by Geeta Kakade
Andrew Blackwell straightened his injured knee and she could tell from the grimace on his face that the cold was bothering it. It wasn’t a good sign. Ever since he’d been here she’d seen him ice his knee after therapy using a polar pack wrapped in a towel and she’d thought it best not to say anything about it. Christy had told them when she’d put all the polar packs Andrew had been given into the freezer that icing the knee would help reduce Andrew’s pain after therapy and reduced swelling and inflammation. She’d also mentioned that the therapy to improve range of movement and maintain the strength in his quadricep muscles was no cake walk.
“Got to stick the rehab out for four more weeks,” he said almost to himself.
“Four? I thought Mark said six.” The words popped out before she could stop them.
“Dr. Rustom says it could be four and then I won’t need the brace, if I keep up with the exercises regularly. I will have to keep up the therapy after that to strengthen the muscles in my right leg. They’ve become very weak because of the immobilization of the knee.”
Bridget felt really bad about everything negative she’d thought about him. With his medical challenges, no wonder he didn’t feel like being social.
“Ever broken anything?” he asked.
This was new. He was actually talking. “My arm, just above my elbow but it was a greenstick fracture and I only had to have it in a sling for three weeks.”
“What happened?”
“One of the other kids dared me to jump out of a tree and I did.” Bridget said.
“How many kids were there at the Convent?”
“The nuns decided to start an orphanage in the 1970’s. When I was there, they had approximately forty children give or take a few.”
“Forty!”
Bridget nodded. “The Convent built cottages so there would be two nuns to every eight children in each cottage. They grouped us according to our ages. We had a common dining room and study hall. It was something like a boarding school except none of us went home. Sister Winifred was in charge of our cottage. The nuns who helped her rotated between different jobs and convents and one of them, Sister Magdalena, even left to head an orphanage in Guatemala but I’m glad Sister Winifred never left.”
“How many girls your age were there?”
“There were four of us and four a year younger in our cottage.”
“Where are the others your age now?”
“One’s doing medicine and two are in nursing school.”
“You didn’t want to go to college?”
Bridget pulled up in the parking lot by the Professional building. “I was happy helping out at the Convent and I got an associate degree in accounting online with some weekend classes. I didn’t want to leave.”
She didn’t want to mention that Sister Winifred had started getting very tired and being at the Convent and helping her had been an obvious choice for Bridget.
He opened the door. “See you back here in two hours?”
She nodded. For a few minutes after he went in she sat staring into space. She was in shock. They had achieved a civilized conversation after all. He seemed to be more relaxed around her since he had heard about the Convent. Bridget smiled. She guessed being thought of as a would be nun did put her in a different perspective.
He looked tense when he came out and she said nothing on the way home.
As she turned on to Lakeshore Drive she braked very suddenly. The tires screeched and she could smell burning rubber as she stopped. A deer had just bounded across the road without any warning. Andrew Blackwell swore.
“I’m sorry,” said Bridget shaking at the close encounter. There had been reports of vehicles totaled and passengers badly injured after collisions with a deer.
“Can’t you watch the road?” he snapped.
“I was watching the road. The deer wasn’t.” She was trying to rein in her temper.
“You were going too fast.”
She hadn’t driven five miles above the speed limit since she had got her license at sixteen. What was he talking about?
“Did your knee get jolted?” Maybe he was in pain.
“A little.”
“I’m sorry.”
She started the car and he said. “Watch the road.”
That was it! The built in pressure of her anger blew the safety valve of her control as it whooshed out.
She pulled to the side of the road and looked at him. “I don’t know what your problem is,” she said, “but I’m a good driver. I’m sorry your leg is hurt and your therapy is difficult but don’t take it out on me. We all know your life may never be the same but the human power to adapt defines the fine line between success and failure.”
She paused, brushed an angry tear away and went on, “We are all trying to be as nice as possible to you but you don’t make it easy on any of us. We cannot make up for what happened to you but we try to express how sorry we are by making things easy for you, holding a door open, talking to you, pulling a chair up to the table. All you do is make it so clear you hate our attempts to help you. Do you ever think about how the people around you feel? You avoid all of us even Frank as if we have the plague and when you do talk to us you’re grilling us about our backgrounds. It won’t hurt you to think of how to make other people feel good. Moira’s terrified that Frank annoys you and she’s told him to stay in the apartment to keep him out of your way. The Kemps stay in their rooms when they’re not working downstairs and Toby doesn’t come into the kitchen like he used to. We are all trying our best to do what we can to make you comfortable. What do you do in return? You withhold what you can give others with very little effort and choose only to focus on your feelings and what you can’t do now. A smile, a few words, a compliment; are all these little things foreign to you? Are you trying to punish us because you got hurt? Maybe you should see a therapist about your anger over what happened while you’re going through rehab instead of taking it out on us. I did not see that deer and if I hadn’t stopped the way I did we would have been in a bad accident.”
When she finally stopped Bridget knew she had given it her all. There was nothing more to say. She looked at him and saw the anger in his eyes over her remarks turned them almost navy blue. Well, she didn’t care.
She started the car and drove home silently the rest of the way. In the drive she got out and went into the house.
Mr. Blow Hot, Blow Cold, had had that coming to him.
Andrew knew he deserved that but for a few minutes when she’d braked like that he’d re-lived the accident. Fear had invited anger in, coloring his reaction.
The more he thought about her remarks the more he knew Bridget was absolutely right. He had been a grouch since he’d arrived.
Tuesday night Bridget felt tired and her head ached. To avoid Andrew Blackwell she’d spent the day in the attic with the dolls. The ones in good condition were laid out on the bed there; the ones she had to work on were sorted in boxes accorded to what they needed done. By three she knew she had overdone her repair work on the dolls’ clothes. After she’d supervised Frank’s homework she went for a long walk by the lakeshore. It didn’t help clear the tired edgy feeling.
After she’d done the dishes and laid the table for breakfast and the last guest had gone upstairs Bridget decided to stay in the family room and watch a show. She didn’t feel like settling down with her knitting and realized she needed a break from routine. The hall separated the room from the guest room Andrew Blackwell was using and if she used the TV listener headset there wouldn’t be any sound at all. Frank had plugged it into the tv one day and shown her how to use it. There was a David Garrett concert that she had recorded on PBS earlier in the week that she wanted to watch and it might help her relax. She’d been wound up since she’d told Andrew Blackwell off and regretted her lack of self-control. She ought to have known better.
Bridget came awake with a shock. The loud moaning froze her. A look at the tv made her realize she still had it on and she’d fallen as
leep on the couch. The headset had fallen to the floor so where was the noise coming from?
It took her two minutes to realize it was the downstairs bedroom.
She went to the door. “Mr Blackwell?” she called softly.
Had he fallen down again?
The moan was repeated and she opened the door. Maybe he was hurt and couldn’t answer.
She went in and hit the light switch.
He lay in his bed, thrashing from side to side as if he was trying to escape something.
“No!”
His hands came up defensively.
Bridget reached for his shoulder. “Mr. Blackwell, you are…
“Get down.”
She didn’t know how but she was dragged down and lying on top of him. “Stay down.”
Shock was replaced by feeling. She was pressed as close as anyone could be to the hard male length of him being held so tightly she could hardly breathe.
“Mr. Blackwell. Andrew wake up! It’s just a dream. Wake up please.”
He went still and opened his eyes, blinked while his pupils adjusted to the light in the room.
“Just a dream?”
She nodded. “Let go of me please.”
His arms fell to his side and she stood up on shaky legs.
“Okay then.”
He closed his eyes and went right back to sleep before she could ask him if he wanted a glass of water. The medicines he was on must be really strong to knock him out like that and yet they weren’t strong enough to obliterate his nightmares.
Taking a few deep breaths she switched the light off and shut the door softly behind her.
‘Well!’ she told herself as she lay down on the couch again. ‘That went well don’t you think? One minute you’re yelling at him, the next you’re lying on top of him. Whatever next?’
If he was having nightmares, she had to stay within hearing range. If he fell off that bed he could hurt his knee all over again.
“Well I never!” said Phillip. “What next? Did you see the way he pulled her down on top of himself Ma?”
“He was having a nightmare Pa,” Agnes said.
“Nightmare my left foot! I have to ask him if he’s going to do the honorable thing and marry her!”
“You’ll do no such thing, Pa,” Agnes told her husband. “For one thing you cannot talk to him, for another he’s not ready to marry her.”
“I don’t know,” Phillip stared into the distance. “I told you there was trouble coming, didn’t I? Well there is. I don’t like it one darn bit, I don’t.”
“Yes Pa,” said Agnes.
Sometimes those two words were all Phillip needed to hear to calm down.
Wednesday morning Bridget was going over the menu for the party with Mrs. Kemp and Moira when they heard Andrew Blackwell coming toward the kitchen.
“I have to see Toby,” said Bridget quickly. “Mark sent me an e-mail asking me to tell him something about the lock on the boatshed.”
She beat a hasty retreat leaving the two other women to get his breakfast like they always did and fuss over him.
She stayed outside chatting with Toby till she saw him look over her shoulder.
“G’morning sir,” he said.
Bridget froze. There was only one man he called sir beside Mark.
“G’morning.”
She turned toward Andrew Blackwell as he said, “Do you have a moment? I’d like a word about the first payment toward my board and lodge.”
“Excuse me.” Toby took his wheelbarrow in the direction of the shed.
Bridget nodded and Andrew said, “Let’s walk shall we?”
He got on the path that circled the house and she fell into step beside him.
“I want to apologize for Monday.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It does. I had no right to blame you about the deer. I should have thanked you for stopping so quickly. And you were right on other counts too. The rehab sessions were painful and I felt the knee wasn’t healing as it should and then when you braked like that I re-lived my accident all over again. I took everything out on you and I’m really sorry.”
“I shouldn’t have said what I did. I’m sorry too,” said Bridget quickly. “The deer scared me jumping across so fast.”
She fell silent wondering how to address the fact she’d spoken her mind and said things she shouldn’t have even if they were true.
“I’m glad you spoke out like you did,” Andrew Blackwell said. “I realize I haven’t been easy to be around. I’ll try to do better.”
She was taken aback by his words and suddenly she wanted to get away.
“I have to help Mrs. Kemp and Moira…” She almost felt like she should sit in her room and write, 'I will not lose my temper’ one hundred times and mail the paper to Sister Winifred.
“Thank you for last night too.”
He remembered? She turned to face him.
“I’m having nightmares since I returned from Afghanistan.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t know why because I didn’t see active duty. I was in Army Intelligence…the guy who always stayed well behind the front lines.”
“But…” prompted Bridget.
“Our company was on a routine exercise one day through an abandoned village when one of my pals stepped on a mine. Four men died in that explosion. The rest of us took cover and retreated but the memory of that explosion returns to haunt me.”
He said it matter of factly as if he had said it many times before. Mark had mentioned PTSD to Christy and her.
“The doctor wants me to increase my meds to prevent the nightmares but I won’t as it makes me groggy throughout the day.”
“I understand.”
“I’m sorry if I embarrassed you last night.”
Did he remember what exactly had happened?
“It’s no problem.”
Bridget wished she wasn’t so tongue-tied.
Moira came to the kitchen door and Bridget said, “Moira and I are baking bread today. Mr. Kemp will be giving you a ride as he wants to do some things in town. Excuse me.”
She almost ran into the house in her hurry to get away from him.
Andrew frowned. He couldn’t remember much of what had happened last night but he could recall pulling her down and her lying on top of him. What an absolute idiot he was. He kept having the same dream pulling the man beside him down after the explosion and shielding him with his body. The dream recurred when he was stressed and he had been upset about his behavior yesterday. His therapist had said his memory was trying to remind him of the good he’d done saving that life and he should focus on that instead of what he hadn’t been able to prevent.
If his personal issues were becoming a problem for all those at Cupid Lodge, Andrew knew he would have to leave.
“What is this PTSD people keep talking about these days?” asked Phillip.
“Post Traumatic Stress Disorder,” Agnes said.
“What causes it?”
“In soldiers it is caused by the trauma of the physical experiences of war and the mental images that stick with them that result in nightmares and or extreme anxiety. Some try to totally avoid remembering the details of the event by blocking it out but they have symptoms of extreme anxiety and alarming flashbacks."
“We didn’t have anything like that in our days. Men went to war, they fought and they came home and went on with their lives.” Phillip argued.
“Not always in the same way,” Agnes replied. “Look at our family through the generations and you will see the same pictures I do. Our grandson was never the same after he returned from war and some of his friends’ took their own lives after the first World War. That was PTSD undiagnosed. Some came home, drank and beat their wives. That was…”
“I get the picture,” Phillip cut in. “So is this Andrew whatshisname going to get over it or not?”
“Definitely, with Bridget’s help. Cupid Lodge will work its own magic too and we�
��re around to make sure things progress as they should.”
Andrew stood by the lakeshore Wednesday evening, willing the cold air to blow away the cobwebs in his mind. He’d missed Bridget this morning on the drive into town and realized he’d pushed her away with his angry outburst on Monday. Why else would she have asked Mr. Kemp to take her place?
Everything she’d said about him was true. Andrew knew he had to make things better. He had to turn his analytical skills inward and sift through all the evidence his actions of the last few months provided and make decisions that were going to make him easier to be around.
He either had to take control of his life and change it or move out to some place where his attitude wouldn’t be a burden on those around him. He could get an apartment in Reno again and hibernate like a grouchy bear.
The thought held no appeal. For a reason he couldn’t identify he wanted to prove to Bridget he could change.
The lake, usually beautiful in vivid hues of blue and green, was grey verging on black now, tossing angry waves on shore, matching the turbulence of his thoughts.
True the accident had been life changing but in his two months in Vet's hospitals in Los Angeles and Reno he’d seen people forced to deal with much worse.
True the problem with his knee might always be there. One doctor had said he wouldn’t be able to do some of the things he’d always taken for granted.
The human ability to adapt is what makes the difference between success and failure.
He’d hurt everyone here with his aloofness, brushing off their help because of the deep fear inside that he would always be dependent on others for assistance.
We cannot make up for what happened to you but we try to express how sorry we are by making things easy for you. It makes us feel better.
Everything wasn’t only about how he felt. He had to take off the blinders and think about how others felt.
Are you trying to punish us because you got hurt?
Yes, he was.
Why would you withhold what is in your ability to give and only focus on what you can’t do?
He stood out there, the cold wind penetrating to his bones chasing away the last vestiges of the heavy fog that had enveloped him since his accident. By the time Andrew went in he knew exactly what he had to do. He had set some things in motion last week to try and give back but that wasn’t enough. He had to make amends to each one of them on an individual basis for his behavior.
