Falling From the Sky Read online

  But she’d failed to keep him interested. And he’d proposed to a sorority girl with long legs and bleached hair. The betrayal still stung. It was almost as piercing as the other woman’s overabundant perfume.

  Callie tapped her fingers on the chart Nathan had handed her. She really needed to get away from this place. She loved Vermont, but it was not an easy place to be single. Last night, she’d spent the evening scanning medical career websites for positions in Northern California, near her parents. She could start fresh out there, and meet some more people her age. It just might work.

  For now, she cast her eyes onto the patient file in her hands. Male, Caucasian, 31 years old. Alcohol poisoning. Then she saw the name. HENRY (HANK) LAZARUS. A nurse had scribbled HAZARDOUS! in the margin.

  * * *

  Hank did not want a serving of hospital mystery meat. He only wanted to go home.

  “No thanks,” he said for a second time to the buck-toothed woman who carried the tray into his room. Landing here last night had been an idiot move. As if Hank did not get enough of this place already. Three times a week he drove to the hospital for physical therapy sessions.

  And for what? His body simply did not seem to want to re-learn to walk. It didn’t matter how many hours he spent staring down at his feet, willing them to move.

  Before his accident, Hank’s idea of paralysis had been informed by Hollywood. He’d assumed that a paralyzed man wouldn’t be able to feel his legs, right? For some patients, that was supposedly true. But Hank had quite a bit of sensation in his legs. The pin-prick tests they liked to use on him were plenty uncomfortable, fuck you very much. He could feel his muscles about 75 percent as well as he’d felt them before.

  He just couldn’t control them anymore.

  Meanwhile, the one-year anniversary of his accident loomed. Last winter he’d heard the phrase “it can take up to a year” stuck at the front of nearly every sentence that doctors said to him. It could take up to a year to figure out how much muscle strength he’d regain. It could take up to a year to regain mobility.

  Now that nine of those months had passed, and Hank still wasn’t walking, they didn’t say it anymore. Now they started sentences with “every injury is different.” Like little fucking snowflakes. He heard that line a lot these days.

  Drinking himself into a stupor had been idiotic. But it wasn’t like he didn’t have a reason or ten.

  “You gonna waste this food?” the orderly asked again, pulling Hank from his reverie.

  “Someone else can have it,” he answered. Someone with no taste buds. Someone who didn’t have a mouth that was lined with wet newspaper, and a headache as sharp as his mother’s opinions.

  “Okay. If you’re sure.” The woman put the tray back on her cart and turned to go.

  “Well, it says here…” came a sweet voice from the doorway, “…that Mr. Lazarus will only eat a full rack of ribs from Curtis’s barbecue.”

  He looked up to see a very pretty woman in the doorway. Her honey-toned skin was set off by the white lab coat. Shiny caramel-colored hair covered up the name tag on her lapel, but he’d met this doctor before, he realized. She’d been here during the worst week of his life. As hazy and awful as those days had been, he couldn’t forget the combination of such a perfect pink mouth with a pair of intelligent blue eyes.

  “The chart stipulates spicy sauce and a baked potato,” she added, stepping into the room.

  “No shit?” He laughed. “That cannot be on my chart.”

  “I remember you, that’s all.” She winked. “I thought it was a perfectly sane thing to want.” She flipped the folder closed and sat down on an ugly plastic chair next to the bed. “I’m Doctor Callie Anders.” She held out her hand.

  “One second,” he said. Hank yanked his chair closer to the hospital bed and reached for the farther armrest. Leaning on it, he hiked his body off the bed and into the seat in one motion. Now he could face her properly. Even better, he looked like someone who was ready to leave the hospital. Already dressed in jeans and his sweater, all that was left was rolling out the door.

  Then he shook Callie’s hand, wondering how it was possible for anyone to look attractive under these godawful fluorescent lights. But the good doctor managed it. She had thick, wavy hair. Hank wanted to know how it would feel against his bare chest.

  Right. Dream on, dude. He smiled at her. “You know, Doctor Callie, I happen to remember you, too. You’re the one who told my family to chill the fuck out.”

  She grinned, revealing a dimple on one side. “Well, did they?”

  “They did, for a little while. But now they’re back on my case.” Shit. He shouldn’t be telling her any of this. He just needed to convince her that he wasn’t going to drink another bottle of tequila, so that she would sign his release papers. And then he needed to get the fuck out of here.

  She studied him, those blue eyes fixed on his. “What does your family want from you? Do I need to have another chat with them?”

  “Nah,” he shook his head. “They want me to try something called Functional Electrical Stimulation.”

  “Sounds kinky.”

  Caught off guard, he laughed. All the other doctors he’d met seemed to have had their sense of humor surgically removed. “If it was kinky, I might not object. It’s a way of activating muscles that you can’t use. It’s a pie in the sky technology.”

  “But you don’t think FES will work for you?” she asked. Her blue gaze became serious.

  He shook his head. “After nine months, I still don’t walk, and my family can’t seem to get over it.”

  She flipped through the paperwork in her lap. “Your chart says you’ve made a lot of progress. You’ve regained a lot of sensation. You live independently. That’s lucky.”

  Lucky. Hank hated that word. Since he’d woken up in the hospital room unable to move his legs, people kept telling him he was lucky to be alive. Most days, he felt anything but lucky. “Sure. But my family wants a miracle cure, or something. They’re still waiting for my gold medal performance.”

  She looked up from the page. “That must be pretty depressing.”

  “Not all the time.” He cleared his throat. “Dr. Callie, I know it’s your job to clear me for release. Can you just set me free, if I promise not to come back again?” He was careful to look her straight in the eye. “I, ah…” He decided to tell her the truth, no matter how embarrassing. If he wanted out of here, he had to convince her that he hadn’t been trying to off himself. “I found out yesterday that my ex-girlfriend is engaged to someone else. So I drank too much tequila. It was stupid, I admit. But I won’t make a habit of it.”

  Dr. Callie actually flinched. “Ouch,” she said, her features softening.

  See that? Honesty really was the best policy.

  “Although…” she hesitated. “The same thing happened to me just last month. And I didn’t drink a bottle of tequila.”

  Oh, fuck. “Seriously?”

  She nodded slowly.

  “So what’s your drug of choice?” he asked. Although, what Hank actually wanted to know was: what kind of douche would dump a beautiful doctor? Big brains and big tits in one convenient package. And with a sweet smile. Hank would bet any amount of money that Mr. Stupid was simply intimidated by her.

  “Well, I got by with a whole lot of bad TV, and an embarrassing quantity of Ben & Jerry’s. I gained five pounds, and lost five IQ points. But nobody had to pump my stomach.”

  Hank laughed. Hard. It was probably the first time he’d done so in weeks. It used to be a common thing for Hank to have an easy conversation with a woman. But that didn’t happen anymore, and it was only partly because he spent so much time alone. Not everybody could see past the chair. But Callie had seen him looking far worse than this already. Plus, there was just no bullshit in her manner. Even now, her baby blues were studying him with an intensity that should have made him uncomfortable. But for some reason, he didn’t want it to stop.

  “Look,” she sa
id. But he was already looking, because she was easy on the eyes. Even with that lab coat covering her, he could see that she was stacked. A glimpse of the valley between her breasts was just barely visible. “There’s no medical reason for me to keep you,” she said. “I’m sure you know that. But help me feel better about not calling someone in psych. What was your intention?”

  “To see the bottom of the bottle?” He lifted his chin. “Is that a trick question?”

  “Hank, do you have suicidal thoughts?”

  He swallowed. “No.”

  “That was an awfully long pause.”

  He rolled his eyes. “No, it wasn’t. I’m not going to kill myself—it’s really not my style. I was just drunk, Doc. If you institutionalized every drunk in Vermont, there’d be nobody left to make the maple syrup or operate the ski lifts.”

  He watched her pretty lips form a frown, while her eyelashes fluttered thoughtfully. “Hank, I’m uneasy for you. Is there anyone that you talk to about everything you’ve gone through this past year?”

  “Thanks, Doc, but I’m not going to see a shrink. But if you’re so worried about me, come and see me yourself.”

  “What?”

  He hadn’t planned to proposition her, because she didn’t seem like the type to say yes. That, and he wasn’t really in the market for female companionship. But old habits die hard. So he plunged onward. “Make a house call, Doc. Get away from the smell of bleach for a few hours. I’ll cook you dinner.”

  Her eyes widened with surprise. “But…” A flash of shyness crossed her pretty features. “You know I can’t take you up on it. That would be unprofessional.”

  “Really? The minute I wheel out of here, I’m not your patient anymore. So what do you say?”

  She licked those pink lips nervously. “I say…that if I were trying to distract a doctor from her line of questioning, asking her over for dinner would probably work most of the time.”

  He barked out a laugh. “But not all of the time?” Hank dropped his head with a defeated grin. Seriously, though, he had better get used to women turning him down. And what would a doctor want with him? She’d spent the last decade trying to cure cancer, or whatever. And he’d spent it getting wasted and tempting gravity to do its damnedest.

  And then it had.

  That grim thought made his stomach roll. But then he looked up to find Doctor Callie still watching him. And if he wasn’t mistaken, a warm curiosity burned in her eyes. Interesting. Apparently, the good doctor liked some of what she saw. Unless his instincts were off. And probably they were. Because every other goddamned thing about him was off.

  Truly, it didn’t matter what Callie thought of him. Because Hank didn’t have much to offer a woman. He was lonely as hell, but he was going to stay that way. Probably forever. He swallowed again, and steered his mind back to the matter at hand. “Sign my paper, Doc. I’ll be a good boy.”

  She tapped the pen on her clipboard twice, and then she clicked her pen and signed the page. “Do me a favor and stay out of here, okay?”

  “I’ll do that,” he said.

  She slipped the release into his file, and then looked at him one more time. And somehow the moment lengthened, stretching out between them. Hank didn’t know how long it lasted — probably for only a few seconds. But as they looked into each other’s eyes, there was an energy there that Hank hadn’t felt in a long time, and hadn’t expected to feel again.

  Getting ahold of himself, he did the necessary thing. He looked away. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m outie.” He put his hands on his chair’s wheels and propelled himself toward the door.

  He felt her eyes on his back as he went.

  Four

  Callie thought about Hank Lazarus for the rest of her shift, and then every day for a week afterward. He was every bit as sexy as she remembered him. Even hung over, he had radiated testosterone, and a magnetism that left her wanting more. Sure, there was a sadness in his big brown eyes. That was to be expected. Yet here was a guy who had lost his entire career in one three-minute run down the half-pipe. And he could still flirt and laugh and make her feel fluttery inside.

  She, on the other hand, had nothing but excellent health and a promising career. And still, she moved through her days feeling wooden and unhappy.

  What the hell was wrong with her?

  While she pondered this question again at the end of a long afternoon, nurse Trina waved her over to the triage desk. “Callie? Dr. Fennigan wants to see you in her office upstairs. She didn’t say what it was about.” The woman’s face was filled with unguarded curiosity, and Callie didn’t blame her.

  Dr. Elisa Fennigan was the director of the hospital, and Callie had never been called onto the carpet before. She fingered the message slip between two fingers and tried to think. Could one of her patients be suing the hospital? It was always a risk. Every doctor got sued at some point, and they often didn’t see it coming.

  Crap.

  She shoved the paper into her pocket on the way to the elevators. And when the car opened on the seventh floor, a receptionist looked up. “Doctor Anders?”

  Callie nodded.

  “Let me catch Dr. Fennigan before she hops on a call.” She pressed a button on her phone. “Callie Anders is here.”

  “Send her in,” said a pleasant voice.

  The receptionist indicated an open door behind her, and Callie walked into the director’s office.

  Doctor Elisa Fennigan rose from behind her desk and held out her hand. “Callie, welcome. Please call me Elisa. I’m sure you’re wondering why you’re here. It’s only for a good reason.”

  That was a relief. Callie felt herself relax as she shook Dr. Fennigan’s hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  Dr. Fennigan—Elisa—sat down in her cushy leather chair. “Have a seat. Do you remember a patient by the name of Hank Lazarus? You saw him twice…”

  Callie nodded. “Of course. Spinal cord injury sustained on a snowboard. He was admitted last week for alcohol poisoning.”

  The director nodded. “The hospital has an unusual opportunity concerning this patient. His parents are interested in a treatment called FES. Functional Electrical Stimulation.”

  “He mentioned that,” she said. “He didn’t sound convinced.”

  “Right,” the director agreed. “But it’s a promising therapy. His parents are offering to fund a year-long study of it here at our hospital. We would open a therapy clinic for spinal-cord patients, including the FES technology, and run a trial to measure the effects of FES as a part of a traditional rehab program.”

  Callie’s mind whirled. “So…at the end of a year, you would analyze whether the patients who did FES made greater gains than the others? But where would you get all those patients?” The Vermont and New Hampshire border was not the most populous place in the world, which was precisely why their hospital was not a hotbed of research activity.

  “There are more spinal-cord injuries around here than you’d think,” Dr. Fennigan said. “The V.A. hospital up in White River Junction sees most of them. Their patient pool includes injuries sustained in Iraq and Afghanistan. But intensive physical therapy is expensive. Patients will be willing to drive a few exits down the highway for a free program.”

  “I see,” Callie said. “And we’ve got the space…”

  Elisa nodded, her face solemn. The hospital had been shrinking a bit in the past few years, as paying patients became fewer and further between. “We have the space and the equipment. We even have a therapy pool, and it’s underused. Facilities are not the issue.”

  “This is about money, right?” Callie asked.

  Again the director nodded. “The Lazarus family is willing to spend more than a million dollars before this is over—that’s on salaries, treatment and equipment. And we’d pull in grant funding for the study. It’s a shot in the arm that the hospital sorely needs.”

  “That all sounds great,” Callie hedged. “But what does it have to do with me?”

/>   “Well, that is the unusual part. Hank Lazarus isn’t wild to participate. But he said he’d do it if you were in charge of the program.”

  Callie blinked back her surprise. “But I’m not a rehab specialist.”

  Elisa grinned. “He doesn’t really care, apparently. And neither do I, quite frankly. Because your job would be to set up the program and administer the study. I’d put our therapy director in charge of working with the patients.”

  Callie didn’t say anything for a moment. It was an amazing opportunity to work closely with the director of the hospital. But even so, her impulse was to refuse. Taking charge of something so far outside her field of expertise was a terrifying idea. “I’ve never administered a study,” she said eventually.

  “Callie,” Elisa urged. “I’ll bet you’ve read the finer points of several thousand medical studies.”

  “Of course.” If you strung together the journal articles that Callie had read during the past ten years, the pages would circle the earth.

  “Doctor, you could write this paper in your sleep. And I need you to do it.”

  “In my sleep?” Callie joked, and the director laughed.

  “Preferably not.” Elisa’s face became serious again. “But I really must ask. Do you have any idea why Lazarus chose you?”

  The question made her face feel hot. “No,” Callie said quickly. The fact that she found Hank to be the most attractive man she’d ever met had nothing to do with it. “I don’t know him, aside from his two hospital visits. When he was originally admitted for his injury, I did tell his parents to, as he put it, ‘chill out.’”

  Dr. Fennigan winced. “Was it a big scene?”

  Callie shook her head. “Not at all. It was just one of those moments when he needed someone on his side. And apparently I was that person.”