by Lynn, Davida
After letting him have his silence for a few minutes, I spoke. “Tired of this place yet?”
Rico didn’t look up at me, but he did answer. “I’ve been sick of it since day one. I’ve helped too many people into ambulances to send them here. Never thought one of them would be me.”
“Do you really think you’re invincible?” He still didn’t look up, so he missed the playful smile I was giving him.
“I did.”
“Rico, look at me.” I had all day, and I’d wait until he actually did. His empty eyes finally met mine. “You can’t be serious. You can work out all day, every day, and you can train twenty-four seven, but it won’t make you bullet proof—or flame resistant.”
“I had it all. That’s the killer thing. I had everything I’d ever wanted, and now I know it’s gone.”
Rico’s words hurt me. To hear someone talk so passionately about their dreams crumbling made my throat close up. I did my best to hide my emotions. “You don’t know that.”
If Rico heard me, he chose not to acknowledge what I’d said. “I only got to taste the victory for a second. It tears me up.”
I took in what he said for a few moments. Most of the time, Rico played the pity party, but I really felt what he had said. I had worked hard to get where I was. I knew the taste of victory, and I knew the cost.
I’d sacrificed relationships and partners to get into one of the best hospitals in Detroit. Back in San Francisco, my fiancé had said it was Detroit or him. I hated that he had made me choose, and he hated my choice. He’d proven to me that putting my career first was the right move, but it still stung.
“Your dream isn’t dead, Rico. Adversity is throwing everything it’s got at you, but that doesn’t mean that your dream is dead.”
“Eh.” Typical male response.
“I’m serious. I don’t lie to patients. I know when they have honest chances.”
For the first time, I saw a spark of something in his eye. “Really?”
I stretched a leg out and turned his wheelchair with it so that he was facing me. I nodded.
“We’ve got to get you thinking differently. You feel like you had achieved your dream, right?” After Rico nodded, I continued. “Look at it this way: you got a taste, and now you’ve just got another hurdle to jump before you reach the real finish line. Sure, you made it onto the Detroit Fire Department, but imagine the story you could tell your kids and grandkids if you got back into fighting shape.”
The mention of kids distracted me. I almost didn’t hear him when he asked, “Have you talked to Dr. Jolie?”
“Not in a few days, but I’ll find him tomorrow and get an update.” In reality, I wanted to talk to Rico’s physician every day, but I knew I was already close to crossing professional lines. I pulled my foot back off of Rico’s wheelchair, and I saw his eyes follow it back to the picnic table.
Rico’s gaze traveled up from my leg until he met my eyes again. He made no attempt to cover up just how slowly it took him to wander up my body. I felt heat course through me as he looked me over. There was something so confident in his gaze.
“So,” he said, “what’s your story?”
“That is one hell of a broad question, Rico.”
He smiled. He was so handsome when he smiled, but it was hard to get one out of him. I took it as an accomplishment. Rico’s dark eyes seemed to lighten, but that might have been the setting sun. His skin wasn’t all that tan, but I guessed that if he hadn’t spent nearly two months in the hospital, it would have been. Sun-kissed and rounding out the trio of tall, dark, and handsome.
“All right, all right. Is this what you like to do? Physical therapy?”
It was my turn to smile. “I love PT work. I get people back on their feet.” Taking the chance to look Rico up and down, I nodded at his legs. “Sometimes quite literally.”
“I see what you did there, Lizzie.” His voice was as warm as his eyes. The orange glow of the sunset afforded him some color again, and I couldn’t help but notice how gorgeous he was. Hearing him say my name didn’t help anything. I could feel myself sinking. Slowly. Slowly.
A flush rose in my cheeks. “Glad your sense of humor is still intact. Really, though, I am able to help people walk again, knit again, or whatever it was they did before. I help them find a way to live. I give them confidence in themselves. Stroke victims have to relearn everything, or in some cases, they have to learn to do everything with the other hand, which, as you can imagine, is one hell of a task.”
Rico looked down at his left hand, the one that had been pretty much immobilized since he’d had come into the hospital.
After a few moments, he looked back up at me. “You give people their lives back?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess I do.”
“Are you going to give me mine back?” There was a childlike innocence to his voice.
“I’m going to do all I can to get your life back, Rico.”
He smiled so wide that his teeth showed. “Is that a promise, Lizzie?”
The professional inside of me was screaming. Don’t make promises, don’t give him false hope, and don’t fall for him! I had already stepped over the line. My relationship with Rico was way too personal. At first, I told myself it was crucial to get his motivation up, but I knew that flimsy excuse was fading fast.
“It’s a promise. Now, let’s get you back to your room before your hospital food gets cold.” I smiled despite the turmoil twisting me up inside.
As much as I hated giving Rico false hope, watching his body language change was incredible. I knew I might be setting his expectations far too high, but maybe he’d work that much harder. That was my hope, anyway.
I stood up, ready to unlock his wheelchair and get him back inside, but he grabbed my wrist as I reached for the handle. I felt another rush and I knew my cheeks were turning red all over again.
“I think I can get it this time.”
I gave him a look that said, You sure? His smile was my answer.
I let him hear the worry in my voice. “All right, but I’ll be following close behind just in case.”
Rico struggled to get his left arm moving, but after the initial start, he seemed to be pushing along steady and evenly. I kept an eye ahead of him to see if there were any cracks in the sidewalk. The hospital kept the courtyard in decent shape, but I wanted to be sure.
As we neared the ramp, Rico picked up some speed. I should have stopped and tilted the front wheels up into the air for him, but I thought he could get it on his own. I was wrong.
Rico hit the ramp and the wheelchair came to a violent stop. His left hand moved forward and crashed into the wheel lock. He let out a grunt and reached across his body with his right hand. I rushed to his side to see what had happened.
“What’s wrong?” I knelt down beside him, and I was glad to see that he wasn’t bleeding. It was a small victory, in the grand scheme of things.
“It’s my hand. I think I felt something snap.” His voice was calm, but I could hear the pain. Whatever had snapped, it wasn’t small.
I hit the call button on my Vocera necklace and said, “Call ICU.”
It chimed and repeated, “Calling… ICU.”
As I tilted Rico’s wheelchair back and got him back inside the hospital, a nurse answered the call in intensive care. “Hello?”
“I’m coming back inside from the courtyard with Rico Baggio. He’s injured his left hand, I think one of the screws might have come loose. We’ll be on the elevator up to you in two minutes.”
“Understood. Thank you.”
“Well, Rico, it looks like we’ll have to bring you back into surgery to reset a few of the pins in your left arm. I hate to have to operate on you anymore, but like I said, we can either reset it, or chance it not healing properly.”
I tried to keep the disgusted look off my face as Dr. Rob spoke. I felt sick. I was angry. I was hurt. I had gone through moments where I blamed Lizzie, but I quickly pushed that thought from m
y head. It wasn’t her fault at all. She had been doing a good thing, and I wouldn’t let anyone blame her. The blame fell squarely on my shoulders. I was the one that had pushed too hard, and I should have known better. I’ve never been a “slow and steady” kind of guy, and once again, it had bitten me in the ass.
As the doctor explained my injuries, I remembered the first day I picked up running. A friend had suggested jogging a mile and working my way up from there. I decided that anything less than a 5k would be a waste of time, and I paid for it with large and long-lasting blisters on my feet.
“You understand that your bones need time to heal, Rico?”
I didn’t like the doctor calling me Rico, anymore. It meant that I had spent far too much time in the hospital, and everyone knew me too well. Lizzie was different, though.
She was the only one in the place who didn’t look at me with pity, and that included my family. Lizzie saw me as someone who just had a hurdle to jump. I liked that. As the doctor turned my hand over and sent a shot of pain up my arm, I thought about the hurdle in front of me. I saw myself jumping it, and I saw Lizzie there cheering me on.
My imagination must have gotten carried away, because I went from seeing her cheer to seeing her in a cheerleading outfit. I blinked away the thought for a split second, but then I came back to it. Her bright and shining smile, her blonde curls, and her tanned legs. I had to guess on the last bit, because I’d only seen her in scrubs, but it was my fantasy, dammit, and it was the best I’d felt in weeks.
I liked her. It was an easy thing to admit to myself. Not nearly as easy to admit to someone else, but I didn’t have to worry about that. The only thing anyone ever talked with me about was my recovery. My family encouraged me, the doctor encouraged me—if “Rico, you have to be more careful” counts as encouragement.
I snapped back to reality when the doc said, “This is going to push our timeline back a few weeks. I’ll let PT know that there’ve been some complications.”
Lizzie seemed like the only one who still saw me as a person. She had a way of making things seem better, even at their darkest. She apologized endlessly for the accident with my hand, but I told her just as many times that I was the one pushing too hard. She must have felt awful, because she didn’t see me for three days, which made me feel even worse.
After a long drought without her, I finally heard her voice in the hallway. My heart pounded as I sat in bed, staring at the door and waiting for her to come inside so I could reassure her that my hand was on me, and not her. I wanted to see her drop her face into her soft hands and give me that sad grin. It slayed me.
She was different than most of the women I had picked up. She was different because I had picked them all up by telling them what I did. I’d flex my muscles, tell a few war stories, and that was that. It wasn’t hard to find girls when you were on the DFD. Lizzie didn’t seem to care too much about that, though. It wasn’t about picking her up.
She was different from the girls I’d been with, and she was definitely different than Susannah. She actually made me think. I never really considered what a partner would be like, but as she came into the room, I threw that onto the list: they had to make me think.
I didn’t get the apologetic grin like I’d hoped, but she was smiling. I gave her a confused look, because it wasn’t just a smile. She had something on her mind. When Lizzie flipped up the doorstop and let the door close behind her, my heart rate jumped again.
“The devil’s in your eyes, Lizzie. Wanna tell me what’s up?”
She put a hand up to her mouth and rolled her eyes, as if she was some innocent party. Her voice was oozing with sarcasm. “Me? Oh, nothing.” But she couldn’t wipe the smile off her face, and that had me worried. I’d never seen mischievous Lizzie. It made me very suspicious and very curious.
After a few seconds, she spoke again. “Well, I have heard from your doctor that I’ll be able to start your PT in a week. I’ve spent all morning coming up with your schedule and your exercises.”
I gave her a cockeyed look, “That’s great, but why do you look so fuckin’ pleased with yourself, then?”
Lizzie was nearing the door, ready to make her exit. I got the feeling that she was going to leave me only more confused.
Her smile turned from something she couldn’t hide into something that she seemed to have practiced well, because the look was dead on. She looked downright sultry.
“Because, Rico, then you’re all mine.”
Oh, God. Her voice was honey dripping over me.
I didn’t have time to reply before she slipped back out of my room. I stared, my mind ablaze with questions and desire as the door clicked shut.
My heart raced the rest of the afternoon. The more I thought about my interactions with Rico, the more I enjoyed being a bad girl at work. I didn’t know what it was about Rico, but he brought something out of me. He made me feel adventurous and flirty. He reacted so well to it all, and I just couldn’t help myself.
From what I could tell, he wasn’t doing as well with other people. Dr. Jolie brought up Rico’s attitude with me on more than one occasion, but even after the secondary injury, I never saw Rico losing hope. I was under the impression that since we’d met, he had only been getting better. I didn’t believe for one second that he was putting on a show for me; I knew that there was something between us that no one else could see.
And no one else could see, or I’d be out of a job. I’d probably lose my license.
I hadn’t told Rico, but the reason I was all smiles was because I had figured out exactly how to motivate him. I knew that he wanted to get back to firefighting as soon as possible, and I was the one who had led him to believe that was an option. After a few days of thinking, I came up with something even better: me.
It was risky, and I was really putting myself out there, but if Rico wanted to get better, I was going to be his motivation. There was something between us, and I was going to offer Rico a date if he met the goals I set out for him in physical therapy. The idea had come to me the night before and I’d been giddy about it ever since. I’d never felt that way about any patient before.
I didn’t really even think of Rico as a patient. I knew he had work to do, and I’d be the one to show him the way to train his muscles, but to me, it felt more like a partnership. When one partner slips, the other is there to lend a helping hand. I was ready to lend Rico that hand. I knew he’d be reluctant to grab onto it, and that was what the incentive was for. I just needed to find the right time when I could tell him in private.
With the courtyard incident fresh in everyone’s minds, I decided to keep my distance. The last thing that I needed was for someone at the hospital to get a bit to nosey about my interactions with Rico. I stopped in briefly, but I kept things professional. I could see confusion on Rico’s face, but he didn’t say anything. It hurt me to act that way in front of him, but it was for our own good.
Since his left hand wouldn’t be ready for exercise for another month, Rico and I would only be working on legs. It would be a start for him, and it would test us both. He would get an idea of just how strenuous PT was going to be and I was going to get a sense of what kind of person he was. What kind of man he was.
I believed him when he said he was a hard worker. You didn’t become a Detroit firefighter without being dedicated and strong, but physical therapy was a different beast. It wasn’t always about complete the most reps or lifting the most weight. It was about slow, steady progress, and I got the idea that Rico wasn’t going to be much of a fan of taking his time.
