When she heard a knock on her door, she deliberately closed her eyes, hoping that nobody would come in. But when the door opened, she peered through her damp eyelashes to see a tall blond male step forward.
“Are you okay?” he asked in a warm liquid voice. “I saw you in the hallway when they brought you in. I could see your pain levels. Your team will be here soon, and I’m one of that team,” he said. “I’m Shane Roster.”
His words came out so smoothly, they almost melted her heart. Actual emotions and genuine concern were in his voice. Which shouldn’t surprise her. After all, the two busy nurses she’d dealt with here so far were a nice change.
“I’m the head of the Physiotherapy Department here at Hathaway House.”
Her eyes opened fully as she looked up at him. “How did you know I wasn’t asleep?”
He gave her the gentlest of smiles and said, “Experience.”
She winced. “Are we all such a mess when we arrive?”
“No,” he said. “Not at all. But I could see your pain. I could see the stiffness in your spine. I just want you to know that it will get better.”
Her eyes widened. “Well, thank you for that,” she said, “because I’m not sure it can get much worse.”
At that, he shook his head. “It can,” he said, his voice firm. “It can get much worse. But we’re here to help you get to be the best that you can be.”
“Well, first, it’d be nice to stop crying,” she said, hating that it always devolved to some female weakness of crying. “I’m not normally so weepy,” she explained.
“Tears are just a release,” he said, stepping farther into the room. “They’re natural. They’re normal, and they’re good to help you let go of pain, tension, and stress. You need that release. Don’t hold it back. It will just add to your own trauma.”
She stared at him, marveling at his words, yet questioning it all.
He smiled and shrugged.
“I thought guys hated women’s tears,” she said.
“Then they’re in the wrong business, if that’s the case here,” he said, “because tears are a very necessary part of your healing. You need to let them go.” He took several steps to the doorway. “I’ll come back and talk to you in a little bit, but is there anything I can get you now?”
“A new life?”
“Order received,” he said, with a big smile that lit up his whole face. “It just takes a little while to process.” And, with that, he stepped out and walked down the hallway.
She lay there, surprised not only at his attitude but in the light way that he spoke about her life. It was different from everything else she’d heard and had experienced up until now. Maybe that was a good thing because surely she didn’t want to deal with any more bad events in her life. It had been a pretty rough year already, that distant dream of a normal life always delayed by one more surgery, so that her normal future looked a long way off. But now that she was here, maybe she would eventually see her new future.
The next day Shane stopped back in at Melissa’s room again. For some reason, watching her arrival and transfer had touched him. He’d immediately read her case file. She was almost heartbroken that she couldn’t be who she wanted to be, something he’d seen time and time again in patients of his.
But something about her had struck a chord and had pulled at his heartstrings. The fact that Melissa reminded him a lot of his sister, whom he rarely got to see now, was another big aspect to it, and Melissa had looked so much like she needed a friend last night. Just someone to tell her that she would be okay. He knew everyone here had a different version of what that looked like, and it rarely matched reality. Acceptance was part of the process.
When he walked into her room today, he looked around. She was still tucked into bed, hardly having shifted from the previous night, but her eyes were open, and her gaze was clear. “Good morning,” he said, noting a spark in her eyes, which was also good. His spirits lifted.
“Good morning, Shane,” she said. “I am feeling better today.”
“Are you?” he asked. He motioned at the way she was positioned in bed. “Do you shift at all during the night?”
She slowly shook her head. “No. I try not to.”
“Because of the pain?”
She nodded slowly again.
“And yet lying in the same position like that,” he said, “causes all kinds of other problems. We have to get you up and moving. And we have to get you so that you can shift in the night without that pain. Are you taking medications for it?”
“Yes,” she said, “but a lot of times they don’t touch the pain.”
“Ah,” he said. “That figures. Pain is debilitating and causes stress, which then slows healing.”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t seem to make any difference though, does it?”
“It can,” he said. “We just need to keep working on everything that’s going on in your world. I haven’t done a full assessment, so I can’t really see what that looks like yet.”
“At this point in time, I think every doctor must come from a completely different program because they all seem to have varied ideas of what to do.”
“And have you liked any of your doctors?”
“I did like one,” she said wistfully. “But then he ended up working in a new area, and I couldn’t go to him anymore.”
“And the next doctor?”
“He had another plan for me and changed my program, changed some of the medication, added two new surgeries, and,
