“Good to hear.”She turned back to her computer.“I need to take a couple vitals and change out that bag of antibiotics.”She tilted her head toward the bar over his bed that held his IV bag.“Is there anything else I can get for you?You’ll be due for some pain meds in another hour or so.Let me know if you’re hurting more than you can handle.What we don’t want you to do is tough it out.Let me know and we’ll see what we can do.”
“I’d really like to start working my way off the pain meds.”Spider shook his head.“I understand they’re needed, but I hate the way they make me feel.I hate the way they make my thoughts slow and fuzzy.”
“I don’t know if we can do anything about that, but I’ll make note of it.The doctors may have something else they can try, but that has to come from them.”
Spider didn’t say anything, just nodded.He hadn’t been holding his breath on that one but had wanted to put it out there just in case.
“Oh, I see Mr.Keane has been here.He usually comes in to talk to people like you.”
“Like me?”
Heather gave him a soft smile.“People dealing with an unexpected amputation.”
“There are people who have expected amputations?”he couldn’t help it, the words just tumbled out.
“It happens.Sometimes they know it’s coming for a while, sometimes it’s a procedure they choose.Everyone goes through their own process, but it’s different for those that chose it.”
Spider shook his head.He couldn’t imagine what it would take for someone to choose to lose a limb, especially a leg.But he wasn’t in the right place to even think about that right now.
“Yeah, he was here.What do you know about him?”Spider asked.
Heather stopped what she was doing, looked at him, and bobbed her head from side to side for a moment, as if she was trying to decide what to say.
“I honestly don’t know a lot.I know there’s a list of people to contact when specific things happen, people like therapists, councilors, that kind of thing.He’s on the list for any kind of lower limb loss.”She turned back to changing out his IV bag.“He has been as long as I’ve been here.I’ve only met him a couple of times, but I’ve had several patients who told me how great he is, how he’s the reason they ended up doing so well.Some just need to see that it’s not the end of their life, others need someone to look up to, for yet more, it’s a competition.They work hard to recover to get better than him.Somehow, Mr.Keane seems to know what they need and he is that.I don’t know how he does it, but he does.”She finished changing out the IV bag and took the rest of the vitals.
“I’ve got a few more things to do before I can see about taking you for a walk, but I’ll check in soon, all right?”
Spider nodded.He watched her go, then turned to look around the room for what felt like the billionth time.His gaze landed on the card still sitting on the table.Clint Keane.He tried to remember if he’d ever heard the name before today, but he couldn’t remember anything.
He leaned back against the bed, tilting his head back as he let everything that had happened that morning, when the man had visited, run through his head.In his head, he could hear the whole encounter again, but he had a hard time focusing on the man who’d walked in and stood as if he still had both legs.Instead, he found the girl, his daughter ...what had he called her?Jordon.She was the one Spider couldn’t keep his attention from.
She stood to the side, not saying anything, and the only thing she’d done without prompting was to work Clint’s jeans down over the boot.Spider had no clue why he had a hard time trying to turn his attention back to her father.To the man who said he was there to help.
What was it about Jordon that he had a hard time ignoring?
Chapter Four
