my feet?”

  “Matt, I meant it when I said we’d help out,” his father said. “I’ll take another mortgage on the house. I’ll use every bit of equipment we own as collateral, if I have to. We’ll get you the money.”

  Invisible hands pushed his face beneath the water. Somehow, he managed not to gasp for air. He forced a smile. “It’s not a big deal, Dad. Staying here’s fine.”

  Deborah had barely disappeared into the hallway when his mother said, “You made the right decision, honey. I’m sure the therapy department here is very good.”

  Then why did it feel so very wrong?

  He loved his parents, but he needed time alone with Crystal. “Dad, I appreciate your taking so much time away from work to be here, but you should go back to Fuller Lake. Make sure Brad and Derrick haven’t been spending their days drinking beer and watching TV instead of working.”

  His father squeezed Matt’s shoulder.

  “It’s been a really long day, and I’m tired. Once I fall asleep, I’ll probably be out for the night, so you guys may as well head back home instead of sitting here watching me sleep.”

  His mother gave him a hug. “This will be good for you. I know it.”

  His father nodded. “We’ll see you tomorrow.” He gave his son a wave before he stepped out of the room.

  Crystal had her jacket on and her purse slung over her shoulder.

  He patted the mattress. “Sit.”

  She hesitated a moment before she perched on the edge of the bed. “You should go to Milwaukee.”

  Even though he agreed, there was something in her tone that set him on edge. “Why? Either I’m going to walk again or I’m not. Where I have rehab isn’t going to change that.”

  She picked up the brochure that was still lying on his bed. “Look.” She tapped the paper with a manicured nail that glistened like a newly waxed car. “It says right here that their patients have a higher level of independence. You don’t want to rely on your mother for the rest of your life, do you?”