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“Got a minute?” she asked a little while later, poking her head through the semi-open door that read “John Hemmings” in gold letters and would soon read “Marc Rousseau”.
“Depends on what you want to do with that minute. If you’ve come to gawk, then, no, I don’t have a minute.” Marc looked up at her. “If you’ve come to be sociable, I’m not sociable. And if you’ve come about a patient, I haven’t even figured out how to fill out all my employment forms, so patients are a no-go as well for the next day or so.”
His office was sparse—a desk with a chair shoved into the corner, empty shelves, no diplomas. It was as if the man didn’t exist. But he did, and she couldn’t help but admire his massive, muscular arms, and the way his reading glasses slid to the end of his nose, revealing clear, dark brown eyes. And his hair cut … longish, over the collar, dark brown as well. He was goose-bumps-up-the-arm handsome, but the attitude … wow, was it bad!
“So, have you had enough time to get what you came for?” he asked her.
“What do you mean?”
“Your first glimpse of a doctor in a wheelchair.”
Truth was, she hadn’t even noticed the wheelchair.
“That’s why I didn’t stand to greet you. Can’t.” He shrugged indifferent shoulders. “Don’t particularly want to, either.”
“You are a piece of work, Dr. Rousseau.”
He stared at her over the top of his glasses for a moment. Appraising her. Taking in every last little bit. “So how would you like it if someone came to your office just to look at your blond hair …?” Shoulder length with a slight wave. “Or your green eyes. How would you like that, Miss …?”
“Dr. Anne Sebastian.”
“How would you like that, Dr. Sebastian?”
“Actually, if a man wants to look, it’s not a big deal.”
“If you were in a wheelchair, it would be.”
“Then that’s who you are? Who you want to be known as? The doctor in the wheelchair?”
“Your minute’s up,” he said, pushing his glasses back up his nose and turning his attention to the mountains of employment paperwork on his desk.
“Then give me another minute.”
“And the reason for that would be?”
“Lunch?” She heard herself say the words, and couldn’t believe they’d come out of her mouth. What in the world had possessed her?
“Seriously? You want to have lunch with me? Or did you draw the short straw and you’re the one elected to be nice to the disabled guy?”
“Believe me, if that was the reason, I’d be the first one backing out of it and running away. And I do mean running because I’m not about to give in to your poor-me-in-a-wheelchair attitude and cop some wary attitude when I’m forced to be around you.”
Marc actually laughed. “My reputation really has preceded me, hasn’t it?”
“Let’s just say that one of your former colleagues at Mercy wished me luck and said something to the effect that it was better me than her.”
“If I were insulted, I’d try to guess which one, but I really don’t give a damn because this is a job and I’m not here to win a popularity contest.”
“Trust me, you’d come in last place.”
He actually gave her a genuinely nice smile. “Is your motive really just to ask me to lunch?”
Her heart fluttered just a bit all because of a single smile. “Someone has to.”
“I can carry my own tray.”
“In our doctors’ dining room we have table service. Otherwise, by the end of the week, I’m sure someone would have already dumped their tray on your head.”
“Lucky for me,” he said as he wheeled out from behind his desk. “And just so you’ll know, I’m an incomplete, I have full sensation, full function, except for walking.”
“And just so you’ll know, I don’t give a damn about your sensation or your function or any other man things you might wish to confide.”
“Man hater, are you? Or do you prefer the ladies?”
“Oh, I prefer men. Just not right now and not for the foreseeable future.”
“I’m assuming it’s a long, sad story,” he said as he followed Anne to the hall.
“Longest and saddest. And the rest of it’s none of your business.”
“You know how hospital staff talks,” he said, shutting the door behind him.
“Let ‘em talk. Better them than me.” Surprisingly, he picked up a brisk pace, one she found quite difficult to keep up with. Was he testing her or trying to prove something? Admittedly, he did have a lot of strength, and the way he wheeled was something to behold, something athletic.
“Keep up,” he said, slowing his pace a little. “I don’t know where the dining room is, and I’m trusting that you’re going to show me sometime this afternoon. But at that slow pace …”
“Just shut up and wheel,” she said as a smile crept to her face. Yes, he was going to be a challenge. Maybe her biggest one ever. But he did have a grudge to work out, and a whole lot of anger he was going to have to learn to curb. Without therapy! Now, that was the part that was going to be difficult for her—just as Jason had anticipated—not getting involved in such a way as to help him solve his issues.
“By the way, since you asked me to lunch, you are paying for it, aren’t you?”
“Seriously?” she said, fighting back a laugh. If she did get through to this hulk of a man, Jason was going to owe her big time. Big, big time!
CHAPTER TWO
“I UNDERSTAND YOU met him,” Jason said to Anne.
“He sat at one end of a table for eight, I sat at the other. Nobody sat between us. And we didn’t talk. Not one word. I paid for his lunch and when he was through eating, he left. Thanked me for my hospitality and simply left.”
“But other than that, how was he?”
“Rude, arrogant, obnoxious, fixed on his work to the point of not even noticing anybody else there.” Her office was adjacent to her treatment room, and both were very relaxed and cozy. An immediate warm feeling drifted down over most of her patients when they came in, and that was done on purpose. Her walls were medium blue, her furniture a lighter blue accented in white, and the music piped in was a soothing Vivaldi or Bach. Atmosphere made a difference in so many of her cases, and she tried hard to achieve that comfort, as comfort equated to trust.
“But workable?”
“That, I don’t know. He’s as resistant a person as I’ve ever met. So this one is going to be the flip of a coin.”
“But you’ll try, since the majority of your referrals will come from him?”
“For a while. But if I see that he’s not working out, you’ll hear from me, Jason. And probably not just me.” Just as that threat rolled off her tongue, she received a text. When she checked it, it said: “See. I don’t bite. Lunch tomorrow?”
Anne sighed.
“What?” Jason asked.
“Nothing. Just an invite to lunch tomorrow,” she said, forcing a smile. “Lucky me.”
Jason headed for the door. “Just be careful, Anne, and you’ll be fine.”
“Don’t worry. I can handle him.” How was the question, though, especially since Jason seemed to have made her the one-person welcome committee, probably owing to her background in psychiatry. If the shrink couldn’t handle him, no one else could, either. What an assumption!
It was going on to seven that evening when Anne finally decided to call it quits. Long days were her norm, especially since she had nothing or no one to go home to. But that was OK because the last time she’d had someone to go home to, he’d been going to other homes. A lot of them. And it made her wonder how she could have been so truly wrong about the man.
Had she expected him to stay faithful while she was overseas? Of course she had. She would have. In fact, she’d been faithful when he’d been the one overseas, fighting, and she’d been stateside, working in a military hospital. It would have never occurred to her to cheat on him, and now she went home to a big, empty house every night, fixed herself a microwave dinner, caught up on some reading, showered and went to bed.
Big night. And nights were the worst, which was why she put in at least a dozen hours a day at the hospital. It was better than going home.
Flipping off the lights, she opened up the door and nearly tripped over Marc, who was merely sitting outside her office door. “What do you want?” she snapped.
“You bought me lunch, so I owe you a meal. Dinner?”
“You don’t owe me anything.” Her heart skipped a beat as she did like the idea of eating with him but she didn’t want to sound too anxious.
“Maybe an apology for being such a jerk today.”
“Apology accepted. Now, if you’ll excuse me …”
“Married, divorced from a lousy cheater, work longer hours than any other doc at Gallahue. I’m betting your evening consists of a microwave dinner and reading medical journals until you fall asleep.”
“I do watch the eleven o’clock news.”
“The epitome of a boring life. Which is why I thought dinner with me is better than dinner with the microwave. Besides, I have some questions to ask you.”
“If they pertain to the hospital, ask Jason.”
“Don’t you find him a little boring?” Marc asked.
“As a chief of staff or as my brother-in-law? Because I’m actually quite fine with him in both capacities.”
“Ah, a family tie.”
“He’s married to my twin sister, so that makes him family.”
“And you spend all the holidays with them, right?”
“How did you know about my divorce?” she asked.
“People talk.”
“But you haven’t even started to practice here yet.”
“And like I said, people talk.”
“They talk to people who give them a warm and fuzzy feeling, and you haven’t got a warm or fuzzy feeling in you.”
“Then it has to be the other thing.”
“What other thing?”
“People don’t see you when you’re in a wheelchair. For some reason, you’re invisible to them, so they talk around you.”
“And people are talking about me?”
“About how your divorce became final recently. Apparently, he’s been fighting you for everything, but you won. Left the man practically destitute.”
“People know too much,” she snapped. “It was an ugly divorce. But since he’s the one who deserted the marriage and left me holding a whole lot of hard feelings, and debt, what can I say other than I’m glad he got everything that’s coming to him?”
“And you’re going to get …”
“First, sell my house. Then buy a nice little cottage, maybe take up gardening. I’d like a cat, too.”
“A cat?”
She smiled. “Everything that makes life nice.”
“No man?”
“Absolutely not! Been there, don’t want to go back.”
“Good, then I’m not taking out another man’s woman to dinner tonight.”
“I didn’t accept your invitation, and I don’t intend to.”
“Because we’re not compatible?” That was an understatement.
“Because I don’t particularly like you.”
Rather than being angry, Marc smiled. “Do you realize how many people actually put up with me and my attitude just because I’m in a wheelchair? They find that if they deny me or do something other than what I want, they’re doing something deeply wrong or offensive. The man’s a wounded war veteran and it’s important to appease him.”
“Appease you? Let me tell you, your wheelchair’s not off-putting, Marc. But your attitude is. So thanks for the invitation but I’d rather curl up with a good medical journal than suffer another meal with you.” With that, she strode away, the sound of angry heels clicking on the floor tile. Rather than frowning, though, a slight smile actually turned up the corners of her lips. This was going to be interesting.
“Well, then, we’ll stick to the plan. I’ll see you at lunch tomorrow.”
She turned back to give him a stiff glare, but what came off was more confused than anything, and she hated wearing her emotions on her sleeve, as they always sent out the wrong impression. “Not if your life depended on it, Marc Rousseau,” she said, trying to remain rigid, although her insides were quivering. “Not if your life depended on it!”
Anne snuggled down on her sofa with a glass of white grape juice and a medical journal and a soft Schubert quintet playing in the background. She wasn’t really so physically tired as she was mentally stressed. Nothing had gone well today. Two of her patients had had emotional breaks—big ones. One had tried to jump out her window until he remembered her office was on the first floor, and then he’d simply smashed furniture. After which he’d apologized and offered to pay for the damages. The other had sat in her office and wept uncontrollably for over an hour, until she’d finally had him sedated and checked in for a night of observation.
Shutting her eyes, she rotated her ankles for a moment, then sank further back into the sofa pillows, not sure if, when the time came, she’d be able to get up and make it all the way upstairs to the bedroom.
She really did hate this house. Hated everything in it because it stood for a happier time—a time when love had been fresh and exciting and she’d known it would last forever. And it wasn’t like Bill hadn’t known she’d be serving overseas when he’d asked her to marry him. He’d be good with it, he’d claimed. There was nothing for her to worry about.
Stupid her, she’d believed him. And on her first leave, she’d come back to a marriage she’d believed was as stable as it had ever been in their three years. But on her second trip stateside he’d seemed more remote. He’d claimed he was tired, too much work, just getting over a cold … there’d been a whole string of excuses, but by the end of her leave, things had been normal again, and she’d returned overseas happy to know that the next time she came home it would be for good.
But when that day came, she’d found earrings in a drawer on her side of the bed. And a bra. And panties. It had seemed, as the days had gone by, there had been more and more excuses for Bill to invent. None of them plausible. Then her neighbor, an older lady, had commented on the succession of housekeepers who’d come and gone at odd hours of the day and night. “Sometimes two, three times a week!” Mrs. Gentry had exclaimed.
One check with the cleaning service confirmed her suspicion. The cleaning service cleaned every Friday morning. Once a week. No more, no less. Her accountant had verified that with the checks that had been written. He’d also recommended the best lawyer in Port Duncan, New York.
“Protect your assets, Anne. Bill’s been doing a lot of spending while you were gone, and if you want to keep anything for yourself, it’s time to lawyer up.” Said by James Callahan, the attorney she’d hired that day.
Through it all, though, Anne had been numb. She had been unable to function. Betrayal. Fragments of memories left over from Afghanistan. Things she hadn’t been able to forget … or fix. No, it hadn’t made sense, but it had seemed like her world had been closing in around her. She’d been unable to breathe half the time. The other half of the time, she hadn’t been able to quit crying. Vicious circle. Every day. Sucking the life out of her every day. Little pieces of it just falling away, one at a time.
She’d almost been at the point of complete breakdown when she’d realized she couldn’t control what was happening to her, so she’d sought counseling. Her condition hadn’t been diagnosed as PTSD, but the emotional conflict had given her a deep understanding of those who did suffer through it—the confusion, the anger, the pain. After seeing it on the field and coming up to the edge of it herself, before she’d realized it, she’d been in a PhD program, coupling what she knew as an MD with learning about stress disorders. It had seemed a logical place for her to be. Where she’d wanted to be.
For that part of her life, she’d put her divorce on hold and concentrated only on herself. Fixing herself first, retraining herself second. Of course, her intention had been to restart divorce proceedings once the rest of it was behind her. One trauma at a time was what she’d learned. Deal with one at a time. And while Bill had been a problem, he hadn’t been a trauma. In fact, getting rid of him would be her easiest fix.
So then, a whole year after she’d decided to take that fix, he’d come after her, claiming that her being gone had caused him PTSD. Of all the low, miserable things to do …
“But he learned,” she said as she shut her book and decided she was comfortable right where she was. “When I got through with him, he’d learned to pick his women dumb and dependent. God forbid he should ever get a fighter again or she might do worse to him than I did.”
Sighing, she shut her eyes, and while she expected to go to sleep with visions of Bill in her choke hold filling her dreams, the person there tonight was … Marc. And he was smiling.
“Nice smile,” she whispered as she dozed off. Yes, it was a very nice smile to go to sleep with.
He’d been in bed two hours now, alternately staring at the ceiling, then watching the green numbers on the digital clock. The harder he tried to sleep, the more he couldn’t. Marc’s first thought was a nice cup of hot herbal tea—something soothing. Then in his mind he added brandy to it, just a sip, but the problem with that was he wasn’t a drinker. Never had been. No booze, no pills. Just a bad attitude to get him through.
So what got Anne through? he wondered. She seemed pretty straightforward. Even functional, considering her divorce.
“Some people are made to be more functional,” he told his orange-striped tomcat named Sarge, who was stretched out on the bed, snoozing quite contentedly. Sarge was huge, a Maine Coon weighing in at twenty-five pounds. He’d been cowering on Marc’s doorstep one day, all beaten and bloody, and there hadn’t been a muscle or sinew in Marc’s body that could have shut the door on him because he’d known exactly how the cat had felt—defeated. So he’d taken him in, nursed him back to health, yet hadn’t named him, as his intention had been to turn him over to a no-kill rescue shelter for adoption.
Except the damned cat had these soulful big green eyes that Marc had been unable to resist. So he’d eventually called him Sarge, mostly because his huge size reminded him of an overwhelmingly large and tender-hearted sergeant he’d had working for him in Afghanistan, and he and the cat had become best buddies.
“She’s something, Sarge,” he told the cat as he pulled a can of cat tuna off the shelf. “And so damn obvious it’s laughable. The lady’s in charge of the PTSD program, and I’m sure I’m supposed to be her secret conquest.” He chuckled as he filled the cat bowl and laid it on the floor at the back door to his apartment—a door never used, due to the six steps down. Management had offered to ramp it for him, but he’d told them, no, that one door was plenty. He lived a Spartan life, didn’t need people fawning all over him. Especially his family. He wondered where Nick was right now. Maybe living it up somewhere and doing every dumb thing in the book just to prove he could. He shuddered, thinking about his brother’s lifestyle. Wild. Carefree. Nothing mattered. Most of all, he wondered if Nick even appreciated the freedom he had to do so many stupid things.
Whatever the case, his parents, Jane and Henry, had been ready to drop everything to take care of him, but that was too clingy. No phone calls or texts, he’d said. He was fine. No sad faces, no mother’s tears, no overcompensation from his dad. A cat was good, though. You fed him, watered him, changed his pan, and he didn’t give a hang whether or not all that came from a paraplegic or someone who could walk.
And he never should have asked Anne Sebastian out, not even for a make-good on a very miserable lunch. What had he expected? That she’d actually want to go with him after he’d been so obnoxious? “I deserved it,” he told the cat, who was busy gulping down his food. “I’m not exactly dating material and, God knows, I don’t have friends.” But for one brief moment, he’d actually thought a couple hours with Anne might be nice.
So much for thinking. So much for anything that resembled a normal life. This was it. A tiny apartment, a cat and an SUV that had been fixed for him to drive. Yep, that was his life. Except he did have a job to add to that mix now. Admittedly, he was looking forward to the work, to having the chance to help others like himself. “Time to go do the weights,” he said to his cat as he spun his chair around and went to the second bedroom, which had been turned into a workout room. “Wanna come spot me, Sarge?” he called out. The cat’s response was to simply stop in the hall outside the workout room and wash his face.
“Some friend you are!”
“He’s interesting,” Anne said to Hannah, her twin sister, the next evening. Hannah was now confined to bed as much as possible as she was nearing her due date and she’d been diagnosed with gestational diabetes. Anne perched herself on the side of the bed with a carton of ice cream and two spoons, ready to eat their favorite—vanilla fudge. Even at the age of thirty-five, they were still identical in every way that counted, right down to the clothes they picked out and the food they liked and disliked.
“Jason said he’s pretty bitter.”
“I suppose I would be, too, if that had happened to me. I mean, I deal with returning soldiers every day who come back just like Dr. Rousseau … like him and worse. I was lucky. All I had to come back to was …”
“How is Bill, by the way?”
“Even though the divorce is final, he’s still fighting me just as hard as ever.” Anne wrung her hands nervously, then continued on in a shaky voice, “For two cents, I’d just hand it all over to him and walk away, but my attorney believes I’m entitled to my share since I was the one off fighting for my country while Bill was spending his time on the golf course and in our bed, so he’s not going to let Bill go back and amend the settlement.”
She shrugged, then patted her sister’s enormous belly. “Glad we never had children to enter into the mix. Don’t know how I would have handled having to have interaction with him because of a child. This way, I don’t ever have to deal with him again. I just refer him to my lawyer.” She let out a ragged sigh. “It’s better that way.”
“But children are going to be nice.”
“For you. And I predict I’m going to make a great aunt. Spoil the baby rotten, then send her home to her mother.”
“Instead of dating? You know, going out, having fun. Have a life. It’s been a long time coming.”
“But I’m not really going to do the dating thing for a while, if ever.”
“You may change your mind,” Hannah said as she scooped a spoon of ice cream from the container. “When you meet the right man, or realize you’ve already met him.”
“Who? Marc?”
Hannah shrugged.
“Ha! Those pregnancy hormones have gone to your brain and left you with an imagination as big as your belly.”
Hannah shrugged again. “Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re not.”
“You’re the acquiescent one, Hannah, and I’m—”
“The stubborn one,” Hannah supplied. “I know. But relationships don’t always make sense. Don’t follow a logical pattern.”
“Tell me about it. Look what I fell for the first time around.” Anne winced. She’d fallen head over heels in days, maybe in minutes. Had married in mere weeks. “Yeah, well, next time, if there is a next time, I won’t be looking for perfection as much as compatibility. Too bad Jason is taken, because I think you got the last good man. He doesn’t happen to have a secret brother hidden somewhere, does he?”
Hannah laughed. “Men like that don’t stay available too long, sis. I’m lucky I got Jason when I did because it was only a matter of time until some other fortunate woman would have plucked him off the market.”
Anne couldn’t help but wonder if Marc had been married or engaged or near the plucking stage prior to his accident. “Well, right now I have a nemesis who’s going to fight me every step of the way and that’s the only man I want to contend with for a while. And, trust me, that’s enough for anyone.”
“He’ll come round,” Hannah said, taking another bite of ice cream. “Once he gets settled into the routine, you’ll persuade him. Or let’s say out-stubborn him. Poor man doesn’t even know what’s headed his direction.”