Chapter 46
Chapter Forty-Six
Houston tried not to be annoyed by the physical therapist’s small talk, but he wasn’t having much luck.
They’d been doing this therapy for four weeks, and he’d struggled through every session. It had been five weeks since Josie had walked out of his office, and it had been a long, miserable autumn, every single lonely second his own damn fault.
He had screwed up and there was nothing he could do to fix it.
Nothing.
It felt like he was walking a tightrope and was about to pitch off and hit the ground with a resounding smack.
He wasn’t even sure what had gone wrong and when.
It just all had and here he was, stuck in this chair listening to Frank, the PT, tell him about the wonderful cookout he and his wife had thrown over the weekend.
Houston had spent the weekend brooding inside his condo with thoughts that never strayed far from a certain pixie-sized doctor.
The same doctor who had painfully avoided him her last few days at the hospital at all costs and who he’d only seen four times in four weeks, each time more difficult because it meant she truly wasn’t going to forgive him. She wasn’t coming back to him.
It was over.
“So, are you having a good fall, Dr. Hayes?” Frank asked, as he packed ice on Houston’s hand. “Geez, I can’t believe it’s almost Thanksgiving.”
No, actually he was having the most hellish fall of his entire life and Thanksgiving loomed ahead of him as a reminder that everyone else had someone. His mom and Larry. Christian and Kori. He had no one.
“It’s been okay.”
Frank started massaging his index finger and thumb and Houston tried to ignore the fact that he barely felt it. Outside of his daily therapy sessions, he had been ignoring his injured hand, relying on his left hand the way he had been for the past seven weeks.
He couldn’t move his thumb and index finger.
They wouldn’t move. He knew that. He didn’t have much sensation either.
And that was something he wasn’t ready to deal with just yet.
Except that he couldn’t ignore it. It followed him everywhere.
He had adjusted, learning to drive with one and a half hands and scratching out shaky words with his left hand, but he sure in the hell couldn’t do his job.
He’d been doing office appointments, but referring all his surgeries to the other orthopedists.
“Okay, let’s try and give it a bend and see how you do.” Frank pushed back on his wheeled chair to give him more space.
Houston glanced around the room to make sure none of the other occupants were paying attention to him.
There were only two other patients in the room with therapists and they were both preoccupied with their own bodies and their failings, so Houston stared at his hand and tried to bend his index finger.
He willed it to bend. He squeezed as hard as he could.
The lower half jerked half an inch, and the tip didn’t move at all.
“Okay, that’s good. Very good.” Frank handed him a soft ball. “Now see if you can squeeze the ball.”
Houston took the ball, sweat forming on his forehead. He couldn’t squeeze the ball and he knew it. They had been trying this every day for a week, with no results at all.
He couldn’t take it today. One more failure and he wasn’t going to be able to ignore the problem anymore. “Can we just skip this one for now?”
“You’re not going to be doing yourself any favors if you do. You know you’ve got to work it if you want to regain some mobility.”
Frank was right, of course. But his cheerfulness drove Houston nuts. Gripping the ball tightly, he tried to squeeze. Nothing happened. He tried again.
Nothing.
“Give it another try,” Frank urged, leaning forward to offer assistance.
Houston stood up from his seat. He was sick to death of people having to help him, of being helpless. He couldn’t take it another second, this burning and building frustration.
Transferring the ball to his left hand, he kicked the chair out of his way. “I can’t do it! I can’t squeeze the goddamn ball and you know it.”
He hurled the soft ball at the wall behind Frank with all his pent-up anger and fear. “Aahh! I can’t squeeze it and I’ll never be able to.”
The ball hit with a soft thump, then tumbled down the wall to the floor.
Frank retrieved the ball while Houston stood there panting and feeling like a two-year-old who’d just thrown a tantrum.
“Feel better?” Frank asked mildly.
“Yes. No. I don’t know.” He sank back into the half-turned chair and ran his fingers through his hair, taking a deep breath in exasperation. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.”
Frank shrugged. “Hey, don’t worry about it. You’re going through a tough time. Though I’m thinking this isn’t just about your hand, is it?”
It was about his hand, his life, Josie, everything.
He was a disaster. A physical and emotional wreck. With a useless hand and a useless heart.
He was in love with Josie. He knew that as clearly as he knew his thumb didn’t bend. Yet he hadn’t told her. He had stood there like a dumb ass and let her walk away. Protecting his vaunted control hadn’t been worth losing Josie, wasn’t worth facing every day alone.
He loved her. Her generosity, her smile, her chatty run-on sentences. He loved everything about her. And he wanted her back.
The question was, would she take him? Him, an asshole of a man with little to offer. Not particularly good at relationships, frightened to be a father, and facing an uncertain career path.
But he’d never know unless he tried.
When Frank handed him the ball a second time, he took it. He gave it his best effort. He really did.
“It’s going to take time, Dr. Hayes. Weeks of therapy.”
But his hand didn’t move.
“Are you using your hand at home, Dr. Hayes? Because part of what you need to learn how to do is adjust how you use your hand. You shouldn’t be ignoring it, but neither should you expect it to do what it did before. You’ve got to relearn some things, change.”
Easy for Frank to say. But Houston heard the words, really heard them for the first time, and knew they were true. He couldn’t ignore the problem or sit around waiting for a miracle anymore.
“I was always good at school,” he said, begrudgingly.
Frank gave a laugh. “You’ll ace this yet.”
After twenty more minutes of exercises designed to manipulate his fingers into movement, Houston felt sick to his stomach from concentrating so hard.
It was a relief when Frank massaged his hand again and rested an ice pack against it to reduce any swelling or pain that might occur from the intense activity.
“Well, see you tomorrow, Dr. Hayes. Same time.”
“Thanks, Frank. Sorry about the ball.”
“I’ve seen worse, trust me.”
Houston stood up, rolled his neck to alleviate tension, and went to meet with Dr. Stanhope, the chief of staff.
He knew what he had to do.
It was time to resign.
Then he was going to go to Josie on his knees and beg her for a second chance.
Josie grabbed the last tissue in the box on the couch and blew. She coughed, nostrils completely plugged. Tossing the used tissue wad onto the towering pile with its germ-laden brethren, she shuffled across the living room to wash her hands.
She had a cold. Which seemed an appropriate representation of her feelings for the last five weeks. Exhausted, miserable, teary-eyed, and foggy-brained.
It still amazed her that she had gotten through those first few days at work after the scene in Houston’s office without bursting into tears.
But she had, and her residency at Acadia Inlet had come to an abrupt and quiet ending.
She’d started at St. John’s and had found almost immediately that she really enjoyed pediatric orthopedics, a lot of which dealt with correcting musculoskeletal birth defects and problems arising from cerebral palsy.
She was enthusiastic that she had found her orthopedic niche.
She was also hopeful that in a year or so she could transfer to the children’s hospital in Daytona to finish the remainder of her residency. Which meant she could leave the final remnants of her life in Acadia Inlet and forget that she’d ever met Houston Hayes, let alone fallen in love with him.
And that should happen in about eighty years. She couldn’t forget him. She thought about him every day and wondered if she had made a mistake walking away from him. Or if she had somehow imagined that he’d ever had feelings for her at all. Now with hindsight it almost seemed that way.
He had been attracted to her, no doubt, but maybe she had been nothing more than a challenge to him.
A conquest. An attraction to explore, knowing he would tire of her.
He’d said as much to her the day he had propositioned her by the X-ray box.
Maybe if he hadn’t gotten attacked by that shark, they never would have gone beyond the first night, their agreed-upon one-night stand.
But they had, and she had the scars on her heart to prove it.
She scrubbed her already dry and chaffed hands while the water ran.
The splashing masked the sound, but she thought for a second that her doorbell was ringing.
Maybe it was her mother appearing out of nowhere due to maternal ESP, bearing soup and the expensive tissues that had aloe in them.
The kind that Josie was going to invest in from now on since her nose had suffered severe epidermal damage.
Which basically meant it was beet red and missing the top layer of skin from blowing so damn much.
Or it could be the woman next door coming to complain about Josie’s 3 A.M. coughing fits.
“Coming,” she said, shaking water off her hands before wiping them dry on her sky blue pajama bottoms.
Grabbing a tissue out of a fresh box on the way past and tucking it into the waistband of her pants, she opened the door.
And wanted to close it again.
Houston was standing there wearing jeans and a black shirt. His hands were tucked into his front pockets and he was studying her intently, a little smile at the corner of his lips. As usual, he had cornered the market on gorgeous.
“Hi, Josie.”
“Hi,” she croaked, then capped it off with a sniffle.
Her mind, dulled by decongestant, couldn’t wrap around why Houston was standing on her doorstep, but she was painfully aware that she wasn’t exactly looking her best.
Apparently he noticed, too. “Are you sick?”
“Yes, I have a cold.”
Thanks for noticing.
Josie turned around and shuffled in her slippers over to her glass of water on the coffee table so she wouldn’t hack on him. She took a sip and swallowed, her ears popping.
“Have you taken anything? Are you pushing fluids? You’re not going to work, are you?”
Josie flopped onto the couch with a big sigh, exhausted.
She couldn’t deal with him right now, not when she’d spent all this time convincing herself she’d be okay, that eventually she’d get over him.
And now, when she was sick and vulnerable, he was waltzing into her apartment and acting like he actually gave a damn about her.
“Houston, is there a reason you’re here? Can I do something for you?”
He stopped in the middle of crossing the room and looked taken aback. “I came to see how you are.”
His guilt must have caught up with me. But honestly, she was too tired and heartbroken to make this easy for him. If he had something to say, she wasn’t coaxing it out of him.