by Dale Mayer
Melissa looked up at Shane. “Did you want to hold him?”
“No, thanks,” he said. “It’s all good.” He pulled out his cell phone. “Do you mind if I take a picture?”
“Sure, I’d love to have one too,” she said.
He took several photos of her holding Timmy, and reluctantly, when Timmy looked like he wanted to check out the reception room, she handed him back awkwardly to Robin, who snagged him up. “That’s it, Timmy. Back inside with you now.” She carried him to his cage.
Sad, and yet at the same time feeling almost awestruck with the one-on-one meeting, Melissa said, “I should ask Dani about visiting with some of the animals,” she said. “I feel like I need to do more of that.”
“I’m sure you do,” he said. “Do you want to go outside now or go back upstairs?”
“I think I’d like to go outside,” she said impulsively. She stopped and looked up at him. “I’m not trying to take you away from your work though.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “As I said, I’ve got some time.”
She smiled. “And it’s nice to spend it with you, not in a gym where I’m getting reamed out for not working hard enough.” She chuckled.
“That’s the job,” he said. “This is completely different.”
She smiled. “And I like that,” she said. “It’s nice to see people on a personal level too.”
“For us too,” he said. “Remember that we live here, and we work here. But we also must have relationships and meet people here on their level as well.”
“It’s hard to even imagine,” she said. “I’m here because of the … the condition I’m in. But you’re here by choice.”
“All of us are,” he said. “There’s work in other places in the country, if we didn’t want to be here. But most of us love it and love just helping the people who we have here. It’s a very special place.”
“And again, kudos to Dani for pulling it together.”
“Absolutely. She’s done a bang-up job on it. And we all appreciate it.”
“I’m not at all surprised to hear that,” she said. “I’m really proud of her.”
“Then tell her that,” he said.
“I think we all forget to give kudos where kudos belong.” She smiled. “Another one of those hard-learned lessons, isn’t it? We tend to get so wrapped up in ourselves, we forget that other people have needs and insecurities too.”
As soon as they went outside and down the pathway, she stopped almost in her tracks and said, “And there are the horses,” she said, shaking her head. “So beautiful just to even see them from a distance.”
“Do you ride?”
“No. Never really had the opportunity. They’re so big too,” she said with a laugh. “Not scared of them though, I’m just … in awe.”
“In awe is a good way to put it,” he said, “because they are very special, but they are certainly not an animal that you want to be too complacent about. It’s easy to get hurt just out of ignorance.”
“I wouldn’t want to hurt them either,” she said, “and it feels like I would end up startling them and causing more problems.”
“Possibly,” he said, “I’m not sure how much of an issue that is though.”
“I don’t know. They are just lovely to see.”
They wheeled down the path, the two of them together, quiet, peaceful. He asked out of the blue, “Do you have anybody waiting for you at home?”
“I haven’t had anybody waiting for me in a long time.” She wanted to joke about it but knew it wasn’t a joking matter. “It seems like I’ve been alone for a lot longer than I even thought possible.”
“Did it bother you to be alone?” he asked curiously.
“No. I didn’t really notice it, until I started recovering from all this, and, at one point in time, I wondered what I was recovering for. It was hard to admit, especially to …”
“To yourself,” he said instantly. “Recovery should always be about you. Every decision in life should be about you,” he said, “because, if the other person leaves, you’ve got to be sure that that decision you made is one you can still live with.”
“And I’ve thought about that,” she said. “But, no, there isn’t anybody.” As they strolled along the pathway, she asked, “What about you?”
“No. A lot of relationships are happening here,” he said. “So it’s been something that I’ve been thinking about a little bit lately, just because I’ve watched as there didn’t appear to be any relationships, then all of a sudden a good dozen were coming together out of the blue.”
“That’s lovely,” she said.
“It absolutely is,” he said. “But it was also unexpected. So it’s made me do a little self-analysis, figuring out what it is I want.”
“And that can’t be easy. You spend all your life helping people,” she said. “What do you do to help yourself?”
He chuckled. “I haven’t been doing very much at all,” he said. “I’ve been burying myself in work, helping as many people as I can. So maybe it’s something I need to look at. I’m not avoiding relationships but haven’t left a whole lot of room for one either.”
“And maybe it’s something you need to just let go and let happen,” she said with a cheeky smile.
As it was a repeat of earlier words spoken, he immediately caught her intention and laughed. “Very true,” he said. “Very, very true.”
The next half hour they spent in peace, as they watched the animals and talked about all things minor. But it was also a milestone that she felt was important, something so very personal and private, almost intimate, about the two of them as they moved outside.
Finally he looked at his watch and, with a heavy sigh, said, “I have to head back. Do you want to come back with me, and I’ll make sure you get there safely, or are you okay out here on your own?”
“Well, I’d like to say I’m okay on my own,” she said, “but that pathway has a bit of an incline to it.”
He chuckled. “There absolutely is. Why don’t I escort you to the main grounds, and then you can go where you want to from there.”
As soon as they got to the pool area, she said, “If you want, you can leave me here,” she said. “I think I’d like to just sit and enjoy the sunshine for a bit.”
“Perfect,” he said. “Just remember not to get sunburned.” And, with that, he gave her a quick smile and disappeared.
Shane headed back to his office, knowing he had spent way too much time with her than he should have, but it was hard not to. Something was very special about her that brought out the protectiveness in him, and whether that was good or not, he wouldn’t analyze it. It was just nice to think about her on a completely different level than as a patient. Something about her just brought out a completely different set of feelings inside him. And it was about time.
He smiled as he headed to his office.
The smile was instantly caught by Dani, walking down the hallway. “Wow,” she said. “Wonder what woman put that smile on your face?”
He stopped, looked at her, and said, “What?”
She burst out laughing. “Just teasing you,” she said, “but obviously someone has put that smile on your face.”
“Yes,” he said. “I was just outside, showing Melissa the animals, and we went for a walk up and down on the pathway.”
“Perfect,” she said with a cheeky smile. “Sounds like you two are getting along famously.”
“She’s lovely,” he said, “and obviously has been through a lot in her life.”
“She has, but more than anything,” Dani said quietly, “it’s made her more isolated and fearful of getting hurt again.”
“I think almost everybody who’s been through some relationship trauma, whether it’s a death, a loss, or abusiveness,” he said, “it’s a similar issue, isn’t it?”
“It is, indeed,” she said. She walked past him, heading to her office, and said, “But as long as she’s putting that smile on yo
ur face, I’m all for it.”
In his office, he sat down, wondering at her words. He didn’t look any different, but he felt different. And, with that same smile on his face, he got to work.
As Shane headed down to the hot tub with Keith at the end of the day—to work on some of his sore muscles that he still struggled to control—Shane wondered where and how long Melissa had stayed out in the sun. He hoped not too long because her skin was supersensitive, being as fair as she was. He looked when they arrived at the pool, thankful she wasn’t here. He would have felt guilty for leaving her here when he should have taken her up himself.
“You seem distracted,” Keith said, looking up at him. “Something wrong?”
“Not at all,” Shane said. “I had a patient out here earlier. Just making sure that she’s not still here.”
“I guess it’s hard to turn off, isn’t it?” Keith asked.
“It can be,” he said. “You know how we invest in you guys. We invest our hearts, our hopes, our energies to try and get you as good as we can, and we don’t want to see anything happen to derail your success.”
“What about emotionally?” he asked. “Now that I’ve found somebody, which I still don’t quite believe, how do you handle relationships here?”
“Well, it hasn’t been an issue before,” he said. “It might be now though.”
“Ah-ha,” Keith said with a chuckle. “It’s nice to see that it’s not just me who got caught.”
“I’m not sure exactly what it is,” Shane admitted, “but I’m definitely interested in someone.”
“Good,” he said. “In that case, you should go after it, if that’s what you want.”
“Oh, she’s not ready,” he said.
“You know what? That’s what I thought about me, but I was wrong too.”
“You think so?”
“Absolutely. Being here, the things we’ve been through, it’s not a case of not being ready. It’s not a case of needing more time. It’s usually that most of us don’t even see what’s in front of us. We don’t think it’s possible. We don’t see that relationship or that anybody will even want us. And that’s something that I had to get past.”
“But you did get past it,” he said.
“I did. It took a bit, and that’s only down to Ilse that I made it that far,” he said, chuckling. “She’s been very, very good for me.”
“You two do look great together,” he said.
“I appreciate that. I still worry that I might be a burden for her, and I know, if she ever heard me say that, she’d trounce me hard for it,” he said, chuckling. “And now that I’m getting so much better, and I can see that the improvements will continue, it’s just that much easier to move forward.”
“While I would have said that this person wasn’t quite ready, I think she’s also slowly learning a little more about herself, what she wants in life, and … where some of her issues are coming from.”
“And that’s what life’s all about here, isn’t it? Every day is some emotional challenge just to figure out what and where people are working from, what the reasons are why they’re struggling,” he said. “And it’s usually not the reason we think it is.” He looked up at him. “In your case, you’re probably afraid to have a relationship with anybody in case you think, … they think, … it’s a patient-therapist-transfer notion. Which I presume the person you’re talking about, from what you said, is a patient?”
Shane nodded slowly. “It’s because of that issue that personal relationships with patients are always avoided.”
“Sounds like that’s something that you might need to deal with,” Keith said.
“I don’t think it’s an issue, a situation I have come up against before, but it’s unique. And I’ll just have to work my way through to accepting that this is potentially my new normal.”
Chapter 9
Something between Melissa and Shane had shifted in a good way. The next few days the smiles were brighter, the touches held longer, and the need to spend more time together deepened. It was a wonderful feeling. They met for breakfast several times a week when before they might have met only once a week. And now they met for lunch every day. She knew other people were commenting, as there were smiles and nods in their general direction when they went in for lunch that following Friday.
She smiled and said, “We’re attracting attention.”
“Let them comment,” Shane said comfortably. “All in all, I would say everybody’s pretty happy. At least I haven’t heard anything otherwise.”
“As long as you don’t mind.”
“And I’m certainly not against it,” he said, chuckling. “And we have to expect a certain amount of interest when you start a relationship.”
At his words, she smiled and said, “Here I thought we were past just starting.”
“Relationships here develop differently,” he admitted. “We’re already past so much of the social niceties that people would put on when you first meet. It’s different here. There’s no energy for that surface level. We are already down to the nitty-gritty of our inner selves here.”
“I guess it gets right down to the heart of what really matters, doesn’t it?”
They were sitting outside on the deck, both with lunch. She had chosen pasta, whereas he had some Chinese dish.
He nodded. “Here you’re already dealing with really deep issues. You’re dealing with healing, with the reality of what your current world looks like,” he said. “And that means all that other stuff—how you look, how you present yourself—changes. It’s different from just putting on makeup and going out to a dance, where you get to be somebody else for a night, and it takes time to get to know who people really are. Here, right now, we know who people are. We see it in our work, on a day-to-day basis.”
“I never thought of that,” she said, “but it’s true. An interesting way to look at life too.”
“And it’s real,” he said. “I think that’s why so many of the relationships that have developed here have done so well.”
“Well, it gives me hope then,” she said with a cheeky smile.
He grinned at her. “The thing is, you need to make sure that whatever is going on between us doesn’t negatively impact whatever it is that you need to do for your health, physically and emotionally,” he said. “So if you ever find me getting in the way, tell me to butt out.”
She chuckled. “If anything, you’re showing me that something normal is possible.”
“Of course it’s possible.” Then he smiled. “But that’s one of the realizations that you had to come to. That’s part of the whole growth process.”
“And that’s not an easy process to get to,” she said, “because, as the patient going through all this, I don’t see it. I don’t realize that it’s a milestone. I’m just focused on working forward until it hits me, and I realize that I’ve crossed it.”
“And I think that’s why so many of us can’t really tell you what it is you need to do to heal, outside of giving you general guidelines, because that milepost, that realization, is different for every person.”
“I guess I just hadn’t even considered it,” she said honestly.
“Well, now you have,” he said with a smile. “So life is … good. You can work toward the next milestone.”
She rolled her eyes at that. “Can’t imagine how many milestones we’ll have to work toward.”
“In some cases, there are a lot,” he said. “But I can tell you, it’s worth it. Every single day, it’s worth it.”
And she thought about his words for the next week, as it seemed like their friendship deepened, and people around them started to see them as a couple. And something was very special about that. The world was built for couples, as if a bubble were around them. And nobody else seemed to matter. She didn’t know for sure that she was falling in love, but she was definitely experiencing feelings for him that she hadn’t expected. At breakfast that following Wednesday, they were eating together. Se
veral people were whispering about them a few tables over.
She dropped her gaze to her plate.
“Problems?” he asked, in that very perceptive tone of his.
She smiled. “I’m just … I’m unfamiliar with this,” she said.
“Does the talk bother you?” he asked, his gaze searching hers.
“No, not so much that it bothers me,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting it, and I’m not used to it, but I can’t say that it’s a problem. I don’t know if it’s a problem.”
“Right,” he said. “Why don’t we just take it as not a problem, and we’ll carry on.”
She smiled. “Like, not borrow trouble before it happens?”
“Exactly.” He nodded.
She laughed. “Sounds good. I have a session this morning with the doctors to see how my last set of tests were.”
“Good,” he said. “You’re showing a lot of improvement physically.”
“Not enough to walk normally though,” she said. “I mean, obviously I can walk-walk, but it’d be nice to not lurch.”
“I know what you mean,” he said. “I’ll show you how much you’ve improved in our next session.” He checked his watch. “And that’s in about two hours.”
“It is,” she said. “I’ll head back and get ready for my doctor’s appointment.”
“Until then,” he said, lifting a hand.
She pushed her wheelchair back and turned, heading out. She knew his gaze was on her as she left, she could just feel it. It was that inner knowing. But it was also special too. She was a little afraid to believe in him. In them. He could have anyone he wanted. Why her? Maybe the need to walk normally was more for him to see her as somebody who had done as well as everybody else in here.
As she headed out the doctor’s door, after her session, she turned to him. “Oh, I wanted to ask you about walking.”
“Well, you are ambulatory, aren’t you?” he asked.
She motioned at the wheelchair and said, “Well, I can walk without it, yes. But it tires me out, and physically I’m not very strong to keep it up.”
“Have you asked Shane about that?”
