Emerald Fire (Christian Romance) (The Jewel Series) (32 page)

“I hate you,” she spat as her leg trembled from the force of the weights.

Muriel smiled and crossed her arms over her thin chest. “I know.”

Maxine looked down at her leg as she lifted the weights and it became fully extended. Well, what was left of her leg, anyway. It was pale, skinny, and crisscrossed with scars from her surgeries. The scars would fade and the color would return to normal, but she didn’t know if she had the strength any longer to build the muscle back up.

Slowly, she let the weights come back down, then leaned back against the seat of the machine and caught the towel Muriel tossed at her. She wiped her face and leg before she reached for the leg brace to strap it back on.

“You look tired, Maxi. Are you hurting too much at night? Do you need me to call your doctor to give you something to help you sleep?” Muriel moved to the weight bench across from her and gracefully sat down.

“No.” She tossed the towel on the floor. “I’m just having nightmares.”

Muriel’s eyes were direct, unwavering. “Why don’t you draw them out onto paper? It’s good therapy.”

Maxine stole a surreptitious glance at her mangled left hand and shrugged. “It’ll pass.”

The therapist stared for several more seconds before she nodded and stood. “Okay. You need a shower, I’ll make us lunch, then I want to show you some exercises you need to do before bed every night.”

Maxine nodded and inched forward on the seat while Muriel walked behind her. When she came back into view, Maxine’s eyes widened. “Where’s my chair?”

Muriel pushed a walker toward her. “No more wheelchair. It’s time for you to be back on your feet.”

She shook her head, as much to protest as to beat back the tension that mounted toward her neck. “No. I’m not ready.”

“Maxine, your arm is strong, now. You need to start teaching your leg to work again.”

She stared at the walker, her vision closing in until that was all she could see. “I could fall. You’re not here all the time. I could fall and break my arm and I wouldn’t be able to get back up again.”

Muriel’s expression never changed. “I’ll go make lunch. If you want to eat, then I suggest you take a shower and walk into the kitchen.”

Hot tears of rage quickly sprang to her eyes. “Why are you doing this?”

Muriel smiled. “Because someone has to. Lunch in twenty minutes.”

Maxine stared at the door, enraged that Muriel actually left, but not surprised. That was how she did things. A command, unrelenting, and then she’d leave, fully expecting Maxine to comply. Her eyes moved back to the walker.

She snarled at it. Then her stomach growled at her. Muriel would leave her there until the next full moon. Or until Barry came home, which would be hours yet. He would pick her up and carry her around if she asked.

Knowing that, she gripped the handles of the walker and pushed herself into a standing position. Barry would carry her around, coddle her, and then talk to her with that infuriatingly pleasant look on his face. Then he would tuck her into her bed downstairs, brush one of those whispers of a kiss on her forehead, and make his escape upstairs.

She’d get strong and walk again, if for no other reason than to follow him up and demand that he start acting like Barry again. A good rousing argument would be nice. A real kiss would be wonderful. Just seeing genuine emotion in his eyes would work for her.

Before she knew it, she had crossed half the room. It was slow, but the brace kept her leg from collapsing. It hurt a little. She knew enough about pain by now to know it was a good hurt – a muscles working kind of hurt. Her arms were strong, easily taking her weight while she compensated for the leg.

By the time she made it to the bathroom she was a little tired, but energized at the same time. She’d just crossed the entire house, and it felt great. She sat on the lid of the toilet to get undressed, then used the bars that had been installed to help her maneuver into the tub. A chair had been installed inside the bathtub, and she smiled as she sat under the warm spray. Soon she would be able to stand under it.

Her workout clothes were gone and a towel and fresh clothes waited for her when she finished her shower. She was tired now, but it would do no good to call for Muriel. She’d said she would be in the kitchen, and that’s where Maxine would find her, no doubt.

She slipped on a long, loose dress, her standard outfit since her release from the hospital, dried her hair with the towel, strapped the brace back on, and gripped the handle of the walker again. Her leg trembled a little, and acted like it wanted to cramp up, but she adjusted the way she put pressure on it and it felt better. Her left hand ached. As she walked into the kitchen, Muriel was setting plates on the table.

“Do you still think you’re going to fall?”

“Not if I don’t overdo it.” She laughed as she lowered herself into a chair, sighing at sitting on something that wasn’t her wheelchair. “And you were right, as always.”

“Every patient thinks they’re the only one who has ever been through it.” She set glasses of tea in front of the plates before she sat down.

Maxine raised an eyebrow. “To us, we are.”

Muriel paused before she nodded. “You’re right. But I still have to push. Family won’t.”

Thoughts of Robin and Barry fluttered through her mind. “No, they wouldn’t. I have the benefit of Sarah, though.”

“Even Sarah wouldn’t have left you alone with it. She would have hovered over you, worried you might fall. I knew you wouldn’t.”

“And if I had?”

Muriel snickered. “Then I would have been wrong. Very rare.” She speared a piece of pasta from her salad with her fork. “I need a favor.”

“Sure.”

“My mother’s birthday is next week. I was wondering … ”

“You need some time off?”

She shook her head. “No. That wasn’t what I was going to ask you. I was wondering if you would do a portrait of me. Not a painting, just a drawing.”

Maxine’s hand trembled and she set her fork down. “I’m sorry, but no.”

“Why?”

“I’m not ready.”

Muriel leaned forward. “Not ready for what?”

She hadn’t voiced it, and her voice wanted to close in on the words. Tears quickly filled her eyes, and she bit her lip to fight them back. “Not ready to find out that I can’t.” Despite her efforts, the tears spilled over, rolled down her cheeks. “I’m afraid to try.”

“You’ll never know if you don’t pick up a pencil and just draw.”

She gripped her left hand with her right and held it up for Muriel to see the scars, the gouges of skin that used to be smooth. “Look at this. Nothing is like it was. My hand was literally put back together. I don’t have the same grip. I won’t have the same stamina … ”

“I don’t care. You’ll try.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I dare you.”

Maxine snarled. “In three months you’ve never listened to me.”

Muriel smiled. “I don’t get paid to listen to you.”

“I’m not ready,” she whispered.

The doorbell rang, interrupting them. Muriel just raised her eyebrow when Maxine stared at her. “I don’t live here,” she said, making no move to get up.

Maxine grabbed her walker and glared at Muriel. “I swear I want to fire you,” she said, moving as quickly as she could, balking at her slowness and weakness.

“You aren’t the first and I doubt you’ll be the last.”

She slowly, frustratingly slowly, made her way to the front door. When she opened it, she was surprised to see her boss, Peter Mitchell, standing there with a large manila envelope in his hand.

“Peter,” she said, a little breathless. “Come in. What’s going on?”

“Hi Maxine,” he said, shifting his eyes from her face to the walker. “I didn’t expect you to answer the door. I was just going to leave this with you.”

“What is it?” He held out the envelope and she automatically reached for it.

“Just your paperwork for termination. Retirement accounts and such.”

“Termination?”

“We can’t just have you hanging on. Work continues. We still need product. Your office, your secretary, your clients are all just hanging.”

“We never discussed whether or not I would come back, and we never discussed the timing of anything,” Maxine said. Her arm muscles were quivering, but she didn’t want to show weakness so she kept standing.

“You said fifty days. It’s been fifty plus three months. I think that has been enough time for you to consider whether you’re willing to come back or not. From what I understand, you can’t even grip a pencil anymore, much less do what we do. I cannot hold your position indefinitely.”

Fear, failure, insecurity clawed at her throat. She wanted to walk away from Mitchell and Associates of her own accord, not because she got into a stupid wreck and couldn’t perform anymore.

She would not cry in front of him. Exhaustion, muscle fatigue, emotions, fear – sadness choked her throat but tears would not escape. “I’ll look over these papers and let you know.”

“The decision has all but been made.”

Maxine opened the envelope and pulled the papers out. A quick glance confirmed her suspicions. “These say I’m leaving of my own accord. These say I’m quitting. Unless you come up with the gumption to fire me right now, then I will look over these papers and let you know what I decide.”

Peter opened and closed his mouth, much like a fish trying to breathe the crisp air next to a mountain stream. He finally nodded and stepped outside. “I’ll give you to close of business tomorrow.”

Maxine sneered. “Fine.”

She slammed the door in his face, then, exhausted, lowered herself onto the little table in the foyer. When she looked up, Muriel was leaning against the wall, her arms crossed over her chest and grinning.

“Looks to me like you’re ready for about anything,” she said.

Maxine started crying, but it quickly turned to laughter that had tears falling out of her eyes and rolling down her cheeks. “You’re right. Bring me my pad and a pencil.”

BARRY
rolled his head on his neck as he shut the door behind him. It was late, later than he’d anticipated. His meeting with the church board over zoning laws had gone much longer than he planned, which put him behind at the office and had him working too late. Of course, he had to admit to himself that a lot of the work he’d finished that night could have waited until morning, but it seemed easier coming home after Maxine went to bed.

He silently made his way through the house and, as he did every night for three months, stopped at Maxine’s door. Clouds obscured the moon tonight, making it impossible to see any distinguishable shapes, but as he stood there and stared, he was certain that there was no form in her bed. Reaching behind him, he flicked on the hall light, bathing her room in a faint glow, and realized he was right. Her bed hadn’t even been slept in. Her wheelchair sat in the corner, away from the bed.

He crossed the room, thinking maybe she had fallen and was on the other side of the bed, but found nothing.

Worried, closing in on panic, he pushed open the door to the kitchen. Could one of her sisters or one of his sisters taken her home with them? No. Someone would have called him. He stepped into the kitchen and spotted her.

She sat at the table with her back to him. Her left leg was kicked out to the side, covered with the brace that stopped at the hem of an oversized T-shirt. Her hair was piled on top of her head, tendrils escaping from the loose knot to tease the back of her neck. Whatever she was doing, she was engrossed in it, because she never looked up as he walked toward her.

He came around the table until he was facing her and realized what she was doing. “You’re drawing,” he said, frozen with surprise.

Her hand paused on the pencil and she glanced up at him through her bangs. There was no welcoming smile, no light in her eyes when she spotted him. “Yes. And walking.”

“Walking?”

She went back to drawing. “Yep.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but her pencil fell from her hand and she cried out, clutching her hand. He was at her side immediately. “What happened?”

“Cramp,” she panted. He was close enough to see the sweat that formed on her brow.

Taking her hand in his, he started rubbing the muscles, coaxing them out of the claw position they’d taken in the spasm. “Maybe you’re doing this too soon.”

Her hand slowly relaxed and he watched her color return. “I’m not doing anything too soon. I’ve just been at it on and off all evening. This used to happen even before it was held together with paper clips and sheet-metal screws.”

The muscles under his finger were completely relaxed now, but he didn’t stop in his ministrations. Instead, he rested his hips against the table as his hands slowly traveled up over her wrist, to her arm, lightly kneading the muscles, gently touching her smooth skin. She closed her eyes and sighed, leaning farther back in the chair.

This close he could see that all she wore was the T-shirt. The hem stopped somewhere at mid-thigh, and the entire length of her good leg was there to torment him. It made him wonder what was or wasn’t under the shirt.

Feeling the slight tremor go through his own hands at the thought, he slowly released hers and straightened. “You should go to bed. You’ve done a lot today.”