Chapter 116

I rubbed my forehead. I didn’t want things to devolve into a genuine argument and I could see that Liz was on the threshold.

“You don’t believe me,” she said. “I told you, nothing like last night will happen again!”

“Until tonight,” I said. “I know you already have plans. Dayton told me last night that you’ve got something going on today. The fact that everybody is already dressed and ambulatory tells me that it’s going to kick off pretty soon. Right?”

Liz sighed heavily.

“I can change plans,” she said quickly.

“You shouldn’t have to change plans,” I countered. “That’s my point. You’ve got something you want to do today. Those plans don’t include me – or if they do, I haven’t agreed to them. You shouldn’t have to change things for me.”

Liz shook her head and looked away out the window.

“It’s fine, Liz,” I said.

“It isn’t fine,” she countered. “I ... I thought Brea would be here today. I forgot it was Saturday until I texted her a few minutes ago. We were going to take everybody to an antique shop and to the Ryman later tonight. It sounded like a good idea when we talked about it. Now I know it was stupid. I’m not going to drag you antiquing. Even if you enjoyed things like that, there are just too many people in too small a space. The Ryman is the same way. The seats are like church pews. You’d be miserable after 15 minutes.”

“I also have a lot of rehab to catch up on,” I said.

“Why was Ciera here?” Liz asked out of the blue.

“I have a lot of rehab to catch up on,” I repeated. “She’s coming back out this afternoon and twice tomorrow. I’ve lost a lot of flexibility in the last week. I’ve got to do these exercises. That’s why I want to change slings. There are ones out there that one person can operate.”

“That one is better,” Liz said, gesturing to the item that I’d placed on a chair. “It lets you keep a Cryo-pac or an electrical stimulator on the shoulder. The others don’t have that.”

“Then maybe I wear that one when I’m sleeping or when you’re going to be available,” I said. “I can wear the other one when nobody is here to help me. I don’t ever want to be the reason you don’t do something you want to do. OK?”

“And you aren’t,” Liz insisted.

“Uh-huh,” I said with clear skepticism. “So you didn’t just offer to change your plans today?”

Liz covered her eyes and lowered her chin to her chest.

“You can’t be here by yourself and still do your therapy,” Liz said. “I promised yesterday that I’d make it a priority.”

“It’s my priority,” I said.

“And your priorities are my priorities,” Liz yelled. “Don’t you fucking get that? If it is important to you, it is important to me.”

“Please don’t yell,” I said.

Liz pinched her nose again. The door opened and our mothers stood there.

“Is everything OK?” Bev asked.

“Yes,” I answered.

“No,” Liz replied at the same time.

I glanced over at her and frowned. It gave her the opportunity to continue talking.

“Travis wants to give up on his physical therapy and move to occupational therapy,” Liz said.

My mother tilted her head at me.

“That’s only part of the story,” I corrected.

“We left him here last night with no food and nobody to help him with his rehab,” Liz continued.

“Liz,” I said sharply.

“Wait!” Mom said. “There was nobody here with you last night?”

“I’m capable of being by myself,” I said defensively.

“That’s why you were sleeping outside,” Mom said. “I thought you said you’d arranged for somebody to be around when you weren’t.”

“I did,” Liz said. She was now the one on the defensive.

“Mom, stay out of it,” I said.

“I will not,” Mom declared.

“Then one of us will go somewhere else,” I told her. “I can’t throw you out of Liz’s house but I also don’t have to stay here.”

Our staring contest lasted almost a full minute.

“Nobody is going to go anywhere,” Liz said when it became pretty evident that neither of us planned to back down. “Yes, Annabelle, there is a health care professional that is going to work with Travis when I can’t. But she worked elsewhere this week and only had a few hours yesterday. I didn’t realize that. I thought that she would be here until at least four and we would be back by five or six.”

“Then we assumed your father was here,” Bev said, frowning.

“Why didn’t you say something?” Mom asked me.

“What should I have said?” I wondered. “Hey, everybody, drop what you’re doing and come home because I need you for 10 or 12 seconds? That’s what it would have amounted to.”

“It was bigger than that,” Liz said. “He couldn’t fix anything. We don’t have a microwave or even an electric can opener. I can’t think of anything in the kitchen that can be operated with one hand. So he ate bread – for lunch and for supper. He skipped rehab sessions because nobody was here to help him with the sling.”

She reached forward and lifted up the hem of my shirt. I had a rash around my stomach.

“And this,” she said. “He went into the pool and wound up wearing a wet shirt for hours because there wasn’t anybody here to help him change it. That’s not 10 or 12 seconds!”

“The amount of help I needed came to that amount,” I said. In truth, it probably would have added up to almost a full five minutes but I wasn’t going to quibble.

“Now we’re looking at the same situation tonight,” Liz continued. “The Ryman seats would kill his shoulder. They kill my back and legs and I can shift around some. He really can’t. We already talked about the antique shops.”

“I can stay with him,” Mom said.

“Mom!” I said in exasperation.

“Actually, I was going to offer to stay,” Bev said. “I’m not really interested in antiques. And outside of Liz, I don’t really enjoy that type of music. Mickey is the same way. It will give us a chance to visit with Travis some. We really haven’t had much time to just chat.”

“Nobody has to stay,” I insisted. “Ciera will be out this afternoon and I’ll just wear the soft sling until somebody gets home. As long as Mickey brings back something I can eat, I’ll be fine.”

“If that woman is going to be here then somebody needs to stay,” Mom said.

“Oh, Christ, Mom,” I said.

Liz just chuckled.

“I don’t mean to sound egotistical but I’m not worried about Travis hounding around,” she said.

“No,” Beverly said. “But it will protect him from any allegations she might make.”

Liz frowned but I could see the wheels in her head turning.

“Maybe the household staff will be here,” I offered. I didn’t want to start the precedent of having people adjust their plans because of me. That would lead to a lot of resentment (from the people affected and from me).

“Let me make some calls and see what we can work out,” Liz said.

A thought hit my brain.

“Bobbi and Dayton will be here,” I said. “Right?”

Liz looked up to where the couple probably still slept.

“I’m not sure and I don’t want to make it a requirement,” she said. “I kept them out way too late last night. I should have sent them home after dinner instead of having them come out with us. That would have solved a lot of problems. I’ll figure something out.”

“I just fucking told you that I don’t need you to figure anything out!” I said, my temper finally coming out.

Liz closed her eyes for a moment and I shifted my glare to my mother (and, because of proximity, Liz’s mother).

“What is your plan?” Mom asked, apparently unaffected by my baleful gaze.

“I don’t need a plan,” I countered. “All I need is for somebody to make sure there is something I can fix to eat. Mickey said he was going to take care of that on his way home.”

“Home from where?” Bev asked.

“He’s visiting some of the people you knew when you lived here,” I said.

“By himself,” Bev said, rolling her eyes.

“I think he figured that everybody would be sleeping most of the day,” I said, sticking up for my gender. “He didn’t seem to know that there were plans for today. I wasn’t sure they included him so I didn’t mention anything.”

“I’ll text him and let him know that we’re going to look at antiques,” Bev said.

“Just wait a bit, Mom,” Liz said. “I think we need to figure out who is going to be where before we start getting people back here. I think even Travis will agree that we need to start sticking with our plans instead of changing them on the fly. That’s what got us yesterday. We told him we’d be back by five or so. Then we wanted to get dinner so it turned into seven. Then we wanted to go out on the town. The next thing we knew it was two o’clock, the Roundhouse was closing and Travis had been stuck here by himself for 15 or 16 hours. If we had stuck with our plans it never would have happened.”

I decided to cut my losses.

“For the record, I’m fine with whatever you want to do,” I said as I headed to the door. “I’ll make it work for me. I am not a child. And in a couple of weeks it won’t matter about shifting plans. I’ll be at least functional.”

“We still need to talk about that,” Liz said to my departing back.

I turned to look over my shoulder.

“No, we don’t,” I stated.

Much to my surprise, everybody appeared happy to let me sort things out on my own – after Liz came upstairs to help me into my other sling after a shower. I hadn’t called for help to dry my back and she didn’t comment on the places that I hadn’t been able to reach.

She watched me carefully as I pulled my shorts on – but not in a sexual way. It was more a matter of curiosity as to what I was doing.

My time the evening before hadn’t been spent moping (well, not entirely). I had bookmarked a series of videos detailing how to do things with a single hand. I hadn’t been able to practice some of them because I couldn’t get my sling off but I had done one or two.

I took a deep breath and tried to remember how to tie my shoes. Liz leaned against the doorframe and watched as I tucked and twisted the strings around each other.

“That’s pretty cool,” she said when she saw how I was doing things. “Did Ciera show you that this morning?”

“YouTube,” I replied. “Apparently there is more on there than cat stuff – and Liz Larimer videos.”

“Ha-ha,” Liz said, offering a half smile.

I spent almost five minutes on my shoes. I couldn’t sit on the bed to do it because of the pressure bending forward put on my shoulder. So I put my foot on a box and stood while I leaned forward. I tried to do two things at once – the rotation exercises with my right hand while I manipulated the shoestrings with my left – and wound up doing nothing at once.

“Can I ask something?” she said when I stood up in frustration.