A SURGE OF pride filled Luca’s heart on seeing the new ramps and pathways being put to use as they’d been intended.
Just a few days in and Mont di Mare felt alive. More dynamic than it had in years.
His sister would be so proud of what they’d done with the place. If only bank loans could be repaid with good feelings...
Never mind. Treatments were underway. However slowly, payments were starting to come in to counterbalance the flood of outgoing costs.
The surgery with Paolo had gone as smoothly as he’d hoped. The teenager was already out of Recovery, and at this very moment discussing the litany of tests he would be going through to combat further deterioration in the wake of his paralysis.
Luca itched to join Paolo’s team, to be part of adding more movement to the young man’s upper body after his motor scooter accident had paralyzed him from the waist down. It was a similar injury to his niece’s, only he’d received next to no physio in the wake of his accident.
The lack of strength in his upper body was startling. Just thinking about the various avenues of treatment they could explore made him smile.
“Dr. Montovano?” Elisa appeared at the doorway. “We’ve got Giuliana, ready to discuss her case with you.”
“Great! Is she in her room?”
“No, she’s over by the pool, speaking with your...your friend?”
Luca’s brow cinched. “Friend?”
“You know—the one with the dogs.”
“Ah. Francesca. No, she’s not a friend. She’s here to work with Pia.”
The words hit false notes even as they came out. A familiar feeling began to take hold of him. The feeling that he’d started to let someone in and then, slowly but surely, had begun to push her away again. Just as he’d done with Marina. Just as he’d done with the women before her.
Elisa shifted uncomfortably, a soft blush coloring her cheeks. “Apologies... We weren’t sure...”
“We?” Luca’s alarm bells started ringing.
“The team. We didn’t—she just...” Elisa’s eyes scanned his office in a panic. “She seems to do a lot more than someone who is just here with the assistance dogs would.”
“Yes, she’s very...American,” he said, as if it explained everything.
Elisa nodded, clearly none the wiser.
“Va bene,” he said, in a tone he knew suggested otherwise. “Shall we go and have a chat with Giuliana?”
* * *
“It’s all right. You can pet him if you like.” Fran smiled at the teen, well aware that Giuliana’s fingers had been twitching on her wheelchair arm supports ever since she and Edison had appeared in the courtyard adjacent to the infinity pool.
The pool she was absolutely dying to jump into now that summer had well and truly made an appearance.
When Giuliana’s parents had mistaken her for medical staff and asked if she would look after their daughter while they went to see her room, she had said yes.
Foolish? Perhaps.
But everyone was operating at full capacity now that the clinic was open, and with Pia already busy with her studies what harm could a little babysitting do?
The dark-haired girl looked across at her with a despondent look. “It’s my arms. They’re just so weak.”
“You’ve got to start somewhere,” Fran reminded her gently. “Not to mention the fact you’re in the perfect place to start rebuilding that strength.”
Fran tried to shake away the problem with a smile, hiding an internal sympathy twinge. Giuliana’s arms were strapped to stabilizing arm troughs and wrist supports on her chair. They were so thin it was almost frightening.
“Edison.” Fran issued a couple of commands and the Lab bounded over and sat alongside Giuliana, so that his head was directly in line with the armrest. “Is it all right if I undo your strap?”
A hint of anxiety crossed the girl’s eyes. “Are my parents back yet?”
Fran looked around, vividly aware of how restricted the poor girl’s movement was. Her neck was being cradled by two contoured pads and it didn’t seem as if she had the strength—let alone the capacity—to turn it left or right.
“They don’t seem to be. They were going to look at your room, right?”
“Si...” Giuliana replied glumly. “They have to approve every single little thing before I am even allowed to see it. I can hardly believe they left me alone with you.”
Tough for any teen to have helicopter parents. Even harder when there was zero choice in the matter.
Fran bit her cheek when Giuliana gave the telltale eye roll of an exasperated teen. She didn’t know how many times she’d rolled her eyes behind her dad’s back when he’d made yet another unilateral decision on her behalf.
Her hand slipped to her back pocket to check her phone was still there. They hadn’t talked yet today.
Time zones.
She’d call him later. Just knowing he’d pick up the phone now, close his laptop and really talk to her, made such a difference. Giuliana might find her parents annoying, but at least they were there for her.
“It doesn’t really hurt when my hands are out of the supports...” Giuliana was saying.
“Do you mind me asking what happened?”
“Skiing.” The word sounded as lifeless as the faraway look in Giuliana’s eyes.
“Where was the injury?” Fran asked.
When she’d been a physio being straightforward with her questions had usually paid dividends. No need to tiptoe around patients who were facing a life of paralysis.
“Grade-four whiplash. Cervical spine fracture.”
“C1?” Francesca asked, her jaw dropping. Most people would have died.
“C2.”
“Oof! That must’ve hurt.” Fran’s features widened into a “youch” face. She was still lucky. C2 fractures often resulted in fatalities.
“Quite the opposite,” Giuliana answered drily. “I didn’t feel a thing.”
“Ha! Of course you didn’t!”
Fran hooted with laughter before registering the look of disbelief on Giuliana’s face. Oops.
“I’m sorry, amore. You’ll have to forgive me. I’m used to talking to dogs, not humans. I am a class-A expert in Open Mouth, Insert Foot.”
Giuliana considered her for a moment, then gave a wry smile. “Actually, it was my test. You just passed.”
“Oh!” Fran gave a little wriggle of pride that morphed into a hunch of concern. “Wait a minute. What kind of test?”
“A test to see who will laugh at the poor crippled girl’s joke.”
“A joke test?”
“A litmus test,” Giuliana answered solidly. “Most people don’t even ask me what happened. They just look at me with big sad eyes, like I’m on the brink of death or something. I’m paralyzed. Not deaf or blind!”
And not bereft of spirit either, from the looks of things.
Fran let loose an appreciative whoop of respect. “You go, girl!” She put her hand up in a fist bump, rolled her eyes at her second idiotic move within as many minutes, then put her fist to Giuliana’s anyway. “Forgive me. Again. You’re here for the summer?”
Giuliana nodded, amusement skittering through her eyes.
“Well, I don’t know what your doctor’s plans are, but by the end of our stay what do you say we work toward a proper fist bump?”
“What? So you can be ‘down with the kids’?” Giuliana giggled, as if the idea of Francesca being down with the kids was quite the challenge.
“Yeah!” Fran parried, striking a silly pose. “That’s how I roll. Hey! I have an idea.” She positioned herself so she was at eye level with Giuliana. “How crazy are you feeling today?”
“In what way?”
The teen’s brow crinkled and it was all Fran could do not to reach out and give it a soothing caress. She couldn’t promise the girl that everything would be all right, and nor did she have the right to do anything other than what Luca had hired her to do, but...
“Well, Edison here is my number one gentle dog...”
It wasn’t a lie. Not really. Her other number one dog was already completely under Pia’s command.
“If you’d like to pet him, it seems to me the easiest way to do it would be if we unstrapped you. I would be right behind you, supporting your elbow, and Edison is very good at holding his head still.”
The glimmer of excitement in Giuliana’s eyes was all the encouragement Fran needed. Ever so gently, Fran lifted the girl’s frail arm out of the rest and settled it in her lap for a moment.
“Is it all right if I put a treat in your hand?” Fran asked. “It’s a sure-fire way to get Edison’s full attention.”
“I don’t know how well I’ll be able to hold it.”
“Not a problem. I’ll support you.”
Fran pinched a treat out of her belt pouch, placed it between Giuliana’s fragile fingers with Edison sitting at full attention at her feet. Then Fran shifted around behind the wheelchair, so she could provide support for the girl’s elbow. It surprised her to feel how rigid the poor thing’s arm was—similar to some of the elderly people she’d worked with years ago. Something deep within her bridled. How awful to have to live like this with your whole life in front of you!
Don’t get attached, Fran! You gave up on people for a reason. First, fix things with your father...
Her thoughts faded as instinctively she began to massage the girl’s arm. Stroking and smoothing her fingers along the length of the musculature, teasing some suppleness into the brittle length of her arm.
“Come, Edison. Want a treat?”
Giuliana’s hand jerked as she spoke. The treat went flying. As it arced up so, too, did Edison’s snout, his jaw opening wide as he jumped up to catch it.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Luca was thundering across the patio, his face dark as midnight.
By the time he arrived Edison was contentedly swallowing the treat he’d caught, with no detriment to Giuliana whatsoever.
“We were just—” Fran began, then she stopped as memory swept her back to her sixteenth birthday. The one her father had forgotten because it had been the same day his first car had rolled off the production line.
All day she had stayed at the factory. Doing homework...idly peeking into the kitchen at the canteen to see if anyone was secretly whipping up a birthday cake. Wandering through the advertising section on the off chance that someone had made a little—or an enormous—birthday banner to mark the day. Hanging around in the mailroom on the pretense of helping to sort the large bundle of post, only to discover that her mother had, as usual, neglected to send anything.
When at long last the first car had come off the assembly line—that first amazing vehicle—she had been so excited she’d run up to touch it, to press her face to the window. The second her hand had touched the car her father had seized her wrist and pulled her away so hard it had hurt for a week.
He hadn’t meant to hurt her. She knew that. But it was in that instant that she’d forced herself to take her first significant emotional step away from him.
That same week she had been signed up for her first round of finishing school in Switzerland. And then another and another, until the thick wedge of her self-protection had been permanently driven between them.
The flash of ire lighting up Luca’s eyes was near enough identical to the one she’d seen in her father’s eyes when she’d dared lay her hand on something that wasn’t hers.
In Luca’s eyes she’d just crossed the line.
His patient. His clinic. His future.
Her mistake.
* * *
“Dr. Montovano! Did you see that?”
Luca could just hear Giuliana’s voice through the static roaring in his ears. He was still reeling at how careless Fran was. Reckless!
“Scusi, Giuliana. See what?” Luca forced himself to turn to his new patient, hastily removing from his eyes the daggers he’d been shooting at Fran.
This was a clinic for people with spinal injuries, for heaven’s sake. Had she no respect for what he was trying to do here? No understanding that the slightest mishap could shut him down?
“The dog!” Giuliana said, the smile so broad across her face he hardly recognized her as the same girl captured in the glowering, unhappy photos her parents had sent. “Did you see how when I threw the treat he caught it?”
“He was catching a treat?”
“Si, Dottore. Of course. What did you think he was doing?”
Fran turned to him, arms crossed defensively across her chest, with a look that said, I’d certainly like to know what it was you thought Edison was doing.
The dog had been jumping, its mouth wide-open, teeth bared. It had looked as if it had been launching himself at the girl’s hand. Which—on went a lightbulb—of course he had. She had been throwing a treat.
Another lightbulb joined the first.
“I thought you didn’t have any movement in your arm.”
“I didn’t...” Giuliana replied, her expression changing as she, too, began connecting the dots of an enormous puzzle.
“Mind if I have a quick feel?” Luca knelt, and with his young patient’s consent he took her arm in his hands and began to run his fingers along the different muscle and ligament groups in her forearm. Her fingers responded to a few of his manipulations. Fingers that were, according to her physio at home, completely atrophied from disuse.
“Shall we get you into one of the treatment rooms? See what may have happened there?”
“Si. Can Edison come, too? And Francesca? She massaged my arm before I fed Edison.”
A flash of ire blinded him again for an instant.
Why couldn’t Fran keep to herself?
He hesitated for a moment before looking up, forcing himself to take a slow breath. She was a trained physio. This was meant to be a place of innovation. And now that he was repainting the scene into what it had actually been, it was very likely Fran and Edison had each played a role in eliciting movement in Giuliana’s arm.
By the time he lifted his eyes to offer an invitation he saw that none was necessary. Fran and Edison were disappearing through an archway leading to the wildflower meadows.
A sour twist of enmity tightened around his heart. He didn’t need to push Fran away. She had already gone.