by Dale Mayer
“Communing with the horses,” she said, “and Lovely.” She pointed out the small llama that was, as always, beside Appie. “She’s such a beautiful addition to the place.”
“But she will grow up,” he warned her. “She’ll grow up into a big spitting llama.”
At that, Dani went off in peals of laughter. “And I’m okay with that too,” she said warmly. “There’s room for all of God’s creatures.”
“Even spiders?” he teased.
She nodded. “Even spiders.” She looked at the coffee he was holding for him and Fiona. “Enjoy your early morning outing,” she said. “I’ve got to have a shower and get ready for work.” And she disappeared up the pasture.
He stared at the landscape until he noted a beautiful house up on the hillside. He glanced back at Fiona. “Is that Dani’s place?”
“It is,” she said. “Too many nights she doesn’t even get that far. Lots of times you have to wake her up in her office and send her home because she’s been working too hard.”
“I think that’s the problem when you have a business like this,” he said. “A business which is a burning passion. She was always all about helping others.”
“She still is,” she said. “She met Aaron, her fiancé, here.”
“I heard about that,” he said. “I think Elliot mentioned it in one of his emails.”
“Well, they’re doing really well together,” she said. “He’s off in vet school. Like you, he was missing some body parts and wanted to find out what to do with his life.”
“Yeah, that’s another big thing. We all have funding from our time in the service. There’s apparently a fair bit of it, if we want to go back to school and get new training, although I don’t imagine all of it’s covered,” he said, “but certainly enough of it that most of us can get retrained as we need to.”
“There are definitely some budgetary guidelines,” she said. “We’ve come across it with a few of our patients. But most men have found a way to make it work.”
“I haven’t even thought about my future,” he said. “For a long time, all I felt was that I had absolutely nothing to offer anymore. Feeling I couldn’t work a job and, therefore, wasn’t a man.”
“And now?”
“Now I feel like there’s got to be all kinds of things that I could do,” he said. “I just don’t know what I want to do.”
“And that’s a huge difference, isn’t it?” she asked with a bright smile. She stepped in front of him, took one of the coffees from his hand, walked a few feet away to a large rock on the side of the pathway and sat down.
“Will you get in trouble for being here with me?” He frowned at the thought. He loved spending time with her but hated to think it’d cause her trouble.
She shook her head. “No, I was on duty early this morning anyway, and they don’t clock-watch here, which is really good.”
“They probably can’t,” he said. “It seems like you guys are always around.”
“Because it’s not just a job,” she said. “Everyone becomes part of our family.”
He nodded, instantly understanding what she meant. “That’s good,” he said. “That’s the way it should be. That’s the way it was in the military, and I guess I’m hoping to find something similar.”
“Well, we had three friends who were here all at the same time, although most of them have left by now but have stayed close in town. I know that they were getting together and doing some things as a group,” she said. “Building up that supportive brotherhood bond.”
“But they probably already had that bond before they left the military, didn’t they?”
She nodded. “I believe so. I think they were all part of the same team.”
“Ouch,” he said, “to have three injured to the extent that they have to be here means it was pretty ugly.”
“I think that’s a very mild word for it,” she said with a half smile. “What kinds of things would you like to do?”
He looked at her in surprise. “Well, sometimes I think about working with animals, and then I think I can’t make a living doing that. Sometimes I think I should get back to my art, and then I talk myself out of that and think I can’t do that anymore. I really have no idea. I do have an electrician’s license,” he said. “I did get a trade when I was in the military, but I’m not sure I want to do that anymore.”
“You’re an artist?”
Of course, she’d glommed onto that one. “I used to sketch,” he said. “I don’t know that I do anymore.”
She studied both his hands and asked, “Were your arms affected?”
“No,” he said, lifting his hands, wiggling his fingers around. “They’re perfectly capable of drawing. It’s just the disconnect between my mind and my heart. I used to sketch from my heart, and, right now, all I see are images of accidents and war. I used to see animals all the time. It’s one of the connections that I had with Dani. She loved her horses, and I used to sketch her horses for her. All kinds of poses, sometimes cartoony. But I haven’t done it for years now.” He looked at his hands and said, “I don’t even know if I still can.”
Chapter 6
Fiona would have to talk to Dani about that, see just how talented Finn really was because maybe something was there that he could do as a full-time career. She’d seen people with little talent take off. She still didn’t understand some of the more modernistic stuff, but it wasn’t for her to judge. If Finn could do something that Dani would appreciate in terms of horses, then he was certainly in the right part of the country for it. “I don’t know about a full-time living,” she said quietly, “but art can certainly be a huge passion and an outlet for healing.”
His lips quirked. “You see? That’s how I always know that you’re in the right field,” he said. “Even when you’re not at work, you’re at work.”
She chuckled at that. “Just because artwork is great for the soul and helps you to heal and all kinds of things,” she said, “that doesn’t mean that I’m on duty.” She looked at her watch and sighed. “But it does mean I have to get back on duty pretty soon.”
He looked at his empty cup and then at her and smiled. “Thanks for this,” he said. “It really did help.”
“Good,” she said, standing. “Let’s take the long way around. I could use a little bit more exercise.”
“Don’t you swim in the pool?”
“I do,” she said. “Definitely I do. Just haven’t been in since I’ve gotten back from vacation. But I should. Just doing a few laps helps me let go of my day.”
“What about horseback riding?”
“Not my thing,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind running alongside them, but I can’t say that I particularly want to ride them.”
“Do you jog?”
“Again I used to,” she said, “but somehow it seems to have been something I let slip away. But I do love it,” she said thoughtfully. “Maybe that is something I should get back into.”
“You’ve got beautiful trails here to jog.”
“There’re trails all across the property,” she said. “It’s one of the reasons I got into running. There was so much to see, and it is just such a beautiful geographical region to step out and get exercise and breathe fresh air and enjoy my surroundings,” she said. “But time is like that. It gets away from you, and you stop doing something one day. The next thing you know, it’s been a week or two, and you’re way behind.”
“Agreed,” he said. “That’s like my artwork.”
“Well, I tell you what. I’ll start jogging again if you start drawing again.”
He laughed. “I don’t have any supplies here. You just need runners, and then you can go.”
“Well,” she said as she pushed him around the pathway, “I’ll check around to see what we have hidden away and see what we might come up with.”
“Well, if you can,” he said doubtfully, “and to keep you exercising and in good health, I agree.”
She was still laughing about
his comment when her shift was over, but he’d kept her smiling all day, and it hadn’t been a terribly easy day either. When she walked out to the front reception area at the end of her shift, she talked to Mandy and asked, “Hey, do we have any art supplies here?”
Mandy, harried and in the middle of answering multiple phone calls, looked up at her and said, “Talk to Dani.”
Fiona stepped off to the side and saw Dani sitting in her office, her feet on the desk and the phone to her ear, and figured it probably wasn’t the right time. Fiona walked down the hallway to the supply room and stood staring at the items in front of her, but she didn’t know what Finn might need.
“Fiona, did you need me?” Dani called out to her.
She retraced her steps to Dani’s office and saw she was done with her call. “Hey, I didn’t want to disturb you,” she said. “I was just looking for something.”
“What is it you need?”
Fiona plunked herself down on the chair across from Dani and said, “Something I’m trying to get Finn back to doing,” she said, so she told Dani about their deal.
At that, Dani’s face brightened. “You have no idea how talented he is,” she exclaimed. “I mean, like seriously talented. He could be doing this as a full-time career.”
“Well, he’s looking for some idea of what to do with his life but says that he’s not even sure he can draw anymore.”
Dani walked around and closed the door, then pointed out a sketch of wild horses racing across rough terrain. “He did that in about ten minutes flat.”
Fiona gasped. She stood and stared. “That’s Finn’s work?”
Dani stood beside her and nodded. “It so is. I was having a really crappy day back then, and I had these pieces of paper I was supposed to be doing summary reports on. Anyway, he snatched one of my pages and made me really mad. Well, I sat here, having a cup of coffee, trying to calm down. When he lifted up the sketch, I could just feel all the pain and anguish and frustration drain away. He’s that talented. Just look at the detail.”
Fiona couldn’t stop staring. Five horses streamed across the field, but he’d done it with minimum strokes. The detail was there, and yet, it wasn’t the whole of the picture. It was just marvelous. “It’s like they’re part of the wind,” she whispered.
“That’s exactly it,” Dani said with a heartfelt sigh. “So, anything to get Finn back to drawing is money I’m quite happy to spend.”
“I don’t know what he needs though,” she said. “He seemed to think that we wouldn’t have any supplies here, and I don’t think he’s looking for just a couple pieces of printer paper.”
“No, we need sketchbooks for him. I think we have an excursion going into town Thursday,” she said, reaching for her calendar. “Maybe I’ll run in myself.”
“Can you spare the time?” Fiona asked, puzzled. Normally Dani didn’t do personal trips like this.
Dani flashed her a smile. “For Finn? To get him back to his art? Absolutely.”
Fiona was delighted that she’d brought it up. “I may have to go get new running shoes then too because the other half of the deal is that I start jogging again,” she said with a laugh. “It’s something that I used to always love, but somehow, like so many things in life, it fell away, along with the rest of my schedule.”
Dani nodded solemnly. “Which is why I was out there this morning, just to trample around with the horses. I want to get back to riding on a more regular basis too, but, like you and the jogging, and Finn and the drawing, it’s something you have to work at to keep in your life. And it makes no sense because it’s what brings us joy. Yet so many other things we label as priorities, and the things that bring us pure joy end up not even making the list.”
Fiona was still thinking about Dani’s words as she walked back to her on-site rooms. Like many of the other staff here, she had a small apartment to herself. She didn’t have a kitchenette because she didn’t need it. She had all the food she could want at Hathaway House. And anytime she wanted a special meal, she already knew the chefs personally, and they were more than happy to accommodate her. It was easy to live here. It was easy to enjoy the food at the cafeteria. It was easy to accept the lifestyle and let everything else slide.
She did her job—usually more than the thirty-five hours a week she was paid for—but again that’s because they were family.
But she hadn’t gone in the pool lately. She hadn’t gone for her walks. She hadn’t gone for her runs. And she didn’t have any friends in town anymore. For a while, she used to meet up with a group for lunch every once in a while and catch a movie, but now it seemed they’d all gone their different directions.
She checked her watch and realized that dinner was about to start pretty soon. She either wanted to go early or wanted to go late to miss the rush. So today she would go late. She walked back to her place, quickly switched out of her uniform and had a hot shower. There, with her hair freshly braided, noticing the length and realizing a haircut was something else she needed to do, she dressed in a soft cotton dress that flowed around her legs. It helped the patients to see her out of uniform, how she was a normal person, not just a staff member. Ready for her dinner, she stepped out of her place, closed the door behind her and saw Stan standing off to one side, staring up the hills. She walked over to him. “Wow, don’t you look like you’re lost.”
He gave her a half-smile, but it was a teary smile.
“I’m sorry. I guess you lost somebody today.”
He nodded slowly. “Yes, I did. I tried hard, but I couldn’t make it happen.” He gave half a whistle, and Helga, the great big three-legged Newfoundlander dog, came racing toward them. Fiona bent down and gave her a big cuddle. “You keeping them close? I don’t think Finn has even met these guys.”
“Well, Racer’s pretty well hard to track down at any one given time in the day,” he said. “Helga here had a little bit of trouble with her back legs, so I’ve mostly kept her downstairs where I can keep an eye on her.”
“Is she okay now?” she asked in concern.
Stan reached down and affectionately scratched her long back. “She is. Now if we could stop everybody from feeding her,” he said, “she’d do much better.”
“She looks like a big girl, but I hardly think she needs to go on a diet.”
“No, she probably doesn’t, but too much human food isn’t good for her either.”
“At least most of the residents here know not to feed Chickie,” she said with a laugh.
“Well, the repercussions on that one are pretty instantaneous,” he said. “One guy fed him when you were gone. Poor Chickie chucked almost immediately all over him. He didn’t try it again after that.”
“Serves him right,” she said. “These animals have already got enough physical problems. The reason they live as long as they do is because we follow strict rules with them.”
“It’s not like Chickie’s getting any exercise either,” he said with a smile. “Everybody carries that poor little dog around.”
“Well, I don’t think Helga has the same issue. She’s too big to carry,” she said.
Helga lifted her head and woofed at her.
She reached down, patted her gently and asked Stan, “Are you coming up for dinner?”
Stan stuffed his hands in his pockets and nodded. “Yes, I should.” He looked at her, smiled and said, “You’re looking very pretty tonight.”
“Just one of the things that I was thinking about today,” she said as they walked slowly toward the cafeteria. “Living here becomes too hard to separate our private lives from work. How often do we not bother getting changed out of our scrubs? We stick around, have dinner in our work clothes and then go home and change.” She shook her head. “I should be going home, getting changed so that I feel like my workday ends and that I have a personal life again.”
“It’s part of that whole syndrome of living here, isn’t it?” he asked. “You try to separate it, but it doesn’t really happen.”
“True enough,” she said. “Are you sitting with anybody for dinner?”
“With you, if you’ll let me,” he said, holding her arm.
She chuckled, tucked her hand in the crook of his elbow and said, “I’d be pleased. Thank you very much, sir.”
“You should be dating some of these young bucks, not hanging around with an oldie, like me.”
“I think you’re a whole ten years older than I am,” she joked. “You’re just having a rough day.”
“Some days are like that,” he admitted.
“On the other hand,” she said with a smile, “Lovely looks lovely.”
He burst out laughing. “Can you imagine someone named her that?”
“Can you imagine keeping her named like that?” she teased.
He just rolled his eyes at her. “As far as Dani is concerned, it’s a lovely name.”
Fiona chuckled. They made their way to where the plates were stacked to see Dennis waiting for them. She said, “You’re another one who never seems to leave his job.”
Dennis’s face split, his white teeth flashing in a huge grin, and he said, “Nope, this is where I belong.”
“Hardly,” she said, “but I’ve never seen you sitting down and eating out here.”
“That’s because we have lots of tables in the back,” he said. “We’re a big family back here too, so we like to sit together.”
“As long as you don’t feel like you’re not allowed to sit out here, that you can’t sit out here or that you’re not welcome to sit out here,” she said.
“Nope, that’s the last thing we feel,” he said. “Now, what will you have for dinner?”
She looked down and said, “Chicken pot pies. Are they homemade?”
“Is today Sunday?” he asked with a teasing grin. “Of course they’re homemade. I made them myself.”
“In that case, I want one,” she said, “and a big salad.”
“You’ve got to eat something besides salad,” he said.
