Mendoza's Miracle

Moments later, with the table set, she pulled up a chair to sit beside his bed and they began to eat.

Javier stuck his fork into a piece of marinated beef and popped it into his mouth.

Dang. When was the last time he’d tasted meat so tender, so tasty?

After relishing another bite, he said, “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this. How’d you come up with an idea like this?”

“It just struck me on the way home last night. You’ve been eating at the hospital for weeks on end, and while I think the food is pretty good, I can see where you might get tired of it.”

He’d gotten tired of just about everything in the hospital. Everything except his nurse.

“I asked Marcos which meal was your favorite,” she said, “and he suggested the carne asada. Would you have preferred the chile rellenos? Or maybe the tamales? He said you liked them, too.”

“No, this is perfect. If I’m still in this room tomorrow, maybe I can have someone at Red deliver us another meal. I owe you one now.”

“You don’t owe me anything.”

That’s not the way he saw it. If not for Leah, he might have gone stir-crazy weeks ago.

They finished their meals in silence, but that didn’t mean Javier’s mind wasn’t going a jillion miles an hour—plotting and planning—much like it used to do before the injury.

Finally he said, “I’m going to be transferred to the rehab unit within the next couple of days.”

She paused, her fork in midmotion. Her pretty eyes, a whiskey shade of hazel, widened. Then she smiled. “That’s good news. You’re getting closer to being able to go home. I bet you can’t wait.”

He wanted to leave the hospital; that was a given. But he wasn’t keen on the idea of never seeing Leah again.

Why had she done all of this for him? And on her day off?

He could read all kinds of things into her effort to surprise him, he supposed. But he wouldn’t. Instead, he planned to enjoy the meal and the nurse who’d brought a bit of sunshine on a mundane day, the beautiful Florence Nightingale who’d provided him with a taste of the real world he was about to reenter.

Chapter Three

The next morning, while Dr. Fortune was making his rounds, Javier learned that he would be transferred to the rehab unit within the next hour or so.

After two long months, he would finally put that devastating, life-altering tragedy behind him. But leaving the third floor also meant leaving Leah.

He supposed he could always look her up after he was discharged from the hospital completely, but not until he was back on his feet and had a better grip on just who the post-tornado Javier really was—and where his future lay.

Still, he hoped to see her before he left, to say goodbye, to talk one last time. But he might not get the chance since Karen, one of the other third-floor nurses, had already come in and told him she’d been assigned to his room for the day.

Karen was nice enough, but she wasn’t…

Well, she wasn’t Leah.

Javier had just turned on the television to watch the midday news when his dad, Rafe and Isabella entered his room.

Determined to be a little more upbeat and better tempered than he’d been in the past, he greeted them, then reached for the remote and shut off the power to the TV.

“How’s it going?” his dad asked.

Javier gave them the good news that he was moving to rehab, which meant he was one step closer to being discharged and sent home.

“That’s great,” Isabella said.

Rafe and his father broke into smiles, too, clearly in agreement. Then his dad pointed toward the serape that was now draped over the back of the chair by his bed. “What’s that doing here?”

Javier smiled, thinking about the lunch he’d shared with Leah. “I had a surprise visitor yesterday and she brought that to me, along with some carne asada, which beat the heck out of what I’ve been eating.”

“So Savannah came by to see you,” Rafe said with a grin—no doubt pleased with himself for setting it all up.

“Yes, she came by. And she gave me those flowers by the window. But Leah’s the one who brought the serape and the food I hadn’t realized I’d been craving.”

“That was nice of her,” Luis said. “The entire nursing staff has been great, but I gotta admit, Leah’s one of my favorites.”

She was one of Javier’s, too.

“When will they transfer you to your new room?” Isabella asked.

“Probably within the next hour.” Javier studied his sister, with her long brown hair and big brown eyes. She was actually his half sister, a young woman he’d only met seven years ago.

Javier’s father had married young and divorced shortly thereafter. He’d been very involved in Isabella’s life, but when his ex-wife remarried and relocated to California, she took Isabella with her and disappeared under the radar for more than fifteen years.

Javier’s dad had been devastated to lose contact with his daughter, and even after he married Elena, Javier’s mom, and started a new family, he’d never forgotten his “little girl.”

When Javier was born, Luis had been thrilled to have a son. Yet he hadn’t made a secret of the fact that he would never truly be happy until Isabella was found.

Javier and his brothers knew they were loved, of course. And that they each had a secure position in the family. Still Javier had always gone out of his way to make his father proud and to fill the hole in his heart created by Isabella’s loss.

Deep inside, Javier had hoped that his achievements would enable his dad to forget Isabella and to get on with his life.

Of course, Luis had always been incredibly proud of Javier—of all his sons, for that matter. But he’d never forgotten his firstborn or given up hope that they’d be reconciled someday.

By the time Javier finally understood the depth of his father’s love for all his children, the need to win and come out on top had become so ingrained in his character that Isabella’s memory no longer had anything to do with it.

When Isabella finally reached adulthood and found Luis, the entire family welcomed her with open arms, including Javier, who actually liked having a big sister, especially one who was as artistic and talented as she was sweet. And he couldn’t imagine what their lives would have been like if she’d never come back home to San Antonio.

Isabella, who’d married J. R. Fortune a few years back, was a talented Tejana craftswoman, as well as an interior designer. So it wasn’t a surprise that the handwoven blanket had caught her interest.

“That’s amazing.” Isabella made her way to the chair and lifted the serape, carefully looking it over. “This is one of mine. Where did Leah find it?”

“I don’t know. My guess is that Marcos gave it to her when she was at Red. She brought that vase and the bougainvillea, too.”

If anyone thought the nurse had gone above and beyond, they didn’t say it, and Javier was glad. He’d been doing a little too much thinking about what might or might not be going on between the two of them as it was.

“I’ll have to ask Leah about it when I see her,” Isabella said. “Is she working today?”

“I think so, but I haven’t seen her yet.”