Reaching Rose (Hunter Hill University Book 3) (3 page)

BEN

"Ben Falco?"

I wake to the sound of a new voice. A female voice. Groggily, I say, "Yes?"

"Hi. I'm Lourdes, your morning nurse. But you can call me Lou."

"Lou...Right...Hi. I'm Ben, but you know that already." I shift in my bed to sit up.

She smiles, but doesn't laugh. "Okay, let's get you out of bed and ready for therapy. Do you need help showering?"

I shake my head vigorously, willing myself to wake up fully. "No. No. I'm fine by myself. Unless, you can help me wrap up my brace, maybe." I pause to stretch my arms. "The material beneath it shouldn't get wet, and well, I have done it myself, but I guess I don’t do it correctly, because it still kinda gets wet."

"Sure. I can do that. I'll be right back."

I take a breath, push myself up against the headboard, and look to see if Johnny is in bed. He's not, he must be in therapy already. I wonder if Lou came in and helped him first, or if he has another nurse who comes in and helps him. I hate needing someone else's help. At least for me, though, it's temporary. That poor girl in the wheelchair yesterday will probably need someone's help for the rest of her life. She's missing a leg. She had pants on, so I couldn't tell if she was missing her whole leg or just half of it. Being that she is so thin, it was hard to see if a thigh was beneath her pants. But there was no mistaking that her leg was gone. The way her black sweats flattened as they fell down the front of the chair, and the lack of a foot on the foot rest, definitely implied she was missing a leg. I wonder if she'll ever walk again. They have prosthetics for that, don't they? I recall reading about a young baseball player who had both legs amputated. Maybe life won't be so hard for her.

But I bet she's dying inside right now.

I bet that's why she doesn't talk.

She probably sees no hope for her future.

But there is hope.

There's always hope.

Isn't there?

Lou walks back in my room carrying a huge roll of cling wrap.

"Hey," I say, "I have a roll like that back home. Used it to wrap up my brother's car on April Fools' Day."

"Nice. I'll have to remember that," the thirty-something-year-old lady says. "Was he pissed?"

"At first. It made him late for work." I chuckle, remembering his fuming face. "But he gives as good as he gets, so—" I lift a shoulder "—he got what was coming."

"Brothers. I got one of them too. How many you got?"

"One. And a sister. Both older."

"Ah. So you're the baby?"

"Eh. Guess so."

She laughs. "Okay, why don't we get you wrapped up? Craig's gonna be calling for you soon."

Lou quickly winds the clear wrap around my leg, starting at the top and ending beneath the brace at my lower shin. Then she snuggly tucks it in, finishing it off with a piece of duct tape.

"And here I thought you had some professional wrap or something," I joke.

"We do. Saran wrap and duct tape work better. You're pretty friendly for an injured teenage athlete."

"Teenage?" I feign offense. "I'm twenty-one. Legal."

She shakes her head. "Get in the shower, old man. Pull on the string if you need me."

Showering isn't too difficult for me, since there is a support bar running the entire width of the stall, so it takes five minutes and I'm done. I get dressed in my room and hobble over to the window to look outside. The guys are probably playing Fall Ball right now, and I'm jealous. I want to be out there. Soon enough.
Soon enough
, I tell myself.

"Look at you all ready," Lou says from the doorway.

I turn around and smile. "Not bad for a gimp, huh?" And then I immediately regret using that word.

"You know, kid, you're luckier than most here. You're injury's gonna heal soon. Some of these kids...not so much."

I nod. "Like that redhead," I mumble to myself.

"You've seen Rose?"

"Rose?" Is that her name? It's perfect for her.

"She's the only redhead here who's a patient. And I don't think you mean Craig?"

I shake my head. "No. I don't mean Craig. Can I ask what happened, or is that breaking some kind of confidentiality thing?"

"Well, yes, there are confidentiality rules, but I can say that losing a leg at that age is extremely difficult to deal with."

"Yeah." I have to stop feeling sorry for myself. I have to. The damage to my knee was done by falling and twisting it during a game. And it's been repaired. Poor Rose. She'll never get her leg back.

"Well, kid. You ready? Craig's waiting for you."

"Ready as I'll ever be."

***

During therapy, Craig unlocks my brace and allows me to do some exercises, which involve bending my knee. Simple exercises that I'd have scoffed at before my injury are fucking hard. All I'm doing is lifting my leg and bringing it down. Or bending it slightly and raising it. Holy shit, what a difference a month makes. Last month I was bending my knee up to my chest every time I pitched a ball, now I can't even bend it a few inches.

"Not that easy, is it, Falco?" Craig laughs as I grunt, bringing my foot down to the floor from a sitting position.

"Holy shit," is my response.

"It'll get easier. Don't worry," he says with a wink.

I shake my head. "This is crazy, man."

After a half an hour of baby exercises that render me a weakling, Craig locks up my brace and tells me to take thirty minutes in the chair.

"I hate that chair, Craig. Can't I just sit in a regular chair?"

"You need your leg extended; the wheelchair has that option. You're not alone. Ninety percent of the people here are in one at one part of the day or the other. Grow a pair and sit in the chair."

I crutch my way over to the forsaken chair and sit my ass down. "Now what?"

"Well, since you like to do things for yourself, roll yourself over to the rec room. I'll bring you breakfast."

I nod and wheel myself out of the room, down the hall, and into the rec room, where Rose is sitting at a table alone, her breakfast tray in front of her.

"Mind if I sit?" I ask her, rolling up to her table, positioning myself directly across from her.

She lifts her eyes and looks me dead center in mine, but then casts them back on her lap.

"I'm Ben. I hear you’re Rose. Pretty name."

Rose looks at me again, but quickly casts her eyes back down.

"Whatchya reading?" I ask, noting the paperback book lying face down on the table next to her tray.

She doesn't look up this time. Okay. I'll leave her alone. Since I'm in here with nothing, waiting for Craig to come in with my breakfast, I wheel over to the bookshelf, grab a pack of cards, roll back to Rose's table, and play Solitaire the old-fashioned way. The way my father showed me.

Ten minutes later, a guy in scrubs comes walking over with a tray of food. "Are you Ben?"

I nod once. "Yup."

"This is for you. Craig said take an extra ten minutes."

"Sure. Thanks."

I continue to play Solitaire while I eat my runny scrambled eggs, fruit cup, and minuscule bagel. At least there are snacks in the fridge. This is not nearly enough food for me. I win my game of Solitaire and place the deck down on the table. "I'm getting something from the fridge," I tell Rose. "Can I get you anything?" Now I know she doesn't speak, but she doesn't know that I know, so it'd look unnatural if I just ignored her and didn't speak to her at all.

As expected, she doesn't respond with words, but I'm sure I saw the slight shake of her head telling me no, she didn't want anything. So she can and will communicate, no matter how slightly. I'll just have to be patient with her.

In the fridge, there are apples, oranges, pears, cups of pudding and Jell-O. Not quite the breakfast of champions, but the pudding will do. I grab three puddings - one chocolate, two vanilla. I take two spoons off the adjacent counter, put the stuff on my lap, and roll back to the table.

After I put the cups on the table, I push a vanilla and a chocolate cup toward Rose and place a spoon on her tray. "Your choice," I say with a wink.

Her eyebrows dip and she eyes me warily.

"Who doesn't like pudding, right?" I open up the extra vanilla and start eating. "Better hurry up, I'm almost done, and then you're not gonna have a choice. You're gonna have to go with the one
I
don't pick."

Her eyes roll, but the corner of her mouth lifts. She wants to smile. I know she does.

I stick the last spoonful in my mouth, and after I swallow, I say, "Uh oh. You ran out of time."

Teasingly, I move my hand across the table to grab one of the pudding cups, but before I do, I see her hand furtively move across the table toward the chocolate cup. Her hand stops before it reaches it, and she pulls her fingers back, balling them into a loose fist. Smiling to myself, but being sure to keep that smile hidden from my face, I push the chocolate pudding closer to her. "It's yours. I like vanilla better anyway."

Rose quickly drops her hands to her lap and her eyes follow.

She's looking down when I say, "I know it's only pudding, but what'd it ever do to you?"

Her chest jumps and her mouth pulls in, the way it would if she was holding back a laugh. I refrain from commenting, because I don't want to embarrass her, but I think I made the sweet girl chuckle. I finish my second cup of pudding, and I notice her looking at the pudding every once in a while, but I don't force it. I want to be her friend, and a friend doesn't make another friend feel uncomfortable, so I keep quiet. When Craig comes in to tell me my time is up, I say goodbye to her. But as I'm wheeling away, I turn to her and say, "Now don't disappoint that poor pudding cup. All he wants to do is make us hungry folk happy." I roll myself toward the door, and before I exit, I turn and notice her dainty hand reaching for the chocolate pudding. Yes. I made progress and it's only day one.

ROSE

I am so embarrassed. The cute boy who was staring at me yesterday sat at my table today.

Why?

At first, I thought it was so he could get a better look at the freak with the missing leg and a huge scar on the left side of her face. But then, he didn't seem to look at me at all. I mean, he didn't stare at me at all, and he only looked at me if he was asking me a question. A normal question. He didn't seem to even notice the huge red scar that starts at my forehead and travels down the length of my body. Not that he'd see the scar past my neck, since my clothes cover the rest of it, but I didn't see his eyes roam toward the left side of my face at all.

The pudding cup in my hand is still cold. Why did he get me a pudding? I wanted to say thank you. I did. But...I couldn't. If I talk, I will break. And I will feel the pain all over again. And then I will want to die...like I should have the day that truck hit me. When it sliced me down the left side of my body with its jagged metal undercarriage and sealed my fate by severing my left leg right beneath my knee. So I would never dance again.

I don't remember the accident, and the only thing I've been told was that the undercarriage of the truck had been rusted and falling apart, leaving a sharp, jagged, metal weapon to sufficiently slice me up like a side of beef. My body-long wound, up to and including my severed leg, got infected because the antibiotic they'd fed me wasn't enough to kill the damage the rusted metal had caused. After waking from my two-month induced coma, sometime during that week, I'd figured out that my left leg was missing. I'd screamed. I'd screamed louder than I ever thought my voice could go. And then I cried out for my mother and asked her if I'd ever be able to dance again.

"I'm so sorry, honey." She shook her head. "You will never dance again. I am so, so sorry," my mother said again, crying into my shoulder as she attempted to comfort me.

That was the first time I'd wished I were dead.

And I've been praying every night since then that the infection would come back and claim me for good. But God hasn’t answered that prayer. For some reason, he wants me alive and suffering. For some reason, God hates me.

But today, when that boy – guy, rather – brought a pudding over to the table for me...little flutters came alive in my stomach. For the first time in over a month, I didn't want to die. For the first time in over a month, I didn’t hate God back. For a moment there...I actually wanted to thank Him. I actually wanted to smile.

When Nina walks in, I place the unopened pudding on my tray, alongside my other uneaten breakfast items. It's still hard for me to eat anything, because eating is prolonging living, so I eat as little as I can. However, the chocolate pudding looks really good. Too late though. Nina is here and ready to get my uncooperative butt moving. Which never happens, because I just stare at my hands the whole time she attempts to get me to cooperate. It always ends up that she moves my legs with her own hands. Nina usually pulls me out of the chair and holds me up, even though I know I can stand on my good leg.

I don't want to be disobedient. Again, it goes against my nature to hurt someone's feelings, and not obeying them, or even responding to them, is the same as hurting their feelings. I know that. But as Dr. Rappaport says when he's rationalizing my behavior, "It's a normal reaction to such a life-changing event." Still...I should at least
try
to find the person I was before that delivery truck ended the life that I knew.

In the treatment room, Nina bends my good leg up to my chest and brings it back down. She does this about ten times before she reaches under my armpits and picks me up. I try not to give her too much trouble today, but the pain of knowing I can't do this myself is overwhelming, and I find myself slipping back in time again.

Four and a half months earlier, I'm on stage performing my solo at the Manhattan Dance Competition. Feeling inspired and at one with the stage, I begin dancing my solo, which includes my favorite, the fouetté, and end it with another favorite of mine, the fouetté jeté.

"Rose. Snap out of it, sweetie, c'mon." Nina's voice punctures my daydream, and just like that, I'm back here in my chair. "C'mon, Rose. I thought for once you were working with me, and then all of a sudden, you went into that place again. Stay with me, girl. I know you're in there." Nina sticks her arms underneath my armpits again, and this time, I use what little strength is left in my right leg to push up and onto the floor. "Thatta girl."

I'm standing on one leg. Nina instructs me to put my hands on the parallel bars on either side of me. For a moment I contemplate whether I really want to do that, but then some warm fuzzy feeling overcomes me and I do as she says. I put my hands on the bars, and she lets go of me.

"That's good, Rose. Now use your upper body to move forward. You'll have a prosthetic leg soon to help you along, but there will be times you'll need crutches to move. We want to keep your whole body strong."

A prosthetic leg? Crutches? See, these are the things that bring me down. Bring me back into my hole. I can't get past them and accept that this is my reality. This is when I want to curse God all over again for allowing this to happen to me. Nina keeps nudging me to move forward, but I don't. Instead, I stare ahead and try to slip back into my past, because that's where I feel safe.