Kate paced her room. It was gone two in the morning, and she still couldn’t sleep. She didn’t know whether it was the excitement of hearing Jamie laugh and talk, or the disconcertingly comfortable afternoon she had spent with Cooper. They had ended up ordering burgers in, and chatting far more than normal. Nothing personal, just chit chat, films, movies, but still – she had found herself relaxing a little. She had noticed how tired and drawn he looked though, and she had a suspicion she knew what the cause was. She was just trying to talk herself into action. Jamie hadn’t spoken to her that afternoon, not that she thought he suddenly would, but he also hadn’t thrown anything at her and had even let her ruffle his hair, so that was major progress. Thinking about how Cooper had helped her son galvanised her into action. Pulling her mirror off the wall, she left her room.
The corridor was quiet, the staff quarters filled with empty rooms or sleeping people. Here if you weren’t on shift, a lot of the time you were in your room, catching up on your sleep or researching some paper or another. She walked towards Cooper’s room, looking in on Jamie on the way. He was fast asleep, his hair sticking up in tufts from under the duvet. She dropped a kiss on his forehead, before leaving and going to Cooper’s room. She hesitated here. The door was closed, but there was a light under the door. She held her breath and knocked once. Nothing. She tried again, a little harder this time, hoping to god she wouldn’t wake him if he was getting some much needed sleep. She heard a wail, a low grumble, and decided to enter. The light from the corridor bathed the room in light, and she realised that the light under the door was coming from the bathroom. Knocking on the bathroom door, she waited.
‘What?’ Cooper snapped. ‘I’m fine.’
‘Cooper? It’s me, Kate. Can I come in?’
‘No!’ came the reply, followed by a groan. The man was in pain. Kate rolled her eyes. ‘Cooper, stop being a dick, make yourself decent and let me in!’
Kate heard nothing. She was about to go get help when she heard the lock being clicked open. She gently pushed the door. Cooper was sat in the shower area, wet through with sweat, clad in only a pair of white boxer shorts. He was gripping his stump. Kate went to grab the mirror she’d left in the corridor, and locked the door to his room behind her when she returned. She came back into the bathroom, sliding the mirror in between Cooper’s legs, till the mirror reflected Cooper’s good leg, making it look like he had two. He was in a bad way, his face red, eyes gritted. She reached out, gently removing his hands from his stump. He flinched and resisted at first, scowling at her, but she persevered and he gave in. His operation site looked good, but the skin area around it was covered in bruises. Kate pressed her lips together, fighting the stab of pain she felt for him. This had obviously been going on for a while. She glanced up at him, and saw his eyes were closed tight, his head against the tiled wall.
‘Cooper,’ she said softly. ‘Thomas.’ He opened his eyes and pierced her with his gaze. ‘Look at the mirror, please. It will help.’ Cooper nodded once and looked. After a few moments his face seemed to relax a little, as his brain registered the fact that it was seeing two legs. Kate started to rub his leg tentatively. He looked at her warily, and they both felt the tension in the room. Looking away, she concentrated on trying to be professional. She could feel the heat coming off his body. It felt nice against her cold hands. If he found them cold, he never let on.
‘How long has this been happening?’ she ventured curiously.
‘It’s happened a few times, that’s all. No big deal.’
‘I can help, you know. If you just let me …’
‘What’s the point of that?’ he retorted. ‘Not going to get me back into service, is it?’ His eyes flashed with anger, and her hands stilled. He noticed her flinch, and he grabbed for her hand suddenly. She jumped. ‘Sorry,’ he said ruefully. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s helping, please don’t stop.’ She swallowed hard. He squeezed her hand. ‘I would never hurt you. I could never hurt you.’
She started to massage him again. ‘I know that,’ she said, giving him a small smile. I do know that, she thought to herself. In fact, he makes me feel safe. She brushed the thought away and continued to work. ‘The mirror helps the brain to centre again. If you can, wiggle your toes, it will help. I can get you some pain relief?’
He shook his head hard, drips of sweat dropping down his neck and chest. She reached for the rack and started to pass him a clean towel, then changed her mind at the last minute and wiped gently at his face herself. He flinched again, and she went slower, dabbing the sheen off his hair, his face and finally his bare chest. She noticed how defined his chest and arm muscles were. She could see them flexing as he shook from the pain. ‘You should take some pain relief, it’s too much to expect you to cope without any.’
‘No,’ he said softly. She didn’t argue. She finished dabbing him, and threw the towel into the corner of the room. She went back to massaging his leg, and noticed that he was pointing and flexing his foot. His colour had come back a little.
‘It hurts a bit less. It’s helping.’ His face sagged with obvious relief, and her heart went out to him. ‘Thanks, Kate.’
She was surprised to hear him call her by her real name, and she kept working to cover her own emotions at hearing it from his mouth.
‘We can sort this. The mirror will help, and we can do other things too, if you’ll let me. Your leg looks good.’
Cooper snorted a little. ‘Oh yeah, it looks awesome.’
She didn’t bite. ‘The wound has healed, minimal scarring. We could start to work on a prosthesis once the bruising heals.’
She let the idea linger, not wanting to babble away or make him mad. Especially when he was so … not vulnerable, she couldn’t ever describe him as that, just … not himself. She finished off rubbing his leg and sneaked a glance at him. He wasn’t looking at his leg though, he was looking at her. Reaching a hand out, he moved it to her face, his fingers brushing her cheek as he tucked a ratty strand of hair behind her ear. She shivered at his touch, and her grip on his leg tightened a little. As he pulled his hand back, he ran his thumb from the base of her ear, along her cheek. Not quite believing what was happening, Kate’s lips parted a little and she didn’t dare let the breath in her lungs slip free. Cooper was looking at her now, and her gaze met his, seeing her own surprised expression mirrored in his. He winced in pain, once, just as his thumb grazed her bottom lip, and it seemed to wake him up. His features changed back to the cocky exterior he normally sported, and she grabbed the chance to rock back on her heels, away from him. She stood, and giving him a quick smile, she went to leave.
‘Kate—’ he called after her.
‘I’ll just get the nurse to help you up,’ she interrupted. She didn’t wait to hear a response. That name again. Hearing him say it was like she had never heard it before. Twice in one night, after weeks of ‘Missy’ and ‘Doc’. She had no idea what had happened, but she did know that after today, seeing him with Jamie, how his touch had made her feel, she had seen another side of Thomas Cooper, and she was intrigued. Just who was the real Captain Cooper? Giving instructions to the nurses at the station, informing them discreetly of what had happened, she went off to her room before any other surprised nurses who had seen her coming out of a patient’s room in the middle of the night could ask any questions.
When she had safely shut the door to her quarters behind her, she looked at the nail on the wall where the mirror had once hung. Laying down on her unmade bed, she touched her fingers to her lips, where his thumb had brushed them. What a day, she thought to herself, as she fell asleep thinking of broken soldiers, mute boys, and shattered lives.
***
The next morning, Kate was scheduled to have a meeting with Trevor, to discuss her patient’s progress. To say she was dreading it was an understatement, but Trevor was too distracted with the news about Jamie to press her for any details.
‘So, Jamie spoke, and laughed, I heard! That’s amazing!’ Trevor was jiggling from foot to foot in his office, and he was making Kate feel nauseous.
‘Okay Trevor, calm down, I haven’t had my coffee yet!’ she laughed at him, and Trevor grinned all the more.
‘And a laugh from you! Wow, the Captain is really working his magic, huh?’
Kate flushed at the mention of Cooper, and an image flashed in her mind of him looking into her eyes, his face close to hers, his thumb touching her lip. ‘He seemed to get through to him, yes,’ she replied reluctantly, hoping that Trevor would let the subject drop. She knew just what he meant by magic, and she wasn’t going to play into it. Trevor must have picked up on this, and he changed the subject.
‘Well, that’s good, and since he’s doing okay with therapy, keeping active, we can probably decrease your time with him a little, get you back on the patient rotation. I understand he has refused the prosthetics, so I don’t think there’s much more to do, unless you disagree?’
Kate wanted to disagree. She wanted to protest, to fight for more time with Cooper, but what could she say? ‘I quite like him now, he’s growing on me’? ‘I think I can get through to him’? The point was, she didn’t know that she could change his mind. And she did miss seeing other patients, having new challenges. ‘Yes, that’s good with me,’ she replied. Trevor turned away from his desk to the filing cabinet at the far wall. Drawing out a couple of files, he put them on the desk in front of her.
‘Okay then, Tuesday 1st, start seeing these guys. See out the month with Cooper, and then we will reduce the days with him to just Mondays and Fridays. I’ll let him know.’
Ten minutes later, Kate was on her way to call in on Jamie before her meeting with Cooper. Walking down the corridor, she made a pact with herself to try to give Cooper her all till the end of the month, when her new clients kicked in. She would work the weekend, make him work, force him to listen. He had got through to her son, she had heard Jamie laugh, a sound she had thought lost forever. She owed Cooper this time, and she wasn’t going to go down without a fight. She wouldn’t have this soldier on her conscience. She felt guilty about enough already. As she walked to Jamie’s door, she wondered whether her motives were really as clear cut and innocent as they sounded in her own head. Walking into Jamie’s room, she was surprised to see him watching television. He was dressed and sat in his chair, engrossed in his program, and for a second, she forgot that the last few months had even happened. He looked just like he normally did on a weekend at home, his facial expressions comical as he followed whatever character was in a scrape on Power Rangers this week. He turned towards her with his head and she saw a slight smile pass over his lips, before he turned back to his programme. She sat on the bed next to him, folding her trouser clad legs under her, having slipped her hospital flats off. She watched the programme for a good half hour, both of them watching the screen in silence. When she next glanced at the clock, it was time for her to go and meet Cooper, and she got up to leave. A small hand covered hers, and she looked up in surprise.
‘Five more minutes?’ Jamie asked tentatively. She sat back down, covering his hand with hers. Kissing it, she nodded. ‘Five more minutes baby.’
Twenty minutes later Kate pirouetted to the rehab suite. Walking in, she sat down at the table, savouring the fantastic morning. The usual bacon and coffee smell filled the air, but something was different. Cooper’s face was pure thunder, and he was ripping into his bacon roll as though it was the spoils of a sworn enemy.
‘What’s got you so mad …’
‘What’s got you so chirpy …’
‘Trevor came to see me …’
‘Jamie spoke to me …’
They both laughed as they spoke at once, and the tension in the air popped.
‘You first,’ Cooper said, passing her a roll and coffee. She took them gratefully, her tummy grumbling in anticipation.
‘Okay,’ she replied in between bites of breakfast. ‘I went in to see Jamie this morning, and he was watching television. He let me watch it with him, and when I went to leave, he asked me to stay. Sounds daft, but it was amazing!’
Cooper laughed. ‘It is amazing, and it’s also cheered me up.’
‘So what did Trevor say?’ she asked with what she hoped was a look of innocent curiosity on her face. He wasn’t falling for it.
She noted once more the furrowed lines deep in his brow, and she once again daydreamed about what it would be like to smooth them out with her fingertips. He seemed to be trying to rein in his anger, and she noticed his foot was jiggling against the footrest of his chair.
‘Do you not want to talk about it? Are you in pain?’ He shook his head, but the furrows grew deeper and his foot kept jiggling, up and down like rapid fire. Finishing another bite of her roll, she steeled herself. Was he annoyed that he had to spend time with her for a little longer? Surely she wasn’t so deplorable that he couldn’t just put up with it. After all, he would get a break from her soon enough. The pang she felt when she thought of this was swiftly pushed away to a dark recess of her brain, where everything seemed to live these days. Neil had permanent residence there, though she did pull him out now and then to give him a good mental kicking. Well, screw them all. She didn’t need to be thinking about anyone, Jamie was her life. No room for anyone else, she didn’t have the energy to hold anyone else up.
‘Look, I know you’re annoyed because you still have to work with me, but I have a plan.’ He had jerked his head to look at her when she spoke and his mouth had opened to speak, but he closed it instead and now he was surveying her with interest. His green eyes twinkled at her, and the image of that nearly silenced her completely. Looking away quickly she cleared her throat and worked at forming her words. Coherently, with a bit of strength behind them, so she didn’t look like a blithering idiot or a lovesick teenager. Damn those eyes.
‘I have a plan for the weekend. I think we should see what we can do. Give it a shot. I want you to try the prosthetics. Just once, just to see. If you do that, I think I can spring us for the weekend. I know I need some fresh air, and I think a night out would be just the ticket. So what do you say? Will you give me a chance?’ She regretted her final choice of words, but she set her jaw and looked at him square on, right into his eyes. The anger was gone from his face now, his brow was smooth, lips tight.
‘Deal,’ he said slowly. ‘But I pick the place. We go out Saturday, all day. Will Jamie be okay with that?’
Kate was too flummoxed to even worry about Jamie being on his own for the day. How was she going go out with Cooper all day? She nodded absently. ‘He got a new game in the post this morning, I doubt he’ll even notice I’m gone.’ Cooper smiled, heading for the door. She had never seen him move his chair so fast. ‘Where are you going?’
Cooper looked over his shoulder and flashed her a smile so intense that she almost bit her tongue as she drunk her coffee. ‘I’m going to plan our date with Trevor, before you back out.’
There was a closed door between them before either even realised that the word date had been used. And neither party particularly wanted to take it back, so it hung in the air like a glistening dust mote.