Healing A Hero (The Camerons of Tide’s Way #4) (11 page)

Chapter 20

March 2015

Camp Lejeune, North Carolina

“I CAN DO THIS,” Philip muttered through gritted teeth as he forced himself into a third set of dips on the parallel bars. “I can definitely do this.”

When he finished, he hopped down onto the mat, cradling his aching right hand against his chest. He looked up and caught Elena eyeing him with her brow furrowed and her jaw set. He dropped his hand to his side, then plucked the sweat-soaked shirt away from his chest and wiped his face with his left arm.

“You are an idiot, Gunny.” Elena threw a towel at him.

The towel slapped against his chest, and he caught it before it fell to the floor. Whatever it was that had her so incensed better not end up in another workout requiring a lot of endurance because he was about tapped out. Hauling ass out of the office because he couldn’t bear to listen to another moment of Captain Clueless’s conceited speculations, he’d come to the PT department early and put himself through a rigorous round of conditioning drills. It was appalling how out of shape he’d become.

“Do you have any idea how much damage those dips probably did to your hand?” She was practically hissing. “All the hours the doctors spent fixing it. All the hours I’ve spent rehabbing it. Do you even care if you’ve undone everything?”

“It’s my hand,” he protested, stunned by her fury.

“But I’m the one who has to answer for your lack of progress. It’s my responsibility to see that you get as much use back as possible.”

Philip glanced at his throbbing hand. “They can’t blame you if the screw-up is mine.” He looked back at Elena. He’d never seen her this angry before. Not that he could recall. And it didn’t feel particularly comfortable aimed at him.

She scribbled furiously on her clipboard. “This will get reported. Your doctor needs to know when the patient is noncompliant.”

“What do you mean, noncompliant? I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to. Even when I thought it was dumb.” He tensed. An answering anger began bubbling in the pit of his being. He’d spent the whole last week picking dimes and quarters out of rice and therapy putty, fingering them until he could tell the difference between one and the other without looking.

“I’m sending you over for an X-ray before we go any further.” She shoved a slip of paper at him. “Tell them I want the images immediately. Then get yourself back here. Today.” She turned on her heel, then hesitated. “Wait—”

She crossed the room to a small freezer and then hurried back and with two small blue ice packs and an ace wrap. “Your hand?” she demanded, gesturing for him to hold his hand out.

Philip offered up the aching appendage, and she placed one cold pack on the back of his hand and one in the palm. Then she swiftly wound the wrap to hold them in place. “Bring them back with you.” Then she stormed into the glass-enclosed office without looking back.

AN HOUR LATER, Elena set a small laptop on the rolling table and cued up the X-ray images of Philip’s hand that the technician had emailed over to her. She scrolled through them, flicking back then forward again, studying each image carefully. Then she sat back with a sigh.

“You’re lucky. You didn’t refracture anything. But you could have. Very easily.”

“I thought broken bones were supposed to heal in like eight weeks or so. It’s been months.”

She bit her lip and didn’t meet his gaze.

“I apologize for yelling at you before. I know you’re used to powering through pain and maybe didn’t realize how much you could have hurt yourself by ignoring it.” She raised her eyes to his and swallowed. “I was just thinking about me and about how big a black mark would appear on my six-month evaluation if you’d seriously set your rehab back. I’m sorry.”

“I guess I was being selfish too,” he admitted reluctantly. “I just wanted to get back into shape and I thought four months was long enough.”

“If you just had a simple break, then yes. Eight weeks is a reasonable estimate for limited stress on the healed bones. But you did a lot more than bruise soft tissue and have a clean break. Bones were crushed and had to be reconstructed. Besides that, muscle and tendon damage takes longer to heal so the new bone growth has nothing to give it support. Nothing to back it up when you put stress on it.”

Philip spread his fingers and studied the web of scars, long healed and already fading. His hand looked ready to get back to business. He looked at the X-ray image, but it meant nothing to him. “When can I expect to be able to use it like I used to?”

“You’re going to be sorry for what you did today in a few hours,” Elena warned with a little shake of her head.

“Can’t be sorry if it gets me back where I need to be,” he shot back. He was already sorry. His hand felt like someone had taken a hammer to it. Since he’d jumped down from the P-bars, been on the receiving end of Elena’s tirade and taken himself to the X-ray department and back, the throbbing in his hand had gotten worse in spite of the ice packs.

“And where do you need to be?” Elena closed the lid of the laptop

“Back in action with my team. With any team.” Philip just barely managed not to press the hand to his chest again where he could cradle the aching limb and maybe put a stop to the stabbing pain.

“On a scale of one to ten?” she asked pointing to the chart he’d come to hate.

He started to fudge his answer, but then changed his mind. Honesty was the only way he’d get her total cooperation. Besides, he owed her that.

She had unexpectedly shared a very painful piece of her history at Bianca’s party. She had trusted him with the truth about the most difficult experience in her life. Her sudden capitulation, leaning into him and allowing him to offer his sympathy, as useless as it was against the enormity of what she had lost, had touched him.

He dreamt about her that night and every night since. His sleeping mind had conjured up images of her holding her lifeless son in her arms with tears running down her face while he tried desperately to reach her. But an endless desert of shifting sand had kept him from getting to her, and her anguish had grown louder as her tears kept falling.

And every night he woke with his face wet and his heart pounding.

“About eleven and a half,” he admitted.

She had begun to turn away, but stopped. Her eyes appeared darker than usual, and he couldn’t guess the emotion lurking there. Was she still angry about his workout and about possible setbacks that would compromise the reputation she’d worked so hard to gain?

“Other than pushing yourself beyond any reasonable limits on the P-bars, how have you been doing with the fine motor tasks you’ve been working on?”

He wiggled the fingers like a wave at the ballpark. “Pretty good, actually. Except for a reluctant pinky, typing is a lot easier.” He held up the offending digit and tried to fold it down. He could bend it halfway and no further.

She took his aching hand in her capable, soothing hands and massaged it for a bit. “Is there pain when you try to use it? Or is it more that you can’t control your movements?”

“No more pain than anything else. It’s a good thing there’s spell-check. Without it, there would be a whole lot of missing Ps. I have to be careful about punctuation, too.”

She hooked her first two fingers around the last joint in his pinky finger. “Try not to let me straighten it,” she said as she began to apply pressure. Very quickly, the finger gave way and pain shot up to his elbow, but he managed to stifle the cry forming in his throat. She repeated the process with each of the other fingers on his hand, working her way up to the index finger. All of them hurt like hell, but he gritted his teeth and persevered.

“When I can I go back to the gun range? Among other things, I need to get my rifle qualification scores back into the top tier, and I’ve already been away too long.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be in such a rush to hurry your recovery along.”

“You used to be in a rush to hurry everything along,” he retorted, remembering, quite incongruously, her rush to get his clothes off whenever they returned to his parents’ house during their last week together. She’d been young and impetuous about everything.

Elena flushed at his inappropriate remark. He almost apologized, but the tinge of pink coloring her neck and ears made him wonder if the same image had flashed into her mind. Perhaps she wasn’t so immune to the chemistry between them as her aloofness would indicate.

He’d given up pretending all he wanted from her now was friendship, at least to himself. He was still hurt and baffled by her failure to wait for him fourteen years ago, but he was willing to forgive her whatever her reason had been. He wanted her back in his life. But there were still so many missing years, so much of her life and his that hadn’t been shared. Was it even possible to bridge the gap between then and now?

She got up abruptly and walked away without speaking. She was definitely still angry with him if she was going to end the session just like that. He waited, not sure if he’d been dismissed. But then she reappeared and gestured for him to follow her.

“How does that feel?” she asked a few minutes later.

Philip glanced down at his hand immersed in a small basin of warm water into which electrodes had been introduced. The low voltage current felt a little shocking at first, but then soothing. “This will help with both swelling and the pain you’re feeling right now.” She set a timer. “I’ll be back.”

Philip wiggled his fingers. Carefully, he made a fist in the water, then relaxed his hand. He leaned his head back against the wall, closed his eyes, and let the gentle vibration and warmth soothe both his hand and his heart. Maybe he should step up his efforts to revive their relationship. Spending time getting reacquainted would be a distraction while he strove for patience with his recovery.

“Better?”

He opened his eyes and pulled his head away from the wall. Had she caught him dozing? “Much.”

“Good. You better not make me sorry for this, but—” She handed him a towel and held out the clipboard. “If you can sign this with your right hand, then it’s yours.”

He dried his hand and took the clipboard and the pen. Clipped to the board was his permission slip to return to the firing range. He balanced the board on his knee and began writing. He could do this. He had to do this. He’d graduated from the crayons, but he’d still been signing his name with his left hand. He concentrated on gripping the pen tight enough to keep it from slipping and ignored the stab of lightning that ran up his forearm. A little slow, but he finished with what he hoped looked like an easy flourish and handed the clipboard back to her.

Her brows rose. “Nice work, Gunny.” She released the form from the clipboard and handed it to him. “I don’t know whether to congratulate you on the achievement or call you for pretending that didn’t cost.”

He hopped off the bench and pocketed the form before she could change her mind. “Your daughter said she liked to surf.”

“When did she tell you that?” Elena hugged the clipboard to her chest like a shield.

“I met her in the waiting room the other day.”

“Right.” She frowned.

“Was I not supposed to be talking to her for some reason?”

“No, I just. . . . Most of the Marines who come in here don’t bother to chat up random kids they run into in the waiting room.” She took a step back.

“Well, I don’t. Usually. But she was staring at me and she looked familiar, so I asked if we’d met before. And we got to talking about the difference between San Diego and here. I just thought I’d pass along the information that it’s supposed to be a good weekend for surfing.

“And Lejeune has a really great beach. A private one for Marines and guests only. You work here. You probably get to use it, too.”

“Hey, Elena!” A petite blonde woman Philip had seen before in the department approached. “When you’re finished here, Rob wants to see you.” She bobbed her head in Philip’s direction, and then angled off toward another Marine who had just arrived for his appointment.

“I’ll see you Monday afternoon,” Elena said as she backed toward the office where her boss waited. “Don’t push things. And don’t hesitate to call if it doesn’t go well before then.” She turned and hurried away.

Chapter 21

April 2015

Camp Lejeune, North Carolina

“I CAN’T BELIEVE you’ve been here two months already and we’re just now meeting up,” Meg Cameron said as she chose a booth near the back of the cafeteria bustling with the lunch crowd and plopped down in the corner with her back to the wall, her eyes scanning the crowd. Her service dog scooted under the table and took up watch as well.

Philip had done almost the same thing the day they’d gone out for coffee. He’d chosen to cram his tall frame into a corner where he could keep a constant watch over the comings and goings in the small café. A soldier thing, for sure. Maybe neither of them would ever feel totally safe again, and it was a part of the price they’d paid when they chose to serve.

Although Elena had worked almost exclusively with military personnel, there was still a lot she didn’t know about the way war changed a man or a woman. She hadn’t realized Meg had a service dog, either. Or needed one. Until Meg showed up outside the café with the handsome shepherd at her side.

“I’m glad you’re back in Tide’s Way for good.” Elena tossed her purse on the opposite bench and slid in next to it. “Maybe we’ll get to see each other more instead of just chatting on the phone now and then. I’ll bet Ben’s relieved now that you’re out of the Marine Corps.”

“Relieved is putting it mildly. He’s—” Meg glanced away, then back. “He’s my rock, and I’m a lucky woman.” For a moment it looked like Meg was going to say something more, but then didn’t.

“I drove by your place on my way home from my niece’s party last weekend. I would’ve stopped in, but we were already late. Ben’s new building looks nice. I guess his project is close to being finished.” Elena lifted the top off her sub, then grabbed the shaker and added extra pepper. “Which do you think will come first? Your babies or the first round of warriors?”

Meg laughed. “The soldiers, I hope.” She smoothed her hand over the bulging bulk of her belly. “While I’m more than ready for these gals to arrive, I really want to be there to welcome the first group and be a part of their bonding with their dogs.”

Elena leaned back to glance down at Meg’s service dog. “You were lucky to find Kip.” The animal’s bushy tan eyebrows twitched when he heard his name, but he didn’t lift his head from Meg’s foot.

“More like he found me,” Meg admitted. “I was pretty skeptical about Ben’s plan to start training service dogs for veterans when I first got home, but this guy—” She reached under the table to touch the dog’s shoulder. “He began following me everywhere. Especially at night when I wandered around the house, unable to sleep and more than a little edgy.

“Kip used to be a police dog. Then he went into a tailspin after his handler got shot and killed. Ben was asked to foster him and see what he could do with him. Instead of keeping him out in the kennel, Ben let him come into the house at night. I guess he was as restless as I was.

“I was a hard nut to crack. Stubborn as usual.” Meg’s gaze skittered past Elena on another recon of the room, then fell to her lunch. “I thought I could get over everything that happened to me in Iraq all by myself. I wasn’t even letting Ben help me. I kept pushing him away and breaking his heart, but Kip—” Meg shrugged. “Kip wasn’t so easy to put off, and eventually, I began to realize his intervention was helping me. He didn’t need a lot of training, but Ben taught him a few things and now he’s my guardian angel. Right, Kip?”

The dog sat up and placed his muzzle on Meg’s knee.

“Why didn’t you call me? I’d have listened. Not that I know much about what you went through.”

“That was the elephant sitting between me and Ben. I was convinced he could never really understand because he hadn’t been there. Even the shrink was frustrated with me. She kept telling me Ben was the one person in the whole world who cared more about me than I did.”

Although he was never far from Elena’s thoughts anyway, Meg’s confession conjured up thoughts of Philip again. Did he have nightmares and prowl his room at night? Was that part of the reason for his frustrated outbursts at therapy? He didn’t act like a man with PTSD, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still struggling to adapt to his new reality—the physical injury as well as the possible loss of his career.

Meg chewed thoughtfully for several moments, then swallowed and set her sandwich back on her plate. “The shrink was right, of course. Ben didn’t have to be there to understand I was hurting. Maybe he put Kip up to following me in the first place. Anyway, I’m a convert now. That’s part of why I volunteer here at Lejeune and bring Kip with me to visit other Marines recovering from emotional wounds. I
have
been there, and they trust me.”

Meg gave the dog’s neck a scratch. “But let’s talk about you. How’s it working out being Philip’s therapist? You two were a pretty hot number a long time ago. Doesn’t that make things a little awkward now?”

Elena almost choked on the bite of sandwich she’d just taken. Her heart raced uncomfortably.

“We weren’t a number. Not really. We just spent his leave hanging out together after his grandmother died.”

Meg’s dark brows rose almost the same way her dog’s had a moment before. “I heard he sent you flowers.”

“It was my birthday.” Elena sagged back into her seat, praying Meg wouldn’t notice the flush creeping up her neck.

“You’re probably going to tell me to mind my own business, but . . .” Meg pursed her lips for a moment. “I overheard Philip talking with Ben a couple of days ago. They were talking about you. I didn’t catch most of the conversation, but it didn’t sound like they were talking about Philip’s therapy. It sounded like—well, like—Are you sure there’s nothing going on between you two? Back then or now?”

“Back then, he promised to write, but he didn’t. Not after the first couple of weeks.” The misery of his abandonment filled her, as fresh and aching as it had when it happened. She blinked back unexpected tears. “I wanted what we had to be more, but—”

“But now you’re here. And he’s here. And you’re both unattached.”

“Philip is my patient,” Elena argued even while her heart burned at the thought of Philip discussing her with his brother.

“So?” Meg grinned. “He’s a captive audience several times a week. And . . . he’s vulnerable. At least as vulnerable as he’s ever likely to be. Best time to strike.”

“I can’t date him. It wouldn’t be right. There’s a code of ethics. And I’m new here. I can’t afford to mess around and ruin my reputation.”

Meg chuckled. “Rules are meant to be broken. Or at least bent a little.”

Tears stung Elena’s eyes. “He broke my heart before. Isn’t once enough?”

“I knew it.” Meg reached across the table to place her hands on Elena’s. “There really was something between you. Maybe still is. If it makes a difference, Philip hasn’t been seriously involved with anyone else since that crazy summer. My guess? He liked you a lot more than he let on, and still does. Why he stopped writing, I don’t know, unless it had something to do with the business of striking back at those bastards who flew planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Maybe he felt he had to put his love life on hold. I just don’t know. But what’s stopping the two of you from getting back together now?”

“He’s my patient.”

“Yeah, I know. You’ve already said that. But love doesn’t play by man-made rules. If he’s spilling his heart to Ben and you get all teary-eyed talking about him, seems to me you two should be talking to each other. Not worrying about what you had or didn’t have back then or about some arbitrary rule that says you can’t fall in love with a patient.”

Elena dashed the incipient tears away and got back to being practical. “What about when he gets his medical clearance and gets deployed again? If I do my job the way I’m supposed to, Philip gets to stay in the Marine Corps. Not just at a desk here or at Quantico, but on a ship. That’s what he wants, you know. To join a forward response team stationed aboard a ship somewhere halfway around the world. The only way he doesn’t get to go is if I fail.

“It’s a lose-lose situation for me. If I succeed, he’ll be gone. If I fail, he’s not the Marine he wants to be anymore, and it would be my fault.”

Meg sat back, momentarily silenced. Then she went on in a softer voice. “If it’s meant to be, love will survive. Not just survive, but grow stronger. Ben and I managed. I’m not saying it was always easy, and it was probably harder on him than me, but we survived. Ben says he wouldn’t change anything, and he loves me more than ever. And my life would be meaningless without him.”

“It’s been a long time, Meg. A lot’s changed. For both of us.”

“I say, if Philip gets around to asking you out, to hell with the rules. Go. Take a chance. Life is all about chances. What have you got to lose?”