“She’ll just get in the way of your recovery,” he told me. “I don’t need her distracting you!”
“She’s not,” I retorted.
We went back and forth until he got so mad, I finally just stopped responding. I didn’t really think he would go so far as to do anything here in the hospital where I was being so closely monitored, but I didn’t feel like taking the chance, either. I couldn’t move much at all. Even though my hands and arms were a little stronger, the feeling of being trapped when my dad was in the room continued to gnaw at me. The doctors kept saying I was already showing improvement, but this was the first day I had even been given anything solid to eat—if Jell-o and popsicles counted as solid. Not being able to get out of the damn bed to pee was annoying.
After Dad left in a huff, Doctor Winchester came in with a woman I hadn’t seen before. He said her name was Danielle Richmond, and she was apparently my physical therapist.
For about an hour, she just lifted my legs up and down, telling me she had been doing this the whole time I was comatose. Though I could feel everything in my legs except for the area around the scar on my right thigh, I couldn’t control the movements at all.
It was pissing me off.
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“This sucks!” I nearly growled at her. “I’m not even doing anything!”
“Just think about how you would make your leg move along with what I’m doing,” she said. “Focus on how your mind would control the muscles. Letting your brain re-learn along with your muscles is the first step.”
“First step,” I snorted. “Nice.”
“Just an expression,” she said with a smile. “It’s good you had a lot of muscle tone before the accident. It should make your recovery more successful.”
More successful. Like maybe someday I could make my legs move again without help.
She switched legs and started rolling my ankle around. It was the first time I had really seen my legs since I woke up, and they looked scrawny to me.
I must have fallen asleep before she left because the next thing I knew, I was surrounded by Nicole’s scent.
“Can you get the other side?” I heard her whispered voice near my face. I opened my eyes and saw a nurse first, who had my pillow tucked under one arm while the other one was behind my head. Nicole was on my other side, holding my head up a little as she slid a different pillow beneath me.
“Rumple?”
“Oh, baby,” she said, still whispering. “I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“It’s okay,” I slurred, still half asleep. “You smell good.”
She giggled and lowered my head onto a soft, cool pillow.
It smelled like her.
“I was going to wash the pillowcase first,” she said, “but I figured you’d like it better this way.”
I smiled and closed my eyes again as my head sank further into my Nicole-scented pillow. I still couldn’t roll over, but this was pretty damn good anyway. Her hand twirled through my hair, and I drifted off to sleep.
Shakespeare said, “The soul of this man is his clothes.” Somehow, I thought maybe Nicole’s soul was in her pillow.
Now I could really rest.
CHAPTER 27
COUNTERATTACK
If anyone else were to tell me recovery takes time and I had to just work hard and be patient, I was going to find the strength to punt that idiot across the fucking room.
Four days after I came out of the coma, I could sit up for an hour before I had to lie down again. I could feed myself about three bites of something before my arms gave out, and I could move my toes if I concentrated really fucking hard. Everyone told me what great progress I was making, but I knew bullshit when I smelled it. I was a fucking invalid, as my father put it, and only Nicole’s regular visits were keeping me from throwing myself out the damn window.
Well, that and not being able to get out of the fucking bed.
In other words, rehab sucked.