Chapter 7 #2
Nelly looked over at him and nodded. “That was good thinking.”
“Dani’s done so much for so many people,” he pointed out. “So I can’t imagine the wedding, outside of wedding nerves, being something that would beat her.”
“Oh, I don’t imagine it will,” Nelly agreed, chuckling. “However, I do think this platter has beaten me.”
He smiled at her. “That’s all right. I’ll take a hit for the team.” And, with that, he proceeded to dig in even faster.
“Slow down, slow down. I was kidding.”
“But you might change your mind,” he noted, still with that big grin, “and I’m not sure I’ll share anymore.” With that, he went back to eating.
She stared in amusement at this guy who just yesterday could barely even get out of bed. Yet today he was tanking up on food like he’d lost fourteen meals. In actual fact he lost maybe one meal, and that’s because he’d slept through it.
She smiled. “Now this,” she muttered, “is good to see.”
*
Zander was thankful that his setback was the last one for a long time.
As he slowly moved through the rehab program, he felt some of his positivity return as he saw, as Shane had promised, real progress.
“Now that it’s been a month since my last slowdown,” he shared, “I’m realizing that I probably just overdid it, just did too much on a regular basis. ”
Shane nodded. “In a program like this, it’s always hard to know at what point in time to call it quits.
So it’s important to listen to your body, to understand your own body, to know where you’re comfortable with your workouts and what you can reasonably do long-term, day in and day out,” Shane shared.
“We’re just happy to know that you’re back on your feet again. ”
Zander smiled. “Particularly as things are heating up over the wedding.”
“They sure are,” he agreed, with a laugh. “You’ll be here for it, as it’s all coming down, so hopefully it won’t bother you.”
“Nope, not at all,” Zander replied. “A lot of couples are here. I’m wondering if any of those couples will take advantage of the whole wedding scenario and get married themselves.”
“It’s been mentioned, but everybody decided that they want Dani to have this day for herself. I’m sure there’ll be a flurry of weddings after hers, me included,” Shane added, with a boyish grin. “But it won’t be the same kind of gala affair, that’s for sure.”
“Your partner doesn’t want a big wedding?”
“Nope, neither of us do,” he shared. “It’ll be a fairly small event, with just family.
We won’t go through something like this, and we don’t have a ton of time off, but we have enough to make it special.
” He nodded. “A lot of partners are all in the process of finalizing their relationships. So it’s all good. ”
“I agree,” Zander replied. “And yet, for me, it’s an odd thing because I’m one of the single guys in here, without a relationship.”
“And there are lots of them too,” Shane noted. “You’re not alone.”
“I’m not sure that’s something I want to have in common with others either,” he replied humorously.
Shane chuckled. “I was alone for a long time myself, and I didn’t worry about it, didn’t push for it, because I figured it would happen when it happened. I wanted it to be somebody who saw me at my best and my worst.”
“My worst is pretty bad,” Zander muttered.
“No, it’s not,” Shane argued. “You’ve come a long way since you first arrived. Even when you got here, you weren’t that bad. Weak, but that’s to be expected. You had a series of heavy illnesses, and that can really take it out of you. But now you’re doing so much better.”
“And I think—for the first time in a long time—I agree with you,” he admitted, with a smile. “It doesn’t always work out that way. Yet I am feeling a lot more positive.”
“Good. And, speaking of relationships, I thought you had a thing going.”
“I would like to think so,” he said. “However, I also know that, being here at work is a different thing for her versus for me.”
“Meaning?”
“I guess I’m just afraid that—” He stopped, not sure how to explain it. “Just feels as if this is a very unnatural environment, and so any relationship that develops here might struggle out in the real world.”
Shane frowned at him and shook his head. “And I think that’s where you’re very wrong. I think this is a microcosmic society, where everything is amplified. And so, if you can make it here, chances are good you can make it out there too, if not even better.”
“I hadn’t considered that,” Zander muttered. “Still not sure I understand exactly what you mean by it.”
“If you think about it, everything here is bigger, stronger, more real,” he explained.
“The accidents we can’t walk away from, no makeup to hide the injuries.
” He added, “The internal scars are being exposed on a day-to-day basis as people go through therapy and training for the outside world. Therefore, if you can deal with your stuff in here, then everything out there—although it still must be dealt with—will be that much easier because you’ve dealt with it here first.”
“Sure, but then adding in a relationship to that mix of healing and retraining, that’s got to be hard.”
“Maybe, but you’ve already gone through a lot of the hard stuff here. So you don’t have to worry about somebody being fake here because there’s no room for that, no time for it. You see the person in crisis mode. When you see somebody in crisis mode, you see them as they truly are on the inside.”
Shane reached up to brush a hand through his hair.
“There’s no way to hide it here. There’s no closing a door and staying behind it for five days, coming out picture-perfect.
It’s dirty here. It’s real here. It’s gritty here.
When people have great days, you have great days too.
Yet, when they have bad days, believe me that you have to deal with those bad days.
There’s no putting it off or brushing it aside.
There’s no way you say, Oh, not dealing with it today.
I’ll go off to work and ignore it until I get home again .
The days here are real and full and extreme, but, because of that, when you come up against something in the real world, where you already have this confront-the-problem basis to go on, I think a lot of relationships do exceptionally well because of that particular mind-set. ”
“I hadn’t considered that.” Zander stared at Shane in surprise. “I was thinking that, when you get out to the real world, there are all these other things to deal with that must be a factor too.”
“Sure, but it’s more a case of you and your partner against that world, trying to find ways to deal with it together, instead of you out there trying to fit into the new dating world and trying to figure out what you’re supposed to present yourself as.
Here you don’t present yourself as anything but the real you.
Here you are who you are, and there’s no hiding from it.
” Shane stood up, with a knowing smile. “So you might want to remember that when you figure out whether it’s worthwhile pursuing her or not. ”
Certainly Zander would think about Shane’s words.
As Shane ended their rehab session and headed toward the hallway, Zander asked, “What about all the thought processes about how we’re broken while we’re in here, and yet, as soon as we’re out of here, isn’t that a better way to have a relationship, when you’re whole? ”
“But what is the relationship you’re trying to have?
” Shane asked curiously. “Because, if you think about it, you’re whole now.
You might be damaged, but who you are is who you are, and you’re not hiding anything here.
When you leave here, you have the ability to mask so much of who you are, whether you think you’re doing it or not.
It becomes almost a self-preservation response out in that world, and that may not be good in any way, not for you or for someone you may meet and date out there. ” Shane pointed out.
“But here is this person, whoever you’re talking about—and, yes, I have a pretty darn good idea who she is—she sees you as you are right now.
You don’t have to pretend to be better when you leave here.
If you’re better, that’s great, but, at least, while you’re here, she sees who you are and accepts who you are.
And there isn’t any waiting until you’re better to become friends or waiting until you’re better to go out on a date.
You’re already seeing that person on the inside, and that’s worth a ton,” Shane declared, “at least to me. I would rather take real and solid and know what I’m dealing with than to take a put-upon persona of what somebody thinks you should be like. ”
“Right, I would much rather have real,” Zander agreed instantly.
“And that’s what we do here,” Shane noted. “We’re all about the real. It doesn’t always mean that you like what you see, but what you see is really what you get, and that’s worth something.” And, with that, Shane turned and walked out, leaving Zander alone to his crazy thoughts.
And, of course, Zander’s thoughts immediately turned to Nelly, wondering just what he needed to do to see where she was at with this whole relationship thing.
Because, as Shane had said, in the future Zander would move on from here.
So the question was, what did he want to move on as, as himself or as something else?
And for him it was always about being real.
Did Nelly want the same thing? Did she like him? That was the real question.