Flashback: 2 years' past: Worth

“No, over there,” Kailey said, inclining her head away from the two round tables where several groups of older men and women in light green scrubs and mismatched bathrobes sat.

Jordan wheeled her around, past the collection of walkers and crutches arrayed behind their seats, and he parked Kailey at a small square table for three against the wall, below the windows.

“I’m doing my best here, K” — the way he said it, it sounded like just the letter, that was it. “They want you to socialize. It doesn’t do you any good, just sitting in your room when you’re not in sessions.”

“Session” was the Institute’s term for therapy, be it physical or mental. Kailey had four sessions a day, a counseling session after breakfast, followed by conditioning until lunch.

“Conditioning” was the Institute’s term for ever increasing bouts of torture with large metal machines and slabs that surely weighed more than the numbers painted on the sides would lead anyone to believe.

After lunch, it was a schooling session. Because she was under age — as well as a year behind — she spent three hours a day with a different tutor every day, fulfilling the state’s requirement that she maintain schooling if at all possible.

After studies, she spent three or four hours with another group of physical therapists, and they worked her lower body, bending, stretching, lifting. She was glad she couldn’t feel anything they did down there, if how she felt above the waist was any indication of the results of a session.

Kailey picked at the cereal in her pre-measured, pre-heated bowl. This was the cereal for babies, consisting of… mush… rather than, say, something with flakes, or berries, or O’s.

“Maybe I should go over there, and sweet talk one of those guys with the new hip out of a slice of bacon,” Kailey said with a narrow-eyed glance over her shoulder.

One of the other old men happened to catch her glance, and he smiled, lifting his box of orange juice in a toast.

Kailey hoped his eyes were bad, and he mistook her grimace for a smile so he wouldn’t think her too rude.

Jordan hunched over his own tray, concentrating on peeling the grapefruit he’d selected. In his hands, it looked about the size of an orange in any normal person’s grip, and he peeled it apart and ate it in sections like an orange.

Kailey glowered at the banana.

“No,” Jordan said, as he ate another slice.

“I didn’t even—”

“Don’t have to, K. Nothing too acidic for another three weeks. That banana has everything this grapefruit does. And don’t forget to take your pills.”

She glowered at the little cup of pills, piled half-full, then began fishing them out one by one, taking them with a slurp of low fat milk. She wasn’t sure if she grimaced more from the chalky texture of the pills, the nasty taste of whatever the coating it was they used on the vitamins, or the milk itself.

She pushed her tray away after she finished her pills.

“You didn’t finish. Eat your banana.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“I’m not going to sneak you any snacks between sessions,” Jordan said, wiping his hands.

“I would never ask you to do that for me,” she said, trying to sit straighter in the chair.

“You never do. You just make those puppy dog eyes and stick that lower lip out.”

She pouted.

“See? There you go. Girlfriend, aren’t you a little old for that trick?”

“That depends. Does it still work?” she asked.

Jordan sighed, and slid her tray atop his.

“So.. What? You’re saying it makes me ugly? Are you saying I’m ugly now?”

He rolled his eyes, then undid her brakes, and wheeled her over to the table full of old men.

“Gentlemen, good morning. Could I ask your opinion on something? I seek the wisdom of my elders.”

“Best watch that tone, sonny. I may have a new knee, but I can still get up and kick your butt from here across the room,” one of the men said. Kailey wasn’t sure if he had his teeth in or not.

“My patient here is doubting her appearance. As my opinion may be biased because I’m stuck looking at her sorry self all day, every day, maybe you could give her a fresh perspective?”

With her hands full of tray, trying to keep it even so the grapefruit rinds didn’t fall to the floor, Kailey couldn’t smack Jordan. He must have planned it that way.

“She’s cute when she’s mad. Which she is, most of the time I see her in here,” said one of the men with a toothy smile. “You keep saying whatever it is you say to her, sonny.”

“Bit scrawny. They should feed her more than bird seed, put some meat on those bones.”

“If I was fifty years younger… And you were a few years older…” He winked.

Kailey felt her meager breakfast begin to turn an uncomfortable flop in her stomach.

“Thank you, gentlemen. Until lunch hour, then,” Jordan said, and with an incline of his head, he wheeled Kailey to the doors, slowing to allow her to deposit their trash and trays on the receptacles.

“See, that wasn’t so bad,” he said, as the doors whisked shut behind them.

“He winked at me,” she said, crossing her arms.

“You still got it, Girlfriend,” Jordan said, beginning to whistle the tuneless song he’d been composing all week.

“They’re a bunch of dirty old men. Next time you bring me by there, I’ll tell them you’re gay, that’s why you don’t find me attractive at all.”

“I never said you weren’t. Just not my type, is all.”

“And what is your type, then?”

“I like my girls tall, with a lot of… spark in them.”

“I think you meant to say ‘big boobs.’”

“Well, yeah, those would help, too. Nothin’ at all wrong with a nice, healthy pair of—”

“Shut up, Jordan.”

“I’m talkin’ cantaloupes, not apples, you know?”

“Shut up, Jordan.”

“Well, you asked.”

Flashback: Two years before....

The man with the long face and gray hair and eyes sat by her bedside, holding her hand. When he smiled, he seemed… grandfatherly.

“Good morning, Kailey. How are you feeling?”

The doctor always started the day with the same routine. He would come, sit by her side, with her hand in his, and ask the same three questions.

She swallowed. “Good morning, Doctor Harris. I feel all right, I guess, all things considered.”

“Did you sleep well?”

“With whatever it is they give me at night, I can’t do anything but sleep well,” she said, trying to smile.

The doctor’s eyes twinkled with his own smile. He patted her hand. “We’re trying to wean you off those. Do you feel any pain or discomfort anywhere?”

Kailey took a deep breath. The first time she’d answered the question, she thought he was merely asking to be polite, to see if there was anything she needed. She closed her eyes.

“My back is aching again, where you say they reconstructed the two crushed vertebrae. Deep down, like where the muscles are.

“They all feel stiff, achy — my muscles, that is. Joints feel okay. My head still feels… fuzzy. The buzzing is still there, and it gets worse when I talk, or look around too fast. The double vision has gone away, except when I get tired.”

Another doctor, standing unobtrusively by the door, scratched away at a datapad.

“Do you know what time it is?” the doctor asked.

Kailey’s eyes flicked over his shoulder, to the clock up on the wall. It had no numbers on it, just two black hands, and a sweeping red second hand.

“8:37 a.m.” she said, making a guess at where precisely the big hand was positioned. She saw the doctor with the datapad nod as he made more notes.

“On the wall beneath the clock, can you tell me if anything is different from yesterday?”

She looked at the three paintings. The two on each end were familiar, maybe by Norman Rockwell. In the middle, though…

“You put van Gogh up in the middle,” she said. “I remember we studied about him in art class… when I went to school.”

“Very good,” the doctor said. “Do you know what that painting is called?”

“Everybody knows ‘Starry Night,’” Kailey said.

“And what did you have for lunch yesterday?”

“Egg salad on wheat. Orange Jell-O cubes. Something clear and fizzy to drink.” She frowned, as did the doctor. More scratching at the datapad.

“What color was the can it came in?”

“I don’t know. They poured it into a cup before I got it.”

The tension eased from the doctor’s shoulders, and he smiled.

“Just one more test, Kailey, and then we’re done for the morning, and you can get some breakfast.” He lifted her arms up, his hands palm up under hers. “Now, press down.”

She did, and the doctor pushed back, increasing the pressure so Kailey had to do the same to keep the equilibrium.

“Now, fingertips to your nose, first left, then right.”

She touched her nose twice, and the doctor nodded, getting up.

“Thank you again, Kailey. I’ll see you again this evening.” Dr. Harris held the door for the other doctor, and then kept holding it for Kailey’s morning nurse.

She was a rather matronly woman, with a round face and her graying hair up in a bun. The woman made light conversation as she turned down the side of Kailey’s bed. She slid arms under Kailey’s legs and back and with what seemed hardly an effort, slid the girl over into the wheelchair that sat by the bed.

She wheeled Kailey across the room, to the restroom, and helped her take care of the usual morning routine. She made it all seem so businesslike, that Kailey had long given up being embarrassed.

“Soon enough, you won’t need to see me anymore, dear,” the woman had told her. She said that once or twice a week, and yet she kept coming back, morning after morning. She waited calmly as Kailey brushed her hair. The way the woman had smiled when Kailey finally had the strength to brush her own hair, the girl thought perhaps she didn’t like the chore as much as she’d let on.

“No, dear, that’s not it at all,” the nurse said. “Each day, you seem to need me less and less, but that’s a good thing. That means you’re getting stronger, recovering from whatever ordeal it is that put you here.”

Kailey frowned. “You mean… that isn’t in my charts? They don’t tell you any of the details?”

“Heavens no, dear. At least, not at my pay grade. I don’t need to know much beyond the basics to help you along out of this wing and up to the next floor.”

There came a knock on the door. Kailey glanced up at the clock. 8:55, the same two knocks at the same point every morning.

“And now, dear, I will hand you over to your chauffeur,” the nurse said, opening the door for a large black man. They nodded to each other, and then the nurse left.

“Good morning, Sunshine,” he said with a broad smile. Everything about Jordan was broad. His smile, his nose, his shoulders. He was over six feet tall, and built like a linebacker. It was what he’d been, before he finished his degree, making the most of his football scholarship.

As big and imposing as he was, though, Jordan’s big hands were gentle, steady. He lifted each of her legs and tugged at the light blue scrubs, making sure the fabric was smooth before they got underway.

“You always do that. It’s not like I can feel any of those wrinkles.”

“Just because you can’t feel it, doesn’t mean they aren’t there, girlfriend. I spent a few weeks in a chair back in college. Knee injury. Trust me, you don’t want to sit on a wrinkle for more than a few minutes. You’d be lucky, not being able to feel the blisters. They aren’t fun.

“And they don’t pay me enough to take care of blisters on your scrawny butt. And speaking of that scrawny butt, breakfast dead ahead.”

The double doors whooshed open ahead of them, and Jordan maneuvered Kailey into the chow line.

“You do this to torture me,” she said, glancing up at him. “You know I’m not allowed to eat most of this stuff.”

One of the serving women behind the counter smiled. “Kailey, good morning, here you go, sweetie.” She passed over a pre-prepared tray, and Kailey held it in her lap. Jordan wheeled her down to the fresh fruit section.

“Can’t I have just one slice of bacon?” she wheedled.

“They don’t pay me enough to clean up the kind of mess that would make.”