A Broken Man (3 page)

Thump
.

“Ethan? You OK?”

Thump.

“Ethan?”

Thump. Thump.

Sarah ran toward the sound. “What the hell?” She stopped in her tracks, taking in the sight of his wheelchair caught in the tiny doorway that led from his bedroom to his bathroom. There were notches in the frame where his chair had rammed against it, and the beginnings of a series of deep, purple bruises covered his knuckles. The door itself hung at an unnatural angle, dangling from a single hinge at the top. She stepped further into the room. A screwdriver lay on the floor, surrounded by sawdust and chunks of wood. Splinters were visible around the door’s hinge. Ethan must have tried to rip the thing off with his bare hands. And damn if he hadn’t come close. Inside the bathroom, Sarah noticed a smudge of dried blood on the corner of the vanity and drops on the floor.

“So that’s how you fell this morning? Trying to take the door off by yourself?” She marveled at the strength and concentration it must have taken for him to pull himself up and unscrew the door, his legs nothing but useless deadweight dragging him back down. Overwhelming sadness hit her right in the gut when she put it all together—there had been no one else to do it. Ethan was all alone. She remembered that feeling of loneliness, the emptiness of it, how it used to fill her. She shook the thought away.

“I need to wash my face. I smell like antiseptic.”

She laid a hand on his shoulder, and his head dropped to his chest. He seemed smaller somehow, resigned. She pulled the chair back a few feet so she could get inside the bathroom. The room was spacious, but she had to open the cabinets under the sink to make room for his knees. She positioned the chair in front of the sink and then walked around in front of him to set the brakes.

“Everybody needs help sometimes.” She looked him squarely in the eyes when she said it, so close she could feel his breath on her cheek. A piece of hair had slipped back out of her ponytail. Ethan reached up and gently tucked it behind her ear. Her breath caught, and her lips parted almost imperceptibly when his fingers grazed first her temple and then the delicate skin on her ear. The sensation sent a jolt of electricity surging through her body. When her senses returned to her, Sarah jerked back from the uncomfortably intimate touch. What was she doing?

“I, uh…I’m going to wait outside while you do your thing.” She stared down at the elegant travertine tiles when she spoke. “You okay with the rest of it?”

“Yeah, I got it. Thank you.”

Chapter Four

“Just give a yell when you’re ready for me to come back in.” Sarah made her way out of the bedroom and shut the heavy door behind her.

The hallway was lined with photos in mismatched frames. Tucked away here, out of sight to most visitors, Ethan displayed his memories. Sarah’s eyes were immediately drawn to a photograph of Ethan standing on a seemingly deserted beach with about half a dozen other people. The group stood in front of water so blue it didn’t look real, holding their kayaks and grinning broadly. The next picture showed him in his climbing gear, hanging in front of a sheer rock face, giving a thumbs-up to the camera.

Another showed him with his arm around an older woman atop Machu Picchu; they looked triumphant on the emerald mountaintop high above the clouds. In yet another shot, which must have been taken with an underwater camera, Ethan pointed to a moray eel nestled in a coral reef. Practically every inch of him was covered by his scuba suit, but it was unmistakably him. Something about his posture, the confident ease that seemed to radiate from him.

Understanding sank down over Sarah, like a heavy cloud. The sheer weight of it was almost unbearable. How could she have been such an insensitive asshole? Every image showed him fit, strong, and happy, ecstatic to be alive. His livelihood—hell, his life—had revolved around pushing his body to do extreme and amazing things. No wonder he felt such a staggering sense of incompleteness in that chair.

Almost all of her patients came to her feeling at least a little sorry for themselves, and it was part of her job to get them to push past that. There’s no greater disability than a shitty attitude. But for most of them, it was as simple as showing them that they could still do most, if not all, of the things they’d always done. How could she show Ethan that? He wasn’t going to be trekking the Inca Trail anytime soon. She couldn’t imagine having this life, where the whole world was within reach, and losing it all in an instant. Maybe he deserved a little bit of slack for that.

“Sarah? I’m all done.” Ethan’s muffled voice broke Sarah’s trance, and she scurried back into the bathroom. She wheeled him back out to the living room and planted him on the sofa just in time to hear to doorbell sound.

“Heads up.” Ethan grabbed his wallet off the end table and tossed it to her. “Dinner’s on me.”

Sarah peeked in at the fat stack of neatly ordered bills and decided not to argue. “Sweet.”

After sending the delivery boy off with a healthy tip, she set up dinner on the mahogany coffee table.

“Pizza and breadsticks on paper plates. Now this is living.” He threw her a wicked smirk. When she went to pour them each a tall glass of Coca-Cola, he added seriously, “Do you have any idea how bad that stuff is for you? People use it to degrease car engines.”

Sarah thought for a minute. “Well, good. We’ll need a degreaser after this pizza.” She dabbed the top of her slice with a napkin and held it up in mock demonstration. She slid over a six-pack of beer she’d found in the back of the fridge. “This better?”

“Much.”

“Beer, the healthy choice?”

“Beer is our liquid bread. Thomas Jefferson said that.” He took a long swig. “Or maybe it was my Uncle Thomas. Either way.” He shrugged his shoulders and tipped the bottle up one more time.

Sarah glanced at the massive fireplace at the end of the room. Smooth gray stones stacked all the way up to the vaulted ceiling above them. A hewn chunk of driftwood formed the mantle. An image flashed in her mind of being curled up with Ethan in front of that fireplace in the dead of winter, a snowstorm raging outside. Where the hell had that come from? She pushed the thought out of her head and turned back to her pizza.

She wasn’t sure if it was the booze or the fact that he was back home, but by the time dinner was over, Ethan seemed completely at ease. He was funny even. Who knew? After they finished eating, Sarah gathered up their trash and tossed it.

“I did the dishes.” She chuckled a bit at her own joke. Just then, an idea took hold of her. “Where are your tools?”

“Huh? Garage, why?”

“I’ll be back.” Sarah hopped up and headed toward the garage. Ordinarily, she would never traipse around someone’s house without their permission, but something came over her, compelled her to do it. Ethan’s garage was neat and well organized, and in no time, she’d gathered the tools she needed and headed back inside.

“Found it,” she yelled.

“What?”

She didn’t answer. She was on a mission, and she’d be damned if she was going to let him stop her before the job was done. She set to work, and the banging noises reverberated throughout the big old house.

“What the—?” Ethan called.

The whole thing took less than fifteen minutes, but she’d managed to work up a sweat. When she finished, she made a pit stop in the kitchen before heading back to the living room. She deposited an armload of wood trim, a crowbar, and a hammer onto the floor with a loud crash. Then she pulled the bottle of Ethan’s good Scotch out of the back pocket of her cargo pants and held it out to him.

“The bathroom is now handicap accessible. I say we celebrate.”

Ethan looked from her to the pile of rubble in the floor and back to her again as he put two and two together. A broad grin broke out on his face, and in a matter of seconds he was doubled over with laughter. When it subsided enough that he could speak, he said, “Abso-fucking-lutely.”

She poured two fingers of Scotch into two tumblers and handed one to Ethan. He drank it down in a single gulp.

“That’s a crime. Did you even taste that?” She scoffed, but was already handing him the one she’d poured for herself. After fixing another, she took a sip and held it in her mouth, letting it linger on her tongue. “Mmm.”

The whisky warmed her belly and fired up her courage. “I’m sorry.” Her voice was suddenly quiet. “About the way I treated you before. I didn’t get it. I do now.”

Ethan gave her a quizzical look.

“The pictures. I saw all them in the hall. Of what you do. Of who you are.”

“Who I was.”

“You’re still the same person, you know. You’ve damaged the shell, but all the stuff that’s on the inside, the stuff that matters, is still there.”

Loaded silence hung between them.

“So how’d you get into physical therapy?” Ethan said, at last.

It was clumsy, but she understood how desperate he must have been to change the subject. “Oh, my mom, actually. She fell and broke her hip. I wound up moving in to help take care of her. She needed lots of physical therapy to get mobile again, and her shitty insurance didn’t cover much of it. Her PT was really great, though. Taught me lots of exercises that I could help her with at home. Things just kind of progressed naturally from there.”

“That must have been hard, becoming someone’s caretaker so young.”

“It was, but you know, I’m really grateful for it. We hadn’t spoken to each other for years before Mom’s accident, and it gave us a chance to mend fences. I’m glad I got to do that before she passed.”

Sarah could tell he wanted to ask what had happened to make them stop speaking, but he held back.

He finished off his second glass of whisky. “And here I thought I had found a nice, neutral subject.”

“It’s okay, really. I don’t mind talking about it. It was good for me. Inspired me to finish college, go to PT school. Gave me purpose. One day, I want to open my own PT and sports medicine clinic.”

“Nice dream. Opening my business was the best thing I ever did.”

“Yeah? What kind do you have, exactly?”

“Basically, it’s an outdoor adventure company. We do a little bit of everything. We’ve got weekend snow-tubing trips for young professionals who need to get out of the city, and we’ve got month-long, mountain-climbing treks for serious athletes. I’m supposed to be leading a hang-gliding expedition in Brazil right now. Don’t guess I’ll ever be doing that again.” He clucked in contempt.

“Hang gliding? Isn’t that where you strap yourself to a kite and jump off a cliff?”

Ethan laughed. “That’s one way to put it.”

“You can still do that,” Sarah said earnestly. “You strap yourself to the kite, and I’ll push you off the cliff.”

“Smart ass.”

“Aww, you noticed.” She sank back into the sofa cushions. “How’d you get into all that anyway?”

“I’ve always been outdoorsy. I knew the only way I’d ever be any good at a job was if I could figure out how to get paid for that. I took my parents’ life insurance payout and started the company. It was touch-and-go for the first year or so, but after that, it took right off.” More than a hint of pride showed on Ethan’s face.

“Good way to honor your parents, too.”

“I hope so.” He stared down at his empty glass. “It was a plane crash. When I was little. Mom always called this place her Taj Mahal. Dad was taking her to India to see the real thing. They never made it.”

The strange look he’d given her earlier suddenly made sense. Sarah was overwhelmed by the desire to go over and hug him, but she fought it back. He’d probably hate that.

Ethan finally broke the awkward silence. “Well, this has been fun, but I think I’m going to have to go to bed before one of us commits suicide. You ready?”

“Very.”

Chapter Five

The booze made Sarah a bit wobbly, but she was able to lift Ethan up and put him into the chair without incident. She was almost sorry that the evening had to end. Without realizing it, sometime between the pizza and the Scotch, she’d started to enjoy herself. She rolled him back to his bedroom, and he let out a laugh the instant she turned the light on.

“I’d almost forgotten about the door.” He took a nice, long look, admiring Sarah’s handiwork. “You did all that with a crowbar? Looks like you went at it with a sledge hammer.”

Huge chunks of sheetrock had been ripped out all the way around the opening, exposing the bare wood of the frame behind it. The mess spread out two or three feet onto Ethan’s plush carpet. Most of the large chunks had been gathered in a pile out of the way, but a thin layer of sheetrock dust coated almost everything in the room.

“Desperate times.” Sarah shrugged.

She rolled Ethan’s chair to the side of the bed closest to the bathroom and locked it into position, so it would be easy for him to slide into by himself if he needed to get up in the night. She hooked her arms underneath him and pulled him up, a maneuver she must have performed thousands of times on hundreds of patients. But this time, for some reason, it felt different.

Maybe it was because she’d been drinking, or maybe it was because she was literally putting Ethan to bed. Either way, she was keenly aware of her physical closeness to him, his body pressed to hers, his arms around her. His hands slid across the sensitive spot on the back of her neck, and she tried very hard to ignore the goose bumps that ran down her spine when his skin touched hers.

She told herself to snap out of it and be professional. She took a deep breath to calm down, but taking in Ethan’s clean, masculine scent only made things worse. Focus. Methodically, she pivoted the two of them around and positioned Ethan above the bed.

His foot caught.

If she hadn’t been tipsy, she might have been able to hold them up anyway. Instead, she practically dropped him onto the bed. He didn’t have time to unhook his arms, and he pulled her down on top of him. The two of them collapsed in a giggling heap on top of the thick down comforter. It took three tries before Sarah could find enough purchase to push herself up off of him.