Melissa: A Hathaway House Heartwarming Romance

by Dale Mayer

  “Sometimes when we’re in pain,” Dr. Sullivan said, “it’s hard to see the helping hands being offered, the joy and the hope and the love that’s there because we think we don’t deserve it, or we shouldn’t accept it because it’s wrong, or we feel guilty because we’re alive, and the people around us are dead, and we don’t deserve anything better than that. All of those are normal human emotions, but that doesn’t mean that they are ones we should hang on to. You’re an adult now. You know so much more about that process and who you were back then, what sent you into the navy, and what has you sitting here now in this position. Now maybe you’re ready to accept a little more from Dani and the Major.”

  “Well, it seems like the Major is still very much the same, maybe even more gregarious,” she said. “He still won’t take no for an answer.”

  Dr. Sullivan laughed. “That’s hard to imagine, isn’t it?” They both chuckled at that.

  “He’s a very big-hearted person,” Melissa said with a smile. “I remember he was always there with a hug, if I needed it. And, of course, back then I desperately needed them, but I also knew that I couldn’t depend on them because, well, look what happens when you depend on people.”

  The doctor nodded and said, “They leave you, don’t they?”

  She looked up and could feel the tears clogging her throat. “It’s stupid because I know my parents didn’t want to leave me. They didn’t want to die in an accident, but because they did, they left me, and I still hold some of that hurt inside.”

  “And that’s totally normal,” she said quietly. “It’s very normal, and sometimes people even feel abandoned by the death of another person. It’s not that that person would have chosen that exit from our world, but it happened, and you’re the one left dealing with the mixed bag of emotions. So, take the time and sort it out, realize that you’ve let some of that color your world now and stop you and hold you back from having that family you want, having that group of friends you want. It was always there on offer, and it probably was in the navy, but you maybe were still so afraid that you would be the one left behind, that the others would turn around and eventually leave you, that you didn’t put any effort into making it happen.”

  Melissa sat here, staring at her in shock. “Wow,” she said. “I hadn’t really considered that either.”

  “Take the time to consider it now,” she said. “And just be easier on yourself. Don’t judge, accept the emotions, accept all of it for what it is. Give it the honesty to acknowledge that it’s there. Then you walk away from it, let it go.”

  “That’s the trick, isn’t it?” she said quietly. “To accept it as a nonjudgment.”

  “Exactly,” Dr. Sullivan said. “Relax, love yourself, love what’s coming up, and let it go. You’ll be a whole new person for it afterward.”

  Shane happened to be going down the hallway from one of his other sessions, preoccupied with his tablet. Only as he moved to avoid a wheelchair did he note it was Melissa coming out of Dr. Sullivan’s office. He stopped, looked at her, and smiled. “Hey,” he said. “Sorry, I didn’t see you.”

  “I’m hardly somebody to miss,” she said humorously, pointing to the wheelchair.

  He shook his head. “Forget about the wheelchair,” he said. “You’re somebody who’s hard to miss anyway.” Her smile beamed, and he laughed. “And I meant it.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, chuckling. “Sure you did.”

  He shook his head. “You’ll have to work on that.”

  “Work on what?” she asked curiously.

  “The inability to accept a compliment for what it is.”

  She stopped and stared.

  He shrugged his massive shoulders. “I meant it,” he said. “You’re hard to miss.” She obviously didn’t know what to say, so he smiled and said, “How did your session go?”

  “Oh, she’s an interesting person to talk to,” Melissa admitted. “It’s different from what I thought I would be getting out of it. But it’s helping.”

  “Good,” he said. “That’s important.”

  “I just didn’t realize,” she said, as she wheeled down the hallway beside him, “just how much all this interacts with everything else in my system.”

  “A lot of people like to forget that healing has to happen on all levels,” he said in a serious tone. “And sometimes they don’t like to have it pointed out. Because a lot of times people come into an injury, an accident, with some really deep grudges, for completely different reasons, different people involved. But it’s the same thing. You still have to let go of some of the stuff in order to let your body do what it needs to do.”

  “That sounds so … woo-wooish,” she said with a laugh. “For want of a better word.”

  “I know,” he said. “But we see it time and time again here.”

  She nodded. “I guess I just hadn’t thought about it before.”

  “Well, now you have plenty of chances to think about it.”

  “Which is exactly what these sessions appear to make me do,” she admitted.

  “Good,” he said. And then in a gentler voice, he continued, “Just don’t stress yourself too much about it because then you’re defeating the purpose.”

  She rolled her eyes at that. “It’s not like there’s an easy way to handle any of this.”

  “Maybe not,” he said. “But, when you think about it, there’s an awful lot that one can do, and a lot of it is just allowing yourself to heal, allowing yourself to heal inside as well as outside.”

  She nodded slowly.

  He pointed at her room and asked, “Are you going in there or are you heading down to the cafeteria? What’s next on your schedule?”

  “Well,” she said, “I think I have an update meeting with Dani. She said to stop by whenever I had a moment today. Then I’m not sure. I may have an hour or two off this afternoon.”

  “Wow,” he said. “How’d that happen?”

  She looked up at him, smiled, and said, “I figured somebody must have dropped the ball.”

  “Not likely,” he said. “Maybe they just knew you needed a break.”

  “And that’s possible,” she said. “It is nice, but I’m also at loose ends.”

  “Why not go down and visit Stan?” he said.

  “Can I just go down there though?” she said doubtfully. “I figured I’d be in the way.”

  “And you’d be wrong there,” he said, laughing, “because Stan’s always happy to see people.”

  “Is there anything useful I can do?”

  He checked his watch and then, on a sudden decision, said, “Come on. I’ll take you down now. We’ll see if any animals need feeding or petting and looking after.”

  She looked up at him, but he could see the pleased grin on her face and the twinkle in her gaze.

  “I’d love to,” she confessed, “but I don’t want to take you away from work.”

  “I’m just heading to the office to do paperwork,” he said. “I can do that afterward too.”

  “If you’re sure.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Remember what I said? This is an offer. Accept it and let’s go.”

  And laughing, she wheeled up behind him and said, “If you say so.”

  “I say so,” he said, feeling a certain release and freedom inside.

  “Do you ever get to do picnics out here?” she asked, as they went down the elevator.

  “I know a lot of patients have,” Shane said. “I’ve thought about it, but I just never made it a priority to try it out. I do come down here in the evenings with a coffee.”

  “Now that,” she said, “would be nice. Just in the evening before bed, maybe for a couple hours—at eight, nine, ten o’clock—when the air is cool and refreshed after a hot day,” she said with a nod.

  “Exactly.” He smiled down at her. “I like to hit the pool around then too.”

  “Ah,” she said. “The joys of not being a patient.”

  “If there’s something you want or need,” he said, �
�you have to speak up. We can’t read minds.”

  She looked at him and said, “I doubt I’d be allowed to go to the pool at that hour, would I?”

  He thought about it. “It depends on whether anybody’s there for you,” he said. “Any patient’s at the pool must have somebody watch over them. In the evenings it’s open to everybody, but, if a patient wants to go, we still have to ensure somebody can keep an eye on them, just for safety.”

  “Which basically means,” she said, “that I can’t go.”

  “I’m not sure about that,” he said, shaking his head. “Again, you’re jumping to an assumption that I’m not sure is true.”

  “Well, maybe you could find out for me,” she said impulsively. “I know, in the evening sometimes, it would be lovely to get out and just ease back in the pool after a hot day.”

  “Depends on how tired you are at night too,” he murmured.

  She nodded. “I haven’t been sleeping all that great, so that might make it better.”

  “We could try it. Just let me know, as I usually hit the pool every night.”

  At that, he walked out of the elevator and pointed toward the double doors for the vet clinic. “These doors are automatic, specifically for the wheelchairs. And for people carrying animals,” he added as an afterthought.

  “We always like to think that everything’s here for us, don’t we?” she said. “When really it’s probably about the people bringing in animals.”

  He chuckled and said, “You know what? I never even thought about it. I assumed it was here because of the human patients, but you could be right.”

  As they walked in, Robin stood at the desk. She looked up with a big smile. “Hey, Shane, what’s up?”

  He smiled and introduced Melissa.

  Robin came around from behind the counter. “Hi. Welcome to Hathaway House and the animal section,” she said with a chuckle.

  “You’re lucky to work here,” Melissa said. “I met Hoppers the other day with Stan,” she said, “and it reminded me just how much I miss animals in my life.”

  “Well, you can sign up for an animal tech course,” she said. “It doesn’t take all that long, and you could always look at adding animals back into your life, but it’s not all sun and roses.”

  “No,” she said. “A lot of death is here too, isn’t there?”

  “There can be, but there’s an awful lot of reward. So I certainly wouldn’t want to discourage you from getting into the field.” She looked at Shane. “Depending on what your injuries are all about.” She added, “It’s something that you could certainly look at, and Shane would definitely help you get back into shape, so you can handle whatever physical effort was required.”

  She looked at Robin in surprise. “Sounds like you have a lot to do with Shane and the people upstairs.”

  “Well, my partner was a patient upstairs,” she said, “and my brother is currently there.”

  At that, Shane remembered Keith. “I keep forgetting that,” he said. “Between Keith and Iain, you’re having quite the relationships here, aren’t you?”

  “And I love it,” Robin said. “It makes me feel very connected to everybody.”

  “And I think that’s what I’m missing,” Melissa said quietly, as she sat at Shane’s side.

  Shane looked at her. “What? What is it you’re missing?”

  “That connection,” she said, “that sense of belonging. It’s been missing a long, long time in my world.”

  Robin leaned on the desk and studied her for a long moment. “You know it’s not from the outside, right? It’s from the inside.”

  Chapter 8

  Melissa looked at her. “That sense of belonging?”

  “I had a similar thing with a rough childhood,” she said. “Some … family issues. But I found that, for me—and I mean, obviously I can only speak for myself—but having a sense of connection to myself, the acceptance of who I was, where I was, what I was doing, made a big difference. And, coming from that point, I could then reach outward with the same sense of acceptance, and I found that people were there for me more than I thought. I had assumed they weren’t there for me because I couldn’t really see it, I couldn’t see myself.”

  Shane piped up, “Wow, that’s a really good insight. I’m not sure too many people will have had that experience and come out with the same wisdom.”

  “No,” Robin said. “It’s been a really good thing to have my brother Keith here,” she said, “because it’s helped us to work through a few of our own family issues. I love him dearly, but we needed to talk about things.” She shrugged. “We didn’t have an easy time growing up. Keith had the worst time of it,” she said. “This time, it’s helping us pull together. And, of course, Iain is a huge help in that way too.”

  Shane nodded. “Iain has done a phenomenal job here,” he said warmly. “And the two of you are great together.”

  She smiled. “Thank you. And you’re right. We worked really hard to be where we’re at. It’s just so wonderful to have found each other.”

  “Is there a trick to that self-acceptance?” Melissa asked, Robin’s words kept going over and over in her head. “Because it feels like something is very momentous in that, in what you just said.”

  “Well, if there is,” Robin said, “give yourself some quiet time to just think it over, to see what pops up. Don’t work on it. It’s not homework. It’s not something that you have to do. Allow yourself to ponder those issues and to see what comes up.”

  Melissa nodded. “That seems to be one of the tricks,” she said. “You know how there’s always that feeling that you’re supposed to be doing more, that you’re supposed to be trying harder, that you should have all the answers? Instead I feel like I have no answers.”

  “And instead it’s more about accepting that this is where you’re at, that this is what you’re doing, and that the truth will find its way toward you.”

  “Exactly,” Shane said. “And we don’t want to get esoteric about it all, but, at the same time, it’s an inner knowing, it’s finding out who you are, who’ll show up every day for the job, and what a job you’ll put in,” he said gently.

  Melissa smiled. “You always have such great words of wisdom. Is it something to do with being here?”

  Robin said, “You know what? Sometimes I wonder. I’ve become very empathetic, much more intuitive being here, with the relationships, with the people all around me. Everybody is so very caring, and you can see when and where there’s a problem. We may not always know how to handle it, but you know enough to back away and to let some people find their way on their own. Like I said, there’s a lot of good things to being here.” Just then the buzzer on her desk rang. She smiled and said, “I have to get back to work.”

  “Wait. Before you go,” Shane said, “we were just taking a moment and showing her some of the animals around here. Do you have anybody that needs a cuddle?”

  “Oh, do we ever,” she said. “I’ll be back in a minute.” With that, Robin disappeared into the back.

  Melissa looked up at Shane. “I find the conversations around here so very unique,” she said.

  “That’s because we’re all involved in healing,” he said, his tone more serious than she’d heard it before. “And, when you think about it, that’s so much of what our world is. It’s all about healing. It’s all about what’s the next step for everybody. And that healing rubs off on those of us who work here too. It’s not like we’re completely immune to it or that we don’t have any work to do on ourselves. It’s just we don’t think we do because we’re not in that world. And then, when we are in this world,” he said, “it just … it sneaks up on you, and it makes you realize that you have this issue or that issue, and you need to work on it. Growth happens exponentially when it’s around another person who’s growing.”

  “And I like that idea,” she said. “I was thinking before I got here that I was a huge mess, but maybe I’m not all that bad off.”

  “Oh my,�
�� he said, “you’re not bad off at all. And you’re doing a wonderful job. You need to give yourself credit for that.”

  “Am I?”

  He stopped and looked at her, then nodded very seriously. “Absolutely,” he said. “You are doing a great job. You just need to realize that the inside growth is not something that anybody else can measure. Only you can.”

  And, with that, Robin returned. In her arms was a huge cat. Melissa looked at her and laughed. “Well, I’d say it’s a cat because it has the look of a cat, but it’s a monster size.”

  “It’s a purebred Maine coon,” she said, “and he is huge.” The cat just draped in her arms, like a piece of dough, sagging on both sides.

  Melissa immediately held out her arms. “Is he friendly?”

  “Yep, he’s here several times a year for basic shots and toenail clippings, things like that,” she said. “The owner said that she’d be here this morning but then phoned to say she couldn’t get in ’til the end of the day. So this guy—whose name is Timmy, by the way—was feeling caged, so we brought him out to give him some space.” She dropped him gently into Melissa’s arms.

  Melissa immediately hugged him close. The cat looked up at her, rubbed his face against hers, and a massive diesel engine kicked in. “Oh my,” she gasped. “He’s gorgeous.” She nuzzled her cheek against the cat, who just seemed unable to get enough, and she scratched the back of his head and along his neck. She sat here, enraptured, just loving the feel of this cat that had absolutely no intention of going anywhere, as long as there were humans to look after him. “He is just beautiful.”

  “Yep, he is. We get a lot of really cool animals in here,” she said with a smile.