“Maybe.” He frowned at Shane. “How does it look?”

  “It looks high,” he suggested. He walked around to the front and squatted, eyeballing it. “I think it needs to come down a little bit more.” He looked at Stephen. “I’m thinking an eighth of an inch.”

  Stephen stepped back, took a look at his leg, and nodded. “Let’s get some measurements going on the knee and the other side,” he suggested to his helper. “And we’ll line them up.”

  It took a little longer than Wesley had expected, but then he was back up again on his new leg and walking ever-so-slowly. Just able to get vertical again and to know that this would be with him and that there were no problems with it and that he could keep it for now, all made him feel so much better. He sighed happily. “You guys have no idea how much I appreciate this.”

  “It’s what we do,” Stephen stated, with a bright smile. “Now, what about that arm?”

  “I was going to ask you about that. Are we done with the leg?”

  “We’re done for the moment, until you tell me if anything sores up, if anything like that is going on,” Stephen explained. “So I want you to walk around while we talk and get comfortable with the new leg and let me know what you’re feeling, how it feels. Is it freely moving? Is it stable? And then we’ll take it off, and we’ll take a look at any sore spots.”

  And that’s what they did. While they walked around and gave him time to process the weight and the feel of the new leg, he asked them what was available for his arm.

  “Nothing’s really changed,” Stephen admitted. “Until you develop more muscle in that arm, we can’t hang very much off of it that’s usable.”

  “So a chest strap and something popped over the top is what you guys have in mind temporarily?” Shane asked.

  “Yep, but, if you can get those arm muscles back and the nerve tendons firing, that would help a lot. We haven’t even gotten close to testing that,” Stephen noted. “You did have corrective surgery on that stump, didn’t you?” he asked, looking at him suddenly. Wesley nodded. “Then we can take a look at the nerves and see what’s an option. If we’ve got something, we might do surgery and put in something a little more permanent. At least something that can trigger fingers opening and closing, arms raising and lowering, things like that,” Stephen detailed. “So there is potentially quite a bit that we can do.”

  “That would be good,” Wesley said, feeling such a huge sense of relief.

  “Feels as if maybe there’s hope after all?” Shane asked Wesley, with a knowing smile.

  “It really does. I know it’s stupid, and I’m grateful to be alive and to have all my faculties right now,” he acknowledged, “but I need two working arms.”

  “And a working leg apparently,” Stephen added, with a smile.

  “Definitely,” he murmured. “And, laugh all you want, but nothing quite like looking and acting like the rest of the world around you. Being normal is when you’re healthy and happy and confident in your physical body,” Wesley declared, “and is something that people joke about all the time. However, being normal when you’re not normal, when the world looks at you differently and sees where you are different and how you look different,” Wesley added in an impassioned speech, “it can become something that you crave.”

  “You’ll feel—and look—a whole lot more normal now,” Stephen said gently. “With that leg you can already walk and hold yourself completely differently, and that will be worth a lot.”

  At that, Wesley grinned again. “You’re not kidding. I’m not trying to be greedy here, but, considering we’re talking arms, it would be really nice to get that dealt with too.”

  “We can start the process, but only if Shane here thinks it’s healed enough.”

  “I don’t think it has,” he replied. “Neither do I think the time and effort to get that arm where you want it to be is something we should put into a prosthetic at this point. We need to get you stronger first.”

  Wesley looked over at Shane and frowned, not liking anything he had to say.

  Shane nodded. “Otherwise you’ll just have to make adjustments afterward as you improve in strength, and those will be costly,” he reminded him.

  Wesley nodded. “I guess so, … but you’re dissing on my dream. You know that, right?”

  Shane laughed. “No, I’m not,” he argued. “I’m not even postponing it. I’m just putting a realistic restraint on it for the moment. You’ve got your leg, and, as long as it’s good to go, we’ll work on strengthening up your related muscles so your walking gait doesn’t favor one leg over the other, which right now you are doing,” he pointed out to everybody.

  “Really?” Wesley asked, looking at him in surprise.

  “Yes, you are. So we have that to deal with, and I would just as soon deal with that before we even get started with adjusting your arm strength to account for an arm prosthetic.”

  Wesley sighed. “Right, so we always have to be the sensible ones.”

  “It’s your body,” Shane said. “You want to sore it up and be off the prosthetics again for another what? Four, six, eight weeks, if not months?”

  “No, I don’t,” he stated, “so fine. We’ll work on it. But Stephen can still do some tests on the nerves and the muscles of my arm today, couldn’t he?”

  “Absolutely,” Shane agreed. “And that’s a start.”

  Stephen nodded. “We’ve got another forty minutes here,” he noted, looking down at his phone. “Then we’ll have to call it a day, but we will be back. We do come here on a fairly regular timeframe.”

  “Good,” Wesley said. “Do you guys know a woman named Kat out of New Mexico?”

  “Yeah, sure do,” Stephen said. “We deal with her all the time.”

  “Any particular work that you do with her?”

  “She has some techniques that are slightly different than ours,” he said, looking up from the computer. “And some of her stuff works better for some of our people, and some of hers works better with our style,” he added. “It all depends what we have to work with as to who can give you the most mobility,” he stated.

  “Ah, I guess that makes sense. Never thought of it from that point of view.”

  “Nope,” Stephen agreed. “You’re just looking at getting the best deal that you can get for your body, and believe me that we understand that,” he said, with a big grin. “That’s why we do what we do because, it really brightens our world to see you guys doing so well with our tools and equipment,” he murmured. “Now, let’s sit down and get through some of this arm testing. Then we’ll have to run.”

  Chapter 11

  Alba leaned against the open doorway and watched as the men tested the nerves on the arm stump that Wesley had left. She noted the extra skin flap that covered the ending, the stump, and a little bit extra had been built in so that he could wear something there. She’d also heard Shane tell him to hold back his arm prosthetic a little bit, so that they had time to build up enough strength in that little wing to do what Wesley wanted done with a prosthetic down the road.

  And she agreed with Shane, but she saw how hard it was for Wesley to hold back. He was like a kid in a candy store. Somebody had given him a toy he desperately wanted, and now he wanted the moon. The toy he’d had didn’t work very well, and what he really needed was a fully functional one. Interesting too that he kept talking about this woman out of New Mexico.

  As Shane walked over, Alba murmured, “Who is this Kat person out of New Mexico?”

  Shane smiled. “She’s a specialist in prosthetics.”

  “Ah, so he wants to contact her. Is this prosthetic not good enough?”

  “We’ll find out,” he said. “According to these guys, they work with Kat all the time, and it depends on what the situation is, as to which person is better to help the patient.”

  “Right. Well, he doesn’t seem to need me at all today.”

  “I don’t know about that.” Shane raised one eyebrow.

  “When they’re gone, there’ll be euphoria, and then there’ll be the let-down,” she shared, with a nod.

  “Got it.” Shane nodded.

  “In the meantime,” she said, “I’ll head back to work because they’ll be busy here for a while.”

  “They’ve got another forty minutes, or”—he looked at his watch—“another thirty minutes max.”

  “Good enough,” she said. “Sounds as if it was still a good day for him.”

  “I think so,” Shane confirmed, studying Wesley in front of them. He was completely engrossed in the questions that the two tech designers were asking.

  “It is interesting to see him in this environment. And to see how much he really values these prosthetics.”

  “I’m just glad that he’ll get one today,” Shane noted, looking at her.

  “I am too,” she murmured. “It would have broken his heart if it didn’t fit. But it looks good on him.”

  “Not only looks good on him but he looks as if he’s doing really well with it,” Shane noted. “Sure, we have a way to go, but I can see that we also have a means to get there.”

  “And that’s what counts.” Alba smiled. “We’ll get him through this.” And, with that, she turned and headed back to her office.

  She felt surprisingly teary, and there was absolutely no reason for it. This was good news all around. Wesley had done exactly what he needed to do, and the tech guys had done what they needed to do, and it looked as if a working prosthetic leg was coming Wesley’s way today. They would have a fight to get it off him. She grinned at that.

  Wesley wanted that sucker, and he wanted it on. But they hadn’t taken it off to see if there was any soring up yet, so that could still be a problem today. She hoped not. When she returned to her office, she ended up buried in appointments and the related paperwork.

  As she hadn’t heard from Wesley by the time dinner rolled around, she slowly got up from her desk and stretched, realizing that she’d been glued to her desk a lot longer than she had expected and even now was looking down at a stack of paperwork still to be done.

  She shut off her computers and walked out of her office, locking the door. She yawned again, realizing just how tired she was. The emotional stress had been a killer this week. But she’d also thoroughly enjoyed her time off, something she’d needed. Time and distance always helped, particularly with difficult patients. She walked toward the dining room.

  When a shout came from behind her, she turned to see Wesley, walking on two legs toward her, his grin a mile wide.

  She stopped and waited for him, delighted that he’d stopped her. “Hey, don’t you look fancy.”

  “It feels great,” he said. “Look at me.”

  “I didn’t think you were that tall,” she noted in amazement.

  “Right? When you’re not standing, it’s, … it’s hard to even imagine height,” he muttered.

  “I knew you were tall, even seated, but I didn’t realize you were over six foot.”

  He nodded. “My daddy and both my brothers are too.” He did a slow turn in front of her.

  “And how does it feel?” she asked.

  “Better than I expected,” he murmured. “I put up with a lot of pain last time in order to keep it because I really wanted it. But, of course, I pushed it too hard, and the end result was I ended up losing it anyway. Plus it set me back.”

  “So now you know better,” she noted gently. “You need to give it time to adapt, use it a little bit, not use it for long stretches of time for a while, and let your body break it in gently.”

  “I know, and I’ll have to be reminded of that on a regular basis,” he admitted, “because I won’t want to go back to a wheelchair.”

  “And yet you might find that it’s a relief to go back to a wheelchair,” she pointed out. “You’re using different muscles right now, and those will get sore pretty fast.”

  “Shane already warned me that we’ll work on that tomorrow.” He motioned ahead. “After you, m’dear.”

  She smiled at him and then stepped forward.

  He noted, “You’re looking really tired.”

  “I am,” she agreed, as she stifled yet another yawn.

  “I haven’t seen you around for a few days.”

  She glanced over at him to hear a studied indifference in his tone. “I had days off,” she murmured.

  “That must have been nice for you, I’m sure,” he replied, although his scrutiny had turned intense, as he studied her face. “You look as if you need another few days off.”

  She burst out laughing. “It’s just the work right now. If I take off, the paperwork remains. I have a lot of reports to write, and that just never, ever goes away.”

  He winced at the term reports. “Not my favorite job,” he stated.

  “No, but the minute you get involved, there’s always paperwork that has to be followed up on.”

  “I guess, but definitely not my favorite job.”

  She nodded. “I don’t mind it mostly, but there are definitely times when I would just as soon find something else much more fun to do,” she murmured. They moved forward in line.

  “You didn’t mention that you were on days off,” Wesley said. “I admit that I asked Shane about you a couple times.”

  “I think you had more than enough of me there for a while,” she noted. “It didn’t occur to me to tell you because I hadn’t seen you right then. And I was not supposed to go out of town, but I got an invitation, so I took it.”

  “Ah, a girlfriend?”

  She looked at him and then nodded. “Yes, a girlfriend.” And she watched as the relief crossed over his face. “Would it bother you if it wasn’t?”

  “I don’t have any right for it to bother me,” he replied in a wry tone. “Yet I appreciate the fact that there isn’t anybody special in your life.”

  Her lips quirked at that. “I don’t know so much about not having anybody special in my life,” she teased, with a wry tone. “But the person I do have is definitely difficult.”

  He stared at her, but just then Dennis called over, “Hey, you two, do you want to keep moving the line forward?”

  And that’s when they realized they’d allowed a large gap to form between them and the person in front of them.

  She walked over and mumbled, “Sorry about that.”

  “That’s all right,” Dennis said, with an airy wave of his ladle. “Apparently we have all day to look after you guys.”

  She rolled her eyes at that. “Okay, that’s a bit thick,” she teased. Then she saw a Greek salad in front of her. “Oh my,” she whispered.

  “Yep, it’s one of your favorites. I know. So let’s get you a big bowl of that, and what do you want to go with it?”

  By the time they were done, her plate was overflowing. “Dennis, you’ll make me fat.”

  “I won’t make you nothing,” he argued, with a grin, “except for maybe happy.”

  “I’ll take happy,” she agreed. “It’s amazing just how much the food here goes a long way to keeping everybody’s moods up.”

  “You have to in this place. We are healers, even those of us in the kitchen. Good food is good for the soul, and what we deal with here is a lot of broken souls. We’re putting them back together, one plateful at a time.” And, with that, he moved on to the next customer.

  She picked up the cutlery she needed and looked around the dining room, which was already pretty full. She wasn’t even sure whether she should mention about eating together or not. Wesley might want to go off and dine with other people. He had a lot to show off today. And just while she was contemplating where to go and what to say, a couple guys called out to him.

  “Hey, let’s get a load of those new legs,” they called over to him.

  She stepped forward and headed out to the deck, even as Wesley walked over to join the men at the table. She didn’t even watch to see what happened; she just kept on going. Outside, she set her plate down and refused to look behind her. Her patients got better and flew the coop. It’s the way of the world, and she needed to deal with it.

  And she had absolutely no reason that she couldn’t have joined him—except that the guys hadn’t invited her—but there was also no reason that Wesley couldn’t have joined her. So she would just let the cards lay where they fell. When somebody sat down beside her, she looked over at Wesley, frowning. “You can go eat with your friends, you know.”

  “I could,” he agreed, “but it was brought home to me in a surprising way that I haven’t necessarily treated everybody very well. So I thought maybe we could have dinner together. I’ll go down and visit with Stan afterward.”

  She asked, “What’s going on at Stan’s?”

  “He’s got foxes,” he declared, with a big grin.

  “Foxes?” she repeated. “I don’t think we’ve ever had any here yet, or at least none that I’ve seen.”

  “Stan’s got … I think he called it a kit.”

  She frowned. “Maybe. So we have babies down there?”

  He nodded. “Somebody had a pet fox, and it was due to give birth, but there were a few complications, so they brought it in, and Stan’s been looking after it ever since.”

  “It? Solo?”

  “She was due to have babies, but I don’t know what happened. I wanted to go down and see what the end result was.”

  “Sounds good. If you don’t mind company, I would like to see it.”

  He looked at her and smiled. “You know I would like company.”

  She shook her head, tired of beating around the bush. “I don’t know that. We didn’t part on great terms last time,” she stated. “I’ve just been giving you space.”

  “And enough of that,” he declared forcibly. “There’s space, and then there’s space. We didn’t even have a real spat. I just got my nose out of joint.”

  She smiled. “In my world that happens a fair bit.”

  “You were right to push me,” he admitted. “I still am not happy about the delay with the prosthetic arm’s progress, and I very much want to get that prosthetic too, but I need a better one than what they offered last time,” he shared. “And I know it sounds as if I’m just asking for more than I can really have, but I’m not so sure about that. I’m not ready to accept less.”