can just image your aunts coming after me with hoes and pitchforks. Hypatia, of course, would be wearing pearls and pumps, and all the more terrifying for it, while Magnolia sported galoshes and heavy gardening gloves.”
Kaylie snorted behind her hand. She had brought the desk chair in from the other room and sat with her legs crossed at the knee, watching him pack it in. Oddly, she’d seemed to derive some sort of pleasure from watching him eat. His mother had done that when he’d been a little boy. Kaylie, however, was not his mom, and he was no boy now.
“And Aunt Odelia?” she asked, a smile wiggling on her lips.
He considered and decided, “Viking gear, complete with finger bones dangling from her earlobes and a horned helmet.”
“Except she’d tie bows on those horns,” Kaylie said, giggling.
He laughed at the thought of it, but then he shivered. Odelia would probably use his intestines to tie those bows. Still, that Hilda was some cook. It might be worth the risk.
“I don’t know how you could pass up that drover’s pie,” he mused. It was the wrong thing to say.
“I promised Dad I’d have dinner with him,” Kaylie murmured. She checked her watch then hastily rose and took the tray from his lap desk. He was really starting to hate that watch of hers. “How’s your pain level?”
“I’ll live,” he muttered, though the leg had started to throb pronouncedly.
“Let me send this down to the kitchen, then we’ll address that.”
She went out, supposedly to send the tray down to the kitchen via the dumbwaiter, and returned a few minutes later. Moving to the bedside table, she picked up several small prescription bottles there and began to go through them one by one.
“I had these filled earlier on my way back here.” She went through them one by one. “Anti-inflammatory. You take it after you eat. Nutritional supplement. Aids in repairing the bone. Antibiotic, twice a day for the next four days. Just a precaution. Pain med. One shouldn’t knock you out. Two might, but not likely. You’ll definitely feel them, though. The new injection obviously puts you on your back, so we’ll save that for bedtime and extreme instances.” She uncapped and shook out pills from all four bottles, then dumped the pills into his palm and handed him the water glass from the bedside table. “Bottoms up.”
He dutifully swallowed the collection of capsules and tablets and drained the glass.
“Now let’s get you in and out of the bathroom before those hit you. Okay?”
“Yes, please.”
She carried the desk chair back into the sitting room and pushed in the wheelchair, but it quickly became obvious that the positioning of his leg would make the chair useless in such close confines. He didn’t mind. It meant that he’d have his arm around her while he hopped to and from the bath.
They went through the laborious process, him hopping on one foot, Kaylie steadying and supporting him. He was relieved to find that he could still do pretty well for himself once he actually got where he was going. His left leg was apt to be twice as strong as the right before this was over, though. He made a mental note to have Aaron speak to the team kinesiologist first thing tomorrow, then he had to stop and think what day this was. Thursday, he decided. Yes, definitely Thursday. The team was playing tonight.
By the time he got back to Kaylie, he was aching all over. Nevertheless, he insisted that she put him in the wheelchair and push him into the sitting room so he could watch the pregame show and the hockey game to follow. She did so reluctantly and only after explaining the functions of the chair and showing him how to operate it. Wasn’t much to it. As it was all hand-operated and he had the use of only one hand, he wouldn’t be going very far in the thing by himself, anyway.
She fetched his phone from his bedside table and gave it to him, along with a slip of paper that she pulled from a pocket. “This is the telephone number here at Chatam House. If you need anything, call the phone here and Chester will come up.”
“But I can still call you, right?”
“Of course. It’s just that Chester’s closer and can take care of most of your needs. I’ll be back later to give you your injection. Okay?”
“Okay, but that’s hours from now.”
“True. So, in the meantime, if you