Putting my phone back in my pocket, I gripped the sink and hung my head. I could let myself feel this pain with them. Quietly and without a single tear that didn’t belong to me.
Eventually, I splashed cold water on my face. The shock of it usually helped, but not this time. After a few more minutes, the numbness finally came, blanking my mind and tingling my limbs.
I had to get the rest of Dad’s stuff moved. Had to take another step.
When I left the bathroom, I rolled the cart back to his old apartment, sparing a glance out the window as I went.
The cart squeaked to a stop as I spotted him.
Adair.
Adair heading for that same Jeep from yesterday. His flannel was missing, leaving him in a baggy T-shirt and jeans.
He tossed his crutch into the back and got into the driver’s seat.
And then he was gone.
Of all the things, that was what finally made my insides crumble to ash.
10
ADAIR
“I’m sorry, Mr. Jacks. If it’s still hurting this bad, I think we need more scans. And possibly surgery.”
My heart sank as Dr. Patel placed her tablet on the exam room table. “You’ve been doing physical therapy as prescribed?” she asked, rolling toward me on her stool.
“Yes, ma’am.”
My co-workers at the station had given me the name of a great physical therapist who wasn’t too far from the apartment. Going to those appointments was about the only thing I’d had going on for me socially for the past month since I gotten back to Georgia from my weekend trip to see Pops on the coast. Especially since I hadn’t been cleared to return to work.
Dr. Patel hummed to herself as she led me through a series of extensions, all of which were level five pain at best, excruciating at worst. “Has anything happened that might’ve strained the injury?”
I gave her a sheepish grin. “There might’ve been an incident.”
She stared at me blankly until I confessed, which took about four seconds.
“I fell. I went down hard but didn’t get up well. I wasn’t thinking.”
And then I’d spent weeks packing up the cabin with Cole, my thoughts so filled with everything about Live Oak—mostly Pops’s diagnosis and treatments he was starting and Beck Sewell’s daughter—that I hadn’t been careful of my ankle.
Her sigh was heavy. “And why didn’t we lead with this?”
I tried to smile at her, but it was more of a grimace. “The power of positive thinking does me dirty sometimes.”
That made her laugh, which made me feel better. I hated disappointing anyone.
“Do you think a couple more weeks of rest would do anything?” I asked hopefully.
She planted her feet and rolled backward, fixing me with a no-nonsense stare. “Sure. If you love wasting your time.” Tipping her head back, she raised her gaze to the lightly stained ceiling tiles. “Medics make the worst patients, you know that?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I agreed. “Though I thought it was doctors who made the worst. I’m not a doctor.”
“Stubborn as one,” she muttered as she grabbed her tablet back from the table. “I’m putting in the order for some scans. Go on down and get them done now. I don’t trust you to not put them off.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said for the third time.
The walk back to the Jeep a while later was brutal, but Delly’s call the minute I cranked the engine was a welcomed distraction.
