ROMANCE: His Reluctant Heart (Historical Western Victorian Romance) (Historical Mail Order Bride Romance Fantasy Short Stories)

by Jane Prescott

  I’m an occupational therapy student. Nobody knows what occupational therapists do, and the field is so broad that I’d have to go into about a million different research articles to tell you exactly what it is, but I’ll be nice. I’ll go the easy route. We help people do their daily tasks, whatever they happen to be. You need to shave your face but you had a stroke? Occupational therapy. You were in a car accident and now you freak out every time you have to go outside? Occupational therapy.

  So how the heck did I end up involved in hand surgery? A most excellent question.

  Basically, the way it goes in this profession is that one of the things occupational therapists do is become hand therapists. So if you break your hand, they splint you. If you rip a tendon, they help you with the aftermath so you can use the hand again. I think it goes without saying that hand therapists are the grand poo-bas of the occupational therapy scene. You know how they say on every doctor show ever made that surgeons are like the jocks of the medical profession? They’re hardcore, they’re gung-ho, they’re the popular kids, and they have the most money?

  Hand therapy is like that. Except for, you know, not being a doctor thing. Which suits me just fine.

  At my school, we’re lucky enough to pick and choose which internships we can apply to. Those poor sacks at other schools are so pit-scared of their administration that they cower down in fear and let their internship coordinators do all the talking. Not me. Even if my school was like that, I’m the kind of person who doesn’t just take a job sitting down. So basically, I did some research in the New York area and found out that there are ten hand therapists in the whole damn state.

  Ten. As in IX. As in a one with a zero at the end.

  I was overjoyed. That meant it would be super easy to narrow down the best one. And I found her super quick. Yes, she. Occupational therapy is a female-dominated field, but hand therapy is the one place you can find boys. Hand therapy is filed under the physical disabilities heading. Boys go into the physical disabilities field, where there are lots of broken bones and heavy lifting. And I am just fine with boys, being one of them and playing with them, let’s just put it like that.

  On the phone, Elisa Ahmed was not what I expected. She had this soft little baby voice and giggled at the end of every sentence as she told me the medical clearance I would have to get and the anatomy I would have to review before the hospital she worked at would let me in. This was the woman who was at the top of her field in the most competitive state across the nation? Had she really passed the grueling, six-hour exam? And been supervising for over fifteen years? She sounded about as soft and fluffy as a corgi puppy, and about as ridiculous.

  Still, stats don’t lie. Elisa Ahmed was the best, and if I wanted to go into hand therapy, I had to be among the best. So when I was approved for a thirteen-week internship at Middleton Hospital’s Occupational Therapy Department, I was thrilled. And nervous as fuck. If I did well here, I could be offered a job after graduation.

  As it turned out, my intuition was right. I had been oh so very correct in being nervous. Elisa Ahmed may have sounded like a sugar-covered marshmallow, but she was anything but. I realized this the very first day I began working for her.

  Rules and directions and all the possible consequences of breaking a patient’s confidentiality—or their bones—came tumbling out of her mouth a mile a minute in perfectly even, clipped sentences, which was confusing, because she was still speaking in that baby doll voice. She gave me the world’s fastest introduction to the facility and told me that by the end of the second week, I’d be taking on ten patients a day, and that if I was truly interested in hand therapy, I’d have to do something to prove myself before my midterm at six weeks.

  At lunch, someone whispered that she had fired the last three students who worked for her.

  Physically, she was a pretty imposing-looking woman. She had the kind of ethnic European beauty that comes with big hair, breasts, hips and blue eyes, but from the no-nonsense dark pants and pale button-downs she wore underneath her pristinely white lab coat, you could tell she was the kind of person who took herself very seriously. And you knew that you better take her seriously, too.

  I was still reeling from the sheer workload piled on to all the interns who make the decision to work in a hospital when Elisa sprang another firecracker onto my lap.

  “Once a week, every week, we go over to the inpatient unit of the hospital to check out incoming cases with the hand surgeon.”

  Hands. Surgeons. Inpatient unit. I swallowed hard. I tried to mask my confusion by nodding as if I were a perfectly competent student of occupational therapy rather than an intern about to wet her own pants.

  “We leave in fifteen minutes. We walk over together. I’ll see you then.”

  She was not kidding. In fifteen minutes, I had to run for my jacket and bag because Elisa Ahmed was giving me a very displeased look from the door of the rehabilitation center, where she stood, fully dressed and ready to go. The inpatient unit was four blocks away, and as we walked, she shot instructions at me rapid-fire.

  “We go in, drop off our stuff, and head straight down to unit thirteen on the third floor. Do not speak directly to the surgeon unless he speaks to you. That being said, sometimes, he has medical students in his office, doing their rounds, so he may enjoy a question every now and then. Do not look over his shoulder when he reads X-rays. Step in, glance, then step back. When he reaches out, give him the white paper every patient gets when they walk into the clinic. When he gives it back to you, it means they need to be scheduled for an evaluation at our outpatient clinic, and that they are automatically one of our patients. Take the paper, go to the phone, dial eighty four eighty four, and while you wait for one of the front office staff to pick it up, ask the patient what day and time works better for them, then schedule them for the best available time. And then go back into the office.”

  What? WHAT? Did this woman ever hear herself talk?

  “And Mindy?” It seemed like a good a time as any to pretend my stomach was not roiling inside of my body, so I looked over at her and tried to smile. “This is a great opportunity to see our patients and find out what’s wrong with them before we even evaluate them.”

  I nodded, trying hard not to betray the fact that my head was reeling from the sheer volume of information Elise Ahmed, certified hand therapist and hardcore chick with the voice of a sugar baby, had managed to stuff into just four short city blocks.

  The first two patients went fine. My manner seemed to have ingratiated me with Dr. Hahn, the short, round little hand surgeon, so I managed to stutter out a few questions which he graciously answered, but for the most part, I just stood next to Elise as the doctor removed stitches from his surgery patients and informed them that they’d be wearing their casts for at least six more weeks, which meant that they were not going to be our—meaning occupational therapist’s—problem for a little while yet. I was afraid to breathe, let alone get close enough to the patients to examine their tendon repairs, and I was just sighing a sigh of relief when patient number three entered the room.

  He was a youngish guy of about thirty, and he had broken his left middle finger seven weeks prior. He had gone to a doctor when it happened, and the medical genius had told him that it would heal over just fine and that he didn’t need any surgery. When Dr. Hahn unwrapped his hand, it was quite clear that this was very incorrect information. The finger was healing over, all right, but it was lapping over his ring and pinky fingers, making his hand appear more like a Franken-limb than anything else.

  “What do I do, doc? Do I get surgery for it now?”

  “I’d have to re-break the finger and you’d only get about 60% of function back” was Dr. Hahn’s curt reply as he sat, typing away at his doctor’s note. Then, some measure of sympathy entered his face as the full extent of his words finally registered in his trained-to-be-cold surgeon’s brain. “But if I don’t operate, it doesn’t grow straight, but you can use the hand.”

&nb
sp; At that moment, Elisa stepped in, all blond hair and professional calm. “If you come therapy, we can get the strength in your hand back. The finger will be more crooked, but you’ll be able to use the hand for all your daily things—shaving, dressing, eating. What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m a driver,” said the patient, terrified at all this information. “That other doctor, he mangled me?” For a split second, it was as if his anger had exploded and suffused the whole room, and the look on Elisa’s face told me she felt exactly as I did—trapped by this man’s misfortune.

  “I’m sorry,” came that soft voice of hers, putting a balm on the situation. “He did a bad thing. But if you come to us, we’ll do the best we can to get your hand up and running again.” And with that, the surgeon scribbled something on the patient’s white card and held it out.

  Take the white card, I remembered. Schedule the patient’s appointment. I was so caught up in the enormity of this individual situation that my awareness of the space around me narrowed down to just my own. Elisa Ahmed was going to do great things for this guy, she was going to rehabilitate his life. I had totally made the right decision, all the other fired interns be damned. I remembered only the next step, to schedule this patient’s appointment with us, and that the phone I was supposed to use was just around the bend of the office. As I rushed out of the office, leaving Elisa discussing the case with Dr. Hahn, I barely noticed bumping into a whole bunch of people who seemed to be lining up with military precision outside of the office.

  And that’s when disaster struck.

  The patient with the medically butchered hand standing right behind me, I grasped the phone with one hand and stared at the keypad in front of me. I was drawing a total blank. I could not remember for the life of me what number I had to call or any of the things I was supposed to do to arrange an appointment for this patient. Five seconds ticked by, and ten, and I knew I had to do something unless I wanted Elisa Ahmed to come outside and find me staring like a slow-witted donkey at a bunch of numbers with a patient behind me. I had to move as fast as she did, or I would get sacked just as fast as the other interns.

  Basically, my whole future hung on my ability to complete this phone call.

  God damn it. Maybe I’d make a good burger-flipper instead?

  “Eight four, eight four,” a male voice behind me said. “It’s the number of the outpatient unit.”

  I glance back. Well, hello ginger, I think, and then my brain is overtaken by the immediacy of my potential workplace situation. I dial the number and somehow, haltingly, and with a million mistakes, make the appointment.

  And bless everything I hold sacred that the patient does not know why I’m slumped against the countertop in relief.

  The seconds tick by as my heartbeat slows to an acceptable rhythm. Medically stable, one might say. My weak little joke cheers me up and the wobble disappears from my knees. I can go back in and face Elisa. I can do this. But first, I need to thank that cute little ginger boy who saved me. I look around, but there’s nothing but nurses’ assistance running around in blue and maroon scrubs. I guess the ginger ran off before I could thank him. Oh well. There’ll be more good-looking guys around here, anyway.

  When I get back into Dr. Hahn’s office, it’s as if the space has shrunk. More accurately, it’s now populated by the surgeon, Elisa, me, and about four medical students. One of them is a tall, skinny blond girl with equally skinny curls who I dismiss instantly—no competition here. There is a short, round jocky girl there, kind of cute in a dirty sexy way, and there are two guys. One is a tall, pot-bellied fellow I’d bet dollars to doughnuts is going to get diabetes any day now, and the other is my ginger savior.

  Hey there, hot stuff.

  He’s tall, skinny as a reed, and has these great sunken cheekbones that you could cut butter with. His hair looks like he got out of the shower maybe half an hour ago, and the green scrubs he’s wearing set off his eyes. There’s a splash of freckles on his upturned little nose that are just begging to be counted by someone’s tongue, and I don’t see any reason why it should be mine.

  Oh wait. We’re still at work.

  I never connected much with medical students ever since I dropped out to join the rehabilitation professionals, but I know that I want to know this guy’s name. And exactly what he looks like under those scrubs. He’s glancing at me from the corner of his eye as well, and I can tell that he’s confused by my lack of scrubs, and isn’t sure who Elisa or I am. There’s a lull between patients, and Dr. Hahn and Elisa step out of the room. I decide to just go for it.

  “So, you’re all going into plastics, then? That’s why you’re shadowing here at hand surgery?” I ask, but Red and I both know the question is really for him.

  There are answering murmurs of dissent all around, and I realize that I’m not the only person who’s nervous about being in a surgeon’s office. Medical or not, they’re all students, just like me.

  “Actually, I’m interested hand surgery,” Red suddenly speaks up.

  “Oh yeah? What school are you from?”

  “Lutheran Saint.”

  “Get outta here! Me too!” I cry, and I’m not going to lie, I’m pretty thrilled. Another point of connection for the ginge and I.

  “Really? So you must be in the year above me, then,” he says, an adorable wrinkle creasing his brow.

  “No, actually, I’m in OT.”

  There are blank stares all around as the medical students shoot questioning looks at each other. I realize nobody has any idea what it is I just said.

  “OT? Occupational therapy. Quality of life care,” I begin and launch into my little therapy tirade. By the time I’m done, they’re all asking me questions, and even Red looks sufficiently impressed.

  “Nice. So you guys are going to try to give that guy a chance to use his hand again, yeah?” he asks me, referring to the patient I blanked out on.

  “Yeah. Surgery’s not a good option for him because he’d probably scar over—“

  “And he’d never get full hand functionality back,” jumps in Red in a moment of perfect synchronicity.

  “Yeah,” I glow, and for a moment, the entire room seems to skip a beat. “Thanks for your help out there, by the way,” I tell him.

  He smiles, and I can tell there’s no pretentiousness about him, he just a genuinely nice guy. “No worries. I know what it’s like to blank out in a moment of pressure.”

  I chuckle. “Well, you think almost like an OT, with your little functionality comment.”

  “Ouch,” says Red, but he’s smiling wide.

  “Nah,” I assure him, “Where I come from, that’s a compliment.”

  That’s when I realize the whole room is watching us, as much caught up in our exchange as we are. They’re watching us, faces twitching with millions of little mircoexpressions, and even they can tell there’s chemistry between us. I clear my throat as Elisa and Dr. Hahn step back into the room, and step back into my professional mode.

  As the weeks go by, I’m caught up in everything I’m learning. How to make atrophied muscles twitch using electrical stimulation. How to make pain in arthritic hands go away with sensory tapping. How to throw every single thing out and disinfect everything else and then run away from the room when it turns out that your patient who works at a meat processing plant has fungus on each of his middle fingers.

  Seriously.

  At home, I’m furiously typing up long-term goals and researching activities for my clients. How do I manage to find an activity for my tendon repair patient to make him use his ring finger and have him not snore at the same time? I’ve started seeing patients in my sleep. But there’s someone else there, too.

  Because still, my favorite part of each week is when Elisa and I go into the hand surgery clinic and I get to see Red.

  For the most part, Elisa Ahmed makes me feel stressed. It’s as if every single moment is another potential one to get fired from this internship. And when you’re working straight
through lunch and focusing on how to get all your mountains of paperwork done before the day is out, you hardly notice how much you’re absorbing. Because seriously, I’m working my ass off.

  So yes, it comes as a surprise to me when I know the answers the medical students don’t.

  Here’s the thing. Most medical students on rotation don’t know jack squat about the specialty they’ve been assigned to shadow. Unless they’re interested in going into it. So the fact that Red is interested in becoming a hand surgeon gives him an edge when it comes to answering the few questions Dr. Hahn decides to throw out at us students. When he asks these questions, even Elisa Ahmed keeps quiet; sometimes it’s because she doesn’t know the answer, but sometimes, it’s to prove to me that neither do the medical students.

  So the day Dr. Hahn asks why the patient’s distal fingertip is dropping and he’s unable to pick it up and the medical students all scramble around their heads searching for the answer, I find that it’s somehow my voice saying, “Mallet finger.”

  Dr. Hahn shakes his head at me. “No!” he cries, but I can tell he’s amused. “I know you know,” he says to me, “But I want to see if these lumber heads knew anything.” The medical students all flush at the derogatory term, but I suppose they’re used to it—that’s how many medical practitioners decide to teach students, after all. Dr. Hahn eyes Red. “Not even you?” he asks, and I cringe, expecting Red to be embarrassed, which is so not what I want him to associate with me. Instead, Red gives a wry little grin, glances at me with absolute warmth in his eyes, shakes his head and shrugs at the hand surgeon.

  “Sorry, doctor,” he says, “We haven’t covered that yet.”

  Dr. Hahn shakes his head. “I thought you were my guy.”

  “Not yet. But I will be, soon.”

  Dr. Hahn sighs. “Well, can someone tell me why the patient can’t lift his fingertip?”

  Silence all around. And yet, somehow, Red’s amusement has managed to infect the room. Dr. Hahn grumbles rather agreeably at me, “Go ahead.”