Ryatt, p.2
Ryatt, page 2
“I really love black licorice,” he told her. “I haven’t had any in a very long time.”
“Well, we can fix that,” she stated. “I just need to know a little more about what kind you prefer. I know there’s soft. There are long skinny strands. There’s rope licorice. There are … one million different kinds.”
“You know something? I haven’t had it in so long that I don’t even know what choices I have,” he admitted. “Maybe get a couple different ones for me to try.” And then he asked, “How does that work?”
“Tell me how much you want me to spend,” she explained, “and either I can collect the money before I go or bring you a bill, and you can pay afterward.”
He said, “I do have a little bit of cash but not much.”
“We also can run banking through the center here,” she shared. “We do that for small denominations on a regular basis for patients.”
“Oh.” He hesitated.
She chuckled. “Seems like you haven’t quite integrated into the center yet.”
“I think that’s my fault,” he admitted quietly. “I was so adamant that nothing here would help me that I think I hurt myself more.”
“Well,” she replied, “understanding that is huge progress. Now it’s up to you to change it.” And she added, “I’ll go figure out what the black licorice choices are, and I’ll bring some back this time. And we can work from there.” And, with that, she hung up and got back to work.
When Ryatt got through his PT session the next day, he was tired and frustrated. He glared at Shane. “I know it’s supposed to take time, but is it supposed to take this much time?”
Shane sat back on his heels, from where he’d crouched on one of the thick mats, showing Ryatt different moves. “There is no set timeline. There is no right or wrong here. PT is very individualized to accommodate each patient’s strengths and weaknesses. There is no You’re doing it wrong. Therefore, you’re set back, or You’re doing it right. Therefore, you’ll get out of here early,” Shane explained. “Yes, there are definitely more correct ways to do these moves and ways that you need to do them better. You’ve come a long way in this last month.”
“I’ve come a long way emotionally,” Ryatt corrected. “And, for that, I apologize for my behavior early on.”
Shane faced him again. “Good. I’m really glad you do see the change in yourself, and you understand what a problem it was before. However, the fact of the matter is, there’ll always be challenges, and none of these challenges are guaranteed to be any easier. You are making physical progress. You are getting somewhere. Are you at the tipping point, where you can necessarily see it? No, absolutely not.” Shane tapped his tablet. “You’re at that point where it’s important that we keep your spirits up, and we keep you moving forward, so that you don’t get so depressed that you give up. Thankfully you have come a very long way.”
“It doesn’t feel like it,” Ryatt replied, staring down at his twisted thigh, ending at a stump where he should have had the knee and the rest of his leg.
“You have two solid upper legs. Yet even the whole leg isn’t necessarily in great functioning form right now because it is adapting while you are on crutches. You still have that solid femur bone and associated muscles on your partial leg, which will allow us to get you fitted for a prosthetic, as soon as that stump has healed. While your legs are not necessarily in great functioning form right now,” Shane noted, “they will be. You’ve gone through so many surgeries that your body must have some time to recover and to relearn its proper function again. None of this is easy on your body. I mean, if you saw what they did during the surgeries”—Shane shook his head—“it’s just amazing that the human body can recover at all.”
“I wanted to see a video of each one,” Ryatt confessed, “but apparently they don’t do that.”
“Interesting.” Shane frowned, looking at him. “If it were me having that kind of surgery, I’d want to know what they did too. But, in your case, I can tell you that it was pretty rough. You’ve got pins. You’ve got staples. They would break bones and move things around in order to get them where they wanted them.”
Ryatt nodded. “There was talk about some pretty rough fixes.”
“Exactly, so just take it easy on yourself and don’t expect more than you have to give each day.”
“I haven’t expected very much out of myself yet,” he admitted. “I’m afraid to even look at the reasoning behind that because I feel like I’ve … I had just given up.”
“But that doesn’t mean that you should be afraid of that,” Shane stated. “You’ve turned quite a corner in many ways. You just need more time to keep improving.”
“That’s the problem though, isn’t it?” he murmured. “Only so much time that I have left in that bed.”
“No.” Shane frowned. “We’re very good at making sure that you get the time you need here,” he stated. “And we don’t take beds away from patients. So get that nonsense out of your head. Don’t think about that as being your blocking point.”
Ryatt nodded slowly. “It is definitely a concern. I mean, after seeing that my sister is back again”—Ryatt shook his head—“that was one eye-opener and not one I particularly liked to see.”
“I don’t think she liked it either,” Shane noted, “but Hathaway House is doing her a world of good.”
“Is it?” He stared at Shane. “You’re not lying to me about that, are you?”
Shane stared at him in shock. “No, absolutely not. I wouldn’t do that. Lying doesn’t help anyone. Not even liars trying to get away with something. And, if someone here ever lies to you, you immediately report it to Dani and to the Major. Plus, even though Quinton is your sister, you still don’t get access to her medical details. If she wants you to have that, she’ll give you formal permission. However, for our purposes here, dealing with you, your mind-set, your recovery at Hathaway House, I’ll state for the record, in generic terms, that your sister’s progressed this second time too—which is evident to all who see her around here daily, whether medical personnel, other patients, or visitors or the like.”
“I didn’t call you a liar—”
“Yes, you did,” Shane interrupted. “And I’ll call you out on every one of those negative, critical, and downright false statements that you make in front of me, until your own brain tells you to stop it. It’s not good for anyone’s health—yours, Quinton’s, mine, anyone’s.” He stared at Ryatt and said, “Now under that veneer is the real reason you are reaching for. What is it?” When Ryatt hesitated, Shane added, “Don’t waste my time or yours. Spit it out, Ryatt. Face it.”
“It just worries me. I mean, what if I go through all this, and it’s for nought? She’s back again. Do you realize how much work and effort she put in the first time?” And then he stopped. “Of course you do. You were on her team back then, weren’t you?”
“I was,” Shane confirmed. “And you’re right. It is disconcerting to see somebody who went through so much return again. The good news though, she will be back up on her feet in record time because of all the work she’d done before, and now we know what more we need to do to correct it.”
“But why wasn’t that done in the first place?” he asked in frustration.
“Just like a new car, with time and use, it wears down. And our human bodies are much more complex machines than some vehicle. We still don’t know all there is to know about the systems within us. So health and healing are dynamic fields, changing as we learn more. But, in a nutshell from a PT perspective, time sometimes makes the body shift, and, in Quinton’s case, she didn’t recognize when her alignment was out of balance and didn’t take the steps to correct it.”
“So it was her fault?” he asked, confused.
“I certainly wouldn’t use the term fault, but … definitely something changed in her physical body, and that can happen to any of us,” Shane added. “It can happen to you, yes. It can happen to me. It can even happen to Quinton a third time,” he stated. “It’s all about doing what we need to do to stay healthy every day. And listening to our bodies. If something feels wrong, speak up, get it checked.”
Ryatt nodded at that. “Fine. It’s still disconcerting.”
“Of course it is, and, in your case, probably a little more than we would have expected. You’ve seen your sister so healthy and so strong that this probably seems to you like a major failing, and I wouldn’t want her or you to think of it that way,” he explained.
“I don’t want her to think of it as a failing at all.”
“And that’s good,” Shane replied, “because she’s done so much, all the rehab work before and again now. It’s not that she’s done something wrong. It’s just that healing is not always 100 percent or permanent.”
He nodded. “I get that. I do. It’s just depressing to think of everything that she’s gone through, and here she is, back again.”
“And yet it seemed to me that, dealing with her relapse, you picked yourself up and weren’t quite so upset with yourself,” Shane noted, sitting back. “Your attitude before was terrible, as you know, since you and I both were at loggerheads about it. However, since then, seeing your sister and what she’s going through again, you seem to be better.”
“And that’s terrible, isn’t it?” he asked, staring at him, his shoulders slumping. “Makes me feel even worse.”
“Which is not why I’m saying it, but I’m asking you, how is that a thing? Explain to me how seeing your sister’s setback could eventually motivate you out of your bad mood?”
“I don’t know.” Ryatt shrugged. “I’d just seen her for so long, supposedly healthy, but her in that hospital bed is a vision that made me really depressed, and then I got really angry.”
“Anger can be a good motivator sometimes.” Shane started packing up his tablet and his notepad and paper. “Sometimes anger is a really good thing. And, in this case, if it got you back on track, I’m all for it.”
“Maybe,” Ryatt noted, “but it’s also hard because it reminds me that, no matter what she did, it still didn’t work.”
“You are wrong there. It did work. It worked well. For a time. Then a misalignment sent her body downhill and back here again, where we can address her alignment and set her to rights and get her back out of here again. Don’t twist the facts. What I’m more interested in with you is how you managed to turn around after your sister’s admittance here this second time and how you looked after your headspace when it happened to her. I still don’t get that. As a PT, I’d like to know what worked for you. Maybe it would work for my other patients.”
Ryatt took a deep breath. “It suddenly occurred to me that she might need more from me, more than ever before. And, while I’m sitting here and wallowing, she’d been looking after me, and now she might need me to look after her.” He frowned, facing Shane. “I didn’t explain that very well, but …”
Yet Shane studied Ryatt, a smile on his face. “I think you did pretty well with that,” Shane commented. “The good news is that hopefully your sister’s current issues are not as bad as you may be worried about. Plus, with Stan now potentially in her life for the long-term, any worries she has will be shared.”
“Is that a good thing,” Ryatt asked, “to share your worry?”
“I would say so. I see it with my patients. The ones with supportive partners seem to fare better overall than the ones going it alone, unless you have a really determined young lady, like Quinton, during her first stay here. Stan’s influence on her health and well-being should amplify her healing here, as he is a good person, intent on serving others.” Shane looked over at Ryatt, waiting for a response.
“I know he is,” Ryatt admitted. “Believe me. I do know that. I’ve seen him around. He brings the animals in every once in a while. Occasionally I tell him that I’m really not in the mood, and he just smiles and carries on.”
“And at least you can share that with him,” Shane noted. “However, it’s interesting that you’re not in the mood for an animal that has only love to give.”
“But when you don’t believe you deserve any love,” he replied, “it doesn’t matter how much love they have to give. You still don’t think you should be the one to get it.”
Shane stared at him for a long moment. “And that is a whole different ball of wax.”
Ryatt winced. “Thankfully it’s not your problem. That’ll be something I have to talk about with our lovely shrinks on staff.” He gave Shane an eye roll.
“Maybe,” Shane replied, “but are you talking to them?”
Ryatt flushed and glared at Shane. “I suppose now you’ll tattle on me, huh?”
“No, not necessarily,” he murmured, “but you might want to think about it.”
“Think about what?” he asked.
“Think about talking to them about it,” Shane stated. “An awful lot going on in that head of yours could use some straightening out. Giving your stump time to heal and getting a properly fitted prosthetic would help too.” And, with that, Shane was gone.
As Ryatt slowly crutched his way back to his room—hating the crutches, yet acknowledging they kept him more independent—he admitted, at least to himself, how hard it was to accept help or love because he was depressed and fed up. … Sometimes it seemed like all this rehab was useless. His sister’s return seemed to prove that—at least originally.
When he got to his room, however, he found a note on the door. Call me. Then he realized who it was from. He smiled, made his way over to his bed, pulled out his cell phone, and dialed Lana’s number. When she answered a few minutes later, her voice was distracted. “Hey, it’s Ryatt.” There was a moment where he could almost think that she had blanked out on his name.
“Oh, Ryatt.” And then she sighed. “Ryatt, here at Hathaway. I deal with outside vendors too, so I couldn’t even begin to place your name for a moment there,” she explained. “It’s been such a crazy day.”
“Not a problem,” he replied, slightly disappointed that she had no instant recognition of him by name. But then why would there be? It’s not as if he’d gone out of his way to be memorable in any good fashion. “I just wondered if you had any licorice for me?”
“I’m coming down your way. I’ll pop in.” With that, she hung up.
He frowned and shrugged. “Whatever.” If she needed to come, then that was fine. Almost instantly he pulled off his T-shirt and shifted onto the bed, groaning at the pain in his thighs after his workout session with Shane. When Ryatt looked up, she stood there, chewing on her bottom lip. He waved his hand. “Hey. Sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” she asked.
He frowned. “I just … I don’t normally show pain like that.”
“Maybe you should,” she suggested. “It makes you a little more relatable.”
He gave a brief nod, then looked at her hands. “What’s that?”
“Well, you mentioned licorice.” She opened the bag. “I found three different kinds, the soft Australian stuff, the regular”—and she held up a longer package—“and then these are the English type.” She shook her head. “I honestly wasn’t sure what you would like, so I bought one of all three. Just don’t eat too much at once.”
He laughed. “You know something? I’m not sure which I like either, so I’m happy to have an assortment to try.”
“Good.” She walked over and placed them on the night table.
“And how much do I owe you for them? I do have some cash here.” The cost she noted was cheap, as far as Ryatt was concerned. “Don’t you guys add a markup for having to go and collect it all?”
She laughed. “No, we sure don’t. Maybe we should. Maybe we shouldn’t.” She gave a wave of her hand. “It’s probably better for all of us if we just keep doing what we’re doing.”
“It’s hard to run a business that way,” he noted, “not capturing all that employee time, plus the gas and the wear and tear on the vehicle, right?”
“Do you know much about running a business?”
He nodded. “I took some business classes in college, and I really enjoyed them. Wanted to do more in that area,” he shared. “But I quit, joined the service, thought I’d go back and finish college after my tours.”
“Aha,” she replied. “So is that what you’ll do when you leave here?”
He frowned at her. “I really don’t know. I always thought about doing some retail sporting goods shops, but not sure I’m necessarily up for it.”
“You could do all kinds of stores that don’t necessarily have to be retail,” she noted.
“Like what?” he asked.
She shrugged. “How about a digital online store?”
“Maybe,” he said. “I don’t know. More things to consider.”
“Well, at least you have the time to think it over.” She added excitedly, “Any time you want to talk about it, I’d love to.”
“Why? You like business?”
“I run a couple online stores,” she shared. “They’ll never make me any self-sustaining money, but I always figured it couldn’t hurt to have something as a secondary income.”
He nodded. “That’s very smart. Too many people never think about what comes after.”
“Exactly. In my world what comes after was the loss of a mother, a father basically drinking himself to death, and, if I hadn’t been doing what I was doing,” she stated, “he probably would have taken all my money too. As it is, I’m okay, and my father, now that I’ve convinced him to let me handle the money, still has a roof over his head.”
“I gather your father’s still not adjusting to his loss.”
“No, I’m not sure anybody ever really adjusts to their losses,” she noted quietly.
He nodded. “Well, I’m not doing a good job on that myself, so I’m really not somebody to talk.”
She smiled. “Back to that again, huh?” she asked. “You’re doing fine. Just keep doing what you’re doing, and you’d be surprised what you can accomplish, even given a little bit of time. Anytime you want to discuss business, I’m happy to have those conversations. As I told you earlier, I have a marketing background from my previous job, but I also have the practical real-life applications of running my own online businesses too.” Then she checked her watch. “And now I need to get back and finish off too many things before my day’s over.”
