and I can’t for the life of me figure out what I could’ve done to make you hate me so much.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“Coulda fooled me. Again, you got a smile for everyone but me. I see you with your other patients, you’re smiling. Me, you’re a DI.”
I absolutely did not hate Trey. He annoyed me. He irritated me. He blew off his PT sessions, which pissed me off, but I didn’t hate him. It was the opposite, I cared too much about him. If anyone else I worked with gave up on themselves the way Trey did, I’d expend half the energy I did trying to get Trey on the right track. I wouldn’t be annoyed, irritated, or pissed. I’d feel bad for them. I’d try to encourage them and help, but I wouldn’t lie in bed at night and worry. I wouldn’t let it bother me to the point of obsession.
“I don’t hate you. But I do hate that you’re not taking your rehab seriously and that’s the difference between you and my other patients. It’s frustrating when you allow your impatience to hinder your progress.”
“Have you ever stopped to think that maybe it’s frustrating to me that my body no longer works the way it used to? That it has nothing to do with patience and everything to do with the fact I will never be what I was.”
I had thought about that. And as much as I could empathize with him, I still had full range of motion and use of my limbs, therefore I had no idea what it truly felt like not to.
Was I being too hard on him?
Heck no. He was a Navy SEAL for crying out loud, he’d been through tougher training than any PT exercises I could give him.
“Trey,” I whispered. “I know I’ve been hard on you. But I know you’re strong. You’re a SEAL—”
“No, I’m not. I’m not shit, not anymore.”
His icy stare chilled me to the bone and his anger flared.
There was the crux of Trey’s issues. Not the first time I’d seen the signs, not even the first time he’d voiced them, yet I still couldn’t find a way to help him. And that was the root of my problem. I needed to find a way to break through. To show him he had so much to be grateful for.
“I know you can do better if you stop thinking about what you no longer have and start being grateful for what you do have. You still have both your legs—”
“Great, I have both my legs,” he snapped sarcastically, rolled to his hip, and started to get up.
My hand wrapped around his bicep, and the instant it did, Trey’s face blanked. What in the world?
“I didn’t—”
“You cannot begin to fathom what it means to lose yourself, so save your bullshit for some idiot that’ll buy it.”
“There’s your problem. That’s why you fail. You’ve talked yourself into believing you’ve lost something. You’ve made up your mind—”
“Right,” he huffed out a humorless laugh. His beautiful green eyes glittered with anger and I braced for his ire. And boy, did he give it. “You, perfect Adalynn, don’t know the first goddamn thing about losing. You and your perfect family, your perfect life, your perfect fucking parents.” He jabbed a finger my way. “You don’t get to tell me jackshit about what my problem is when you’ve never known anything but fucking perfect your whole coddled life.”
He got to his feet and stared down at me and my heart lurched at the blatant, unmasked pain. There was way more going on with Trey than his bum leg. More than no longer being a SEAL. Something dark and ugly had crawled inside of him and I realized I would never break through. Not because I didn’t want to, but because he’d never let me.
I got to my feet and mustered up all the courage I could find and said, “I think you need to find a new therapist.”
I instantly regretted saying those words but it was the right thing to do. He needed more, better, someone with more experience.
“I think you’re right.”
With his carefully blank stare, he shook his head and turned. Three steps later he stopped, craned his neck, and looked back at me.
“So much for never giving up.”
My heart seized and my temper flared.
“You can lie to yourself but we both know it’s not me giving up, it’s you.”
“Funny, Adalynn—”
“There’s not a damn thing funny about you giving up,” I cut