“I am. It’s just this damn brain.”
“That damn brain has held you in good stead. Cut it some slack.” He gave her a one-arm shrug. She looked at him and asked, “Anything coming back?”
“Not that I can make sense of.” He shook his head. “Just lots of memories that aren’t very pleasant.”
“Of course.” She nodded.
“No ‘of course’ about it,” he said. “It would be nice if I had some meaning to it all.”
“There is, and there will be.” She shrugged. “You just have to give it a chance.”
“I know,” he said, “but it’s frustrating nonetheless.”
“Remember. Your brain must heal too.”
“I know. I know,” he growled, showing his palms. “The trouble is, I can’t hurry up the healing process.”
“You can practice patience.” She tucked into her meal, but her gaze was wary. He was healing faster than she had expected, was gaining strength at a phenomenal rate. Once his brain decided to kick in fully, he would charge forward, hell-bent for leather, regardless of what she had to say.
He moved his injured leg around. “I was happy to see it held my weight.”
“You’ve also lost a lot of weight,” she murmured.
“Not because of the food though,” he said, with great satisfaction, as he stared down at his plate. “It’s very simple, but it tastes good and is very filling.”
“It’s also good for you. Not all food is the same.”
“No, and I like this,” he said with a nod.
“Good,” she replied, as she reached for his empty plate. “Would you like some coffee now?”
“Coffee sounds great, but could we go outside?” he asked hopefully.
She knew at this point he could probably get there on his own, but he was looking for her permission. And, with that, she nodded. “We can probably get you to the edge of the beach, if you like.”
“I’d like to go in the water and swim, but I know the ocean tides would tire me easily.”
“A set of pools are to the side,” she said. “If you could get yourself there, you’d probably be okay.”
“So we’re not going to the beach?”
“The adjacent pools are fresh water that runs into the ocean,” she said. “The water would be cooler, but it would be easier for you to get in and out.”
He looked at the ocean. “It doesn’t look like it would be hard to get in there, but I’m afraid it might be hard to get out.”
“You’re right,” she said. “Sometimes I struggle with it myself. What do you think? Shall we give the pools a try?”
He nodded, then struggled to sit on the side of the bed again. Then, reaching for the crutches, he slowly stood. She gathered the dishes and walked to the big porch deck of the other hut and added the dishes to a bucket of water on the porch. She slept inside under the roof, which covered about three-quarters of the building; the rest opened to the deck area outside. She pointed to the small group of trees about one hundred yards away. “The water comes into a pool there, and I have steps down into it.”
“You swim there?”
“I bathe there all the time,” she admitted.
He tilted his head. “Good, then show me the way.”
As he slowly walked toward the area, she kept a tight eye on his progress. She knew he would assume he could go farther and better than anybody. And, sure enough, it wasn’t long before he made it partway, then stopped and looked at her. “You don’t have far to go,” she said. “Once you’re there, you can rest.”
“How far?” he asked. “It’s looking farther all the time.”
“It always does,” she said.
He pushed forward, and, when he stopped at the trees, she had really meant it when she said she had a lot of rock ledges going down to the pool. Using the crutches on the dry rocks, he slowly made his way to the water’s edge, where she had placed more rocks on the side. He looked at the water, then at her. “Is there any reason not to fall in?”
“Go for it,” she said. “It’s all safe. But let me take that makeshift cast off first.” With that done, he turned, dropped his crutches, and literally fell into the water, causing a great big wave to wash up.
She waited nervously, until he popped to the surface again, but he was obviously half fish because he rolled and twisted as he swam with joy. She laughed at him. “If I’d realized this is what your heart wanted,” she said, “I would have gotten you here sooner.”
“No, I had to come on my own,” he said. “I’m too big for you to manhandle this far, which meant I still had to improve first.”
“But look at how well you’re doing,” she said. “It’s amazing how much more range of motion you have with the buoyancy of the water helping out. You’re not showing near as much pain as you would if you were trying to twist that way out of the water.”
He rolled over on his back, and, with a great big sigh, he floated. “The current isn’t bad either,” he marveled.
“No, not here,” she said. “It’s quite calm.” After he was out of the water and stretched out one of the rocks, still wearing only his shorts, she asked, “Are you okay here while I go put on coffee?”
“Are you okay if I just sleep here?”
She laughed, then leaned over, checked his forehead. “I’m fine if you do that,” she said.
“I am getting better, you know?” he said, eyes closed against the sun.
“I can see that,” she replied, her voice choking up; then she hastily left to put on the coffee.
*
Not knowing whether what Bullard heard was part of a dream state, as he drifted in and out, he shifted gently. He was cautious about shifting too much because, as Leia had said, any sudden movement could cause a jarring to his spine, and the pain could cripple him. It’s not that he was still broken; apparently it was more about how his body wasn’t used to movement yet, after being in bed for so long.
She had him doing yoga, for God’s sake, though, at first, he had argued. Eventually he’d seen the sense of it and was doing it on a daily basis. For some reason he knew that people in his past would laugh at him, yet he didn’t have a problem following her instructions here. She was like a guiding light, and, if she told him to move left, he’d move left. He didn’t have any reason for his blind obedience, other than the fact that she had been working very hard for quite some time to help him.
And he saw the change in his body as he’d followed along with her instructions. Also, floundering rudderless in this storm with only the broken parts of his memories, he knew he needed to trust somebody. Whether it was safe to trust her, he couldn’t tell, but he also had no reason not to. He shifted on the rocks, slowly sitting up and moving closer to the water, as he tried to look around, tried to find the source of the noises.
He saw no sign of anyone, and he wasn’t sure what he heard. He knew some wildlife was on the actual island itself because sometimes she told him about them. He didn’t think any big cats were here, but he’d been wrong before. As he studied the area around them, trying not to make it look like he was hunting—a move that came naturally, easily—he thought he saw somebody in the bushes across the way. He let his gaze drift past, before coming back to study the area.