Chapter 8
F eeling better, at least emotionally, Yvonne spent the next three days healing, resting, doing some more healing, and sleeping as much as she could. Her back was still sore, but she no longer had that sharp pain, which didn’t happen every time she moved but happened just enough times to wonder, Would it be okay or not to move? And now, with both pieces of shrapnel gone, she felt much more reassured about everything.
As it was, when Monday dawned bright and early, and the doctor cleared her to return to Hathaway, she could hardly wait to phone Dani to arrange for a ride. After the call, Yvonne felt even better. They would come and get her right away. Of course the hospital needed the bed too.
As she said goodbye to the hospital staff, Yvonne spoke to the kind nurse who’d been looking after her for the last two days. “Nothing personal,” Yvonne told her, “but I really hope I don’t have to come back.”
The nurse laughed. “Hey, we don’t take it personally. And, in this place, considering the pain that brought you in,” she noted, “we do understand. We want you to move on and to have a long healthy life without any more hospital visits.”
And, with that, Yvonne turned to see Dani standing in the doorway. Her jaw dropped. “You?”
“What’s the matter?” Dani joked. “Do you think I don’t do transfers? The doctor told me how you didn’t need an ambulance, so I’m here to take you back.”
Yvonne was wheeled out in a wheelchair by the weekend nurse to a large SUV, then helped into the front passenger seat. Dani proceeded to drive them from the hospital parking lot to head home.
“Wow,” Yvonne muttered, “I didn’t expect to put you out.”
“You didn’t put me out,” Dani clarified, glancing at her. “It’s just one of the many hats I wear.”
Yvonne nodded. “I just thought it would be somebody else.”
“Well, believe me that Dennis would’ve come, if I could’ve spared him, but that wouldn’t work with lunch happening.”
She laughed at that. “No, Dennis is pretty vital.”
“It’s funny,” Dani began in a contemplative tone as they drove. “The actual job he does, I could probably get any number of people to handle without very many technical skills or much experience. However, the actual role he plays is a very different story.”
Yvonne frowned, considering that. “I never thought of it that way.”
“Dennis is part of the heart of the Hathaway House community,” Dani declared. “Or maybe I should say, he’s the soul. Everything he does, he does with love. He doesn’t cook the food, although I understand from Ilse he’s been taking all kinds of cooking lessons lately. Normally he plates it and handles all the patients as if they are the one and only one in rehab at our place. Everybody responds to his particular version of our community.” And, with that, Dani lapsed into silence, as she navigated through traffic.
To Yvonne, the Hathaway House community was something odd for her to contemplate, but Dani was right. Dennis was an integral part of the place, something that Yvonne hadn’t necessarily seen before. He’d been her friend—her special friend in many ways, her potential partner. So, when she’d turned down his offer of marriage, she hadn’t really considered that her rejection would reverberate onto everybody else.
No doubt all of those at Hathaway House knew in one way or another that he had asked her to marry him. No reason for them to have not known because she and Dennis had been seen together constantly. But five years ago, Yvonne just hadn’t been ready. And now she wondered if she would ever get another chance. There was just something so very special about him. And she didn’t even know where she stood with him or even where he stood with her.
Sure, he had said Love you in a recent text, but Yvonne had had friends and family do that too. She wanted that special in love with you kind of love. In her own mind they were still a mess, mostly because of her guilt for not taking him up on his offer five years ago. And here she was, heading back into his healing embrace in so many ways, and yet not in the way she wanted. In her heart, she didn’t feel as if she deserved a second chance. She looked over at Dani. “Do you think everybody deserves a second chance?”
Dani nodded. “And a third and fourth and fifth and sixth,” she replied instantly.
That burbled a laugh out of Yvonne. “Really?”
“Yep. Some people are slower learners. Some people don’t understand the message. Sometimes it takes them a little longer to get it. Sometimes they have to learn the hard way. Sometimes they make a mistake, and they didn’t learn all of what they needed to. Thus, they have to make another mistake to get the rest of it,” Dani explained. “Who are we to judge?”
“I guess I hadn’t considered that quite in the same light.”
“And you’re thinking about Dennis, aren’t you?”
She flushed as she saw Dani’s knowing gaze. “I guess everybody knows, don’t they?”
“Not everybody, but a lot of the old-timers? Sure. We knew how it was between the two of you before.”
“And yet I turned him down,” she muttered softly.
Dani nodded slowly. “I know, and it was the right thing for you to do.”
Shocked, she stared at her. “What? How can you say that?” she cried out.
Dani’s lips twitched. “Obviously you’re having second thoughts now,” she pointed out, “but in reality you weren’t ready five years ago. The fact that you turned him down meant you weren’t ready. For a lot of people, what Dennis offered was a massive gift, a huge boon to what so many women would want, but it wasn’t what you wanted at the time,” Dani offered.
“Now, I’m not judging you. I’m not saying anything about that in any way, shape, or form. But, for you, back then, you needed to go out into the big wide world and still learn more about yourself. I think you have done that now. I don’t know where you and Dennis are at in this present moment, and it doesn’t matter because that’s your problem. It’s not ours. It took me a long and twisted road to get to where I am. And the fact that I’m making wedding plans and booking flowers for my own wedding, that’s enough to even think that I’ve come this far.” She sighed.
“Yet it feels as if I’m very overdue, and I should’ve just walked into a minister’s office and got it done years ago,” she shared. “But Aaron wanted to finish school, and that was fine. In hindsight, I would much prefer to have been living with him as his wife all this time, instead of waiting until he was done.”
“Oh, I can see that,” Yvonne agreed. “I was quite surprised when I heard how long you’ve been together.”
“Right?” Dani said, with a chuckle. “But you make these decisions, and then afterward you look back, and you think, What was so important? And we decided what was really important was that we had time together whenever possible within this long-distance relationship. Obviously we had time together, and maybe—I won’t say probably —but maybe it was easier this way. We certainly enjoyed every moment we had together, and being married won’t change that. Yet, if anything happens between now and then, I’ll be incredibly sad to not have been his wife in the meantime,” she admitted.
“Also I knew my father wanted me to have a big wedding, and he wanted to walk me down the aisle. So mostly I think—partly because of Hathaway House—that I did hold off because so many people wanted to attend our wedding. And, if I had just gone into a minister’s office and got it done, I don’t think that would have had quite the same effect or had the same response from everybody here. They’re all busy planning the entire thing, and that’s both fun and also kind of scary.” Dani laughed.
“I like the fun part. We are still struggling to get everything lined up. We’ll get married at Hathaway House, obviously. Ilse and Dennis had been working on the menu in a frenzy, even though the event is not for a couple months yet. Wow, okay, guys. Remember a budget is involved here . But they seem to think that Hathaway House should absorb part of that budget. I already feel bad because my staff people are doing this on their own hours off.” And then she let her voice trail off.
That was something Yvonne hadn’t even considered. “Just so much is involved in this that you don’t think about, from the outside looking in, isn’t there?”
“And yet really the bottom line is you want to spend— I ,” Dani corrected, “I want to spend every moment that I can with Aaron. The fact that he’s coming back and will be working with Stan is absolutely breathtaking for me. The fact that Stan desperately needs the help right now is also a good thing, and he’s trying to ease back some of his workload so that he can spend more time with his new partner.” Dani smiled.
“In the last few years so many couples came together here at Hathaway House,” she stated, “that we feel truly blessed. As well as healing people, a harmony is here, an openness is here. Sure we have fights, we have disagreements, we have jealousy, we have, in some cases, sheer ignorance of how things operate or how people are progressing faster than others, and a constant reminder to always communicate better,” she murmured. “However, we’ve also witnessed so much healing, so much emotional and physical healing, that I know in many ways we’ve created some little miracles here,” she noted. “And, yeah, that’s being very arrogant…”
“No,” Yvonne countered. “I wouldn’t say arrogance at all. Confidence maybe, because really, you should be proud of everything you have done here.”
“I am,” Dani agreed. She pointed up ahead. “And here’s our turnoff.”
As Dani navigated onto the long driveway to the property ahead of them, Yvonne muttered, “It feels like coming home, doesn’t it?”
Dani looked at her and chuckled. “You’re not the first person to say that. In many cases it has become home. We have expanded a lot of our employee housing to be big enough for couples. I’ve got single housing units always turning over as some staff move to town with new partners or their partners are in town already so they move in with them. I have some of the partners who were patients here, who stayed because that was convenient, depending on the work their significant others were doing,” she added, with a smile. “It’s always been fascinating to me to see what arrangements people make in order to have something work for them.”
Yvonne frowned. “I never even thought of that. I was so focused on taking on the world and showing them that my injuries wouldn’t hold me back that I didn’t even think about life past that challenge. I was thinking… I would just be it . I was the next it girl,” she shared, with a bitter laugh.
At that Dani gently clasped her hand with hers. “Don’t be so bitter about it. You needed to learn something, something that was important to you. I hope you’ve learned it. I hope that whatever you went through these last few years was worth it. And just remember that it’s a never-ending process. When you work toward something, and you get it, then you find something else, and you work toward that.” She chuckled. “There is no such thing as one endpoint. There are only stepping stones on this pathway of life.”
“And what is your next stepping stone?” Yvonne asked Dani in amusement.
“First, I’ll get married,” she said, with an eye roll. “That seems to be a pretty major stepping point. And then maybe”—she smiled—“maybe I’ll be lucky enough to start a family.”
“Oh my,” Yvonne replied, as images of tumbling toddlers running around Hathaway entered her imagination. “Can you imagine what that would do to the place?”
“Oh, I can.” Dani laughed. “But don’t forget that I have my own house on the property. And my father has his own cabin up there as well. So it’s not as if the children will be in Hathaway House all the time. That might be good for patients to visit with the children every once in a while, but it could also be extremely hard on some,” she noted. “We have to remember that a lot of these men have temporarily separated from their families so that they could get through these rehab sessions without interruption. So I must be judicious in my thought process as to how that could work.”
“And again,” Yvonne admitted, “I never even thought of that.”
“No, but it’s,… it’s part and parcel of healing, isn’t it?” Dani asked. “Everything I do is integrated with Hathaway House. But then I have to think about all the people who are here. And what they can and cannot do.” She looked over at Yvonne. “Do you want children?”
“Nobody told me that I couldn’t have children, at least not that I know of,” Yvonne muttered, with a headshake. “It was something that concerned me last time, and then I shut it down, thinking it would never happen because, hey, I would be that big career woman again.” She gave Dani an eye roll. “And now I find that I want something very different out of my life.”
“And what is that?”
“I want peace,” she replied. “I want to get up in the morning and not feel that same aggressive need to go out and to prove myself.”
“Oh, I agree with that,” Dani stated. “That sounds like an absolutely wonderful goal.”
“And,” Yvonne added, as Dani pulled up to the ramp at the front entrance, “to be perfectly honest, I want Dennis.”
*
Dennis knew Yvonne was on her way back. He’d heard from the grapevine within minutes of Dani being picked as the transport driver. He walked out to the lobby several times to see if they had arrived.
Finally Ilse said, “Go and get a coffee and sit down and relax.” He just glared at her. She put her hands on her hips, and all five foot four of her stood nose to chest and issued her order. “Move it.”
And he’d moved it… because Ilse was right. He was completely of no use to her while he was mooning around, struggling to see Yvonne again. And so, with coffee in his hand, he checked the empty lobby, then went downstairs for a quick visit with Stan.
Stan took one look and asked, “Is she on her way back?”
He nodded glumly. “Ilse kicked me out.”
Stan laughed, his face splitting into a big grin. Then he dropped something huge and furry in Dennis’s arms and said, “Good. Look after this one for me.”
Dennis frowned down at it. “What the devil?” It was a raccoon.
“Yep, we call him Trash Panda,” Stan replied. “And unfortunately this one got into his owner’s trash. We had to clean out his stomach and pulled out… sixty-two bottle caps. His owner collects them and, for some reason, Trash Panda swallowed them.”
Dennis stared at Stan in shock and looked at Trash Panda in his arms, who was just grinning at him. Then the animal reached up and whacked him on the chin. “He’s quite a character, isn’t he?”
“You’ll find that, once you get to know them, every animal has individual and completely different personalities,” Stan declared, with a smile. “And this guy—his name is really George, by the way, as in Curious George, the monkey—is already quite a character.”
“But he doesn’t look to be suffering now.”
“No, now that the incision has closed, I’ll probably send him home tomorrow,” Stan shared, “but that’s only if the owner can keep him out of the garbage.”
Dennis chuckled, and the raccoon stretched up to sniff Dennis’s nose and mouth.
Stan asked, “You got food on you?”
“No, but I work in the kitchen, so I was just pulling cookies out of the oven and putting them on cooling racks,” he murmured. “Then filling up the outside bins.”
Stan watched the raccoon in Dennis’s arms. “You may be his newest best friend, as this guy can spot food a mile away.”
“He hasn’t made it up to my dining room, so I’ll take that as a good sign.”
“No, and he doesn’t do well in his cage. He gets really depressed, so we do try to get him out as much as we can.”
“And does he have free reign at his home?”
“Yes, he does, inside and out. So, as much as I would like to tell off the homeowner for his too-easily available bottle cap collection, I’m not sure that this furry guy isn’t getting them somewhere else.”
With that, Dennis shook his head and continued to cuddle and pet the raccoon that appeared to be completely content to sit in his arms for the entire visit. When Stan finally reached out his arms, the raccoon walked right into them.
“He seems to know you.”
“Oh, he knows me all right.” Stan chuckled. “This is about the third, maybe the fourth, time he’s been in to have his stomach emptied.”
“Ouch,” Dennis muttered, staring at the raccoon in amusement.
“Yeah.” And even then the raccoon reached his arms around Stan’s neck in a big hug. “He gets a tummy ache, and I have to come clean him out every once in a while,” Stan shared, with a sigh. “You would think that, by now, he had learned to eat things that could go right through him.”
“Not likely.” Dennis laughed. “Chances are, he’ll be back again, just so he could see you.”
“Wouldn’t that be something,” Stan said, as he held the raccoon close. “Imagine an animal eating something wrong, just so he can come in and see me.” He shook his head at that. “In which case his owner needs to spend a lot more time giving George some love and attention.”
“Maybe point that out to the owner,” Dennis suggested, with a grin. “You never know. And now I’ll head back up and see if Yvonne’s here.”
“Yeah, but you know that she’ll be ordered straight to her room to rest, after her road trip from the hospital back here.”
Dennis nodded. “I still want to at least see her, to know that she’s all right.”
Stan nodded, with a sly grin. “It’s been a whole twenty minutes that you’ve been down here,” Stan called out.
“Hey, twenty minutes is twenty minutes,” Dennis murmured as he walked out.
Almost as soon as he got to the top of the stairs and entered the main hallway, he saw Racer sitting on the ground beside a man with no legs, also sitting on the ground beside him. Dennis stopped and asked him, “Did you need a hand?”
The man looked up and gave him a big toothy grin. “Nope, Racer and I are just having,… well, a race,” he explained.
Dennis watched in astonishment, as the big man used his arms to drag his lower torso along, as he competed alongside Racer down the hallway, the little Chihuahua’s wheels on his back end spinning as fast as they could go.
The big guy looked back over at Dennis and whispered, “I have to let the little guy win sometimes.”
Dennis laughed. “Sure you do.” And then the big guy’s name popped into his head. “You’re Olsen, aren’t you?”
“Yep, sure am,” he confirmed. “My prosthetics are acting up today,” he explained. “They sored up my legs, so I took them off, and I’m out here just enjoying life, the same as Racer is.”
Dennis nodded. “An awful lot can be said for being comfortable in your own skin, in your own physical condition, no matter what it is.”
Olsen nodded. “And I used to be as big as you, but, even chopped in half, I’m still a big-enough force to be a contender to best Racer.”
At that Racer came racing back, barking at him.
“And what’s that for?” Dennis asked curiously.
“He’s upset I didn’t race him down the hallway. So, Dennis, back to the kitchen with you. I’m working up a heck of an appetite, so we need to ensure there’s food for us.”
“Ha.” Dennis chuckled. “Don’t worry. I’ll race you both down to the dining room.” And with that, full-out breaking all the rules, he raced down the hallway, as Olsen fisted it all the way down, while Racer ran on his wheels. As Dennis reached the large dining room, a group of people stood outside the double doors.
They stopped, took one look, and started to laugh.
Dennis grinned. “Hey, they encouraged me to get back to the kitchen, so you guys could have lunch,” he explained. “What could I do? Turn them down?”
“We agree with that, but that’s not what we are laughing at,” one of the women replied, a big grin on her face. “I’m laughing because Racer beat you.”
And, sure enough, Racer still ran circles around Dennis’s feet. “Hey, he’s got wheels,” Dennis protested.
“Yeah? And what about Olsen?”
Olsen sat there at the doorway too.
“All right, that’s enough outta you guys,” Dennis complained, then chuckled. “I’m heading into the kitchen now.” And, with that, he returned to work.