Leave a Trail (Signal Bend #7)(69)
He had. He’d come every day for several days after. Sometimes he’d just dropped by and checked in; other days he’d sat for a long time and asked her lots of yes/no questions. Today, with her voice suddenly back, he was trying to answer a question she’d asked him. With actual words.
He crossed one leg over the other. “Here’s my guess. Selective mutism is classified as an anxiety disorder, and I’d say that you have some things to be anxious about. Sometimes, when the signposts in our life start to shift unpredictably, and things we knew to be true suddenly aren’t, our mind tells us that we can’t trust anything we perceive. We pull in and regroup. By nature, you aren’t one to seek help when you’re hurting. You pull inward. This time, without control over your body, not even control over where it is or how it moves or feels, your mind pulled you inward in the only way it had left.”
“But I wanted so much to talk. Everybody wanted me to talk. Not talking hurt worse.”
“The mind isn’t always very smart. If it were, I wouldn’t have a job.” He stood up and stepped up to her bed. She was sitting all the way up for the first time, and she was finally able to move her burned arm— though it hurt to do so. When Dr. Ambrose put his hand on her bedrail, she bore the pain and lifted her hand to lay it on his.
oOo
The day before they were sending her home, she finally looked at her body. All the time she’d been in the hospital, through all the dressing changes and surgeries and anything else, she’d refused to look. She knew eventually she’d have to deal with what had happened on the outside, like she’d had to deal with the inside.
But she didn’t want to. She hadn’t known she was vain until she no longer had a cause for vanity.
Badger stood next to her bed, on her left side. That arm was still bound in a brace, but he put his hand very lightly on her shoulder, his fingers and thumb hooked soothingly around the base of her neck.
She hadn’t voiced her fears, even after regaining the ability to do so, but she knew she didn’t need to.
Badger had a special insight into what she was going through—he’d understood her pain and her anxiety, her loneliness and fear, better than anyone else. And he’d just stayed with her, without pressure. He’d held her as he could and had done what he could to help her know he was there.
When her father had forced her to make a choice, she’d made the right one.
While the doctor and nurse unwrapped her right arm and leg, Adrienne kept her head turned away. She stared up at Badger, drawing strength from within his beautiful eyes.
“You know it doesn’t matter, right? You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known. Inside and out.
I love you. The way I love you—it saved me. You saved me. A scar doesn’t mean anything other than you’re strong.”
She believed him, because she thought the same thing about his scars. They made him more beautiful to her.
She felt the tail of the last bandage leave her leg, and Badger nodded toward her right side. “You ready?”
After a deep breath and another tour through the depths of Badger’s eyes, Adrienne turned and looked at the side of her body that had been on fire not so long ago.
It was okay. Not pretty, but not the horror show she’d seen in her head. Two large swaths of her thigh and calf, mainly on the outside and over the top, were covered in pinkish skin that looked almost polka-dotted. Around the edges of these areas the skin looked ridged and melted, looking a little like Badger’s chest. In long lines leading away on both sides were scars from sutures they were preparing to remove now.
Her right arm had only a small graft area. The striated scarring was a little more extensive on her arm, especially her bicep, but even that was less horrific than she’d imagined. She had no scars that could not be hidden if she chose to do so, and for that she felt lucky.
On her left side, she knew, she’d already seen, were two long scars, of the normal variety, still stitched, on her hip and thigh. Her days of wearing cutoffs and cowboy boots were over, she thought. She’d probably never wear a bathing suit again. But she’d been prepared—she thought she had, anyway—for worse. She’d be okay. Badger said he loved her, that he still found her beautiful. She knew he’d seen her scars before now, at their worst, and she believed him. She’d be okay.
She examined her leg, turning it to get a better look. It still felt stiff and strange, as if the skin wasn’t used to moving in the ways it needed to move. And it hurt, but nothing like it had at the beginning. Then she watched as the doctor removed all of her stitches.
As he finished, he said, “It’s going to take some time before the grafts are acclimated fully to their new sites, but I’d say we’re past the worry about rejection. Still, it’ll be a little while until the grafted skin is fully integrated. So you need to keep it bandaged for another week or two. Instead of the elastic bandages, we’re going to move to these sleeves—easier movement for you, and better ventilation for the grafts.” As he spoke, the nurse began sliding the larger sleeve over her leg. “And no exposure at all to the sun this year.
Next spring, with lots of sunscreen, you can wear shorts or short sleeves if you want. But for now, you’re Scarlett O’Hara. Stay out of the sun.”
She smiled. “I am the queen of sunscreen. If I’m outside without it for thirty seconds, I look like a lobster and have fifty more freckles. So it’s not a problem, doctor.”