Chapter 22
TWENTY-TWO
LANIE
What Can’t Be Undone
Cord’s arm drapes heavily across my shoulders as we totter along the hall.
Winnie holds back her formidable vocabulary as he passes her with a weak smile.
I’m relieved because I don’t have the energy to support anyone else right now.
Just one man. That’s my limit for today, and I’m not even sure I can do this part right.
It might be my limit every day from now on. I’m not actually sure what my limits look like after seeing Cord come off that bull and be tossed beneath its hooves like a dusty salad. I’m not sure I have the smarts to find out.
He clings to me, the weight of his doubts and mine manifesting into something physical, though his shoulders remain tight beneath the shirt that West has dressed him in to come home. I both admire and am terrified for him.
The Coyote Falls boys will be responsible for a large chunk of Cord’s recovery, giving him support in the way that they always have. Naturally, Levi has cooked for everyone.
I lead him into the bedroom, that being my first goal. Then shoes, because I know it will bother him to have walked all this way in his boots on the flooring he’s so protective of.
“Sit down, Cord. Let me do something for you.” I purse my lips, cataloging every ache he reaches for, every time he rotates a joint.
West sent all the doctor’s reports to my phone, and I’ve been reading them, over and over.
Overwhelm doesn’t start to cover it. That West did this on his own with a then half-built house last time blows my mind.
Cord pretends to stretch, turning his face to hide a wince that creases his forehead. “I’m fine, babe. The PT wanted me walking around.”
“Mmm, there’s also that directive from the surgeon not to overdo it.”
Cord growls softly.
I cough to hide my smile. Okay, so it looks like neither of us is prepared to be totally honest. At least, not yet.
“Overdo it, get up and walk, lie down and do nothing…We got our miracle, and I still have blinders on,” he mutters, easing himself onto the bed. Breath hisses through his teeth. His lips whiten as he lies back and presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Fuck.”
I take the opportunity to kneel, sliding Cord’s shoes off. His hand rests on my head, tugging upward.
“Lanie, stop. Please.” A tremor lies beneath the strain in his voice.
I look up, holding his deep gaze. “Don’t clench your teeth. You’ll get a headache,” I whisper, still working at his boot. “Let me help you.”
Pride battles with a plethora of other emotions for prime real estate on his strained face.
The need to be independent, to prove the bull hasn’t crippled him again.
All the support in the world is on offer and he still needs to do it all himself, even when he doesn’t have to. That’s the reason he is who he is.
The reason I love him most.
“I can’t do anything at all.” He reaches for me without bending his back, tugging me gently up to him. “Letting others help is all I can do right now.”
“I don’t remember you whining like this before.” I perch carefully next to him.
“I’m not going to break, Lanie.”
“Uh-huh.” I stroke the corner of his strained smile. “What do you need right now?”
His arms fold around me, pulling me into him. I sigh inside the circle of his arms, resting my cheek on his chest. His heartbeat thumps slow and strong just like before.
That hasn’t changed.
“Right now, I want everyone to leave, give me time with you, and sleep. For a week,” he groans. “What I want is my home back.”
“Winnie might get upset if you tell her to leave.” I cup my hand to the bristles on his cheek.
He leans into my touch, and my heart cramps. “West might get upset if I tell her to leave,” he counters.
I raise an eyebrow. “You noticed that, too, did you?”
“Anyone with eyes can see that. That’s not what I broke, Lanie.” Again, that quaver.
I wriggle into the center of the bed. Cord scoots back slowly.
“You’re going to get tired of me as a crippled old man.” Cord closes his eyes, his breathing regular, though faint lines crease the corners of his mouth that weren’t there before.
“You’re far from a crippled man, and you’re not old.” I poke him gently. “But that’s not all that’s bothering you.”
Cord opens one reddened eye. “It’s not?”
“Nope. Tell me.”
“I need to sleep.” His eyes close again.
I sigh, curling into a ball next to him.
Five days of sleeping—if it can be called that—in the hospital’s plastic chairs hit me in a wave. The two days here at the homestead on my own have been just as bad. I sink into the space Cord makes for me, matching my breaths to his longer ones.
“I missed you,” I murmur, enjoying the sensation of being close to him again, free of beeping machines.
“I was aware. Sometimes,” Cord says softly.
I raise my head.
He stares at the ceiling, lines deepening across his brow as he stares at something I can’t see.
“In the hospital?” I frown.
“When I first went in, I think. I could see the doctor, and the nurses, either just after I went in or while I recovered, but before I woke properly. I saw you, too,” he adds.
“Okay.” I blink, trying to piece together what he’s saying. “You had moments of lucidity?”
“I saw them, looked straight at them. But they didn’t see me. The same as last time.”
I watch him. Anyone else might think he’d hallucinated, but something in his tone says otherwise.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” I traced the lines of his stomach under his shirt.
Cord shifts, inhaling deeper breaths and letting them out as he seems to find a more comfortable position on the bed. Then he lets out a hiss and catches my hand. “That tickles. I didn’t tell anyone because even my bank balance won’t save me from becoming a pincushion in a pretty, expensive cage.”
I hiccup a laugh, stretching out next to him.
He hauls me onto his chest.
“You’re not supposed to—”
“I’ve imagined you in my arms for a week, Lanie.”
“Mmm,” I murmur. “What’s it like?”
“Being out?” Cord falls silent.
I bite my tongue, the sharp pain pushing away the guilt of asking, prying. I shouldn’t have said anything.
“Time passes. Not like here. When you wake after rest, you can tell you’ve had a good night’s sleep, or a bad one, that it’s five in the morning, and you need to haul yourself out of bed.”
“But?” I prompt gently.
“Waking up from that is like emerging from being very deep underwater. There’s a sort of pressure and a nothingness.” He jerks his head, once, and presses his hand to it. “I can’t explain.”
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pried.”
“Is it prying to try to understand what someone you—what someone is going through? It’s okay, Lanie.” He strokes my hair.
“I love you, Cord.” The words tumble out, but they’re true, and I told him when he wasn’t awake, so I don’t bother trying to stop them.
Cord’s fingers still in my hair and then resume their stroking. “It’s good to hear you say it.”
I smile into his chest. “My rear, however, hates me. Those plastic chairs have permanently reshaped me.”
He laughs, his palm cupping the back of my head. “Everything moves, and I’m grateful.” His voice drops. “Now, I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Surely I can’t be this lucky.”
“Why not?” I prop myself gently on his chest, looking for signs that my weight puts pressure in the wrong spots. Clear, fathomless eyes stare back. “I swear you’re more complex than you were when I met you, Cordell Rand.”
“Why do people keep using my full name?” He runs his fingers across my cheekbones and traces the curve of my brow. “I can’t stop touching you. But I might be a little different in some things.”
“What do you mean?”
He stills. “Sometimes my mind jumbles things up. I can’t always remember names, and words come out mixed up. Like I’ve scrambled the letters in my head and spit them out in the wrong order. Alphabet omelet.”
I nod. “I get that.”
“You do,” Cord says flatly. His eyebrows hike, his gaze wary, like he’s told this story before and earned the same result. I wonder who lied to him at the hospital and who will lose their job tomorrow when I make a phone call.
But I have my own confession to make. “You’ve never seen me after a full-blown migraine. Or with one. The night after I drove back from here—that first day I collected Sally—I could barely think. The pain does that.”
“You were dopey.” He squints at me. “When I got to Winnie’s a week later, you were all over the place.”
I huff. “Those pills are terrible. I can’t go out in public like that.
But I can function after a few days. Maybe not drive, but…
function. After a migraine, I can’t always say words right.
Dialing a phone number or entering stats into my spreadsheets—sometimes it’s impossible.
I can go six or seven times, trying to put numbers in that I’m familiar with.
Passwords are a nightmare. Or I might be thinking of something simple, like, say, a square.
But I say oval instead. Or utter rubbish falls out, like I’m possessed.
Communication, no matter how simple, is… ”
“Terrifying.” Cord watches me, the wariness leaving his gaze. “The last person who told me they understood was full of shit.”
“I figured that out. I’m sorry.” I press a kiss to his chest. “Not having your brain work the way you’re used to—not being able to rely on the thing you love about yourself—it’s like someone’s taken what you identify with most and destroyed it.
” I press my lips together, studying a button on his shirt.
I’ve never told anyone about the aftereffects of my worst migraines. They sicken me, and I’ve experienced the same disbelief factor that Cord has come across from both friends and health providers enough not to bother with seeking yet another diagnosis.
“Come here, Lanie.” Cord draws me along him gently. I wriggle to help. “That’s not broken, you know. Stop wiggling.”
“Oh?” His body pushes against me. Oh. “You’ve just had surgery. You cannot be serious.”