Page 10
Story: Handling Haven
CHAPTER 9
Six months later. . .
Groaning, Frisco climbed out of his truck. His shoulder was stiffer than usual this morning, and he couldn’t wait until the physical therapist put the damp, heated pad on it to loosen it up. Three weeks after badly straining the trapezius muscle that ran down his neck to his left scapula, during a rescue operation in Syria, he’d finally regained full range of motion of his arm again. But last night, he must have slept wrong because when he’d woken this morning, it felt like he’d pinched a nerve or something. Hopefully, it wasn’t going to delay his recovery—he didn’t want to miss out if his team got called up for another mission. So far, he’d been lucky.
Striding across the parking lot of the Carl R.Darnall Army Medical Center in Fort Hood, he reveled in the cooler air that a weather front had ushered in last night. It was the first time in weeks the temperature had dropped below ninety degrees. When he entered the lobby, the air conditioning caused goosebumps to pebble across his skin, and a shiver went down his spine. Knowing the way to the physical therapy department by heart, he headed down the correct hallway and made two rights and then a left.
The older civilian receptionist greeted him with a smile as he entered the waiting area. “Hi, Frisco. You can go on back. You’re on cot number two.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Schaffer.”
As usual, the huge PT room was filled with a number of physical therapists and their aides working on men and women who were recovering from various injuries, some worse than others. Several patients were on the treadmills and stationary bikes, while others were doing stretches and exercises on other equipment. One man, with a prosthetic leg, was using the parallel bars for support as he took steps toward a waiting wheelchair he was probably working to get out of permanently.
Ordinarily, Frisco came in the mornings, butdue to a scheduled 0900 team meeting, he’d asked for an afternoon appointment. Climbing up on his assigned cot, he waited for someone to bring a TENS unit—an electronic nerve stimulator—and a heating pad for him. Tilting his head from side to side, Frisco winced in annoyance as a sharp pain shot through the left side of his neck. “Damn it,” he muttered. But there was no way he was complaining about it louder than that, not with all of those recovering from far worse injuries than his nearby.
He glanced around the room, and a brown-haired woman in a wheelchair, with her back to him, caught his eye. She’d turned her head just enough for him to see a partial profile, and there was something familiar about her that caused him to stare, waiting for a chance to see her face to identify her. As if sensing a gaze upon her, she grabbed the wheels and spun the chair around, just as his regular therapist, Chad Walker, called out from across the room, “Hey, Frisco. I’ll be right there.”
Giving the man a distracted wave, Frisco’s heart pounded in his chest when a set of soft, brown eyes met his hazel ones. A flash of uncertainty was replaced by recognition on the pretty woman’s face, and he was shocked when the cornersof her mouth ticked upward before she pushed on the chair’s wheels, propelling herself toward him.
Haven. The woman he still hadn’t been able to get out of his mind all these months. He’d even tried to hook up with a chick he’d met in a bar one night a few weeks ago, but it hadn’t felt right, even though she’d appeared to be a sure thing. Instead of taking her up on the offer to go back to her place, Frisco had politely declined, to her obvious disappointment. Now, he was glad he had.
Haven stopped at the end of the cot he sat on and cocked her head. “Frisco Ingram?” When he silently nodded, still trying to convince himself she wasn’t an apparition, she continued. “You didn’t have that full beard the last time I saw you. It was much shorter then.”
A grin spread across his face, gaining one from her too, as he realized she was wearing the T-shirt he’d given her all those months ago. It was a little big on her, but she didn’t seem to mind. He ran a hand down his whiskers. “Yeah, it definitely needs a trim. How are you, Haven? You’re here for therapy, I assume.” He was a little surprised since it was a military facility, but there were too many people around to ask her about that. No one there knew he was Delta, and he had to assume no one knew she wasfrom Deimos, an agency most, if not all, of those in the room had never heard of.
“Yeah, I am. Finally got off my sorry ass and decided to come back to the land of the living, as my friend Jordyn says.” She paused, her mouth flattening again as contrition filled her eyes. “Um ... look, I’m sorry about what I put you through—both the night I was shot and then again at the hospital. You didn’t deserve any of that. I was the ultimate bitch to you. This ...” She gestured to her legs. “... isn’t your fault. The damage was done by a bastard who’s hopefully rotting in Hell. I shouldn’t have taken my fear and anger out on you. I really am sorry. Thanks for getting me and Kenny out of there alive.”
Frisco sat up straighter, feeling lighter than he had in the past eight months. “Apology accepted. I’m glad to see you’re doing okay and not carrying around a death wish anymore. How’s everything going?”
“You mean my legs?” He nodded again. “Actually, better than I expected. The swelling has gone down around my spine, and they’re working on getting me up on my feet again with braces and crutches. The doctors and therapists think I’ll be able to kick this chair to the curb oneof these days. It’s hard work, but not much harder than my training.”
He didn’t doubt that. From what he’d learned from Carter, Jordyn, and Sawyer, Haven had been a hell of an operative, able to take down men twice her size, who’d been dumb enough to underestimate her. He suspected she could still take someone down, despite her injury, given enough motivation. And, damn, that thought turned him on. Even with her long hair pulled up into a ponytail and without a stitch of makeup on, she was prettier than he remembered, which was saying a lot. He was still having erotic dreams about her a few times a week. He couldn’t help it—his subconscious seemed to be in that movieGroundhog Day, where it just kept repeating itself. His cock twitched in his BDUs as he recalled what his fantasy Haven had been doing to him just that morning, and he mentally ordered it to behave.
“So, what are you doing here?” she asked. “Where’s your boo-boo?”
His grin spread wide as he chuckled. “My boo-boo? I haven’t had one of those since I was five or six and my mom kissed my skinned knee to make it better. But the reason I’m here is a strained muscle that’s, literally, a pain in the neck.”
“Hmm. At least it’s not a pain in the ass.” She snickered. “Sorry, bad pun.”
A bark of laughter escaped him. He was thrilled she felt comfortable enough to crack a joke with him. “Yeah, that was pretty bad. But, tell you what—you can make it up to me by letting me take you to lunch.”Please don’t shoot me down.
Her eyebrows flew upward as she was clearly surprised by his invitation. “What? When?”
“Are you still in the middle of your treatment or can you stick around for a bit? We can go after Chad is done torturing me.” Having overheard the sarcastic remark, the therapist smirked as he approached with a TENS unit and a heating pad.
“Torture? Nah, Chad doesn’t torture anybody,” Haven said. “Just be grateful Clarissa, aka Attila the Hun, over there, isn’t your therapist—I think she’s a sadist or something. All she’s missing is a leather whip and over-the-knee boots.”
Glancing to where she pointed, Frisco had to agree the six-foot-tall, female therapist did look like she knew a thing or two about intel retrieval via pain. His gaze returned to Haven, where it heated. “So, lunch?”
Once again, she caught him off guard as a pink blush appeared on her cheeks, but shestill kept eye contact with him. “Um ... sure. Actually, you might be able to help me with something.”
“What?”
She gave a quick glance over her shoulder when her name was called. “We’ll talk about it later. Attila is calling me. It’s time for me to learn how to tap dance again—not that I ever knew how to do it before.”
For the next hour, while he did his own exercises and received treatment, Frisco watched in awe as braces were attached to Haven’s legs, and, with help from the therapist and one of the aides, she stood and used all her strength to support most of her weight with her upper body while “walking” from one end of the parallel bars to the other. Her lean arm muscles bulged as she struggled to place one hand and then the other further down the bars, before taking one step and following it with a second. She then started the whole one-two-three-four process over and over again. Sweat covered her face, but it was out-shined by her determination.
By the time Frisco’s appointment was over, Haven was lying on her back as Clarissa massaged her thin legs. It would take more therapy before the muscle tone was built up again, but she was definitely on her way to a decent recovery. He was gladto hear the doctors still believed she’d walk again. She’d been lucky—a millimeter in the wrong direction and that wouldn’t have been a possibility. As she laughed and joked with the others in the room, Haven seemed okay with the fact she wouldn’t get one-hundred percent use of her legs back and was willing to take as much as she could get. Damn, he was proud of her—she’d gone from wanting to be dead to looking like she was ready to take on the world again.
Six months later. . .
Groaning, Frisco climbed out of his truck. His shoulder was stiffer than usual this morning, and he couldn’t wait until the physical therapist put the damp, heated pad on it to loosen it up. Three weeks after badly straining the trapezius muscle that ran down his neck to his left scapula, during a rescue operation in Syria, he’d finally regained full range of motion of his arm again. But last night, he must have slept wrong because when he’d woken this morning, it felt like he’d pinched a nerve or something. Hopefully, it wasn’t going to delay his recovery—he didn’t want to miss out if his team got called up for another mission. So far, he’d been lucky.
Striding across the parking lot of the Carl R.Darnall Army Medical Center in Fort Hood, he reveled in the cooler air that a weather front had ushered in last night. It was the first time in weeks the temperature had dropped below ninety degrees. When he entered the lobby, the air conditioning caused goosebumps to pebble across his skin, and a shiver went down his spine. Knowing the way to the physical therapy department by heart, he headed down the correct hallway and made two rights and then a left.
The older civilian receptionist greeted him with a smile as he entered the waiting area. “Hi, Frisco. You can go on back. You’re on cot number two.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Schaffer.”
As usual, the huge PT room was filled with a number of physical therapists and their aides working on men and women who were recovering from various injuries, some worse than others. Several patients were on the treadmills and stationary bikes, while others were doing stretches and exercises on other equipment. One man, with a prosthetic leg, was using the parallel bars for support as he took steps toward a waiting wheelchair he was probably working to get out of permanently.
Ordinarily, Frisco came in the mornings, butdue to a scheduled 0900 team meeting, he’d asked for an afternoon appointment. Climbing up on his assigned cot, he waited for someone to bring a TENS unit—an electronic nerve stimulator—and a heating pad for him. Tilting his head from side to side, Frisco winced in annoyance as a sharp pain shot through the left side of his neck. “Damn it,” he muttered. But there was no way he was complaining about it louder than that, not with all of those recovering from far worse injuries than his nearby.
He glanced around the room, and a brown-haired woman in a wheelchair, with her back to him, caught his eye. She’d turned her head just enough for him to see a partial profile, and there was something familiar about her that caused him to stare, waiting for a chance to see her face to identify her. As if sensing a gaze upon her, she grabbed the wheels and spun the chair around, just as his regular therapist, Chad Walker, called out from across the room, “Hey, Frisco. I’ll be right there.”
Giving the man a distracted wave, Frisco’s heart pounded in his chest when a set of soft, brown eyes met his hazel ones. A flash of uncertainty was replaced by recognition on the pretty woman’s face, and he was shocked when the cornersof her mouth ticked upward before she pushed on the chair’s wheels, propelling herself toward him.
Haven. The woman he still hadn’t been able to get out of his mind all these months. He’d even tried to hook up with a chick he’d met in a bar one night a few weeks ago, but it hadn’t felt right, even though she’d appeared to be a sure thing. Instead of taking her up on the offer to go back to her place, Frisco had politely declined, to her obvious disappointment. Now, he was glad he had.
Haven stopped at the end of the cot he sat on and cocked her head. “Frisco Ingram?” When he silently nodded, still trying to convince himself she wasn’t an apparition, she continued. “You didn’t have that full beard the last time I saw you. It was much shorter then.”
A grin spread across his face, gaining one from her too, as he realized she was wearing the T-shirt he’d given her all those months ago. It was a little big on her, but she didn’t seem to mind. He ran a hand down his whiskers. “Yeah, it definitely needs a trim. How are you, Haven? You’re here for therapy, I assume.” He was a little surprised since it was a military facility, but there were too many people around to ask her about that. No one there knew he was Delta, and he had to assume no one knew she wasfrom Deimos, an agency most, if not all, of those in the room had never heard of.
“Yeah, I am. Finally got off my sorry ass and decided to come back to the land of the living, as my friend Jordyn says.” She paused, her mouth flattening again as contrition filled her eyes. “Um ... look, I’m sorry about what I put you through—both the night I was shot and then again at the hospital. You didn’t deserve any of that. I was the ultimate bitch to you. This ...” She gestured to her legs. “... isn’t your fault. The damage was done by a bastard who’s hopefully rotting in Hell. I shouldn’t have taken my fear and anger out on you. I really am sorry. Thanks for getting me and Kenny out of there alive.”
Frisco sat up straighter, feeling lighter than he had in the past eight months. “Apology accepted. I’m glad to see you’re doing okay and not carrying around a death wish anymore. How’s everything going?”
“You mean my legs?” He nodded again. “Actually, better than I expected. The swelling has gone down around my spine, and they’re working on getting me up on my feet again with braces and crutches. The doctors and therapists think I’ll be able to kick this chair to the curb oneof these days. It’s hard work, but not much harder than my training.”
He didn’t doubt that. From what he’d learned from Carter, Jordyn, and Sawyer, Haven had been a hell of an operative, able to take down men twice her size, who’d been dumb enough to underestimate her. He suspected she could still take someone down, despite her injury, given enough motivation. And, damn, that thought turned him on. Even with her long hair pulled up into a ponytail and without a stitch of makeup on, she was prettier than he remembered, which was saying a lot. He was still having erotic dreams about her a few times a week. He couldn’t help it—his subconscious seemed to be in that movieGroundhog Day, where it just kept repeating itself. His cock twitched in his BDUs as he recalled what his fantasy Haven had been doing to him just that morning, and he mentally ordered it to behave.
“So, what are you doing here?” she asked. “Where’s your boo-boo?”
His grin spread wide as he chuckled. “My boo-boo? I haven’t had one of those since I was five or six and my mom kissed my skinned knee to make it better. But the reason I’m here is a strained muscle that’s, literally, a pain in the neck.”
“Hmm. At least it’s not a pain in the ass.” She snickered. “Sorry, bad pun.”
A bark of laughter escaped him. He was thrilled she felt comfortable enough to crack a joke with him. “Yeah, that was pretty bad. But, tell you what—you can make it up to me by letting me take you to lunch.”Please don’t shoot me down.
Her eyebrows flew upward as she was clearly surprised by his invitation. “What? When?”
“Are you still in the middle of your treatment or can you stick around for a bit? We can go after Chad is done torturing me.” Having overheard the sarcastic remark, the therapist smirked as he approached with a TENS unit and a heating pad.
“Torture? Nah, Chad doesn’t torture anybody,” Haven said. “Just be grateful Clarissa, aka Attila the Hun, over there, isn’t your therapist—I think she’s a sadist or something. All she’s missing is a leather whip and over-the-knee boots.”
Glancing to where she pointed, Frisco had to agree the six-foot-tall, female therapist did look like she knew a thing or two about intel retrieval via pain. His gaze returned to Haven, where it heated. “So, lunch?”
Once again, she caught him off guard as a pink blush appeared on her cheeks, but shestill kept eye contact with him. “Um ... sure. Actually, you might be able to help me with something.”
“What?”
She gave a quick glance over her shoulder when her name was called. “We’ll talk about it later. Attila is calling me. It’s time for me to learn how to tap dance again—not that I ever knew how to do it before.”
For the next hour, while he did his own exercises and received treatment, Frisco watched in awe as braces were attached to Haven’s legs, and, with help from the therapist and one of the aides, she stood and used all her strength to support most of her weight with her upper body while “walking” from one end of the parallel bars to the other. Her lean arm muscles bulged as she struggled to place one hand and then the other further down the bars, before taking one step and following it with a second. She then started the whole one-two-three-four process over and over again. Sweat covered her face, but it was out-shined by her determination.
By the time Frisco’s appointment was over, Haven was lying on her back as Clarissa massaged her thin legs. It would take more therapy before the muscle tone was built up again, but she was definitely on her way to a decent recovery. He was gladto hear the doctors still believed she’d walk again. She’d been lucky—a millimeter in the wrong direction and that wouldn’t have been a possibility. As she laughed and joked with the others in the room, Haven seemed okay with the fact she wouldn’t get one-hundred percent use of her legs back and was willing to take as much as she could get. Damn, he was proud of her—she’d gone from wanting to be dead to looking like she was ready to take on the world again.