Читать книгу Soul Caress - Kim Shaw - Страница 8

“Bonjour,” Nurse Crosby beamed as she burst through the door to Kennedy’s private room.

Her shoes squeaked as she crossed the carpeted floor, bustling toward the window. Nurse Crosby snatched the curtains back in one quick motion.

“There. Let’s let a little sunshine in here,” she quipped. “That’s better, isn’t it?”

Kennedy did not respond nor did she move. She wanted to ask what difference it made whether the room was sunlit or not. It wasn’t as if she could see it. Curtains open or closed, the room was still a dungeon devoid of color and light. She didn’t say this, however. There was no reason to annihilate Nurse Crosby’s cheery disposition with her sour one. Besides, she’d rather sulk silently in her stew of despondency.

“It’s a beautiful day out there, Ms. Daniels. What do you say I help you get ready for your walk?” Nurse Crosby asked, as she pulled back the blanket that covered Kennedy’s lower body.

Kennedy leaned forward abruptly.

“Walk? I’m not going for a walk,” she replied.

Obviously, Nurse Crosby had had one too many cups of caffeine this morning. Either that or Kennedy surmised that she was as blind as Kennedy was if she couldn’t see that, not only was Kennedy’s leg up in a trapeze with a cast from foot to thigh, but that she could not see her hand in front of her face. There would be no walking today.

“Of course you are, dear. This is a rehabilitation facility, you know, and we certainly can’t get you back up on your feet if we leave you lying on your backside all day. Now, one of the client assistants will be by in just a few moments to take you out to get some fresh air. He’ll escort you all over the grounds. Just wait until you see the place. It’s to die for. Oh, Stillwater spared no expense when it came to landscaping this beautiful property. Just you wait.”

By now Nurse Crosby had removed the hooks that had kept Kennedy’s leg suspended one foot off of the bed. She carefully lowered Kennedy’s leg until it rested on the bed. Kennedy listened to the squeak of her orthopedic footwear as she moved away from the bed toward the bathroom. Kennedy listened as the nurse ran water into a basin, turned off the faucet and squeaked her way back to the bedside.

“I’ve brought you a warm wash towel so that you can wipe your face. Here you go.”

Kennedy reached out, moving her fingers tentatively in front of her until she touched the towel. She grabbed it, bringing it to her face. When she was finished, Nurse Crosby took it away from her.

“Here is your toothbrush. The paste is already on it.”

Kennedy felt in front of her again until she located the toothbrush and clumsily directed it to her mouth. She brushed her teeth for several moments and then took the cup of water offered by Nurse Crosby. She rinsed, gargled, spit into the basin and rinsed again.

“Now, that’s better. Once you’ve had your wheelchair lessons, you’ll be able to do this in the bathroom all by yourself. Won’t that be great?”

Kennedy slumped back against the pillow without responding. It was taking every ounce of reserve that she possessed not to go off on the nurse. Normally, she was not what you would call a combative person. She hated conflict and discord, preferring to find less confrontational ways in which to work out disagreements. Unless she felt backed into a corner with no alternatives—as in the case of the rumble at summer camp back in the day—Kennedy was mild-mannered and diplomatic. Her patience was running low these days, however, and the last thing she was prepared to deal with was an overzealous nurse who’d swallowed one too many happy pills.

“Do you feel like pink or blue today?”

“What?”

“Pink or blue? I’ve taken the liberty of making two selections from your closet—the first is a blue denim dress and the other is a pink skirt and matching sweater. What will it be?”

“I don’t care,” Kennedy responded tersely.

“Well, let’s go with the denim.”

Without another word Nurse Crosby helped Kennedy remove her gown and slip into the denim dress. After her arrival the day before, she’d been left alone pretty much to rest until evening, when another nurse had helped her bathe in a special shower designed for people with casts on their legs. Within the shower stall there stood a metal closet in which Kennedy placed her plastered leg and then the nurse closed it, thereby keeping it sealed and protected from the water.

“All right, dear, I’ve got other clients to tend to,” Nurse Crosby announced as if Kennedy had been keeping her there.

Kennedy listened as the nurse retreated, closing the door behind her. She covered her face with her hands, pressing her fingertips against her useless orbits. She cursed and muttered, allowing herself to release the frustration that she’d held in check while Nurse Crosby was in the room. While Kennedy’s other injuries had begun to heal, her emotional health teetered on the brink of crumbling. Her arm had been freed from the cast and despite a slight loss of muscle tone, it felt as good as new to her.

Outwardly, she had mended sufficiently enough so that the doctors at Annandale were comfortable in signing her out of the hospital and sending her to Stillwater Rehabilitation Center to begin the arduous task of rebuilding her life. However, inwardly her spirit remained fractured and she felt no motivation to even get out of the bed. The fire that had previously driven her to become the lively, energetic woman that everyone who knew her believed her to be, had been extinguished.

She took sharp, deep breaths, feeling as though she were suffocating under the unfairness of it all. She gasped for air where there was none to be had.

“Good morning, Ms. Daniels. I’m Malik Crawford and I work the day shift here at Stillwater. I’ve been assigned to work with you during your stay.”

Kennedy turned toward the door, the direction from which the baritone voice came. Two things struck her at precisely the same moment. One, the voice was vaguely familiar, although she could not place it. Secondly, whoever he was, the brother had the sexiest voice she had ever heard in all of her twenty-eight years. She wiped the tears from her cheeks, momentarily pulled from the cliff of crushing despair on which she had been lingering.

“Mr. Crawford—” Kennedy began.

“Malik, please. Just call me Malik. As I said, we’ll be working together during your stay. I will take you to all of your therapy sessions, doctor’s appointments and twice-daily trips outdoors. Outside of that, if you need anything else…if you’d like to leave your room, say, to go down to the game room or something, I’m your man. Okay? Just buzz the nurses’ station and ask them to page me. How’s that sound?”

I’m your man sounded interesting, but Kennedy didn’t say that. Had she been in another frame of mind, another place in her life, she would have allowed the heat of attraction to spill over her. Yet other more pressing things were on her mind, like the fact that she was dependent on this person for however long she was at Stillwater. Dependence was not something she did very well. She was used to taking care of herself and coming and going as she pleased. Once again, the realization that she was no longer the woman she’d once been smacked her in the face. Once again, she fought the powerful urge to cry.

Malik watched Kennedy for some reaction. He’d neglected to tell his new client that he had been part of the team who’d helped to unload her transport bed from the ambulance that had brought her to Stillwater early the day before. In part, he’d omitted this fact out of sheer embarrassment. He had been rendered speechless when he’d laid eyes on Kennedy Daniels for the second time in his life. Absent were the bruises and bandages, the intravenous tubes and the heart-monitoring devices. Gone was the poor nameless individual for whom he felt sorry.

Her jacket unzipped to reveal a white camisole that fit her torso like a glove. On her left foot she wore a pair of yellow-and-white Nike cross-trainers, and her hair was pulled back off of her face and held in a ponytail by a large barrette. Her fresh face and fit figure could easily have been that of an eighteen-year-old college freshman, yet something in her carriage even as she was rolled on a gurney out of the transport van told him that she was a mature woman in every sense of the word.

The singular thing that struck him, literally sucking the air right out of his lungs, was her smile. It had been ever so brief, but immensely potent. One of the nurses, an older woman who did a remarkable imitation of comedienne Adele Givens, said something that prompted the brief smile from Kennedy. Behind the expensive shades that covered one-third of her face, Kennedy smiled, her plump lips parting, revealing beautiful teeth and exposing a small dimple in her left cheek. Malik’s iron-man persona melted, causing him so much discomfort that he’d had to excuse himself to other duties just to get away from her before he became a staring, blundering idiot.

Twenty-four hours later, Malik had collected himself. He was confident that he would be able to handle his duties with professionalism and decorum with the light of a new day around him. Upon entering her room, he’d steeled himself against the potential of her physical beauty to stir his emotions. He was not a man for whom a woman’s physical appearance was enough to do more than cause a slight stir in his loins. What turned him on mentally and emotionally was a woman whose intellect and conversation were equally as attractive. If he couldn’t talk to a woman and share his ideas, hopes and dreams, he could not share his body with her, either. He had no way of knowing what rested inside of Kennedy Daniels, so to him she remained just another pretty woman—a client at that.

Kennedy reached her left hand out to the side, bumping it against the side of the nightstand clumsily. She moved her hand several inches up until she could feel her way along the surface of the table. When she came into contact with the object for which she had been searching, her shades, she snatched them up gratefully and moved slowly to her face, placing the shades over her eyes. Malik, having received no verbal response from her, took that as a sign that she was ready to go. He came farther into the room, pushing a wheelchair in front of him. He stopped next to her bed.

“I know movement is a little tough for you right now with that cast covering most of your leg, but we’ll help you learn how to navigate with it and trust me, as soon as you get used to it, it’ll be time to take it off,” Malik said.

He hadn’t expected a response, although he felt that at least a nod of the head would have been nice.

“I need you to try to turn your body sideways, swinging your broken leg toward me while letting the other one hang down toward the floor. I’m right here so don’t worry…I’ll catch you if you need me to.”

With Kennedy feeling less than trusting of Malik’s ability to safeguard her transfer, the transition from the bed to the wheelchair was thorny and awkward. She laced her arm around his neck, noting how strong a neck it was, but she gripped him so tightly that he had difficulty maneuvering. By the time he got her into the seat, his breath was ragged and little beads of sweat had popped up on his forehead.

“All right, Ms. Daisy, ma’am, shall we?” Malik joked as he began pushing the wheelchair of his silent new client.

The sun felt hot on Kennedy’s face. She tilted her face up toward it, allowing it’s warmth to massage her stony facade. Malik stood a few paces away from her, alternating between watching her and staring at the lagoon. This was his favorite place on the Stillwater grounds for several reasons. For starters, not many people came down here as it was quite a trek from the structure. The tranquility he found here on his daily breaks was rarely broken by chatter. He appreciated alone time, since it was something that was a rarity, especially since he’d allowed his brother to move in with him earlier in the year. At the apartment, with its small two bedrooms, a kitchen that opened to the combined living room and dining area and claustrophobic bathroom, there was rarely an opportunity to find solitude. His brother, Malcolm, who was seasonally unemployed, often had the company of some female, and no matter who the pick of the week was, they all had the same annoying giggles and the same exaggerated moans, which could be heard in every corner of the tiny place.

Here on the lagoon, Malik would sit and stare at the ducks, contemplating his life. He often felt that just like those ducks, all he was doing was floating on the same body of water, day in and day out, with no progress and without change. At thirty years old, Malik had become restless and dissatisfied. By other people’s accounts, including his parents, he had a good stable job with benefits and a pension that he’d only have to work thirty years to receive. All he needed to do was find a good woman, start a family and his life would be perfect. For Malik, however, there was so much more to the puzzle of his existence. The only problem was that even though he knew he wanted more for himself, he had no idea what else there was in store for him. Furthermore, he had even less of an idea of how to go about getting it.

A noise that came from Kennedy pulled him from his thoughts. From his vantage point behind her, he could not see her face, but the heave of her back and shoulders told him unmistakably that she was crying. He hesitated, unsure of whether he should leave her alone and let her cry uninterrupted or not. He knew all too well that sometimes a person just needed a good cry. His grandmother used to say that crying was like giving your spirit a bath. Still, something pulled him to her, awaking a need in him to comfort her, even though she was a complete stranger to him.

“Ms. Daniels, are you okay?” he asked as he moved in front of her.

She’d removed her shades and they lay on her lap. When he spoke, she moved her hands up to her face, covering her eyes. Her body trembled.

“Ms. Daniels, are you in pain? Would you like me to call for one of the doctors?”

She shook her head vehemently from side to side.

“No, I don’t want anyone,” she said.

Finally, a complete sentence from her. The sound of her voice, even though it was choked with emotion, surprised him. He hadn’t expected it to sound so strong. Even though she was obviously upset, her voice held a quality of vigor that was undisturbed by her current distress. With a right hand that trembled, she slowly reached up and wiped at the tears on both sides of her face. She lowered her left hand, fingering the shades that lay in her lap. Her eyelids blinked rapidly for several seconds before fluttering to a standstill. She stared out in front of her, seeing nothing.

Malik looked at her face, for the first time seeing it in its entirety without the distraction of eyewear. His heart literally stopped beating for a moment, his breath caught in his throat. He knew that she was beautiful. He had recognized that the moment he’d rolled her out of the transport vehicle. What caught him by surprise now, touching a part of him that he had not even acknowledged in years, was the fact that despite her tears and current distress, there was a harmony of spirit that possessed her. He had never laid eyes on a woman in his entire life that made him feel like he never wanted to look at another woman—until now.

“I’m sorry,” she said softly. “I just…can I have a minute alone?”

“Sure,” Malik said, continuing to stare at her.

It took all the strength within for him to disengage from her face and move away from her. He walked a few feet along the lagoon and sat down on one of the large boulders that lined the edge. Occasionally, he dared to sneak a quick glance in her direction. She held her head erect, her face pointed toward the water. She didn’t move nor did he. He glanced at his watch, knowing that it was past the lunch hour and that he should have her back in her room already. Yet he was unwilling to interrupt her solitude.

Although he had other duties that he was currently neglecting, he had no intentions of rushing her. He couldn’t very well leave her by herself as she was a long way from the point in her rehabilitation where she could be left on the grounds to take care of herself. He knew that there was no clear prognosis as to whether her vision loss was temporary or permanent, but that the goal was to teach her how to live as a visually impaired person just in case. That would take weeks of work with the specialists and it would also have to wait until she had the use of both of her legs again. Until then, she was dependent on him and, try as he might, Malik couldn’t help but like the sound of that.