Wife by Design

He hadn’t really been coherent, either, even when he’d opened his eyes.

But Grant had known Darin would make it through just fine.

Still, it was great to―

“Good morning.” The tall, gray-haired doctor entered the room. Dr. Zimmer was Grant’s kind of doctor. No-nonsense, tell it like it is. With a nod toward Grant, he focused on Darin. Asked a couple of questions. Slowly. Kindly. Lifting the sheet to look at his brother’s feet, he asked Darin to move his toes. Asked about pain and other sensations. He studied Darin’s eyes, had his brother follow a penlight with his gaze.

Everything was going as expected. Fine. Grant would be out of there soon. He’d get to work on time, come back to spend the evening with Darin and then go home to prepare the house for Darin’s return the next day. All in all, they’d come through the potentially life-threatening episode with only one day of missed work. “Your left hand, Darin. Can you lift your left hand?”

Grant watched, nodding, waiting. The covers moved. And...nothing. The left toes had moved. Hadn’t they? Grant hadn’t paid that much attention.

He wanted Dr. Zimmer out of the way so he could check again. Just to make certain.

Moving to the left side of the bed, the surgeon lifted the cover, setting Darin’s hand on top of them. “Now,” he repeated gently. “Move your fingers for me.”

And Darin did.

Thank God.

“Lift your hand.”

Grant stared. Willed the hand to move. And it did. Okay, not a lot. But the movement meant that Darin was capable, didn’t it? That there was no permanent damage to his brother’s motor skills resulting from the latest surgery?

They’d been through this before. Through worse surgeries. Like the one right after the accident when they’d had to go in to remove the barb the stingray had left in his brother’s brain. Grant had been a senior in college at the time. A mere boy.

Darin, once a force to be reckoned with in the business world, had been forever changed. He had his normal moments. And childlike ones. Stress made things worse. He couldn’t figure out basics, like monetary value.

But they’d survived. Made a fine life for themselves. Just the two of them. A satisfactory life. Other guys had wives. Kids. Grant had Darin.

“Can I speak with you in the hallway?” Dr. Zimmer’s request interrupted Grant’s silent pep talk. The look on the surgeon’s face put a blight on the positive outlook he’d been trying to create.

“I’ll be right back.” Grant squeezed Darin’s hand. “You get ready to spend an hour or two in that chair over there.” He nodded at the high-backed leather seat in the corner by the window. He knew the drill. Darin had to be up, able to walk and get to the bathroom before they’d release him. And it all started with the chair.

“I can’t lift my hand, Grant.” Darin’s voice was low. “Why can’t I lift my hand?”

“Because it’s asleep,” he said, keeping his tone light. Lightness was the last thing Grant felt as he uttered his asinine response and followed the doctor out the door.

CHAPTER TWO

“I’M PUTTING BUTTERFLIES on this, but it needs stitches,” Lynn Duncan said, her tone as matter-of-fact as she could make it while tending to the brutalized skin of the twenty-four-year-old brunette sitting on the table in one of the two small examination rooms at The Lemonade Stand Tuesday evening.

“I hate hospitals.” Regina Cooper wasn’t crying as she gave yet another reason she was refusing to allow herself to be stitched. Lynn almost wished Regina was sobbing, even though that would make her task more difficult. The younger woman’s voice was deadpan, her words slurred as she formed them through cut and swollen lips. Like the life had been beaten out of her.

“I can do it right here,” Lynn said. Technically she was off shift, but when you lived on the premises of one’s job, you tended to be on call 24/7. Not that Lynn minded.

At-risk women came to The Lemonade Stand in coastal Santa Raquel, California, to find shelter. Lynn had found her life’s purpose here, nursing them.

Tending to the third of three ugly cuts on the woman’s chin and neck—one the result of a knockout punch to her mouth and the other two gashes from the glass that broke when it had been thrown at her—she said, “These are going to scar, Ms. Cooper, if we don’t get them stitched properly.”

“I don’t care.” Regina hadn’t said much in the half hour since she’d arrived at The Lemonade Stand, partially, Lynn suspected, because it hurt too much to talk.

“You’re a beautiful young woman,” she said. “You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. And we need to get these taken care of properly.”

Sara Havens, one of the Stand’s counselors, was outside, waiting to take Regina under her wing. She’d know better what to say. But they didn’t have weeks, or even days, for counseling to change Regina’s mind about these cuts.

A member of the Stand’s small full-time security team was there, too, standing guard.

Lynn’s face was inches from the other woman’s as she gently worked the torn skin together as well as she could. Regina’s pretty blue eyes met hers. “You see where my beauty got me?” she asked in a near-whisper, her eyes growing moist but not enough for a tear to fall. “I can do without it.”

“You’ll remember him, and the beating you just took, every single time you look in the mirror if we don’t get these properly stitched,” she said.

“I’m going to remember anyway.”

“You want to wear his anger? To keep him with you every minute of every day for the rest of your life?” Nursing school had taught her how to tend to bodies. The year she’d spent in grad school after Kara’s birth had provided her with her advanced nursing midwifery certification. The two years she’d been living full-time at The Lemonade Stand had been a completely different education. “You want to let him mark you that way?”

Tears blurred the hurt-filled blue eyes. “I can’t afford stitches,” the woman said. “I don’t even know how I’m going to pay for the butterfly bandages. I can’t use my health insurance. It’s through his work and he’ll know where to find me....”

Stopping her work, Lynn studied the younger woman. “That’s why you won’t agree to stitches? Because of the cost?”

Regina nodded. “I went to the ATM as soon as I left, but he’d already drained our account. I’ve got a hundred bucks on me, this week’s grocery allowance, and that’s it.”

Regina spoke slowly, sounding as if she had marbles in her mouth, but she made herself understood.

Going for stitching supplies, Lynn pulled on a fresh pair of sterilized procedure gloves. “Your care here is free, Regina,” she said. “I thought you knew that.”

“Medical care, too?”

“Everything. For the first four weeks you’re here, you have access to all services, and pay only what you can afford to pay. If that’s nothing, then nothing is what you owe.” She smiled at the young woman. “Now, are you going to let me take proper care of you and get this stitched?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Regina’s mouth wouldn’t allow a smile, but the relieved look in her eyes spoke volumes.

And twenty minutes later, when Lynn turned over her newest patient to Sara Havens, who would see Regina through the admissions process and get her set up with clean clothes, toiletries and a safe place to sleep, she was fairly certain she’d managed to minimize the damage Regina’s husband’s brutality had inflicted.

At least on the surface.

* * *

“LYNN?” THIRTY-FIVE-YEAR-OLD Maddie Estes, one of only a few permanent residents at The Lemonade Stand, looked upset as she hurried toward Lynn just after Sara escorted Regina out of the three-room health clinic located in the main house.

“What’s up, Maddie?” Lynn smiled at the pretty woman who was three years older than her by birth, but fifteen years younger in mental acuity. Maddie’s developmental challenges, present since a premature birth, caused the sweet, gentle woman to worry over small things.

But with regular weekly physical therapy sessions, Maddie’s motor skills, while slow, were finally within the normal range.

The woman’s hands were flailing as she moved.

“There’s a man here. He’s been waiting to see you for a long time. He looks like he might be getting mad. You know, walking back and forth and back and forth in the hallway and slapping his baseball cap against his hand.”

Maddie emulated the motion with jerky movements, her gaze meeting Lynn’s only for a brief stop as it traveled around the space they occupied—the empty waiting room at the clinic. Lynn held regular, well-check office hours. They’d long since passed on that particular Tuesday in February.