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He managed to lift his partway, then dropped it in his lap. “H-howdy, ma’am.”
She knew he was eighteen, but instead of muscular and fit, he had the pale, almost porcelain appearance of someone who hadn’t been outside in a very long time.
With his silver-blond hair and those soft blue eyes, he could have passed for an angel in one of the old paintings she’d seen at a museum in Los Angeles, though she’d bet her favorite stethoscope that he wouldn’t want to hear that.
Even in his current state, there was a glint of challenge in his eyes.
Dan’s old clinic charts were cursory at best. After the illegible scrawl of Doc Grimes ended, there were random entries by a series of physician’s assistants—a tetanus shot, a few sutures, a bout of bronchitis.
“Want to come on back?” Jolie asked.
Following her, Mrs. Aiken pushed his wheelchair into the first exam room.
“What can I do for you today?”
His mother reached into a denim bag suspended between the handles of his wheelchair and withdrew a thick folder. “These are photocopies of Dan’s hospital records,” she said coldly. “Surgical reports...discharge information...everything.”
Jolie accepted the folder and leaned against the exam table. “I’ll glance through these now and then thoroughly study them later.”
Probably in her late forties, Mrs. Aiken’s weathered skin bore the dry, deep wrinkles of someone who’d worked hard outside all her life, and the bitter expression of someone who neither found nor expected much joy in her life.
“Like I told you on the phone, the doctors at the hospital said we had to establish contact with—” she faltered over the wordsas if they tasted bitter “—a doctor close to home, now that Dan’s out of the hospital.”
Dan’s mouth tightened. As clearly as if he’d spoken aloud, Jolie heard him say,Don’t treat me like I’m not even here.
For a vital young man at the cusp of independence and adulthood, it must have been terrible losing all control to countless doctors and nurses...and his mother.
“Are you comfortable?” Jolie asked him, pausing over the first document.
“I—I’m—” He seemed to search for the word.
“He’s fine right now,” Mrs. Aiken snapped, hovering at his wheelchair as if ready to protect him from assault. “His improvement has been amazing, but he still has a long way to go.”
“I see.” Jolie scanned the discharge summary, her heart turning over at all the boy had been through.Oh, Bobby. Do you even realize what you did to your friend?
Dan had been comatose for weeks.
He’d suffered a temporal blow when thrown from the back of Bobby’s pickup truck, resulting in language and swallowing difficulties. Tube feedings had given way to pureed foods by December; he’d advanced to soft foods by March.
His speech had improved markedly, but he still had residual speech defects and was being followed by a speech pathologist in Billings. No wonder his mother had spoken for him.
Jolie tried to hide her dismay at the rest of the discharge summary.
The boy had also suffered a traumatic cervical spine injury—a teardrop fracture with cord involvement resulting in quadriplegia. After three months of extensive physical therapy he’d finally been discharged from the program because his progress had slowed markedly.
From his mother’s obvious concern, Jolie guessed the woman would have preferred ongoing efforts. But insurance and personal financial limitations were sometimes cruel realities to families still living with hope.
Emotion clogged Jolie’s throat. Tears burned beneath her eyelids. This beautiful boy had nearly died and might never walk again, because Bobby had chosen to drink and drive.
Distance,she told herself harshly.This is a patient. This is your job.
After a few moments, when she could again control her voice, Jolie looked up and found Mrs. Aiken’s hard eyes staring at her. “What about rehab? Will therapists do home visits?”
“None of them travel this far from the city,” she said stiffly. “We have an exercise program to follow every day, and we’ll be driving to Billings twice a month.” A glaze of unshed tears glittered in her eyes. “When he starts showing real improvement, we’ll find a way to get him back into rehab.”
Now wasn’t the time to delve further into the case, with Dan sitting between them.
But that angry, stubborn tilt to his mother’s head and his discharge from the rehab hospital, told a different story: a family warned not to expect much improvement, a mother determined to prove the experts wrong.
