I held my breath, waiting. Hana gave me a contemplative look before she said, “It does hurt, pretty much constantly. Nerves were damaged, and they can fritz out on me, but the main issue is that I lost a lot of the connective tissue around my knee joint. For a while, saving it was touch-and-go.”
“That had to be scary,” Ida Jane murmured, eyes wide.
“It was.”
Those simple words unleashed a maelstrom inside me. So. Much. Guilt.
Hana must have seen it, because she took my hand and squeezed.
“How did they save it if the tissue was compromised?” Maxim asked. He frowned at her leg, not paying attention to me.
I wanted to know the answer as well, but I didn’t want Hana to feel pressured.
“There’s a newer technique that allowed my orthopedist to add cartilage from a cadaver to my patella,” Hana explained. “The problem was that the way my leg broke—at my shin near my ankle, then just below my knee, just above my knee, and at my pelvis—left me immobilized for months, which caused muscle atrophy. So this leg is shorter than the other.”
“Ah. The limp.” Maxim nodded. “But shouldn’t the muscle tissue return with proper therapy and workouts?”
Hana chewed her lip, then shocked me by crouching and pulling up the hem of her wide-legged pants.
“You don’t have to…” I began. But I stopped when I caught sight of the mass of pink and faded scar tissue that ran up and around her pale skin from the top of her boot—and probably lower—to the hemline of her pants, which now rested above her knee.
Maxim leaned in, studying. He tilted his head as he pointed at three separate lines of scar tissue around her knee. “These were the surgeries?”
“Some of them. Those gave me back cartilage and repaired tendons. But this is what I wanted to show you.” Hana touched the longest scar, which ran along the side of her shin bone to meet the ones Maxim had been looking at. “Initially, the orthopedist put pins along this incision to reconnect the bone fragments, but it was splintered in too many places, so they had to go in and shore up the bone with more metal.”
“Your leg is titanium, then? Indestructible.”
Hana wrinkled her nose and dropped her pants back in place. “Definitely not indestructible. And not a superhero. My body continues to reject the metal they used. We’ve tried two different alloys. If my immune system continues to target it, they’ll probably have to amputate my leg.”
Chapter14
Hana
Paxton had said hardly a word since I showed him, Maxim, and Ida Jane my leg back at their place.
I’d taken that risk because already, I could feel myself falling for Paxton again. He needed to understand the complexity of my health, how badly damaged I was. My leg was hideous—I knew that—but I hadn’t expected him to withdraw from it. Disgusted, sure. I could understand that. I felt it when I looked at my leg, just as I also felt such gratitude to still have it, even on the bad days when it swelled and itched and burned.
We’d walked over to Maxim and Ida Jane’s house because it was only a quarter mile or so, but Paxton hadn’t seemed like he wanted me to walk back. I’d been just as adamant about using the two legs I still had. As a result, we’d walked most of the way in silence, and when he opened his door, I was exhausted. I headed for the couch and settled on it with a long sigh. Closing my eyes, I relished the faint throb in my leg. At least it was no longer a burning ache.
Paxton settled next to me and pulled my leg up onto his thick thigh.
“What are you doing?” I asked, opening an eye.
“I had no idea, Hana.”
“I know. I didn’t tell you.”
“You could have died in that accident.”
“I almost did. Well, afterward. I was in bad shape, not just my leg.”
He laid his warm palms on my shin, and I moaned at how good that felt. He slid his hands up and down over my pant leg with just enough force to ease some of the tension in the stiff, overworked muscle.
“Want to take a bath? Would that help with the stiffness?” he asked.
“Maybe.” I shrugged. “I don’t have a bathtub, so I’m not sure.”
Before I could say anything else, Paxton hauled me into his arms and started up the stairs off the entryway.
