Heath Read online

  Dani had done a phenomenal job, but the more it grew, the harder it would be to keep this way. Hailee didn’t know how much of a warning everybody got when they first arrived after being hired on or accepted in, but she couldn’t imagine Dani being anything but blunt and open about what her expectations were for people here and what their expectations needed to be for their own progress. Hailee herself hadn’t received any such speech, but then she and Dani went way back. They knew who they each were on the inside. Although Dani had had a tough time initially, she’d pulled through and had done an incredible job trying to help everybody else.

  For herself, Hailee had seemingly gone the wrong direction and had ended up in more pain than she could have imagined by getting married and getting pregnant. There’d been so much agony that she often forgot about the rest and focused solely on the pain. And maybe she needed to focus more on the good things in her life. She stared aimlessly around her, stopping the line from moving forward. Snapping out of it, she stepped up smartly to see Dennis’s big grin.

  “What’re you doing? Sleeping?” he chided her gently.

  “Maybe,” she said. “Heavy thoughts, at least.”

  “Well, you park them right now,” he said. “No heavy thoughts when you’re eating my food. Food should bring happiness, not sadness.”

  She smiled at him. “Well, I hadn’t heard that before.”

  “Well, you’re hearing it now,” he said. “Food should be a comfort. It should feed the soul and feed the heart, and it should definitely feed the body. Otherwise you’re eating the wrong kind of food.”

  “For so long,” she said, “I put food in my mouth because it was available to keep me going.”

  “Well, your luck has changed,” Dennis announced. He motioned to the array of food in front of him. “What can I get you?”

  “Vegetables,” she said immediately.

  He nodded and lifted a lid. There was a beautiful stir-fry with mouth-watering broccoli in some kind of a light sauce.

  “That looks lovely,” she said. He served her one scoop. As she considered it, and she said, “Three scoops total please.” He added two more; now her plate was mostly full.

  “What will you have for protein to go with that?” he asked.

  She smiled at him. “What have you got?”

  “I’ve got a beautiful piece of sea bass here for you,” he said.

  “And I’ll take it too,” she said. “I can’t remember the last time I had fish.”

  He just stared at her, shook his head, and reached for a lovely piece of fish that he placed on the side of her plate. “Now, potatoes, rice, anything else?”

  She shook her head. “Nope, nothing. I’ll add a green salad as I go through.” She was wondering if she would even have room to eat some salad, but it looked good. She knew that they made it fresh every day, everything from Greek to Caesar. Grabbing a small bowl, she added a Caesar salad to her tray and then moved over, bypassing the coffee and reaching for a large glass of water.

  Slowly she made her way outside to the deck, where she sat down all alone. She still hadn’t collected any friends who she could have a meal with. She was hoping that that would happen, but so far it hadn’t yet. Even as she sat here, she could hear friendly groups forming all around her.

  She knew she was new, although not as fresh as anybody suspected, but had hoped that maybe she would have made a little more strides in the friendship area. Perhaps it was her air to stay away. And that’s something she had garnered after her husband and she started having a lot of trouble. She hadn’t wanted to get into that well of self-pity, where all she could talk about were the problems in her life, so she avoided people until she got her balance back.

  But now, as she sat staring out across the hills, she realized she was more than ready to have some friendly conversation.

  Almost as if her wish was fulfilled, somebody with a tray, standing on two crutches, stopped at her side.

  He looked down at her and asked, “Do you mind if I share your table?”

  She looked up at him in surprise and glanced around, then realized that all the tables were full. She immediately shook her head and said, “Not at all. I didn’t realize this was the last free table.”

  “Doesn’t matter if you’re willing to share,” he said with a smile. He placed his tray several seats over from her, as if he wanted space too. But still, at least she wasn’t entirely alone. And then she realized that she recognized him from the hot tub the other day. Although maybe not necessarily everybody would have recognized him, for what made it more memorable for her was because he’d been in such pain. His muscles weren’t at peace. And she’d seen way too much of that with her own son. She ate quietly, and finally, when she looked up, she caught him staring at her and glancing at her plate.

  “You eat only vegetables?”

  “Sometimes,” she admitted. “I missed out on all the fresh vegetables for a long enough time. And I know for a fact I need the nutrition to get my body back to what it needs to be.”

  At that, curiosity piqued his gaze. “You don’t look sick.”

  “No?” she said. “That’s the thing in a place like this. The people who are physically injured are reasonably visible. The rest of us have our own problems, only they aren’t as visible.”

  “Yeah? What kind of problem are you dealing with?” And there was almost a derisive tone to it.

  She immediately felt her walls coming up. “Nothing much. Just long-term stress. And I’m smart enough to know I need my nutrients to help get back over the hump of what that does to you.”

  He nodded. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. In a place like this, you tend to forget—just because you’re not missing an arm or a leg or your back isn’t all gimped up or you’re not carrying around half-a-dozen steel plates in your body that add ten pounds to your frame—that the people who work here can also have problems. And, of course, we all do. We just don’t like to acknowledge them.”

  His apology surprised her. She looked at him and gave him a quick nod, then said, “It’s not an issue. I just feel bad even complaining when I work here, and everybody is triumphing, overcoming such incredible challenges.”

  “Sometimes some people are overcoming more than others,” he said, his lips turning down in the corners.

  “Anybody who is here,” she said, “anybody who’s trying to survive, they deserve all the kudos coming their way. It’s not easy to work with people who are struggling, and it’s not easy to be somebody who’s got a problem which seems insurmountable in my own head, but it really isn’t because I see how much you guys are growing and changing. In fact, you’re my role models. Don’t ever think less of yourself for the journey that you’re taking right now.”

  His eyes widened slightly, and he looked at her with a tilt to his head, as if she were unique or maybe odd.

  She shrugged. “I know,” she said. “I’m not normal.”

  “Nothing is normal,” he said. “Not in this life. We are all who we are, but we don’t usually learn these substantial lessons until we get through some of life’s worst difficulties.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I can agree with that. And I’m finding a lot of hidden benefits to being here that I hadn’t realized originally. As if seeing what you are all working on is showing me where I need to work on things too.” And it was surprising that she understood the truth of her own words. If she hadn’t come here, she would have been wallowing in her personal losses and in her own grief, finding it very difficult to pick up her feet and to move forward. Instead she’d started to see the changes in her perspective. She still had a lot to work on, but it was a start. “It’s the best thing I ever did, coming here,” she said.

  And, with that, she picked up a large piece of broccoli and put it into her mouth.

  “Interesting way to look at life,” he said. Heath looked down at his plate. It was heavy in starches but also heavy in protein. But hers was full of bright colorful vegetables, and he realized she was
right. A lot more nutrients were available to him that he wasn’t taking advantage of, mostly because he was a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy. But that didn’t mean he shouldn’t be helping himself to the vitamins and minerals that were on offer. He glanced back at the cafeteria line and realized how much farther he would have to go just to get some veggies. Next time would be soon enough.

  “Is there something I can get you?” she asked.

  He looked at her in surprise and then shook his head. “No, not at all,” he said. “I can’t eat much more than this anyway.”

  “So what were you thinking of then?”

  “I thought you were right,” he said. “I haven’t really eaten much in the way of vegetables, and I’m sure my body needs it. And even supplements, which I do take, aren’t the same as getting the vitamins and minerals that I really need from food.”

  “If you want me to get you a bowl of vegetables, just say the word,” she said. “I’d be happy to.”

  “Nah,” he said, hating to put anybody out.

  She looked at him and frowned. “Are you one of those tough guys who can’t ask for help?”

  His gaze narrowed at her.

  She just beamed a bright smile. “Not that I know anything about men like that …”

  That surprised a laugh out of him. “In a place like this,” he said, “I imagine we all are guilty of that problem.” He watched as her lips pinched together. And then he gave a clipped nod. “You too, I suppose.” And his shoulders relaxed, as she nodded.

  “Exactly. Me too. I keep trying to accept help when it’s offered, but it’s hard. You shut people out, you keep them on the outside, not wanting them to see the depths of your pain and your confusion and what you’ve been through because you know that they can’t even begin to walk in your shoes.”

  “I think the fact that we walk in our own shoes,” he said, “is what gives us our own unique perspective in life. You certainly don’t want anybody else to walk in your shoes. Sure, we provide them with some empathy into our situation, but you don’t want them to suffer like you have. You just want them to walk in their own shoes and to handle their own challenges with their heads up, knowing they’re not alone.”

  She sagged back and looked at him. “That’s very prophetic.”

  He shrugged. “I have my moments. And, on that note,” he said, “I’ll ask you if you would mind getting me a bowl of whatever that mixed veggie dish is. Because I should be eating vegetables.”

  She laughed, hopped to her feet, and headed back to the cafeteria line.

  He smiled as he watched her. Tall, superslim—as in too thin—with long dark hair and a smile on her face. A smile of somebody who had earned it. Somebody who’d walked through the trials of life and had come out on the other side with more inner calm. She might think that she hadn’t gotten very far in life, but he could see the challenges she had surpassed. The milestones marked her actual growth.

  Almost like people should have rings like trees, so you could see the maturity on the inside and not just on the outside. It would help to match people’s ages up with their own growth. Not that he wanted people to look old, but he wanted people to recognize that wisdom didn’t always come on an easy pathway or just from the passage of time. Mostly it happened after hard years of journeys on steep paths that were convoluted and from decisions that maybe were better taken a different way.

  But nevertheless, after you’ve traveled that path, and you’ve come to the other side, there you are, standing proud and firm. Yes, looking a little more aged and a little worse for wear in some cases, but these signs weren’t something that you should hide with makeup or whatever. They were wrinkles in maybe a thicker skin that you should wear with pride. Not to show everybody and boast, Look at what I’ve done, but to know that you have surmounted that challenge, and that it was something worth going through as you now stand on the other side from a position of strength. These were the trials and tribulations of this thing called the human condition.

  Wouldn’t it be nice if any of that came with warnings, like in roadside alerts, that said, Hey, if you didn’t want to do any of this, then you shouldn’t have come to this pathway? When we started this journey, we needed the reminder that it could change in a heartbeat. Just like it had for him. And he suspected that that was a very similar issue for her too.

  Just then, she came back toward him with not a small bowl but a large bowl of bright green veggies in her hand. She smiled at him. “You do need colorful veggies,” she said, “but what you desperately need is dark greens. So here’s a mix.”

  He looked at it. “Your bowl is brighter,” he said, as he studied some of the steamed veggies before him. “I don’t even know what some of this is.”

  “Try it,” she said. “And then I’ll tell you what they are.”

  He hesitated but then realized that she was watching him, her own gaze narrowed but with laughter in her eyes. He sighed. “I did ask you to get them for me, didn’t I?”

  “You absolutely did,” she said. “And remember. What we take, we eat.”

  “You could eat most of this,” he muttered.

  She shook her head. “Nope. You try it first.”

  He picked up something that looked a whole lot like spinach but tougher and took a bite. He frowned, but the flavor was rich and deep, and, as he chewed, he thought it wasn’t all that bad. When he caught her looking at him, he smiled and said, “I don’t know what I just ate, but it was pretty decent.”

  “That was Swiss chard,” she said. “Go ahead and try the lighter greenish leaf on the side.”

  “Spinach, right?” He picked it up and tasted it and frowned. “It’s great.”

  “That was steamed spinach,” she said. “And that’s not all. You have broccoli and some kohlrabi in there too. That’s an unusual thing to add to a dish like this, but it adds hidden depth and density to the plate.”

  He looked at his bowl and asked, “Which is the kohlrabi?”

  “May I?” she asked as she took his fork, leaned over, and poked part of a slice of a light green stalk with a white end. “Something between a cucumber and a turnip.” She returned his fork to him.

  He bit it, surprised to find a bit of a crunch to it, and then nodded. “That’s really good.” He dug in his bowl, found another piece, and popped it into his mouth.

  “The rest of that,” she said, “you should eat with no trouble.”

  Chapter 12

  Even though dinner was over, she carried his words throughout the rest of the day. She still didn’t know what his name was, and he didn’t wear a name tag. She’d seen name tags on a lot of the patients, but it probably depended on the individual men as to whether they wanted to be identified. As she, herself, didn’t particularly care to wear a name tag.

  For the next few days, she looked around for him but didn’t see him. Then, at dinnertime, she was walking through to the deck, all alone, looking for a place and realized that she’d come out a little too early as the tables were mostly full. Off to the side at a table, all alone, was the same guy. She walked over and said, “Hey. Mind if I join you?”

  He looked up at her and smiled. “Absolutely. It’s time for me to return the favor,” he said and motioned at his table. This time it was only a table for four though, so she sat down across from him slightly to the side. He looked at her and laughed. “So do you have any meat in there?”

  She pointed at the two skewers of souvlaki Dennis had given her. “And lots and lots of veggies,” she said. In fact, she had this massive Greek salad too. “I gather it’s Greek night or something,” she added.

  “Absolutely,” he said. “They do all kinds of food themes here. And it’s pretty impressive.”

  “I’m quite surprised,” she said. “The food is unbelievable.”

  “It certainly is,” he nodded. “But I believe that’s part of their actual philosophy here. The food needs to help feed you and restore you to your balance, so it needs to be something that you want to come a
nd eat and not just eat to survive.”

  “Eat to thrive,” she said with a nod of her head. She picked up her spoon and stirred the cup of coffee she had.

  “Don’t you drink coffee all day long?”

  She looked at him in surprise. “Some days I do,” she admitted. “But Dennis made me a special coffee tonight,” she said, “something Greek.”

  “Oh,” he said, frowning. “I must have missed that.”

  She smiled up at him. “Really? I don’t think you miss much.”

  He grinned. “Maybe not,” he said. “Although I haven’t seen you around for very long.”

  “I’ve worked here off and on,” she said, “for about six weeks total now.”

  “Good for you,” he said. “I’m Heath, by the way.”

  He caught her just while she was inhaling and taking a bite. She immediately started coughing, and, by the time she was done, he held her a glass of water and looked at her worriedly. She took several deep breaths, then took a sip of water to clear her throat, and then said, “Sorry. Man, that went down the wrong way.” She hoped she had covered up her shock at finally seeing who she’d been visiting with at night when on mop duty.

  “Are you okay?” The concern was evident on his face and voice.

  She smiled, nodded, and said, “That’ll teach me. I guess I was a little too hungry.”

  “Two hatches,” he said. “One for air and one for food. Don’t mix them up.”

  At that, she burst out laughing.

  He grinned at her. “Haven’t you ever heard that before?”

  “No,” she said, “I haven’t.”

  “Then you don’t have any kids either,” he said, “because that’s something you get to tell them all the time too.”