Secret Pleasure (11 page)

“No! You can do this. It a simple task.”

“I’m done.” He hopped towards his crutch. “If you want to really work on my balance—”

“I thought you wanted to walk without a limp,” she interrupted. “I guess that was someone else who told me that.” She started walking towards the house.

Damn, she knew which buttons to push.

“What has this got to do with not walking with a limp? I’m not even working on the walking part. Just teetering on my damn leg.”

“Balance is the key to life. If you can’t balance yourself on your good leg, how are you going to learn how to walk again?”

“I don’t need to learn how to walk again. I know how to walk!”

“No, you used to know how to walk.” She stopped in front of him. “You don’t have the same body you did the last time you walked. You need to learn how to walk with your new body. Your new body has pins holding bones together, it has muscles and nerves that are damaged. Just wait until those nerve endings start healing; you will have phantom pains all over your body even in places that weren’t injured during the crash, because everything is connected.”

She held out her hand for him to give her the crutch.

“Learning how to balance on your good leg will teach you how to protect yourself when your bad leg fails you. Since it’s too early to start putting much weight on your right leg, we have to start building up everything so we can prepare your body for the task of retraining it.”

Thinking about it, he decided it made sense. Handing her the crutch, he balanced himself on his leg and hoped no one was watching. He felt like a fool and probably looked like one too.

“Tomorrow we are going to take a short walk.”

“How short?” He teetered and almost lost his balance. Even though the ground was right there, to him it felt as if he were standing on a high wire.

“Steady. Focus on centering your energy.”

“Where did you learn all this?” He had never put any stock into all that new age crap.

She looked at him and smiled.

“You think I’m crazy, don’t you?” She held up her hand to tell him not to talk. “I know that look. I’ve seen it in many of my patients before. You have the classic,
Oh great, she’s going to fix me with magic,
look.” Then she laughed. “Now you’re looking at me like I’m going to fly away on a broom. It’s not magic. It’s science, physical certainties that have been tried and tested over the years.” Then she set his crutch down. “Watch.”

She bent over smoothly and did a back bend that had his mouth watering.

“When you condition your body to do something, it becomes almost habit for it to follow your commands.” She moved smoothly into a hand stand. “This is something I haven’t done in years.” She moved back into a back bend in another simple move and had his mouth dropping open. Then she stood back up smoothly like she’d been doing that every day of her life. “Now, if we can condition your body to believe that you don’t walk with a limp, you won’t. It’s as much psychological as it is physical. If you tell yourself to limit your movements because of the pain, ten years from now when the pain is gone, your movements will continue to reflect that.”

“What else can you do?” he asked eagerly, and she laughed.

“I bet you didn’t even realize that this entire time you’ve been standing there, completely balanced.”

He looked down at himself and realized she was right. His leg held strong under him and he wasn’t even teetering. He felt as strong as a sailor on the deck of a ship in stormy weather. Looking up at her, he smiled. “You are amazing.”

“Why? Because I got you to stand on one foot in your own yard?”

Later that evening, after spending a few hours on his laptop answering emails, he looked up to see his mother bring in his dinner tray.

“Where is Airlea?”

“We don’t know. She didn’t show up to take your tray. I have your father out looking for her. Rosa said she saw her going on her walk shortly after your session, but no one has seen her since. I hope she didn’t fall and hurt herself.”

He sat up a little straighter. “Is there something I can do? Do you have the others out looking?”

“Don’t worry, we’ll find her. She couldn’t have gone far.”

“Is Lucy here? I know sometimes she walks with her.”

“Yes, she’s downstairs. Apparently she got left in the laundry room.”

Dante wished he could join the search for Airlea. “How long has she been gone?” He looked over at the clock.

“Almost four hours. I’m sure she just lost track of time. Don’t worry. I’ll have her come up and let you know she’s all right. Eat your dinner. I’ll go see what’s going on.”

Four hours later, Damiano and the crew came back without any clues to Airlea’s whereabouts. It was a quarter to midnight and still they hadn’t heard anything from her.

“It’s too dark out there, son. We’ll have to continue our search tomorrow.”

“Dad! She could be hurt.”

“I know, but having my men out there in the dark, someone else could get hurt. We’ll see better in the light, maybe pick up her trail.”

Dante didn’t sleep at all that night. He sat on the deck and looked off into the dark night. He was thankful that the weather hadn’t taken the turn for the worse that the weatherman had said it was supposed to. Around three in the morning, however, their luck changed. The rain started falling in huge drops and the temperature dropped another ten degrees. Lucy lay down beside him under the overhang as he watched the storm building. Then her head came off the ground and she sat up, looked at him, then sprinted off into the darkness.

Did Lucy know something they didn’t? Where was Airlea? Was she injured? Was she lost? His mind played over scenario after scenario, each one worse than the last. He felt helpless. His broken body was not only hurting him, he was sure that if he wasn’t injured, he would have found her by now. He just knew that he could have found her. Now more than ever, he felt the betrayal of his body.

She felt like a fool. How could she have gotten locked in the small shed? She had walked by it, and upon hearing what sound like an injured kitten, she’d walked in the unlocked door and looked around. Shortly after commencing her search for the animal, she noticed that the door had swung shut behind her.

After she’d searched the entire five-by-five shed and found no animal, she tried the door, only to realize it was locked. She tried to remember if there had been some sort of latch on the outside that might have locked. All she could remember was pulling a flat handle as she had opened the door. She spent the next few minutes trying everything she could to open it. She walked over to the window and tried to look out. She used a large barrel and box to try to climb up to it, but it was almost ten feet off the ground, and after realizing there just wasn’t enough stuff to stand on, she gave up trying to get out that way.

For such an old shed, it was sure solidly locked up. After the first hours, panic had set it. It was time for Dante’s dinner and she was getting worried that they would be missing her. How would she explain that she’d locked herself in a shed? How stupid would it make her look? She’d tried again to work open the door, only to come up short. She’d seen someone open a door once in a movie by removing them, but she couldn’t even try that, because the hinges were on the outside. She’d tried kicking the door, pushing it, and she even tried to ram it with her shoulder, which had only caused her shoulder to hurt.

Sitting down next to a box and a large barrel, she tried to think of other ways to get out. It was cool in the shed and she was thankful she’d worn the sweatshirt as she shivered. She was getting hungry, but skipping a meal was something she’d gotten used to with her job at the hospital.

Her eyes kept going back to the small window. How would she get up to it? And once there, how would she climb out? Was there a large drop?

She leaned back against the wall and thought. By this time, it was dark and she couldn’t even see the window anymore. She kept listening for someone, just in case they were out looking for her, but she didn’t hear anything. She must have fallen asleep, because suddenly she was being jolted awake by a loud boom of thunder. She quickly backed against the wall. When the lightning hit next, she noticed the shed door stood wide open.

Had someone come? Then in the dark she heard a low voice speak in thick Italian, “Come here, girlie.” She scooted farther back, behind a large box she’d been resting her head on.

Fear froze her breathing. When lightning hit again, she saw a tall figure standing in the doorway. The rain pelted down on him and she saw he had something in his hands that looked like a large hunting knife. She was going to die. She just knew there was no way out of this. He must have seen her, because the next time lightning flashed he was only two feet away, looking directly at her.

She saw dark eyes and the shine of the knife before it went dark again. She screamed and kicked out, hitting him in the shin. He didn’t even slow down as he grabbed her with his empty hand and pulled her up on her feet. His hand was in her hair, holding her close, and the knife was at her throat. His foul breath hit her face and caused her to recoil. She could smell his stale body odor and tried to kick out.

“There you are, girlie. We’re going to have some fun, you and I. No one’s out looking for you anymore so you can scream as loud as you want. I want to hear you scream.”

She did scream, and he slapped her across the face and yanked her around so her back was to him as he fumbled around, grabbing her chest in a vise-like grip, bruising her. She tried to kick out and push his hands away as he ripped her sweatshirt, and just when he started to yank her pants down, she heard a low growl. He turned around, but in the darkness she couldn’t register where the noise was coming from. In the next flash of light, she saw Lucy standing at the doorway, her fur drenched and her hackles up, her teeth bared as she slowly walked towards them.

“Damn dog! Get back!” he yelled, and loosened his hold on her. Now was her only chance. She dropped down out of his reach just as Lucy jumped towards them. She heard a yelp but didn’t stop as she rolled, and once she was free from his hold, she ran out the door. She didn’t know if Lucy was okay, but she knew she had to get out, knew she needed to get as far away as possible.