These Battered Hands

by Laurel Ulen Curtis

  And as if the wound needed a little more salt rubbed in, my fall cost our team the gold.

  Three Olympics. Three Team Silver Medals.

  I thought I’d feel unsatisfied by that. That is would really burn and grate that I made all this effort, all of these sacrifices, and still hadn’t managed to do better than before.

  But I didn’t feel that way at all. I felt like three Silver Olympic medals was still really fucking good. And most of all, I felt like I got what I really wanted out of that work, sweat, and blood—a life changing reward that changed the meaning of my life and filled my life with even more guts and glory.

  I wanted to feel like I had everything I’d always wanted. I wanted that feeling of fulfillment.

  And I found it in Nik.

  He was the everything I’d been looking for. It just took me a while to realize what everything looked like.

  It wasn’t until the fourth time his hand moved from my knee to ankle that I realized what the fact that I had noticed meant.

  “Nik…I…I can feel your hand.”

  He looked down, startled, so lost in his thoughts and his concentration on my face that he didn’t even realize what it meant either. He thought he was hurting me, jerking it back like retreating from an overly hot surface.

  “No, no!” I shouted to stop him. “Put it back.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Please, put it back.” He did, looking right into my eyes and listening. “I think I can feel my legs.”

  His eyes widened just before closing in relief, his fingertips sinking noticeably into the muscle of my blanket-covered thigh. Sweet sensation drifted into the skin around them, and my throat clogged in relief.

  “Oh, thank God,” I heard my mom say from the side of the room I’d yet to survey. My dad stood next to her silently, probably for the first time in his life.

  I’d told myself that everything would be okay no matter what the outcome with my legs. That as long as I figured out a way to get Nik in my life and keep him, the rest really didn’t matter. I had to hold on to that positivity before surgery.

  But I could not deny the sweet melody that hummed through my veins at the realization that I wouldn’t have to live with that burden—and that Nik wouldn’t have to either.

  Lost in my own relief, I hadn’t noticed that the room was uncomfortably silent.

  When several seconds passed and my dad still said nothing, I scrunched my eyebrows together and looked from him to Nik, at a complete loss for what was going on.

  “Nik?” I asked, knowing he would be the one to tell me the truth out of the bunch. Even if he didn’t want to, he respected me enough to do it.

  “Cal,” he murmured sweetly with a short swipe of his arm, “it’s fine.”

  It was fine?

  What was goddamn fine?

  What the hell was going on here?

  “No, damnit. I don’t know what’s going on, but I do know that it is not fine,” I disagreed, anger running the line of my body, raising me taller in bed, and making Shirley hide a smirk and turn her head. “Someone is going to tell me why it’s weird, and they’re going to do it right now.”

  Still, no one spoke, and as a result, I officially started to lose my shit.

  I met each and every one’s eyes individually, holding them in the depths of my most violent stare until they turned repentant.

  “Someone is going to tell me why I’m lying here after one of the biggest scares of my life, telling you I can feel my legs, and you’re all denying me a well-deserved goddamn celebration!”

  Shirley, the saucy minx, raised her hand.

  Nik couldn’t contain his laugh at the harmlessly shit-stirring gesture, and my dad’s eyes turned hard at the beautiful sound.

  Mine narrowed for a fight, but before I even opened my mouth, my mom changed everything I thought I knew, turned my whole parental world upside down, and elbowed him directly and with force in the gut.

  He made a small noise as the air left him, accusatory eyes turning toward my mom but not challenging.

  “Okay,” I shrieked! “Now I’m really interested.”

  Nik sighed and moved at once, coming to sit on the bed in the space by my hip. His hands moved to my face, love bleeding from every facet of his tender hold, and lifted my lips to his once, twice, and touching his lips to mine a third time before looking into my eyes and explaining to the best of his ability despite a clear preference not to.

  “It’s pretty simple, Cal, and if you really thought about it, I’m sure you could figure it out on your own.” He paused only briefly, touching his lips to mine once more and drawing a grumble from my dad once more. My lips followed his as they left, each touch like a tiny stitch in the hole he’d torn open in my heart when he left.

  He shrugged with a simplicity that matched his statement. “I’m here. Your dad doesn’t want me to be.”

  I closed my eyes and slammed my head back into the pillow, turning in my father’s direction and prying them slowly open. “Still, Dad? Really? Jesus.”

  “Come on, Frank,” my mom prompted my dad, pulling him toward the door of the room and trying to contain the situation. “We’ll give you some time alone,” she added, addressing me directly. It was pretty clear he didn’t want to go, but he did anyway.

  Shirley winked and followed them out of the room, and Nik didn’t watch any of it.

  He was too busy watching me.

  His forehead met mine with a soft thunk, and his eyes closed as it did.

  “I missed you, Cal.”

  I reached up and cupped his cheek, whispering, “I missed you too.”

  His face felt warm in my hand, and the flush of his cheeks matched my own. “I know I didn’t always make the best choices when it came to us, and I’m sorry for them all. For each hurt, each inconsistency, each time I made you feel less worthy and wanted than you are.”

  His lips touched mine softly.

  “I want an us,” I said desperately, feeling like my point wasn’t clear enough and not wanting to leave even an ounce of question. “I want you and me, and I want it forever.”

  A small smile pulled at the very corners of his mouth, and his hands gingerly took mine, turning them over until the palms faced up.

  Under the lights, the glitter and New Skin glistened, and the evidence of my jumbled up words shone indisputably.

  “I know, my little Pea. I know you want it, and I know I’m going to give it to you. You, your dad, Shirley…” He smiled. “None of you could get rid of me if you tried.”

  Relief surged and sizzled, and determined not to waste any more time or opportunities, I blurted out the one thing that was long past due.

  “I love you,” we said at once, completely robbing me of my victory dance, a right of passage to be awarded for taking my foot out of my mouth first.

  Smiles melted both of our faces, and the already negligible space between us dwindled significantly.

  He didn’t let me dwell on it long though, crushing his lips to mine and re-marking my mouth as his. His tongue traveled all the territory, visiting all of the corners and the residents and leaving his taste with the majority of the sensitive buds of my tongue.

  He felt like home and happiness and like a long awaited prize awarded solely by being a prize idiot.

  I’d denied it too long, fought it too hard, and waited too long to make him my everything.

  I didn’t intend to make that mistake ever again.

  His forehead rolled back and forth on mine as I shook my head, wanting to let it go, wanting to live in the moment and move forward, but not being able to.

  “Why’d you go?” I breathed, the sound just barely audible over the bustling noise of the hospital around us.

  His forehead left mine and his vision narrowed in question, but his hands reached out to hold both of mine. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” I started with a huff, the frustration I’d felt that day hitting me as if it were happening all over again. “Why did you leave? Why did y
ou sign that stupid fucking paper? Why did you leave without saying anything? Why’d you give up and give in when you did nothing but swear that you wouldn’t? I’ve got nearly a million fucking whys that have done a million fucking laps in my head.”

  He shook his head, slow at first and increasing in speed as it went, stopping only to accuse me of his own injustice.

  “You signed that paper first,” he insisted, squeezing at my hands with more and more pressure as he did. He wasn’t only telling me. He was reaffirming the actuality to himself.

  And he definitely saw it as a certainty.

  My heart jumped in my chest, and I searched my memory for my exact account.

  But I hadn’t signed anything.

  Not when he first brought me in the office, not when he showed me the paper from Nik, and not when I left to call him.

  Nothing made sense, and I shook my head vehemently to say so.

  “I didn’t sign anything, Nik.”

  “Fuck!” he yelled, jumping back off the bed and startling my heart into a beat double the speed. He’d figured something out, but my brain was only moving at half of his speed.

  I tried to sit up fast enough to follow him, tried to move as he moved away, fighting desperately to keep him close and touching.

  “Nik—” I called as he turned, his walk a perfect display of anger and exploitation. The door slammed into the wall on his way out and my monitors started to go off in distress.

  I tried to throw back the covers and climb from my bed, but though my legs had feeling, they were hardly fully functional, and the pain as a result of trying to force it was excruciating.

  “Ahhhh,” I moaned in pain, gritting my teeth against it just as Shirley came running into the room.

  “Sit back,” she told me, helping me settle back into the pillows and giving me a stern eye as she did.

  I widened my own, nodding to the escalation outside. “You expect me not to try to figure out what’s going on?”

  She didn’t answer. Instead, I heard Nik’s voice going higher and higher until my father’s joined in, each one of them scraping and challenging for dominance.

  I panicked they’d get kicked out, but so far they hadn’t.

  Nik’s eventually won the war, the sound of him asking, “What did you do?” ringing out so loudly the whole floor had to have heard it.

  My palms turned clammy at the growing possibility of what I feared would be true.

  “You owe us an explanation!” Nik’s voice boomed, sending a sharp knife right through my heart.

  Because I knew what had to be. I didn’t know the details, but I knew the painfully heartbreaking gist.

  My dad had set us both up like a couple of fools, and in a game where I had already lost, I just found out that I lost double.

  Ushered by my mother and a lesser known, fuming version of Nik, my dad made his way back inside my room.

  “Dad?” I asked simply, knowing he knew I was smart enough to put all of basic pieces of the situation together.

  “I did it,” he admitted immediately, Nik’s jaw hardening to the point that I thought it might shatter in the background.

  His eyes met mine.

  I expected details and a reason, something greater than selfish priorities, but something far more disappointing is the only thing that came.

  “I created a problem, and I fixed it.”

  Rote and steady and comical in its simplicity, his voice held no emotion. No hesitation, no apology, and not one fucking ounce of regret.

  “Nik!” I yelled watching him jump toward my dad in one smooth move. It cost him a lot, I could see it in the stormy flash of his eyes, but he stopped at the sound of my voice.

  “God, Dad, how could you?!” Bitterness burned the lining of my throat and bile met it in the middle on its way up. Betrayed wholly by one of my most trusted allies.

  “I did what I had to do to keep you from ruining my career,” he justified easily. Way too easily.

  “And nearly ruined my life.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Don’t be so dramatic. It’s not like I intended to keep you apart forever—”

  “No,” I interrupted, a single tear finally escaping my eye and floating down the line of my cheek. “Just long enough to make sure I didn’t mess up any of your carefully schemed plans.”

  “The worst part is that you still don’t get it,” Nik cut in, unable to hold back his own emotion anymore. “You don’t get that life’s about more than achievements. It’s about understanding and love and a genuine fucking desire to make the people you supposedly care about happy.”

  “I know you’re focused,” he added before my dad could speak up. “But I also know you’re not blind.” His words were pointed and cutting. “You could not have missed that your daughter was happy…and that you were the one taking it away.”

  “Mom?” I asked, not wanting to know the answer.

  She shook her head in despair. “I didn’t know.” Her eyes flashed to my father in disgusted disapproval. “Not until recently.”

  “I want you to go,” I told my father, barely able to look at him, all of the years of his command-like-suggestions stacking up in the back of my mind. I’d never thought him to be calculating, but he was. He was from the beginning.

  The one who had changed was me. I’d been a better puppet, an easier target, and an easily swayed vote.

  Not anymore.

  From naive to aware in the blink of one Olympic fall’s eye.

  He didn’t realize what was happening, I could see it in his eyes, the denial of his consequences.

  But I wasn’t deciding if I trusted him anymore or not.

  It was already—

  Done.

  Family ties are usually for life. But when the binding breaks, it’s nearly impossible to put them back together again. Not without a whole hell of a lot of cooperation and glue.

  After a thankfully short stint, therapy was finally over for Callie, and so was her relationship with her father.

  Her back had healed beautifully, but her father’s scars were still just as ugly as ever. There’d been no reconciliation and no apology, and, when it came to the two of them, absolutely nothing resembling a happily ever after.

  The harsh reality was that some people never learned their lessons.

  Parents died.

  Trusted loved ones turned out to be neither trusted nor unconditionally loving.

  For Callie’s dad, their relationship came with strings. Big, thick, Olympic-sized ones.

  Rationally, I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. He’d had to have known that eventually it would end. That she’d grow too old to compete, too tired to perform, and too burned out to care.

  I guess he just always expected it to end on his terms.

  She felt the sting of his loss every day, but I made sure to contain the burn. Loving and supporting her own decisions and desires with the same fervor that I invested in my own.

  Step by step, I carried her burden, but it didn’t feel remotely like weight. Not when she did the same for me.

  “Nik?” she called from the bathroom, the sound of it echoing and bouncing down the hall to my spot on the couch with uncertainty.

  It was rare that I couldn’t get a read on what she was feeling anymore, but all mixed up and stirred together, I had to admit that on this one, I had no clue.

  “What’s up, Cal?” I asked as I walked, not getting an answer.

  I quickened my steps and deepened my frown, making up possibilities in my head and then taking them back just as fast.

  Callie was different. More open to solutions and a fan of necessary change. She’d handled the upheaval of her injury surprisingly well, but there were moments when she didn’t.

  It was my job to be there when she had them.

  “They’re gone,” she said simply, as soon as I turned the corner.

  Her eyes weren’t pained or sad necessarily. Just reflective.

  My mind searched for what she could be talkin
g about but ultimately came up empty.

  “What’s gone?”

  Instead of answering with words, she settled for a simple nod of her head.

  I glanced down, following her line of sight exactly and landing on the palms of her hands.

  Healed and whole, no ugly rips marred the surface and years worth of calluses had softened and pinked slightly. They looked normal to the layperson, and it took me hardly any time at all to figure out that was the problem.

  “I resented them and hid them my entire life, embarrassment in school and relationships and everything in between,” she murmured, tracing the lines on her palms and following each individual branch of the print with precision.

  Captivated, I followed along with her, pausing a beat at the places where each line came together.

  “But they were my whole identity.” She laughed. “Hell, you pointed it out. And now that they’re gone, I don’t know how to keep from missing them.”

  I shrugged and pulled her hand to my face, putting my lips to the pristine palm and giving it a gentle kiss.

  “It’s the key to everything, Cal. Instead of looking for what’s missing, be happy with what you’ve got.”

  A smirk transformed her face from troubled to trouble-making in one quick shift and confirmed that the hands weren’t the part of this conversation that mattered.

  “But then I never would have ended up with you.”

  I shook my head, but she grabbed it by both cheeks, stopping the movement and pulling my mouth down to meet hers.

  “You changed me, Nik. There I was, so sure I wanted everything to stay the same and you taught me better.”

  The journey hadn’t been easy, but she was worth fighting for.

  I took her mouth with mine, but she pulled back one last time.

  “I’m happy with what I’ve got,” she breathed, thinking the words that ran through my own mind on a constant loop.

  She looked at her hand in mine, and then squeezed.

  “You’re a good teacher, you know?” she asked cheekily.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah,” she nodded with a smile.