Chapter 4
A week later Yvonne stared at the X-rays that Shane had up on the wall, courtesy of the recent sharing of her current medical records. “Wow, they look really bad.”
“The one thing that bothers me,” he noted, “is that piece of shrapnel that they never removed has shifted.”
She looked at where he was pointing and nodded. “I know. They did mention that.”
“And they still weren’t willing to take it out?”
“They told me that it was better to leave it as it was,” she murmured.
Shane shook his head. “I’m not a doctor, but that really worries me. If anything happens while we’re working on you, trying to get you back up to strength, what’s likely to stop you is that very piece of shrapnel.”
She felt her heart sinking, as she studied the X-rays. It did look as if it was awfully close to something vital. “What is that?”
“Your liver,” he stated calmly. “And that shrapnel wasn’t there before.” He went through her files and brought up the old X-ray and pointed to where that piece had been sitting way too close to her spine before. “The shrapnel has broken into two pieces, so you have one shard still by your spine and that other part now near your liver.”
“Good God,” she murmured.
“Right? I’m surprised they didn’t bring it up with you.”
She frowned, shaking her head. “They mentioned something about shrapnel, but they still didn’t advise surgery. Thus, I didn’t really think much about it. However, when I see the two X-rays up there side by side, it becomes real to me, more black-and-white.” She didn’t even know what to say.
“We’ll do our best to get you back as strong as we can,” Shane stated. “That shrapnel is definitely something to keep an eye on, though.”
“Sure,” she agreed, “but, short of some catastrophic event, they won’t do anything.”
“Maybe not. I will talk to the doctors here about your case, though.”
She wasn’t sure what that meant, but it was a little bit beyond her willingness to study those medical records and to realize all that damage that had been done to her. “The car wreck in some ways helped, and in other ways it seemed to just compound my problems.”
“Yes, it helped in some ways in that it realigned some of the bones that we couldn’t move before. In a way we’re starting right back at square one,” he murmured. “These most recent injuries are fresh. They’re new. They’re different. I don’t see anything stopping us from getting you back on your feet as solid as you were before, though. As a matter of fact, these injuries in some ways are less than your original ones.”
“Less, but?”
He nodded. “ Less, but is right. Every injury is something new that we must work with,” he shared. “So everything that’s gone on before, we can pretty well take off our plate and ignore because this is all a new beginning in terms of rehabbing these current injuries,” he shared. “I’ve worked up a plan that we’ll start with, but not today. I just want you to rest, to get your strength back up for another day or so. And then we’ll get started.” He added, “I need another day to work some extra things into your plan.”
He kept studying the X-rays, whereas she was already past it. If she spent all her time thinking about the damage that that car accident had done, or what damage those two pieces of shrapnel could still do if they shifted, well, there just wasn’t any living at all with her fears. She announced, “In that case, I’ll head to lunch.”
He smiled at her and nodded. “You do that.” As she got to the door, he asked, “How are you and Dennis making out?”
“Fine,” she replied, without stopping her exit, not giving him a chance to ask anything further.
She headed out to the dining room. Her mind was still preoccupied with her X-rays. It looked bad when she looked at them closely. But now that she had seen all that damage to her body, past and present, she realized that her latest damage was piled on top of her previous damage and that her new scar tissue was there along with her old scar tissue.
To her, it looked to be a monumental rehab job. She trusted Shane to get her as good as she could be, but it seemed now that as good as it could be just wouldn’t be very good at all.
Depressed, not sure what she should’ve done instead of heading to the dining room, she got in line at the buffet counter, using her wheelchair with an adroitness that she hadn’t expected and didn’t want to have. But after several months back in a wheelchair, both before and after her hip surgery, it was what it was. As she got up to the front of the line, there was Dennis.
He frowned at her. “You look tired today.”
She nodded. “Yeah, I am a bit.”
“What can I get you?”
She quickly made her selection, and, when he handed her the plate of food, she murmured her thanks and headed to the table in the farthest corner. She didn’t feel like being social. She didn’t feel like being even halfway friendly to anybody. It was just that kind of a day, where she wanted to shut herself away and try to ignore everybody and everything. But the world wouldn’t cooperate.
Almost as soon as she sat down, her table filled up around her, and she was surprised because it used to not be quite so full here at Hathaway House. Maybe that’s what it was like these days. She looked around to see that most of the tables were filling up at the same time. Even if she wanted to be antisocial, it would be hard. Another woman sitting beside her chatted away.
She asked Yvonne, “Hey, did you just get here?”
She nodded. “More or less.” It was such an odd thing to say that the woman gave her an inquiring look. Yvonne added, “I had a recent car accident, but I was here years ago, getting over a roadside bomb,” she murmured. “And now, here I am back again, after getting hit by a drunk driver.”
The other woman stared at her in shock.
Yvonne waved her hand. “Don’t worry about it. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
“Of course you should have,” she replied. “In one way or another we’re all in the same boat here. Obviously everybody’s issues are different, but we all need to heal.”
“Are you a patient here?” Yvonne eyed the woman, but she appeared to be healthy. “How long have you been here?” she asked.
“I’m just about done now,” she replied, with a smile. “Shane’s putting the final touches on some of my exercises. I’m leaving on Friday.”
“Wow, I’m envious.”
“I’m also getting married in two weeks.” She laughed elatedly. “So that just adds to it.”
“Good for you,” Yvonne replied.
“I didn’t want to get married until I could walk down the aisle. And then he had a close call on an accident himself just a few weeks back,” she murmured. “And I realized how foolish it was. We set all these goals, about how we won’t do this until that happens, and it’s ridiculous. His accident helped me to see that I just wanted to get married and to spend whatever time I have with him because we have no guarantee that we’ll get that time just because we think we will.” And, with that, the woman quickly finished off her parfait and said goodbye and disappeared.
Yet her words had a lasting effect on Yvonne because they mirrored a lot of what she had been thinking for the last little while. She’d done everything she could to get on her feet and to get out of here last time. And now she was right back at square one, and it felt as if she’d done everything for nought. Matter of fact, it felt as if she’d made it even worse. When somebody sat down beside her, she looked up to see Dani. Her smile was bright and natural. Yvonne smiled back. “You guys got busier.”
“We got bigger,” Dani noted, with a nod. “Sometimes I wonder if it was the right thing to do.”
“As long as you can maintain that love and affection that everybody here seems to have for each other,” Yvonne replied, “I think it’s fine, as that is what makes you guys so special.”
Dani looked at her in surprise and then laughed. “That is interesting to hear,” she murmured. “And we are trying to keep a lot of what we have the same, but, of course, as you get bigger, you have to adjust.”
“How’s Ilse doing with the extra food load?”
“She’s got more staff to help her now too,” Dani shared. “So she’s doing great.”
“And I hear you’re getting married.”
“I am, indeed.” Dani flushed. “I can’t wait. Seems like forever.”
“And he’s a vet?” she asked. “Going to be a veterinarian?”
“Wow, the rumor mill’s really been working overtime.”
“Of course it has,” Yvonne noted, with a smile. “Plus, everybody’s trying to catch me up on the news.”
“Of course. Yes, Aaron will soon start working with Stan downstairs. We’ve been maintaining our relationship long distance, and that’s been really tough,” Dani admitted. “He’s done with school now, coming back here, working with Stan in a couple weeks, at least I hope it’s a couple weeks. Aaron still has a few exams to finish off, and then we’ll get married.”
“I’m really happy for you,” Yvonne said. “You deserve it.”
At that, Dani smiled at her. “Thank you. You deserve happiness too, you know?”
It was such an odd thing for her to say that Yvonne frowned at her and asked, “Do I act or speak or whatever as if I don’t deserve happiness?” she asked.
“No, I think in your heart of hearts you think you made a mistake, and you don’t know how to go back.”
“Ouch. I forgot how absolutely intuitive and spot-on everybody here is.”
Dani laughed. “I don’t know about any of us being intuitive and spot-on,” she began, “but I can tell you that we all come from the heart, and we know when somebody is hurting.”
“I guess my leaving was hard on him last time, wasn’t it?”
“Yep, it sure was. Let’s just take the word hard out of it and put devastating in there.”
She winced at that. “Lord, I was such a fool.”
“Nope, you weren’t, and you had to do what you thought was right back then.”
“Even if it was so obviously wrong?”
“I don’t know that there was anything that was so obviously wrong about anything. Sometimes we don’t know if it’s wrong unless we try it first. Would you rather regret what you did or instead regret what you failed to do?” Dani asked, not expecting an answer. “Life happens, whether we like it or not. It’s just not always easy to find the right answer out there. While we try hard, that doesn’t give us any guarantees that what we do will be the correct choice for us. You should go with your gut, choosing the best decision that you have ahead of you at the time. You did that. Don’t regret doing it. I would be more inclined to think you might regret not doing it. If you change that decision now, that’s another option you have.”
“I’m not sure it is available anymore,” Yvonne noted, her gaze straying to where Dennis was talking with other people. “It doesn’t seem to matter to him whether I’m here or not.”
“That’s not true,” Dani countered. “It matters. He’s also hurting over the fact that you’re hurting. He doesn’t want to see that, but he also probably doesn’t know what to do about it.”
“Nothing he can do,” Yvonne muttered. “That’s the thing. It will be up to me again.”
“Well, last time it had to be you all alone because you set it up that way,” Dani pointed out in a very gentle tone. “Maybe this time you can learn to accept help, learn to accept support, learn to accept that other people can be at your side, can be part of your journey and won’t judge you for your choices,” Dani explained. “You were always afraid that you weren’t doing enough, that you had to do so much more.… I’m not sure that that was true.”
“Maybe not,” she murmured. “But it sure seemed as if there just wasn’t a whole lotta choice.”
“And I get that,” Dani replied. “In your mind there was no choice because you were on a path. You were determined to go off and to do all these things. And he let you go, without any argument.”
“And maybe that wasn’t good either,” Yvonne muttered, staring at the man who had captured her heart so long ago, a man who she now couldn’t even bear to talk to, just confirming her fears that he didn’t want anything to do with her.
“I’m not sure about that,” Dani countered. “I think loving and letting go is a very important lesson. If that person comes back to you, then you’re both truly blessed. But if not?… If they don’t belong together, then it wasn’t meant to be,” Dani stated, her words spoken low and very calmly.
At that, Yvonne had to smile. “I forgot what a cheerleader you are.”
“Hey, it goes with the territory,” she murmured. “Even if it’s not so much cheerleading as just trying to be supportive.”
“Right, but there’s support, and then there’s support.”
“No, there’s just plain support. So, if you need anything, you let me know. If you need to see a surgeon or another doctor, then you let me know that as well,” she added. “I think you’re supposed to see your specialist next… week?”
“Yes, I wanted to see what we can do here first.”
“Got it.”
*
Dennis watched Yvonne over the next few days, but she didn’t seem to be any happier or any stronger. Instead she appeared somewhat defeated, as if the return to rehab was harder than she expected. Finally at the end of dinner one night, when she was sitting alone out on the deck, he came out with a cup of coffee and sat down beside her. “Hey. How are you adapting?”
She looked over at him cautiously, as if expecting him to blow up at her or something.
It almost broke his heart. Yes, he’d been devastated when she left, but it had also been her choice, and he was an adult. And life? Well, life just sometimes wasn’t what you wanted it to be.
She shrugged. “It’s not easy being back. I hadn’t even considered returning until they called me about a job interview, and I turned it into a patient interview.”
“Sounds as if the call was perfect timing,” he noted, “and I gather the injuries are different this time.”
She nodded. “Yeah, the car accident seems to have added to some of my other problems.”
He was sorry about that, but it made sense. You couldn’t expect to walk away from a car accident after having had as much surgery and recovery as she had had beforehand and expect it to be as good as gold. “At least you’re in the right place,” he said gently.
She nodded. “That’s my hope at least,” she murmured. “Unfortunately—”
“Unfortunately what?” he asked curiously.
“The shrapnel has moved,” she replied. “Well, the shrapnel has broken into two pieces, and both pieces are moving.”
“So can they remove it now?”
“They didn’t mention it before,” she shared. “I’m supposed to see the specialist soon. It was set for next month, but Shane wants them to take a look at it earlier.”
“If Shane wants you to, then you should,” Dennis stated.
“Shane talked to the doctors,” she shared. “Shane’s the one who started everything going down that pathway, and now they want me to go see my specialist early.”
“Then it’s a good thing. Shane only wants what’s best for you.”
“I know, but the thought of the surgeon going in after that shrapnel?” She winced. “It doesn’t sound good to me.”
“But if it’s moved and if it’s accessible for them to get it out safely now, I think that would be easier for you.”
“Maybe,” she murmured, “but, of course, waiting to see him is nerve-racking.”
He nodded. “How will you get there?”
“I think somebody from here is taking me,” she shared, “but honestly, I didn’t ask Dani that.”
“We have transports for things like that,” Dennis stated, with a nod. “So I’m sure somebody will handle it.” They didn’t say anything for a long moment, and he wasn’t sure just what to say. Finally he got up. “I need to get back to work.”
At that, she nodded and smiled. “Thanks for stopping by.”
He didn’t know what to say, so he spoke from the heart. “Always for you.” And, with that, he left. As he got back into the kitchen, the other staff looked over at him. He shrugged. “You can’t go backward in time,” he murmured.
He knew they wouldn’t necessarily understand, but he understood. Things had changed. She’d changed. He’d changed. He didn’t know if they still had anything or not, but, if she wasn’t willing to go in that direction again, he couldn’t change those circumstances. It was heartbreaking to see her as despondent as she was, but that shrapnel was still an ongoing concern. From his perspective it was a good time to deal with it.
Each day he kept an eye on her, seeing the physical and emotional pain that she was in, trying to help from a distance, yet knowing that he couldn’t do anything if she didn’t let him in. As long as she was letting somebody in, that was fine. He saw her a lot with Shane, with Stan, and with Dani, but that seemed to be the end of her interactions among people in Hathaway House.
When he caught her moving very slowly at breakfast early one morning, he said, “Today would be a good day for you to stay in bed.”
She stared at him and nodded. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“If you need it, you should take it,” Dennis suggested, trying hard not to have that demanding tone in his voice. They’d gone through this several times when she’d been here before, where he wanted her to take it easy, but she’d been driven to do so much more than she should have. But she’d been stronger than all of them knew, and she’d been right, and he’d been wrong. She’d put all that hard work to good use and had gotten out of here in good timing.
She added, “I go in to see the specialist today.”
He frowned. “Oh. So do you want breakfast?”
She stared at him and shook her head. “No, I’m not sure how I’ll find the trip.”
“Is that coming from your back?” She nodded. “Has that got anything to do with the shrapnel?” Dennis asked.
She sighed. “Both, plus just sitting still for too long.” And, with that, she took her cup of coffee and headed out on the deck.
When Shane showed up, Dennis asked him, “Is all that extra pain that she’s in coming from the shrapnel?”
“That’s one of the reasons I wanted her to see her surgeon,” Shane replied in a very low voice. “I’m not exactly sure, but I think it’s time to get it out.”
Dennis winced at that. “I know she’s been really terrified about that for a long time.”
“Yeah, and this added surgery won’t be any easier on her either,” Shane pointed out. “Nothing I can do for her until we deal with some of these underlying issues.” Not a whole lot else Shane could say. And he had to stay as confidential as he could over all this.
Yet it’s not as if Dennis wasn’t in the know. He just wasn’t in Yvonne’s inner circle this time around. And to recognize that was even harder to accept. He had no right to be there either. He watched from a distance as Yvonne got ready to leave, and then, even after the transport vehicle had left, he went out to the front lobby to check with Dani that they had got off okay.
“Yes, they did. She won’t be home until lunchtime.”
He nodded. “I’ve got lots to keep me busy until then.”
“Has she talked to you at all?”
“Not very much. Feels as if she’s keeping me an arm’s distance away.”
At that, Dani nodded. “I would be surprised if she wasn’t doing that.”
“Yet she’s a different person entirely,” Dennis shared. “This version’s more beaten. More… I don’t know how to explain it. Seems she took a licking from life, and it’s got the better of her this time.”
“And in some ways that might be true,” Dani agreed, “but don’t give up on her. She’s a fighter. We need to figure out what’s happening with that shrapnel.”
“I can’t believe they allowed her to travel as it is. Maybe it moved during the trip here.”
“Maybe. The concern is whether it’s still moving, in which case all her rehab therapy must come to an immediate stop, while they decide what to do.”
“She won’t like that much.”
“No, she won’t, but she’s holding back a lot of the pain, I think,” Dani suggested. “That’s something else we’ll have to talk to her about when she returns.”
He nodded. “She never did like taking painkillers. They make her sick to her stomach.”
“She may not like the side effects of taking them,” Dani noted, with a smile. “However, she should also remember that progress can’t happen if she’s overwhelmed with pain. Pain itself is debilitating. We need to get her to the point where she’s at least managing the pain.”
With nothing else to do, and a whole lot on his mind, Dennis headed back to the kitchen to work.