Melissa: A Hathaway House Heartwarming Romance

by Dale Mayer

  “Yep,” he said. “At least one to start with.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, we’ll have to adapt it as we go,” he said, “as we always do.”

  “Why?”

  “Because some exercises could have different results. Don’t worry,” he said. “We won’t go too far, too fast. We’ll do our best to minimize the pain.”

  “Is that even possible?” she asked.

  “To minimize, yes. To stop all of it, no, not in PT at least,” he said, “because the whole idea is to force these muscles to work again. They’ve been sleeping, and they need to wake up, step up, and do the job. But we don’t want to shock them or force them. We want to coax them into doing it.”

  She shook her head. “Sounds like a lot of pain to me.”

  He looked up, smiled at her, and nodded. “It won’t be pain-free, that’s for sure. But one of the first things I want to work on is the fact that you’re in so much pain now.”

  “Well, that’s not something you can fix easily.”

  “No, it isn’t, but it is something we work at on a steady basis.”

  She waited.

  “We’ll start on the floor,” he said. “So down on the mat on your back, please.”

  She groaned but managed to get down there. It was almost halfway a collapse. When she made it to the mat in the position he’d asked for, she closed her eyes and said, “Okay. Let’s do this.”

  Two hours later she lay here, shuddering on the floor. He sat beside her and said, “You’re still not willing to let me know when the pain is too strong, are you?”

  “I’m not sure if it’s a case of not being willing,” she whispered, “as much as it’s potentially something I don’t recognize.”

  “And that’s a good answer,” he said. “I think you’ve been disassociated from your body for so long because of the pain, because of the brokenness, that you haven’t been in tune to what it needs, what its own needs are.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “But, when you have many health problems, it’s a lot easier to ignore it all than to figure out which parts are working and which parts aren’t.”

  “Understood,” he said, “and that’s why I’m here. We’ll get it figured out.” He straightened. “That’s enough for now.”

  “Good,” she said. “I couldn’t do any more.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  She looked at him in surprise. “Why is that?”

  “Not that you’re done,” he said, “but that you’re finally realizing that you can tell me that you’re done.”

  “Well,” she said with half a smile, “I don’t have a great record with relationships. Including therapists.”

  “In what way?” he asked, standing with his hands on his hips.

  She shook her head. “It’s nothing to do with you.”

  “It has everything to do with me,” he said. “At any point in time, where something’s blocking your healing, it matters to me.”

  “Yeah,” she said, “but I see the shrink today. I’m not sure I can handle two sessions in one day.” And, with that, she dragged herself into her wheelchair and, without saying another word, slowly wheeled herself toward her room.

  She would have another shower, to ease up the soreness; then she had her first session with the shrink. Too bad that session wasn’t after lunch. She would need food because she already felt weak. Her body hummed nicely. It was sore but maybe a good sore. Tomorrow she’d be even more so. She’d probably regret having done as much as she had done today. But, as long as Shane seemed to think he knew what he was doing, she’d have to put some trust in him.

  So far, he hadn’t let her down, and that was more than she could say about a lot of other places she’d been in.

  By the time she had a shower and redressed, she was running late for her appointment. Swearing to herself, she rushed as fast as she could toward the office. Then she realized she was likely going in the wrong direction and had to stop and ask someone for directions.

  By the time she arrived, she was a good ten minutes late. She knocked on the partially open door, and someone called from inside. Pushing the door wider, she slowly made her way inside to see a woman. Melissa didn’t know why she assumed it would be a male. That’s what she had had for psychologists up until now. Only after seeing the woman in front of her did she recognize her from her first day’s introduction.

  Dr. Sullivan looked up, smiled at her, and said, “Hi. It’s good to see you again.”

  “Well, I wasn’t in very good shape when you saw me initially.” Melissa choked, feeling the need to pull some armor around her from that way-too-searching gaze.

  “Arrivals are always tough,” Dr. Sullivan said with a nod. “How are you settling in now?”

  “I’m settling in,” she said. “Still tired, still not quite there yet. But I’ve recovered from the transfer.”

  “Good.”

  At the silence that ensued, Melissa could feel herself tense.

  “I gather you’re not particularly open to having this visit?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because you’re already guarding against any questions I might ask.”

  “Well, it’s always a bit awkward,” she said, “because they never seem to be the questions that I can answer.”

  “How so?”

  “It just seems like, whenever I come to a session like this,” she said, “I feel like I’m a student in class still, where I’m searching for the right answer that you want to hear because that’s the only way to get a passing grade.”

  Dr. Sullivan looked at her, then started to chuckle. “Honesty. I like that,” she said, “and please don’t give me answers that you think I want to hear. I would just like to talk to you.”

  “What do you want to talk to me about?” she asked forcefully. “Because there isn’t anything I want to talk about.”

  “Then let’s find something you do want to talk about,” she said.

  Melissa stared at her nonplussed. “I don’t know what that would be.”

  “Any hobbies?”

  “Not anymore,” she said. “Not for a long time.”

  “Why did you join the navy?”

  “Because I didn’t have a family or a home, only one friend, and I was looking for a way to identify to the world around me.”

  “Interesting. Why navy? Why not army? Why not air force?”

  “I love water,” she said with a shrug. “I knew a couple people who were going in, and I thought it was a good idea at the time.”

  “Any regrets?”

  “Nope,” she said. “It’s just now I feel I’m at a crossroads again, and I don’t really have anywhere to go. I have nothing pointing me in a specific direction.”

  “You’re talking about your future?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It just seems like I’ve hit the end of the road, and I don’t know what’s next.”

  “Do you have to have the answer to that right now?”

  “I hope not,” she said, “because then it will feel as if I’m already going to fail.”

  “I don’t think failure is really an option here,” Dr. Sullivan said a nod. “We’re much easier to get along with than that.”

  “You are. I’m not sure if I am though,” Melissa admitted. “It seems like I always expect more out of myself than others do.”

  “I think that’s a common human problem too,” she said. “We’re always much more critical and harder on ourselves than we are of others. And then we take what other people say and twist it around so it makes it look worse for us. When really the comment was just that, a comment.”

  “I don’t think I have so much that problem,” she said, “but I’ve always had trouble fitting in. Part of the reason why I went into the navy, I think I was looking for that brotherhood we hear so much about. I was looking for a family.”

  “Did you find it?”

  Melissa sat back, wondering at the answer. “I’ll say no,” she s
aid. “I found a friend group, but they weren’t a family.”

  “And you got along with each other?”

  “I think we did fine, but it didn’t become that same closeness that I had hoped for.”

  “Did you see others forming those kinds of groups?”

  Melissa nodded emphatically. “That I did,” she said. “And again, that left me feeling left out, as if I’d done something wrong, or I wasn’t quite enough, or I hadn’t quite enough skills or the right personality or something.”

  “And how did that make you feel?”

  “How it makes anybody feel?” she said. “Inadequate.”

  “Isn’t it great how we always judge ourselves by our relationships with others?”

  “Is that what we do?” she asked.

  “Some of us, yes,” Dr. Sullivan said. “If you think about it, if you had formed that friend group, you would have seen yourself as a success. But because you, in your mind, had something very specific that you could see as being a triumph, yet didn’t achieve it, then you felt like you were a failure. And it may not have even been you who was at fault. It may have entirely been that nobody there clicked with you. So it wasn’t that you did anything wrong but that the whole scenario wouldn’t work, no matter what.”

  Melissa sat back, wondering. “I guess,” she said. “I never thought of it that way.”

  “And that’s all we’re doing here,” she said. “We’re opening up your mind to thinking about things in a different way.”

  She nodded but didn’t say anything, still wondering about her words.

  “Do you have any friends who are close?”

  “No,” she said, “and none from the navy stayed with me. After my accident, it really did feel like I was all alone.”

  “And you’re not the first to say that either because really, when it comes down to it, we’re born alone, then we usually die alone. In between, we hit various milestones, and hopefully we will have somebody walk beside us. And sometimes we have to hit those milestones alone. Everybody has trials and tribulations and troubles that they have to deal with, and sometimes just nobody can help you get through it.

  “Some people seem to have more of those in a lifetime than is fair, and others seem to have very little. There always seems to be somebody who has a charmed life, and it seems like they always get the best jobs, the best partners, the best of everything, and they didn’t do anything to deserve it. Whereas others seem to work and work and work and never get anywhere, even though they try so hard. It’s like there is no justice. And sometimes it’s got nothing to do with any of it. It’s just luck. It’s not even fate as much as it’s a throw of a card or a roll of the dice.”

  “It’s hard to think that my life became a card toss.”

  “Nobody wants to think of that. You always want to think that there’s a reason for everything, and maybe we just don’t know what it is yet,” she said with a smile. “How are the pain levels since you arrived?”

  “A little rough,” she said, “but I’m dealing.”

  “But that’s what you’re used to doing, isn’t it?” Dr. Sullivan said with a gentle smile.

  Melissa nodded slowly. “I guess I am.”

  “So,” Dr. Sullivan said, “when are you going to live, not just deal?”

  Shane stopped in Melissa’s room later that afternoon to see how she was doing after their first session. She lay on the bed, facing away from him, still in that same awkward position. He frowned at that. He knocked gently on the door and said, “It’s Shane. How are you doing?”

  She let her head roll toward him as the rest of her body remained stiff and immobile.

  He hated that. The human body was supposed to be fluid. It was supposed to be gentle and moving. It was supposed to shift and bounce as needed. But, in her case, it was like everything was locked down.

  She smiled up at him and said, “You worried about me already?”

  “I was hoping that today wasn’t too hard on you.”

  “It wasn’t,” she said, “but I’m definitely feeling it. I can’t imagine what tomorrow’ll be like.”

  “How about a hot tub then?”

  “But,” she said and looked at him. “I thought I wasn’t allowed to?”

  “Bent the rules. I would not like to have you seize up overnight.”

  She winced at that. “Me too.”

  She slowly sat up, and he watched the movement. “You’re really favoring that left side.”

  “Yep,” she said, “but that’s just part and parcel of it. After being T-boned by a military truck, I’m lucky to be alive. Even knowing it wasn’t my fault as he ran a red light doesn’t help.”

  “That’s okay,” he said, mentally putting something down in his chart about her. As he walked over, he said, “Sit up straight for me, and, as she sat there, he said, “Okay. I’ll put some pressure on your hips. I want you to see if that makes it easier or worse for straightening up.” And with his gentle hands, he placed them on either side of her lower back and pressed in softly.

  She stiffened and straightened up a little bit more. “If I could sit like that,” she said, “I’d feel like I was at least sitting straight up.”

  “You’re quite a bit straighter but not straight enough yet,” he said. “We have a lot of work to do.”

  “You keep saying that,” she said, “and then, after our first session, you’re already worried and want me to go into a hot tub to stop any reaction.”

  “It just means I care,” he said. When an awkward silence followed that, he looked up to see her studying him with a questioning gaze. “Is it wrong to care?”

  “No,” she said with a shrug. “Just not something I’m used to.”

  He smiled gently. “Not all the world is a cold, empty, dark place.”

  Her lips twitched. “Not all of it, no,” she said, “just most of it.”

  He chuckled. “We’ll have to work on that belief system of yours too.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “But a hot tub would be nice.”

  “Did you eat lunch?”

  “I did,” she said.

  “Good,” he said. “In that case, let’s get you down there.”

  “Now?”

  “Now,” he said. “Where’s your bathing suit?”

  She pointed to the drawer off to the side. He opened it up and pulled out a simple one-piece black suit and said, “You need help getting it on?”

  She shook her head. “I can do it.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Get it done now, and I’ll take you down myself.”

  She slowly made her way to the floor, then into the bathroom. It took her a lot longer to get dressed than she had expected, mostly because she was dealing with a bad case of nerves. Did he care? Or was that just him talking? Because she hadn’t done anything but think about him. She thought it was because of his role in her life, but maybe it was more than that.

  She frowned, wondering where all these stupid schoolgirlish butterflies were coming from. It had been a long time since she’d had a crush on a guy, and no point in having one now, not with the shape she was in. Shane could have his pick of women. He didn’t need somebody broken down, like her.

  With that thought firmly pushed to the back of her mind, she finished dressing, made her way out to her room again, and said, “Is there a towel or a robe or something?”

  “Here,” he said, opening another cupboard.

  He pulled out a thick fleece, almost a bathrobe, but she figured it was probably for the pool. She put that on atop her bathing suit and sat back down on the wheelchair. “I’m not sure I’m strong enough to make my way there and back again,” she warned.

  “Well, I’ll push you there,” he said. “Then we’ll see how you do afterward.”

  “Is this more training?”

  “Oh, it’s definitely more physio,” he said, “but an easier kind.”

  “If you say so,” she said.

  When they got down to the hot tub, he locked the wheels on h
er chair and gave her a hand up, helped her get to her feet and over to the stairs and a railing. As soon as she sat down on the seat in the warm water, she groaned.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, kneeling beside her.

  She nodded. “Yes. It feels really good.” She watched as he took off his shoes and socks, then he sat on the edge beside her, his feet in the water.

  He said, “I want you to turn so that you’re putting some of those muscles against the jets.”

  She shifted where he asked and had her lean forward ever-so-slightly, where he slowly worked the long muscles of her shoulders and across her lower back. He worked quietly, just trying to ease the stiffness.

  As soon as he was done, he said, “Lift your arms.” He checked her balance and her stretching to see if the fingertips were even close to matching, then had her do a few more stretches. He asked, “Now how do you feel?”

  She gave a little shake, almost like a puppy wiggle, and looked at him and said, “I feel quite a bit better.” She stood up using the handrail and walked across the hot tub, then back toward him again.

  He smiled to see her movements much smoother, much less of a crab hobble.

  “Things are moving, at least a little bit,” she said.

  “Looks like they’re moving a lot,” he said with a gentle smile.

  She grinned. “Hey, if I could do this outside of the hot tub, it would be great.”

  “That’s the goal,” he said. “Now let’s get you back to your room.”

  “Are you sure I can’t stay in here?”

  He hesitated, looked at her, and said, “How about for ten minutes, and I’ll come back?”

  She nodded and sank back against the jets. “And it’s okay?” she said. “I mean, if you let me take an extra ten minutes?”

  He chuckled and put his shoes and socks on. He headed up to the cafeteria, where he contacted Dennis. “You got any of those ice creams?”

  “I’ve been preparing a flood of ice cream parfaits,” he said. “You want one?” He pointed to the side, where Shane could see trays full of the treats.

  He snagged two spoons and two parfaits. “Perfect.”

  “Who’s that for?”