Wife by Design

He blinked. Stared for a second, and said, “You’re telling me I’m in for a lot of hard work.”

“What I’m trying to tell you is that you can’t possibly do the job you’re promising to do. You have no idea what you’re letting yourself in for.”

“I will get the work done and do as good a job—or a better job—than the company currently providing the services.”

The man was determined.

A characteristic she admired. A lot.

“My brother’s quality of life depends on him having that therapy.” His gaze spoke directly to her heart.

He wasn’t getting it. She couldn’t have him around.

“There are only so many hours in a day and you’ll still have to earn a living.”

“Before he went in for surgery, Darin was experiencing serious bouts of depression,” he said. “They were growing increasingly worse, with times of moroseness similar to what we went through about a year after his accident. If he ends up paralyzed for life, I’m going to lose him.”

The man’s desperation was understandable.

“I’ll get the work done,” Grant Bishop said again, the words as firm as any promise she’d ever heard. “I generally do the design work and the guys do the physical labor, which leaves me evenings to focus completely on Darin. If I have to, I’ll spend the days out in the yards here, and do my design work at night. Darin needs this therapy more than he needs trips to baseball games with me. And I swear to you, your residents will have nothing to fear from either me or Darin. He’s like he is because he was protecting a woman.”

The cause of Darin’s condition, the stingray barb lodged in his brain, had been in his file. The circumstances that had caused that barb to be there were not.

She couldn’t help herself. “What happened?” she asked.

Boundaries! The word screamed in her brain. Vital rule of health care—keep your boundaries.

But things were different at the Stand.

“He and his wife were scuba diving. She got tangled in her line and was losing all of her air. He got her untangled but was attacked by the stingray during the process so it took him longer than it should have. Badly bleeding and half out of his mind, he still got her up to the surface.”

“Darin’s married?”

“Was.”

“She left him? After he saved her life?” Because he was brain damaged. Some people were that selfish.

“She died. She was gone by the time they got her out of the water.”

“After he went through all that she didn’t make it?”

Grant swallowed, and that told her more than any words he could have said.

“If there was anywhere else I could afford to get the quality of therapy he needs, I’d be pounding on their door, too.” Grant Bishop’s quiet words fell into the silence. “Dr. Zimmer said that The Lemonade Stand is Darin’s best hope. Apparently, your therapist has a group session for the mentally handicapped.”

“Yes,” Lynn said. “She specializes in working with emotionally—and mentally—handicapped patients who are also physically injured.” The group session for the mentally handicapped had only one patient at the moment.

“Dr. Zimmer indicated that she’s good at encouraging the hopeless to find hope,” Grant Bishop said, looking her straight in the eye.

They were her own words to Dr. Zimmer the last time she’d seen him.

Grant said Darin had been suffering from depression even before the surgery. Lynn surmised that without sensitivity to Darin’s emotional issues, physical therapy might do him no good at all.

The Lemonade Stand, founded by a young man who’d grown up in an abusive household, existed to help save and protect human life. In a very real sense, Darin’s life depended on them. If the landscaping work was too much for Grant’s small company, they could hire out half of the landscaping, help Darin and still save the Stand some money.

“I’ll make a recommendation,” Lynn told the man. “Talk to your brother to make certain that you’ll have his cooperation with your plan, and call me in the morning.”

Call me in the morning. The words were a medical cliché, and in this case, they were a promise, too.