Chapter 4
N elly kept an eye on Zander over the next few days, but he did quite a bit better after that one ugly event with muscle cramps.
As the days turned into weeks, she was thrilled to see him start to put on a little bit of weight.
She mentioned it one day at lunchtime, as she brought over a tray and took note of the serving sizes on his plates in front of him.
But he’d been good with his food choices and had packed his plate full of vegetables.
Of course, some of it was Dennis’s special Greek salad, and she’d packed her plate full of that too.
“By Jove, I think you’re putting on some weight. ”
He nodded, giving her a beaming smile. “I think you’re right. I haven’t been on the scale, so I was going to ask Shane about it.”
“I’m sure he would be more than happy to put you on the scale,” she replied, “but I can already see that you’re filling out a little bit in the face and in the shoulders.”
“I’m glad,” he said. “It seems as if I got nowhere very quickly at the last place.”
“Exactly, and then all of a sudden you got somewhere. And that somewhere, I think, is starting to show. You’ve been here what now? Almost a month?”
He nodded. “Coming on a month, yes. Progress has been slow,” he admitted. “A couple times I wasn’t sure I was getting anywhere, but, hey, it looks as if we’re slowly pulling in a little bit of success here.”
“A little bit is a good start,” Shane declared from behind them, as he stood there, smiling down at Zander.
“You definitely have put on some weight. We’ll do a full workup on your weight and measurements when we get into the gym next time,” he shared.
“In the meantime, eat your veggies.” And, with that comment, he headed on past them to join a group of other therapists, who Zander vaguely recognized.
“He runs a big team here, doesn’t he?”
“He does,” Nelly murmured. She moved her salad closer and started to dig in.
He smiled at that. “I really like how people here appreciate the food, and nobody wastes it, and they all seem to really appreciate Dennis.”
“Dennis and the team behind him,” she murmured. “Ilse runs the kitchen. Dennis,… well, he runs the front.”
“I get it. I have to admit that Xavier told me a lot about him.”
“Good, I’m glad. Anything that gives you an insider’s knowledge when you first get here is helpful,” she noted. “It makes your initial adjustment to Hathaway House a little bit easier.”
“I finally made that adjustment,” Zander declared, “and I’ve seen Xavier a couple times. He looks so fine that it’s hard to believe that I might get the same results.”
“No reason why you shouldn’t, is there?”
“I don’t think so, but I’m always afraid that something’s wrong with me or something’s wrong with the system, and I’ll be the one case who never quite gets the same progress.”
She burst out laughing, and then she nodded.
“I’ve heard that a couple times, and I understand it.
I think I probably felt exactly the same thing in my various training courses.
It seems as if everyone else gets it, yet you don’t, and you’re afraid that you’ll be the one person who’s either too stupid or too dense, to understand what’s going on.
Then all of a sudden that light bulb comes on, and you’re like, Okay, now I understand .
And for you here with rehab, it’s as if you will be the one person who doesn’t see the same progress, the one person everybody else will look at sideways and ask, What’s wrong with him? ”
“Exactly,” he cried out.
She poked her fork in his direction. “And that won’t happen. You do know that, right?”
He smiled and tilted his head at her fork. “Don’t point that thing at me,” he teased. “It’s got a sharp end on it.”
“Actually it has multiple sharp ends,” she clarified, with a mischievous smile. “And, if I want to point it at you, I will. So, what will you do about it?”
“I’m not sure,” he admitted, fascinated, as he stared at her.
She shook her head. “What’s that look for?”
“You’re just such fun to be around,” he said. “I didn’t think rehab could be fun. I didn’t think therapy could be fun, and honestly, Shane’s not a whole lot of fun.”
At that, she burst out laughing to the point that she couldn’t stop.
He leaned in and whispered, “Don’t let him know that.”
She shook her head but continued to giggle.
Finally Dennis walked over and asked, “Are you all right?” And he handed her a glass of water.
She took the water gratefully and nodded. “I am,” she murmured. “Zander’s got such a great sense of humor.”
“ Uh-huh .” Dennis just looked over at some of their empty plates and pointed. “And a good appetite. I appreciate that.” And, with that, he gathered their wiped-clean plates and disappeared again.
She stopped giggling finally and looked over at Zander, wiping the tears from her eyes. “Wow, I can see that you’re the one who’s fun to be around. I feel like such an old stick-in-the-mud for not having the same sense of humor.”
He shrugged. “And so you should. I’m the injured party here,” he quipped. “You guys should all be entertaining me.”
“Nope,” she replied, with a headshake, “but you’re doing a great job entertaining me.”
“Hey, that’s supposed to be a two-way street.”
And, with the same amount of fun, they finished dinner. As he looked back at the dessert table, he added, “I didn’t quite grab enough, so maybe I could fit in a little bit of dessert.”
“I’m going to have an apple pie.”
“An apple pie? All to yourself?”
She pointed over her shoulder. “You didn’t see them over there, did you? Hang on a minute. Let me go take a look.” She got up and headed to the dessert counter. When she came back again, she was holding two whole pies, but they were only about six inches across.
He stared in fascination. “Individual pies?”
“Yeah, and wait until you see what’s coming now,” she shared, with a smile.
As Zander looked up, Dennis came walking around, a scooper in one hand and a bucket of ice cream in the other.
Zander immediately put up his hand and waved. “Me, me, me.”
Dennis, a big grin on his face, walked over. “Look at you guys. Won’t be any food left in the house.”
“Good,” Zander declared, patting his tummy. “Food should be eaten, especially really good food.”
“Oh, I agree with you, and, whatever you eat, I don’t have to put away,” Dennis pointed out, as he dumped a big scoop of ice cream on Zander’s plate. Then Dennis turned to Nelly.
“Yeah, but one-third of that size,” she said, with a headshake. “I only want to take what I can eat, and, man, I won’t eat that much.”
“That’s okay. I’ll finish yours too,” Zander vowed, with a fat grin.
She stared at him. “Seriously?”
“Yep, seriously,” he said.
Dennis was long gone by the time she finished what she could, which sadly wasn’t the whole pie. She stared down at it. “This is one of those times when I want to take that sucker home to my place.”
“Can’t you?” he asked, with an odd expression. “If you live on the place, can’t you just take it back to your room and eat it in a couple hours?”
“Well, I could,” she conceded. Then she smiled and patted her tummy and added, “Yet absolutely no way I’ll eat more in another three or four hours.”
“That’s too bad,” he muttered, with mock sympathy.
She stared at him. “Are you serious? You can eat this too?” He nodded. She steered it a little bit closer to him.
He snatched it and polished off the rest of it in a bite or two. He sat back with a happy sigh. “I don’t know how you could possibly not have finished it. You were down to just a bite.”
“It was a lot more than a bite,” she argued, with an eye roll. “But, hey, at least you got to enjoy it.”
“That and so much else,” he agreed. “What I don’t enjoy are the workouts. I don’t enjoy always feeling as if I’m behind schedule, and I really don’t enjoy that sense of craziness going on around me,” he noted. “There seems to be constant conversations, as if people are talking behind my back.”
She stared at him and then shook her head. “Not behind your back at all. It’s all about the wedding.”
“Oh, right. I forgot about that. That’s going on, isn’t it?”
“It is, and it’s in a little over four months, but plans are being made now.”
“ Ooo-kay , got it. Good. I was starting to get a complex. It seemed I would approach, and all of a sudden conversations completely stopped.”
She nodded. “It’s all about the wedding.”
“Well, I’m really happy for Dani. She seems to be a really nice lady.”
“And she built this all on her own with her father in mind,” Nelly shared. “Her dad came back from a war zone in rough shape.”
“Yeah, I heard some about that,” he muttered, looking around. “It’s pretty fascinating.”
“It is,” Nelly agreed. “And, just like downstairs, we have her horses and the veterinarian clinic, she also takes in rescues of the canine or of the equine variety—or a rabbit or a llama or whatever,” she murmured.
“And thankfully her new partner is Aaron, who was one of the first patients who came to the center. They fell in love, and he’s completing his vet training, so he’ll be working downstairs soon. ”
Zander stared at her. “Where that otter came from, right?”
She nodded. “Did you get a tour down there?”
“I found myself down there, but I wasn’t exactly sure what that place was. I had heard about it a lot from Xavier. I just haven’t gone down to see it for myself yet.”
“You should. An awful lot is down there that you don’t even think about.”
“As long as it’s good stuff,” he replied, “as I can’t stand to see an animal in pain.”
She nodded in commiseration. “I agree with that. I can’t either. But, if you want, I can take you down tomorrow, and we can take a look at the end of our day.”
“And do what?” he asked. “What exactly are we looking at?”
“Stan often has animals that you can hug and hold, animals that are recovering from surgery or are alone, animals that have been dumped off and are lost, and they all need cuddles too.”
“Done,” he declared. “Four o’clock?”