“No, we sure don’t. Besides, that would be insulting to the rest of my team. They’re all good,” Dani said. “And Shane will do everything he can to get you back on your feet.”
“Well, I can walk,” she said.
“Nope,” Shane said. “That’s not walking. That’s doing a hunchback sidestep.”
“It’s still vertical and still moving forward.”
“It is,” he said, “but it’s nothing to what you’ll be doing hereafter. And, in any case, we’ll take a video of you to document your improvement.”
“Video?” She stared at him. “That would not be a cool idea.”
“No, but it’s what we do,” he said cheerfully. “You have lots to learn yet.”
She shook her head, looked back at Dani, and said, “You sure I shouldn’t be working with somebody else?”
“You’re exactly where you need to be at this moment in time,” Dani said with an assurance that left no for doubt. “Now you have to let go and to let the process happen.”
“So says you,” she muttered, as Dani walked away. Instead of being upset though, Melissa felt pretty weepy around the edges. Nice, if nothing else, to know that she still had a friend here.
“Were you guys close in school?”
“Very,” she said. “I’d had a rough time back then. Dani and I were already friends. So was the Major for that matter.”
“Ah, we don’t know a whole lot about those early years of the family,” he said, “so it’s good that you can relate to her that way.”
“Dani and I never had a problem relating,” she said. “I’ve been the one who’s probably had the most difficulty.”
“You want to share?”
She smiled and shrugged. “Maybe not right now.”
“Good enough.” And he left it at that.
She was surprised that he did. She wasn’t upset but a little curious as to how he could walk away from it so easily. “It doesn’t bother you that I don’t want to share?”
“Oh no,” he said. “When you’re ready, you’ll share.”
“It’s nothing major,” she said. “I just had a loss back then that made it very difficult. I ended up joining the navy, so that I could get away and could have some identity.”
“A common story,” he said.
She nodded. “In many ways, it is, isn’t it?”
“And remember,” he said, “you’re still different. You’re still unique. And nobody’ll lump you in with the rest of them.”
She chuckled. “Makes me sound like I’m a mess.”
“Everybody is a mess when they have to deal with reality checks,” he said. “It doesn’t mean anything.” She just smiled, as he got up and said, “Now I want to take some videos.”
“You were serious?”
“Absolutely. I’m serious about the work,” he said.
She groaned and said, “Where and when?”
“Down in my corner of this world,” he said, smiling. “So come on. Let’s go.” He waited for her to push her wheelchair to the doorway. He knew that she wondered why he wasn’t pushing her wheelchair now, but independence was important here. He watched how she handled the wheels, could see her movement, the stiffness in her shoulder and her side. By the time they got to his big gym, he motioned her to the center of the gym. Then he brought out his cell phone. “Now I want you to get up out of that chair and walk to the wall. Then I want you to slowly lower yourself down, so you’re sitting on the floor.”
She just glared at him.
“We’re recording this, so you can see how different it will be in a few months.”
“Sure,” she said. “I should move better in a few months.”
The last surgery wasn’t all that long ago, but still she got up and hobbled her way across to the wall. He could see the relief on her face when she hit it. She turned and slowly slid in an uncontrolled movement down until her butt hit and bounced. She winced at that. “I have less padding on my butt than I thought.”
He laughed. “That’s all right. Dennis will work on that part.”
She chuckled. “Well, that’s good news then,” she said. “I hadn’t realized how lacking in that area I am now.”
“It’s not about beauty here. It’s not about fitness,” he said. “It’s about health and managing whatever you have to deal with, whatever challenge that is, so you can be the best you can be.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said with a wave of her hand. “I’ve heard it all before.”
And he knew where she had trouble. She had almost heard too much of it and didn’t believe it anymore. But he knew that they could add a ton of improvement for her. But it had to be with her active participation; otherwise all this would be for naught. And that wasn’t something he was prepared to let happen.
Chapter 3
By the time Shane had done whatever tests he had to do, Melissa was shaking inside and struggling to hide the tremors. She’d been trying to cover it up for at least twenty minutes, but his sharp eagle eyes had noticed, and either he’d ignored it or he had wanted to push through to get something completed on his side. When he finally stopped, he said to her, “Will you ever tell me?”
She glared at him. “You mean that you’ve been watching me suffer, waiting for me to speak up?”
“I told you not to let me push you past six on a scale of one to ten for pain or exhaustion,” he said. “Remember that?”
She frowned because she did but only vaguely. “That was at least an hour ago,” she said with a wave of her hand, a mannerism she started to realize she did almost automatically. “Since then, I feel like a whole lifetime has happened.”
He chuckled. “Well, the lifetime is the fact that you let it get this far. Yes, I’ve been watching and waiting to see if you would say stop or tell me that you’d had enough.”
“If you tell me that I’m supposed to do more, I’ll do more,” she said readily. “And I honestly forgot about you telling
