Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (136 page)

The truth was that while part of me had
wanted to go to the party, I had ended the day tired, and I knew I wouldn’t be
a very good addition to the festivities. I love the holidays—but being around a
bunch of happy couples was not my idea of a great way to celebrate, and I knew
that I’d be one of maybe five people at the party who didn’t already have
someone. With odds like that, I’d either end up being chased underneath a fake
mistletoe branch by a desperate guy for a “joke,” or I’d be in the corner most
of the night, talking to whoever passed by but mostly just looking a little
pathetic. I’d told Cynthia that I had a bunch of stuff to catch up on at the
apartment, but mostly I was catching up on one of my favorite sitcoms.

I took my food out of the microwave and
stirred it, checking the bottom of the Tupperware to make sure it had heated
through. I decided that just because it was a night in, it didn’t mean that I
couldn’t celebrate a little, and opened the fridge to get the half-empty bottle
of wine out of the door. I doubted that the vintners that had bottled it
expected for someone to pair it with a tuna casserole, but I figured that a
white wine at least went with fish.

Glass of wine and Tupperware in my hands,
I went back into the living room of my apartment and started the stream of my
show up once more. There was a third and final load in the washer—delicates,
including my underwear and a few dresses that I thought I might eventually pick
out to wear for drinks with the girls at the office another time—and a stack of
files that needed to be updated. I had to be careful about what parts of the
files I updated from home; I couldn’t risk anyone seeing them, but there
weren’t always enough hours in the day to get everything written down, and the
office after hours was a creepy place. I didn’t bring any identifiable
information home with me—just the narrative parts of the file where I could
transcribe my notes about how a patient did at a particular task, how they were
improving...things like that. I’d put them back the next morning and the woman
responsible for digitizing them would get to them whenever they came up on her
list.

I finished my dinner quickly, trying to
get as involved as possible in my show; it didn’t seem to have the same allure
as usual, but I kept hoping it would click, that I’d start laughing at one of
the character’s antics and everything would be right with the world. I had
started to work on my files, listening to the show more than watching it, and I
heard by phone across the room, buzzing and ringing where it was plugged into
the wall. “Huh.” I put the file I was writing on aside and stood up, able to
feel the lingering fatigue in my legs. “Maybe I would have been better off
hitting the gym instead of coming straight home,” I said, thinking out loud as
I walked across the room to where my phone lay on a side table.

The number flashing on the screen was
totally unfamiliar, and for a second I thought about just letting it roll over
to voicemail.
It could be someone from
the clinic, or someone calling me from a friend’s phone because of an
emergency.
I took a quick breath and unplugged my phone from the charging
cable, tapping the “accept” icon and bringing it to my ear all at once.

 
“Hello?”

“Mackenzie?” The voice was tantalizingly
familiar but not enough for me to immediately place it.

“Speaking,” I said, taking the safe
assumption that it had to be someone I didn’t know that well.

“It’s Patrick—Patrick Willis, Landon’s
dad.” I smiled, walking back over to my couch and sitting down.

“Is something wrong? How’s Landon doing?”
It had been a day off for Landon’s PT, so I hadn’t seen him earlier in the day.

“He wants to go ice skating this weekend,”
Patrick said, sounding both amused and concerned. “I told him I had to check
with you to make sure it was okay.”

“As long as he doesn’t overdo it, he
should be all right,” I said, thinking about the question. “Stay close to him,
if you’re going with him, and if he looks wobbly, get him off the ice for a few
minutes. His muscles are still weak.”

“I remembered what you said about the
stabilizer muscles,” Patrick said. “I just didn’t know if they’d stand up to a
long day of skating.”

“Probably not a whole day,” I said. “He’ll
tire out pretty fast on the ice, but it would actually be a good thing to do
with him—functional therapy, they call it. He’ll work the muscles out in a way
that we just can’t really duplicate in therapy.”

“Is that good?” I nodded even though I
knew Patrick couldn’t see me.

“It is. Our goal with the PT is to get him
up to natural functioning, so little things that he can do to further that are
great.” I licked my lips and picked up my half-finished wine, taking a quick
sip. My heart was beating faster in my chest.
Down girl! He’s a patient’s parent—off-limits.
“I would say if he
wants to do something and feels up to it, obviously keep an eye on him, but he
should at least try. Other than any kind of contact sports, of course.”

“Of course,” Patrick agreed. “Is—is
skating not a contact sport?” I laughed and had to bite my lip to stifle it.

“Not strictly speaking,” I said, as soon
as I could recover my composure. “I’m thinking of things like hockey, or soccer
or football, things like that where he’s likely to end up getting hit or
hitting the ground as part of the game.” I thought for another moment. “If you
want to feel safer, I’d say get him one of those ACE bandage braces for his
knee. He doesn’t have any real problems with his ligaments, but with the
weakness he’s still got going on in the other muscles, it’ll give that leg some
more stability.”

“Thank you so much,” Patrick said, and the
relief in his voice was so intense it almost embarrassed me. “I didn’t want to
have to tell him that he couldn’t go ice skating.” I grinned.
He really is a good dad, all things
considered.

“He’ll probably get tired pretty quickly,”
I told Patrick. “It takes a lot more effort to do something like that when your
muscles are still weak. Make sure he takes lots of breaks, keep his fluids up,
and if he starts looking wobbly, insist on him sitting down until he can stand
steady.”

“That all sounds good,” Patrick told me. I
could hear him smiling somehow. “Thank you again for taking the call on your
free time.” I smiled to myself.

“I’m not really up to anything tonight, so
it’s no trouble to answer a quick question,” I told him.

“You must really love your work,” Patrick
said, making it almost a question.

“I do,” I agreed. “I love working with
kids—they’re so resilient, and they’re willing to work hard. When I was doing
my rotations, before I finished the program, I worked with all kinds of
patients…and kids were the ones that appealed to me the most.”

“Did you always know you were going to go
into physical therapy?” I shook my head.

“No, I kind of fell into it,” I told
Patrick. I knew that I should probably get off of the phone—the conversation
was getting a little personal—but I couldn’t help myself. “I was a gymnast in
high school, and I got a really bad torn ACL during a practice, and of course
with that you have to have really aggressive PT.” I licked my lips and finished
off my wine in a quick gulp. “That was how I got interested in it.”

“Not too different from how I got into my
line of work,” Patrick said, sounding almost surprised. “I started off studying
something completely different in college, but I took a summer job at an
information security company and just sort of…stayed put.”

We chatted for a few more minutes, talking
about the people we worked with, about how we’d ended up in our fields, and
then I finally couldn’t ignore the fact that I was having a personal
conversation with a patient’s father. I told Patrick that I had to get my
laundry, but that I’d see him again at Landon’s next session, and he said he
and Landon were both looking forward to it. I ended the call, and in spite of telling
myself that Patrick was probably just one of those guys who liked to have a
listening ear, that he was off-limits to me, I couldn’t help but feel a warm
little tingle all over my body; I hadn’t felt comfortable or excited like that
in months—maybe years. I pushed the thought aside and finally did get to my
laundry to fold it so it wouldn’t wrinkle before I went to bed.

Chapter Six - Patrick

After talking to Mackenzie about how
Landon wanted to go ice-skating, I was glad to take my son to the park over the
weekend. He’d had physical therapy the day before, but when he woke up in the
morning he was so excited I didn’t think he’d miss the trip even if he somehow
managed to break his leg all over again. I made him eat a good breakfast:
oatmeal, scrambled eggs, bacon and toast along with some juice, and we went on
our way to McKinley Park.

I kept in mind what Mackenzie had told me
and before we left I’d convinced Landon to put on a knee brace under his long
johns. It was getting colder and colder, and the forecast called for snow that
night, but the day itself was sunny and bright when we got to the park and made
our way to the rink. We’d gotten there early enough that it wasn’t super
crowded yet—right after the park opened for the day—and I told Landon that as
long as he didn’t try and get away from me, and as long as he was willing to
stop for a while whenever I told him to, we could skate for as long as he
wanted.

I kept an eye on Landon just like
Mackenzie suggested, making sure I took him off to the benches when he started
to get wobbly or looked tired, but he managed to keep it up for at least half
the day, spaced out between his breaks. When he got bored of the skating
rink—or, as I suspected, too tired to keep going, especially with the bigger
kids on the ice zooming around without a care in the world—we wandered around
the park for a little while. I bought him a hot cider and some roasted nuts,
and we munched on our snacks while we wandered around looking at the
decorations.

Finally as it was starting to get dark, I
decided it was time to head for home. “We need to get you in a nice hot bath
buddy, and get a pot of soup in you.” It was coming up on winter break, and the
last thing I wanted was for Landon to get one of the flus going around before it
was even his vacation, especially since that would mean he’d have to stay away
from physical therapy for a week. I could tell he was tired out—the ice-skating
had been tougher than he’d thought—but Landon was trying to pretend like he had
as much energy as ever.

I got him into the car and we started back
for the apartment, navigating the busy weekend traffic. “Dad,” Landon said, his
voice sleepy from the back of the car. “Do you miss mom sometimes?” I felt as
if the kid had kicked me in the stomach—something he hadn’t done intentionally
in years.

“I do shrimp,” I admitted once I had my
voice under control.
It’s a natural
question this time of year, when everyone’s with their families.
“What
brought her to mind?”

“Can you tell me a story about her?”

I clenched my teeth, breathing in slowly.
I had known from the time that Joanne had died that I would have to tell Landon
all about his mother someday; and part of me felt ashamed that I had sort of
let her memory fall by the wayside over the years. I couldn’t even give myself
the excuse that I’d been grieving, not anymore. Joanne had died only months
after Landon had been born, from complications of cancer treatment. She’d been
diagnosed when she was four months pregnant, and had put off getting treatment
until after she delivered; she’d wanted Landon so badly that she was willing to
risk it—though I couldn’t help but think that taking that risk had been exactly
what had killed her.

“Your mom was a great woman,” I told my
son, glancing at each of the mirrors to make sure I wasn’t about to hit
someone. “Before you were born, she used to tell you bedtime stories every
night before she went to sleep.”

“But how did I hear her if I wasn’t born?”
I grinned to myself. It was so easy to picture Joanne, curled up in our bed,
one hand on her big, pregnant belly, the other one holding a book. She had read
to Landon religiously in the womb; even when she was exhausted, even when she
was in pain from the cancer she didn’t want to treat until the baby was out,
she read to him before she finally went to sleep for the night.

“She said she was sure you could hear,” I
told him. “She said you used to kick around inside of her when she would start,
and then you’d slowly calm down until you fell asleep.”

“Is that why you always read to me, Dad?”

I smiled again. “It is shrimp. She asked
me to do that for you when she knew she wasn’t going to be with us much longer.
She wanted to make sure that you had something that she’d always done with you,
for as long as she knew you.”

“What books did she read me?”

I laughed in spite of the pain I could
feel inside of me, remembering the woman I had loved. “She read everything,” I
said. “She loved to read you Dr. Seuss books especially—she said you always
kicked the hardest when she’d start on
The
Cat in the Hat
or
Hop on Pop
. But
if she was really tired she’d read those Peter Rabbit books you like so much
now.”

“Do you think I like them because mom used
to read them to me?”