Chapter 5
Y vonne stared at her military surgeon and shook her head. “You still don’t want to remove them?” she asked in disbelief.
He frowned and shook his head. “You’ve got two pieces of shrapnel. The original piece in there has broken. You have one jabbing up against your liver and one jabbing up against your spine,” he explained. “Taking the piece near the liver might be possible,” he muttered, as he studied today’s X-rays. “But to go in there and not get both of them won’t be an option.”
“When would it be an option?” she asked, her voice faint, as she studied the same pictures but now with a new perspective.
“Only under extreme circumstances,” the doctor replied. “Unless you’re prepared for paralysis.”
“I’m in a wheelchair already,” she noted, grasping for humor but not finding any.
He nodded. “This is high up your spine. Yet you would still quite likely end up with the full use of your upper body, at least your chest area and your arms,” he noted, “but beyond that? I’m not so sure. Something could go wrong, and it could cause bleeding, and we would have a hard time stopping the blood loss.”
None of this was what she wanted to hear and was beyond devastating. “So, as far as you’re concerned, it’ll stay like this?”
“I think we should let it stay as is,” he suggested, “providing you don’t have any falls and nothing else goes wrong. So no more car accidents. Even then, given some new circumstances, I would like to see it stay where it is.”
“And the pain?”
He looked at her and frowned. “Honestly? Painkillers.”
By the time she got back to Hathaway House, she was so depressed and upset that she wasn’t even in the mood to talk to Shane, who was waiting for her.
He took one look at her expression and muttered, “Not good, huh ?”
“He doesn’t want to touch the shrapnel, which is in two pieces now, just like you told me,” she confirmed, with a note of bitterness. “One jabbing the liver and one near the spine. He’s afraid I’ll end up a paraplegic if he goes in after the one against the spine.”
“And what about the one up against the liver?”
“He basically didn’t give me an answer on that. I think he’s hoping that it’ll all go away and won’t be his problem.”
Shane studied her face intently. “And what do you want to do?”
“I would like to get the shrapnel out,” she declared. “I tried to tell him that I’m already in a wheelchair, and, if this is what my life will be like, well, then this is what my life will be like.”
“And you know your life doesn’t have to be like this, right?”
She stared at Shane. “I don’t know that. I can walk, and it is nice, even if I can’t walk far,” she admitted. “I can still handle all my personal needs, and that’s very important to me. To lose that would be difficult.”
He nodded. “But it wouldn’t be impossible.”
She smiled. “No, it wouldn’t be impossible. I’ve certainly seen lots of people here dealing with similar issues, but it wouldn’t be easy either.”
“Not sure easy happens here,” Shane pointed out. “This appears to be the camp of not easy .”
She felt the tears clogging up her throat. She nodded. “I need to rest now.”
He stepped away to leave. “His report should be coming through in the morning. I’ll look at it then.”
She just nodded and didn’t say anything. The report wouldn’t change anything. As far as her surgeon was concerned, this is what she had to live with, and she should basically be happy with it. Didn’t matter that she wasn’t happy, didn’t matter that she was in constant pain, didn’t matter that she had huge problems no matter which way she looked at it. It just all seemed to be a headache that never went away, and she would slowly get more and more confined as that lovely shrapnel either got more established—where her body built up scar tissue—or she would have increasing pain. When she got back to her room, she crashed on her bed, trying to relax her back.
It was hard though. If her back wasn’t hurting, another body part was. It just seemed as if one was always at war with the other. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep. But the world seemed to be against her. She had multiple people coming in to check on her, on her blood pressure, on her pain level, on everything else. She wasn’t sure if they were just checking on her to ensure she was alive and well and not suicidal—although that thought hadn’t ever occurred to her—or if something else was worrying them, or if it was just the way her day had been set up.
By the time the last person left, she asked, “Could you close the door? I’ll sleep now.”
The woman smiled, nodded, and closed the door for her.
And, with that, Yvonne closed her own eyes and once again tried to sleep. Instead of sleep, all she saw was Dennis’s face as she had walked away from him five years ago. She always refused to revisit that memory so it never bothered her, not until she had to come back here. She had been okay to bury what she could and did bury all this time that she had been gone because she didn’t see him and didn’t have to face him or to face her life without him .
Her life had been too busy. Her life had been good. She had been busy doing things. She was living life the way she was meant to live it. Until she wasn’t. And now, for the first time, she realized what life was all about when you were alone. And the trouble was, she had nobody to blame but herself.
All this sounded as if she were some poor-me woman instead of the woman who had made very strong, clear decisions to lead her life this way. And yet here she was. A mess, once again. And, with that, she rolled over, punched her pillow a couple times to make it a little bit easier to sleep, closed her eyes, and finally slipped under.
*
Dennis kept an eye on Yvonne day in and day out. He got a little bit closer to her and then sensed the same walls as before. After lunch one day, he determined to sort out what was going on and sighed as he sat down beside her.
She looked up at him. “Tough day?” she ventured.
He smiled. “Well, tough something or another.” He took a big breath and plunged in. “I want us to be friends.”
She nodded immediately. “I would like us to be friends too.”
“Yet it feels as if, every time I sit down by you, you’re bracing yourself for something I might say.”
She stared at him, her jaw dropping.
He studied her for a moment. “I call them as I see them.”
“Sure, but I have to admit I had forgotten just how abrupt you can be.”
“I don’t think it’s abrupt,” he clarified. “You’ve been here three weeks already, if not four, and it still feels as if we’re not comfortable around each other.”
It was obvious she didn’t know what to say about it.
He stared off into the distance, his mood dark, and yet he knew it was his fault, not hers. “I don’t know what I can do to make the transition to friendship easier. I’ve been trying to stay out of your way. I know this is a tough time for you, and I’m not here to stress you out even more,” he declared in a determined tone.
She frowned at him. And then her lips twitched.
He nodded. “But I am, aren’t I?” he asked, with a heavy sigh. When she burst out laughing, he grinned at her. “See? I always loved that about you, that great sense of humor. Even when I messed up, you were always there with quick forgiveness.”
“You never messed up,” she replied, with a shake of her head. “I did. But you? You were always perfect.”
He stared at her and then, feeling some of the stress inside easing slightly, he added, “None of us are perfect. How about we go with that,” he suggested.
“I broke your heart,” she said abruptly.
He winced and nodded. “Yep, you sure did. But obviously it wasn’t the right time or it wasn’t the right thing for us to be together,” he said. “I’ve made peace with it over the time. You don’t have to be afraid that I’ll jump the gun or crowd you or push you into anything that you don’t want to do. That’s not who I am.”
She nodded. “I know, and you’re right. I was tensing every time you came around because there’s an awful lot you could say to me, and I wouldn’t blame you in the least. It still doesn’t mean that I want to hear it.”
He studied her for a long moment, knowing where she was going with this and realizing that he really needed to just let her off the hook. “I was hurt, yes,” he agreed, “but I’m a big boy, and I understood at the time that I needed to let you go. So I did, but I still care about you, and I still want to see you do the best you can here. Yet the circumstances are very different for you now, and I’ve changed. You’ve changed.”
“Yeah, and some of that change has not been for the good.”
“I don’t know about that,” he replied. “I think the change as needed is definitely for the good. It’s just sometimes hard because the change comes from experience. When you were here before, you were broken, emotionally, mentally, physically, struggling with the future of your life as it was then, the loss of a career that you adored, the loss of the life that you adored, and you were grieving. I couldn’t help you grieve any faster. That was a process you needed to go through on your own. And I couldn’t do anything but be there for you. I wanted to be there the whole time for you, but that obviously”—he gave a dismissive wave of his hand—“wasn’t happening. And I promise I won’t keep bringing that up.”
Her lips twitched again, and he grinned.
“You’re different now.” He hesitated and then continued. “You’re wiser. You’re not as broken, but today it’s as if you’ve hit a wall, a major wall that you never expected. There’s almost a defeated attitude to you that wasn’t there before. You were always gung-ho about beating this and being strong and invincible and finding that life that you so wanted and being determined to make a life for yourself. Yet this time I’m not seeing that same will, that same determination,” he murmured. “So I know that the years in between have been hard and that you’ve learned some very tough lessons. Maybe I’m wrong about that. Maybe you’ve just been kicked down by life, and the lessons haven’t been learned, but they’re still there staring you in the face, and you just don’t want to deal with them.”
“Oh Lord,” she muttered, staring at him. “I forgot how perceptive you are.”
He shook his head. “I spend a lot of time watching humanity. I spend a lot of time watching people struggle, knowing that, if they would just reach out a hand, we could make it a little easier for them. But it’s so limiting for us because, if we help too early, it’s not something that you’ve achieved yourself. Yet, if we help too late, often we are literally too late, and you’ve lost that sense of purpose and that glow of accomplishment. So we struggle to try and get it back again and to re-energize you into wanting to care.”
She smiled. “Let’s unpack all that a little bit.” She lifted her fingers and ticked them off. “One, yes, last time I was bound and determined to make the most of it. I refused to be one of those unable to accept what life had shot at me. I would accept it, and I would do my darndest to make a good life for myself. And, two, yes,” she added, ticking off another finger, “I got kicked down in the world.” She spoke with a sad tone to her voice. “I didn’t really expect that. I didn’t really see it coming, but, before I realized it, I was exhausted and worn out and scrambling to stay ahead. I don’t think any of it had to do with my energy or my injury. I think a lot of it just had to do with the IT field I chose, the people I worked with, all of that. And it wasn’t easy. A lot of it was just definitely not easy to live with,” she murmured. “And before I realized it, I was already looking at how to get out of this profession. But instead of getting out, I had an accident that put me right back where I left.”
“Except different,” he reminded her.
“Except different,” she agreed, with a nod. “I’m not sure the differences are any easier though,” she murmured. “And that makes it very hard too.”
“Of course it does, and I’m so sorry.”
She nodded. “I thank you for that. I’m in a new adjustment period, and I promise you that, this time, if you reach out a helping hand, I will accept it very gratefully,” she shared. “It is not an easy thing to admit, but I made a lot of mistakes last time because I thought I needed to do it all myself. I thought that I had to do it myself or else I wouldn’t survive out there because I would always be dependent on everybody here. And honestly, that’s not true.”
She lifted her fingers to tick off the next point, then shook her head. “I don’t even know what number we’re on,” she said, “but the bottom line is, I have changed, and maybe I have been beaten down by the reality of what life is like out there. It also probably would have been a huge shock for me if I had gone from working in the navy to real life even without the injury anyway,” she suggested.
“But going solo as I did just accented the magnitude of the differences between what I had before and what I have now.… And then I had the next accident. And now, yeah, a part of me says, I can’t do this again ,” she murmured. “A part of me says I’m not strong enough. A part of me says I don’t want to do this all over again. And I,… I have to get over that. I have to get past that, and I don’t know how.” She sighed as she looked at him. “And do you realize I haven’t told anybody any of this yet?” she asked.
“Oh, I think most of them already know,” he pointed out, with a gentle smile. “Because, once again, what you have failed to realize is that you are not alone here. You have people to talk to, who can help you deal with small things, like picking up a pen from the floor, plus the larger things, like having help with personal hygiene when you’re back in a wheelchair. The people here are pros at it. Many people here live with it on a daily basis. It’s not easy, but it is definitely necessary for you to get your confidence back.”
“It’s not even my confidence,” she said, staring at him. “I’m almost at a loss to know what to call it.” And then she nodded. “ Chutzpah . I’ve lost my chutzpah for life.”