Rescue Me (12 page)

“Give it time. There are many different levels of success. You can do a lot with before-and-after photos and video footage that shares her story.” Mary Hannah focused on the kennel run, her face tipped, the silky black hair sliding to hide her face. “She's a beautiful girl.”

Holly wasn't the only one.

His fingers itched to touch Mary Hannah's hair, to test the slide and glide of those strands between his fingers, to tuck it behind her ear again. But everything he'd thought he knew about her had been turned upside down in the hospital, and he needed time to resolve that in his mind.

“What happens now?”

He asked about the dog, wondered about a helluva lot more. Mary Hannah swept back her hair, and her dark brown eyes met his, holding, confusion and awareness swirling like winter flurries in a night sky.

She stood quickly, tucking back into the supply closet, her voice drifting out. “I wouldn't worry about anything other than becoming friends with her. For today, just let her explore at her pace.” She stepped out with a bag of food and set it by the gate. “Give her space.”

“Space. Got it.” He was good at that.

“Keep treats with you at all times.” She placed three boxes of dog biscuits on top of the bag. “Keep them beside you. She'll slowly make her way to them.”

He watched her build the pile of supplies with neat efficiency, tucking the leash, collar, tags and a couple of booklets into a brown paper sack with the treats. “I'll stop by tomorrow with the flyers and our first session once I can evaluate how things are going in your home.” She paused, picking at the tie on her surgical scrubs. “Unless you need me to help now.”

“You should take the rest of the afternoon off. You've been through a lot. Maybe you should take tomorrow off as well.”

“I'm already late and I have patients to see.” She swept a hand over her head and held back her hair. “Let's focus on Holly.”

He could tell from the stubborn set of her jaw, she wasn't changing her mind about resting longer. So he scooped up the bag of dog food and the brown paper sack. “I should walk these over to the house. I'll jog over and be back in couple of minutes to meet Jim and take Holly. I assume she'll walk on a leash?”

“We'll find out. If not, Jim has some tricks to get her moving. But every dog is different. Some do better with another alpha to lead the way. Some need to be away from the pack so they have to look to the human.”

“God, poor pup.”

“I agree.” She unlocked the gate, a collar and leash in her hand. “But you can't pity her, not if you expect to make progress. Your instinct will be to baby her, but you have to be careful with that because it reinforces her fears. I'm not saying be hardhearted. But there are ways to build her confidence, to ease her bit by bit outside her comfort zone without pushing too fast or far.”

Was she talking in layers? Was it the counselor in her trying to nudge out his locked-up feelings about the past? He'd agreed to this project to appease his boss and his cousin, but he was already feeling itchy.

“This is going to be tougher than I expected.” He jostled the bags in his arms until they settled against his chest.

“And absolutely worth it.” She slid down to sit, leaning against the kennel wall without touching Holly, just sitting in a nonthreatening manner like she'd instructed him to do. “When you see her shine with confidence and joy . . . it's one of the most rewarding experiences.”

“You really believe that's possible for her.” Seemed damn near unattainable now, but looking in Mary Hannah's eyes, he saw a glistening hope that reminded him of all the paisley optimism in her outlook. Regardless of what she'd done in the past, her former addiction, he couldn't deny she had a big heart.

“There's something in her eyes that makes me believe Holly can blossom. She may not ever be the dog she could have been if she'd been nurtured and socialized from the start, but she can have so much more than she has now.” Mary Hannah looked at the boxer, her eyes filling with compassion. “She will be . . . Holly.”

The caring in her eyes drew him in like moths to a lightbulb, making him want to forget what he'd learned about her today. He stepped closer, into the half-open gate.

“AJ . . .” She raised a hand to stop him in his tracks. “I'm the arsonist in this scenario, remember?”

And she sure as hell was making sure he would never forget.

The reminder hit him like sleet against bare skin. And not because he doubted her, but because he doubted himself.

He couldn't deny she lit a fire inside him, one he needed to rethink feeding. Today had shown him too well how vulnerable Mary Hannah was.

Turning on his heels, carrying the food and bag of supplies for Holly, he started to leave the barn, toward his solitary cabin.

Thirty-six hours drug-free and counting. Good-bye, Peppermint Lady. Hello, bachelor pad. What AJ lacked in decorating taste, he made up for in a phenomenally large television screen. I fell asleep that night with my old friend Alex Trebek.

—HOLLY

M
ARY HANNAH STEPPED
through the elevator doors, stuck in a hospital for the second time in two days. But this time was different since she was there to help the patient, not
be
the patient. Normally that was the kind of thinking that got her through the day when she visited a hospitalized client.

It wasn't working so well for her today, not after the sleepless night she'd had.

She wished she could have done as AJ suggested and taken a couple of days off to rest. Her leg hurt like hell from the bite, and whatever was in the injections made her stomach churn. But she'd pushed through, showered and readied for work this morning. She needed to check in on this particular wounded army veteran—Captain Declan Roberts.

The holidays were toughest on people already in crisis. And the Roberts family of three was most definitely stressed to the max since the Captain had been wounded overseas.

Mary Hannah shrugged her paisley bag more securely onto her shoulder, her low-heeled leather boots clicking on the bleached tile. She wore her glasses instead of contacts, a small difference really, but the frames gave her an added layer of protection, a barrier between her and the world. Besides, her eyes were gritty from lack of sleep. Between the dog bite, confessing her battle with addiction and resisting the attraction to AJ, her own stress level was off the charts.

Holidays were tough on more than just her patients.

Christmas decorations still sparkled, garlands draped along the front of the nurses' station. A decorated fake tree towered in a waiting area, without presents now that Santa was done for the year. And on Captain Roberts's door? A construction-paper wreath, made from cutout handprints glued into a circle.

No doubt made by the little boy sitting on the floor outside the door. He leaned over a coloring book, a box of crayons open beside him. Henry Roberts—Declan and Callie's only child, four years old with blond hair and round glasses. The child didn't remember a time when his father wasn't at war or in the hospital. Henry would never remember his father holding him with both arms.

Mary Hannah gripped the handles on her bag until her fingers numbed. She knew she had a vulnerable spot when it came to kids, but there was something about Henry that tugged at her all the more, making her wonder a million times over what her child would have looked like. If her baby would have been a boy or girl. So many questions and what-ifs she would never have answered.

She reined in her thoughts and focused on Henry. He was his own person, not an extension of her lost dreams. She nodded to the nurses behind the station before reaching the too-quiet child.

“Hi, Henry,” she said softly.

“Hey, Ms. Gallo.” He waved without looking up from his coloring book as he traced alphabet letters with a purple crayon. He painstakingly traced the large
C
on a page of cookies while his snow boots twitched back and forth as if his feet were itching to run and play.

Mary Hannah knelt, struggling not to grimace at the pain to her leg. “Did you get that coloring book in your stocking for Christmas?”

“Yeah, plus some candy, and a video game, too, but Mom says I gotta do school stuff first.” He scrunched up his face, hand shaking as he worked so hard to trace. “Gotta work on my motor skills.”

“That's a good mommy thing to say.”

“Yuh-huh.” He colored the spots on a chocolate chip cookie. An aide pushed a food cart past, wheels squeaking and trays rattling.

“Where
is
your mom?”

“In there. With
him
.” Henry rarely used the word
Dad
. “They're fighting again.”

Low voices echoed through the door, hushed but tense, just barely discernible over the filtering noise of televisions and normal conversations in other rooms. Declan and Callie were having a rough time adjusting to his injuries. The recovery had been long and painful, and life would never be the same for them.

Helping them felt like filling a bucket with a hole in the bottom. She suspected their problems had started before the accident, but neither was willing to admit that yet. She could only keep trying. There was a saying that the therapist could work only as hard as the patient.

Mary Hannah lowered herself the rest of the way. “Do you mind if I sit here with you until they finish their conversation? I wouldn't want to interrupt.”

Henry looked up, his green eyes wide behind his round glasses. “Aren't you s'posed to fix them?”

If only it was that simple. “I'm here to help how I can. I'll visit with them when they're ready. For now, I'll keep you company.”

“Sure, whatever.” He put away his crayon, closed the coloring book and stashed it in his lion backpack. He tucked his hand in deep and pulled out a Leap Frog learning video. Lights whirled and flickered on the screen.

She leaned closer, her next breath taking in the smell of children's shampoo and waxy crayons. “What kind of game is that?”

“I'm building a farm.” Little pigs marched across the screen with numbers on their bellies.

“What's on your farm?”

“Animals and tractors. I like tractors.”

She sat silently and waited.

“I'm also planting corn. I like corn on the cob when my friend's dad grills it.”

Where was he going with this? She'd found there was always a reason for everything Henry said; she just had to follow his train of thought. “Grilled food tastes amazing,” she added, hoping to prompt him. “I like fat hamburgers, too.”

“You can have a picnic every day on a farm.”

“That sounds fun.”

He looked up from the game, his eyes as green as grass, the expression in them far too old for his age. “It's just a game. It's not real.”

Professional distance just wasn't possible sometimes. She swallowed down the tears clogging her throat and nose and forced her face to stay mild and reassuring. “Your father is working very hard to get well.”

The voices in the hospital room grew louder, the words discernible. Declan's voice growled, “I told you not to bring him today.”

Henry's hand tucked in Mary Hannah's, the soft and sweaty stickiness tugging at her heart as it shattered into a million little pieces.

“Told?” Callie sighed with unmistakable weariness. “What about discussed? God, Declan. When did we stop asking each other's opinions?”

“When I lost an arm and half a leg,” Declan said in the next room while Henry clenched tighter, his other hand adding more animals to his farm. “I don't want Henry seeing me this way, like some broken action figure that got tossed to the bottom of his toy box.”

“Don't say that.” Her words choked on a sob.

“Even you're wincing.”

Mary Hannah squeezed Henry's hand once more before she shoved to her feet. She needed to stop this now for Henry's sake. She tapped on the door. “Hello, Declan? Callie? Mary Hannah Gallo here.”

The voices inside went silent fast; then, “Come in,” Callie called.

Mary Hannah looked at the nurse, who nodded toward Henry, confirming she would keep an eye on him before she stepped out from behind the desk. “Hey, Henry, would you like to pick out some juice and pudding from the kitchen?”

“Sure.” He sighed, tucking his game into his backpack. “We can get some for my mom, too. She forgets to eat . . .”

Mary Hannah pushed the door open and stepped inside the hospital room she'd visited so many times over the past months as Declan struggled to survive . . . then regain his independence.

He sat in a wheelchair wearing a sweat suit, the left leg pinned up to the point where his leg had been amputated at the knee. The left T-shirt sleeve was empty. He would get prosthetics soon, which would restore some of his independence but could never replace what he'd lost.

Before the accident he'd been a college athlete, a track star, then afterward a competitive triathlete. The inactivity was clearly taking its toll on him emotionally, but his body could be pushed only so far as he recovered, and he insisted on hiding from the world until he could emerge whole again—or at least on two legs.

Life didn't work that way. The damage he was inflicting on his family—and himself—with the isolation could prove just as damaging as the scars he'd gotten in Afghanistan. A missile hit had toppled his vehicle, trapping his arm and leg. Even with the scar down his left cheek, he was a handsome, all-American-looking man, with blond hair a shade darker than his son's.

“Happy New Year, Doc,” he said sarcastically, always calling her “doc” no matter how often she corrected him.

She understood he had trouble thinking of himself as anything other than a patient, and everyone around him fit into that paradigm. “Hello, Declan.”

Before she could say more, he wheeled into the bathroom, and she heard the door lock. The sink faucet turned on, then a radio he kept in the shower, and she knew from past experience that this was his way of shutting out the world. Of course it also meant she could speak privately with Callie.

Was Declan offering his wife the comfort of talking out her pain to someone even if that someone couldn't be him? Or was he genuinely just checking out? Things to work through later. For now, she needed to focus on the grieving wife.

Callie toyed with the miniature Christmas tree strung with popcorn. Her white silk shirt and black slacks were new, her shoulder-length red hair freshly cut. She'd clearly tried today. “Aren't you going to tell me to be patient with Declan? That everything will get better with time?”

“Is that what you need for me to say?”

“Of course not, since it would be a lie.” Callie sank onto the edge of the hospital bed, her head tucked low, red hair covering her face even as she dragged her wrist across her eyes.

Mary Hannah sat slowly in the chair beside her. “There's no denying this is tough, Callie, as tough as life gets.”

The young wife and mother glanced at her and whispered, “Most people tell me how grateful I should be that he's alive, and I am. Really. But everything's still awful.”

“Pain is pain. There's no comparing one kind to another.” She hesitated. Sharing her own life experiences could be dicey and unprofessional. But she could safely say, “Marriage is difficult even when life runs smoothly.”

“That's sure true.” Callie sniffled, grabbed a tissue from the box on the bedside table, then threw her head back with a long exhale. “It's like even though he's alive, he's still dead to us anyway because he doesn't want us anymore. I don't know what to do. I thought once his body healed, things would get better, but they're worse. He still doesn't want to see Henry. I can't let him keep hurting our son this way.”

Staying neutral was tougher some days than others, but Mary Hannah was here to treat all of them. And while she sympathized with Declan—God knows he'd suffered—the best way for him to heal was to help all three of them. “You need to take care of yourself, too, for your sake and your child's.”

“I don't know what's right for Henry.” Her eyes held a pain so deep it blurred out the rest of the room. “He wants his father, but his father doesn't want him, so maybe it's best for Henry if I just take him away rather than let him be hurt.”

“Do you really believe that will make the situation easier for Henry . . . or for you?”

“Sometimes yes, sometimes no.” She wadded up the tissues and hurled them into the trash. “But that's not what you came here to talk about today. You said you had some program you thought would help Declan.”

Mary Hannah had come with a concrete idea in mind, but everyone had to be on board. And right now one Roberts male was hiding in the bathroom and the other was somewhere slurping down juice and pudding. “I'm here to talk about whatever is important to you.”

“Thank you. Really. I don't know what we would have done without you.” Callie smoothed her hands down her black slacks, which still carried the sheen of newness. “Now tell me about the program you have in mind for our family.”

“Actually, it's for Declan and Henry, if they'll agree.” Mary Hannah reached into her paisley bag and pulled out the flyer and a packet of forms. “I've had a lot of success partnering patients with dogs. They find the training and contact therapeutic. In fact, a few doors down, another patient of mine is here with his service dog.”

“Really? To help him with tasks?” Callie sat up straighter, her eyes filling with a hint of wary hope and a lot of skepticism.

“And emotional support. The dog's name is Lina. She was a rescue pup named Thumbelina, orphaned and near death.” The Second Chance Ranch had nurtured the litter of pit-bull puppies back to health a year and a half ago. “Now she's eighty pounds of wonderful, trained awesome-sauce.”

Callie smiled, her first full-out smile since . . . ever. “I've seen television specials on things like that. It would be a wonderful, amazing miracle if it could happen for Declan.”

“I'm glad you think so.” She passed over the flyer, wondering how AJ and Holly were managing. What kind of difference would Holly make for him? “There's a six-week program where a shelter dog is cleaned up and trained for the My Furry Valentine Mutt Makeover competition.”

“You want us to adopt a
puppy
?” Callie held the flyer between two fingers as if not sure whether to read it or pitch it into the trash with her snotty Kleenex.

“No, an adult dog.” The last thing Callie Roberts needed was a puppy to train. Mary Hannah leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “You're under no obligation to keep the dog, only train it for six weeks. There will be people lined up to adopt these dogs. So no worries.”