She hit the blender and they both watched the blueberries, strawberries, and bananas turn into a purple mush. When Jessie shut it off, Hannah spoke up.
“Well, I’ll keep my eyes open at school tomorrow. If I see any sketchy-looking older dudes on campus handing out business cards, looking for sex slaves, I’ll let you know.”
“Thanks,” Jessie said, smiling bitterly. “That’s probably as effective as anything I could do right now.”
*
Ryan breathed.
As he repeated the process, in and out, keeping it slow, he focused on pushing out his frustrations and inhaling positivity. He’d never gone in for meditation before the attack. But in the hospital, his respiratory therapist, a retired cop who’d taken up the gig to keep from getting bored, had convinced him that it helped.
And when he could quiet his mind enough to try it, it did. The problem for Ryan Hernandez was that his mind was usually a series of bouncing, disconnected thoughts and fears that he couldn’t control, much less verbalize.
Would he ever rejoin the force? Would he ever walk again? Would he ever inhale without that brief, painful twinge so far back in his chest that it felt like a splinter had lodged there? Would Jessie grow weary of playing nursemaid and dump him once she’d given it the old college try? He couldn’t quiet his mind back when he led a life of non-stop activity. How was he supposed to do it when he was trapped in this shell of a body with no outlet for his anxieties?
Still, as he sat propped up against the pillows of the hospital bed they’d had brought in, he tried to calm his thoughts. He tried to let go of the guilt he felt for lashing out at Jessie, who was only trying to help him. He tried to forget the fear he’d seen in Hannah’s eyes when she walked into the room and found him sprawled out, helpless, on the floor. He tried to block out the memory of Jessie’s ex-husband plunging a knife into his chest while he lay frozen in place, paralyzed by a drug that kept him awake and able to feel pain, but powerless to move.
He heard the blender in the next room and knew Jessie would be returning soon. He had to get a grip before then. He had to let her know he was sorry, that he appreciated what she was doing. He had to let her know that he understood that he couldn’t do this again.
The road to recovery was going to be slow. Dr. Badalia had warned him that it might be weeks before he could get to the bathroom on his own. He’d said that targeting the new year to walk on his own normally again was realistic. It was September now. That meant that he was probably wheelchair-, walker-, and cane-bound for at least the next three months. The thought was unbearably depressing. And yet, that’s the way it was.
Ryan had never been one to quit. No one had even expected him to graduate high school, much less finish near the top of his class at the police academy. No one had expected him to make detective at all, much less do it faster than almost anyone in department history. No one had expected him to lead the most highly regarded investigative unit in the LAPD before the age of thirty. Even he hadn’t expected that after an ugly divorce, he’d find love again with a brilliant, gorgeous woman who kept him on his toes every day, if only figuratively for now.
*
Jessie took a deep breath and walked back in carrying a tray with a smoothie and a bowl of chicken noodle soup. She set it up in front of him and adjusted his bed so that he was fully upright. She wasn’t sure if he wanted her to stay or go. He cleared the question up quickly.
“I’m…sorry,” he said.
She pulled up a chair and sat down next to him.
“No, I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I know that this must be incredibly frustrating for you and I should have been here for you, not driving around the city on a wild goose chase. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Was sorry…for myself,” he said as forcefully as his lungs would allow. “Not okay. Will…try harder.”
She nodded.
“I get frustrated too,” she admitted. “This is going to be hard, obviously more so for you than me. But for it to work, we need to make some hard choices. The reality is