Miracle (The Pagano Family Book 6) (3 page)

“Double pneumonia for someone with your pulmonary condition is a devastating illness.”

He shrugged. He remembered. It had been pretty damn devastating, yeah.

“Extra weight isn’t helpful, either.”

Another shrug. Even if he hadn’t really realized how fat he’d gotten, he’d noticed the drag of it.

She studied her tablet some more and then took a deep breath. Her chest rose, and Joey couldn’t ignore that. He might as well have been a eunuch, but he wasn’t one. Maybe life would have been easier if he were.

“Okay. Well, let’s start here: any therapy plan we work on together will include a psychologist. At least to start. Not because you’re ‘nuts’”—she made the quotation marks obvious—“but because you stopped therapy at a critical moment, and you didn’t go back to it despite marked losses. That, among other things, suggests depression to me, and depression is a significant obstacle to the goals you listed. Therapy can’t be productive unless we deal with
all
the challenges you face. Will you agree to that?”

He wanted to say no and get up and leave. He wasn’t nuts. But he was sitting in this office because his family kept telling him he was being an asshole, and because when, on Christmas night, his father had wept and begged until he had gasped for breath, he’d really felt like one.

He thought about all the nights he’d spent lying in bed with his fucking cannula in, or sometimes even the mask, wishing he’d just die and get the whole show over with.

He thought about how fucking miserable he was. How much he hated everything about himself. How he had nothing, when everyone around him had everything.

Yeah, he was depressed. Sure. He didn’t know how talking about it would make it better, since not being able to talk was most of the fucking problem, but it probably couldn’t make it worse. He’d promised Pop he’d try, and here he was, trying.

He nodded.

~oOo~

By the time Dr. Turillo left the room and Joey could finally put his shirt back on, he had an appointment with a headshrinker for the following week. He had an appointment that very afternoon at the Rehabilitation Therapy Center with a speech therapist
and
a physical therapist—not because his arms and legs didn’t work, but because any fitness plan had to take his stupid defective lungs into account. Oh—and he had the number of a nutritionist. And a follow-up with Turillo in six weeks.

She had kept calling all these specialists Joey’s ‘team.’ He had become an actual project.

As he stood at the bank of elevators, waiting for an upward car so he could go to the RTC for his appointments, a downward car opened, and an old couple got out. It sat there for a second or two, open and empty. Down. To the lobby. Out the door. Back to Quiet Cove. Where everybody could leave him the fuck alone, thank you very much.

As he pressed the down button and took a step toward that car, an upward car opened.

Feeling bitter, Joey got in and pressed the floor for the Rehabilitation Therapy Center.

~oOo~

Most of the patients at a therapy center—and the RTC was no different, as far as Joey could tell—were either very young or very old. In other words: weak. Joey fucking hated it. Sitting in the waiting room, with one area full of small chairs and bright plastic toys, with a television on the wall playing Disney movies, and the rest of the room full of coughing, snorting, groaning old codgers, Joey felt like a lost soul.

Occasionally, a youngish adult would come in with their knee in a brace, or something like that, probably an athletic injury of some sort, but that was even worse, as he sat there with his fucking oxygen tank in its snazzy red backpack.

But he sat there, and when he was called—as Joey, this time—he went back and met with Evan, who worked out a fitness plan for him and gave him a bunch of shit he was supposed to track. Then he met with Gayle—and thank God she wasn’t hot. The speech stuff was mostly familiar to him. Lots of ‘imaging’ strategies and repetition exercises. So very dull—and not all that easy. But some stuff was different from what he’d done before.

He was supposed to meet three times weekly with Evan and twice weekly with Gayle. He was going to be putting a lot of miles on his Jeep.

He hated it all so very fucking much. But he had been better, before. Words had come more easily. And for a while, he’d almost never needed his tank except to sleep.

It hadn’t been enough, but it had been better. Maybe that was all he could hope for: just to be slightly less of a loser.

If it made Pop happy before he died, okay. After that, if he wanted, he could bail again.

Afterward, he went to the front desk, his tank on his back and its cannula in his coat pocket, and set the thick white envelope full of instructions and brochures down so he could pay his co-pay, set his next appointments, and sign the papers the receptionist set before him.

Behind him, a dog barked—not loud, more like a happy cough—and he turned, surprised to see a big, fluffy black dog. Its size and fluff kind of reminded him of old Elsa, Carlo’s dog, who’d died a while back. A little kid, maybe five or so, wearing one of those helmets kids wore when they either had a brain injury or might give themselves one, was kneeling next to the dog, hugging him around the neck. The dog’s tail was going a thousand miles a second, but otherwise, he stood motionless.

A slim woman in a white coat, with a long, dark ponytail, stood close by, her back to the desk, as did another woman, a little on the heavy side, with a purse hooked on her shoulder. Therapist and mother, Joey guessed. The black dog must have been some kind of therapy dog.

Too bad they didn’t have therapy dogs for his kinds of problems. That might be pretty cool.

Joey turned back to his paperwork. When he heard the little kid say, in a loud, monotone voice, “BYE MO AND TINA,” he smiled.

Finished signing and paying and setting appointments, Joey picked up his envelope and turned around. The dog was right behind him, and he couldn’t resist. He crouched down and tousled the big lug between the ears.

“Hey buddy,” he said as the dog leaned in to the love.

“Joey?”

Joey looked up, shocked to have recognized the voice, and saw that the kid’s therapist, now facing him, was Valentina Corti: Quiet Cove resident, the daughter of the owner of Corti’s Market, and the little sister of the guy he’d once called his best friend.

She’d had an obvious and adorable crush on him, once upon a time. In a very different life. When she’d been in high school, and he’d been in his twenties, strong and cocky, with a big damn mouth and big dreams of being a made man.

Angelo Jr., her brother and his former friend, was made now. And Joey had a team of therapists and doctors.

His chest tightened painfully, and he fought the urge to gasp his next breath. “H-h-hey…Tina.”

~ 2 ~

Feeling suddenly sixteen, Tina blushed. She had not been prepared to see Joey Pagano at the front desk of the RTC. “Hi…how are you?”

He stood and shrugged. “Okay.” He paused and cleared his throat—just one sound, the
hem
without the
ah
—“You?”

“I’m good, I’m good.”

Tina’s mind whirled, and she stomped on the gas and made it go faster. She and Joey lived, as far as she knew, less than five miles apart, but she hadn’t seen him regularly in years. In fact, she wasn’t sure she’d seen him at all since she’d started grad school, which was almost six years ago.

He looked a lot different. He was heavier, and there was a touch of grey in his brown hair, and—most obvious of all—there was no light of mischief in his dark hazel eyes, but the old butterflies still stirred to life in her chest. God, she’d had such a painful crush on him back in the day. For
years
. Like rock-star level need and misery—only worse, because she’d seen him all the time, and there had been, at least in her mind, the realistic possibility that someday he might notice her.

He hadn’t, of course, except as Angie’s baby sister. A kid he’d been nice to.

She knew about the shooting—it had been big news in the Cove back then—and she knew he’d had some trouble after. That was back during the deepest part of her ‘love’ for him, and she’d been worried. But he’d basically dropped off the edge of the world after it—or at least off her part of the map. She’d been young and busy and figuring out her life, and she hadn’t thought about him much in a long time, except for some nostalgia and mild curiosity whenever she heard the Pagano name.

But here he was, and she felt a little shaky. Stupid. She was no dumb, sappy kid now. She had a Master’s degree in Occupational Therapy. She was working on her PhD, for fuck’s sake. And he was…different.

He wasn’t her client, so she didn’t want to ask why he was there—in Boston, an hour and a half from home—but the obvious answer was that he was getting some kind of therapy. Maybe a follow-up. Ten years was a long time to still be in active therapy.

Her curiosity was damn near demanding that she ask, though, so for a second, she couldn’t get any words out at all. They stared at each other, with Moses standing between them, his wagging tail slamming both their legs.

Finally, Joey made that
hem
sound again and said, “O-okay. Gotta…go.”

Aphasia. Tina thought she had probably known that at some point, though when people in the Cove talked about Joey—something they’d done a lot at first but didn’t really anymore—they just talked about his ‘troubles,’ which always made her think of The Troubles in Ireland. She’d done a high school paper on The Troubles. Anyway, she wouldn’t have had much to think about ‘aphasia’ until the past few years.

He was walking past her, and, without being entirely sure why, she didn’t want him to go. “Wait.” She put her hand on his arm, and he recoiled from her touch. “I’m done for the day. You…you want to get some coffee?”

Again, he
hemmed
. It seemed to be a tic with him before he spoke. Tina’s clinician brain identified it as a possible coping mechanism, giving him an extra second to compose. “Don’t drink…coffee. M-makes me… …”

His face took on a red flush, of embarrassment or frustration—or both. Tina felt bad, and she guessed that the word he couldn’t find was ‘tense’ or something like it, but she didn’t fill it in. She didn’t get impatient. She simply waited.

He gave up. “No,” he said instead.

“There’s a place down the corner that has really good tea, too. I don’t drink much coffee, either. I get kind of batpoop nuts if I have more than one cup a day.”

A smile broke out suddenly across his handsome face, and the old Joey shone through the clouds. “Batpoop?”

She returned his smile and brushed her long bangs out of her eyes. “I work with kids. I know lots of unswear words. I’ll share some over tea. Please? My treat?”

“What about…” he gestured at Moses.

“Mo is my colleague, not my roommate. He goes home with somebody else. I’ll just take him back and get my bag. Will you wait?”

With a wistful glance at the door like he was watching his last chance for escape slide by, Joey met her eyes and nodded.

Expecting him to bolt as soon as she turned her back, she hurried to hand Moses off to Oliver, then ran to her office, hung up her lab coat, and grabbed her bag. She would have to come back up after tea to work on reports, and log some research, but for now, she left her desk a mess and locked the door behind her.

Joey was still waiting, almost right where she’d left him, the straps of his oxygen pack over his shoulders. He looked like a condemned man awaiting the gallows.

Tina faltered a bit at that, but she was too far committed to turn back now. “Okay! Let’s go!” She heard the chirp in her own voice, and, inside, she cringed. She could be obnoxiously peppy, especially when she felt self-conscious.

But Joey smiled again, and waved his arm in an ‘after you’ motion.

So tea it was, then.

~oOo~

The coffee shop was in that afternoon lull, not long before it would close for the day, and they almost had the place to themselves. Tina ordered a chai latte, and Joey pulled a bottled water from the refrigerated case next to the register. He set it on the counter and then nudged her aside and paid for their drinks.

“I said it was my treat.”

He shrugged and paid. When the barista told him to have a good day, he nodded.

She realized that ordering at a restaurant, even a coffee shop, might be difficult for him. Fuck, what an imbecile she was. She had no excuse, either. It was her job to think about shit like that.

When he went to a table while she waited for her chai, Tina took the opportunity to consider him. The Joey she’d known before, when he and Angie had hung out a lot, had been a goofball—rowdy and quick to laugh, a gentle flirt with an easy smile. He’d been hot as Hades, too. He and Angie had taken every chance to walk around with their abs showing, and their photos online had been nothing but shirtless bathroom mirror selfies, shirtless gym mirror selfies, club-dress mirror selfies, drunken party selfies, beach selfies, surfing shots, and hot chicks they knew or had simply seen on the beach.

Tina had been completely susceptible to Joey’s shallow mystique. She’d had a whole fantasy about how underneath all that bravado was a tender, spiritual soul. Possibly even tortured. Definitely some deep secret he’d been hiding.

That had been all fantasy back then, she figured, but the quiet man staring out the window of the coffee shop certainly seemed tortured.

She chuckled to herself—apparently, back in the day, it hadn’t been the abs or the laugh that had gotten her attention after all. Because he was on the chubby side now, and the somber side, and she was still intrigued.

“Tina,” the barista called, and she picked up her chai and crossed to the table Joey had selected. He’d hung his oxygen pack on the back of his chair and taken off his coat so that it lay over it. She hadn’t seen him take a hit from the tank yet.

When she sat, he cleared his throat and said, “Don’t…talk. Not good at…c-con-conversation.”

She understood, so she nodded. “Do you listen?” Though she’d meant it as almost a joke, as soon as she asked, she realized that he might have auditory processing issues, too. She really needed to set swoony, high-school Tina to the side and remember therapist Tina a little more. “I mean, is that hard?”

“Not…one on one.”

“Can I ask yes/no questions?”

He nodded, and there was a gleam of relief in his eyes. He had great eyes. They were brown mostly, just darker than the color of her chai, but they seemed green in sunlight, and even gold every now and then. During her crush phase, she’d thought of them as ‘sparkling and mysterious.’ In her diary, she’d probably written that phrase a hundred times.

She’d been formulating a way to ask him some details about his ‘troubles,’ when he cleared his throat twice. “Don’t… … … diagnose me. Done that all…day. Talk about you. Doctor?”

Surprised that he’d read her mind, and with a flutter of pleasure at his interest in her, she smiled. “No—I mean, not yet. I’m an occupational therapist. I have a Master’s, and I’m working on my PhD. I won’t be a medical doctor, but I guess it counts.”

He nodded his agreement, then lifted his eyebrows, an expression of curiosity, encouraging her to continue.

Tina had done a lot of research during her studies about all manner of disabilities and the therapies to remediate them. And for the past two years, she’d had a vivid personal interest in communication disorders. Always, in study or practice, she wondered what a horror it must be to be locked inside a head that wouldn’t let you communicate the way you wanted.

She had respect bordering on awe for people who coped and found ways to hold their place in a world that had neither the time nor the patience for the differently-abled. Those people triumphed over life on a daily basis. Normally-abled people didn’t understand the effort, the skill, the strength required to simply conduct the basics of life in a fundamentally different way.

Despite her years of study, she didn’t understand it, either. She couldn’t possibly. But she got as close as she could from her position of privilege and ease.

Tina didn’t want to diagnose Joey Pagano. She wanted to know him again. The Joey that her high-school self had pined for had had life laid out for him like an all-you-can-eat buffet. This Joey had to make his own meals. Every one of them from scratch.

So she sipped at her chai and leaned close over the table, and she talked about herself, as he’d asked her to do. She let him listen and be part of her meal.

~oOo~

They sat at that table for more than an hour, and Tina talked until her tongue and jaw were sore. Though she became self-conscious at the constant drone of her own voice, Joey’s attention had seemed rapt, and whenever she quieted, he’d cleared his throat and asked a short question to keep her going.

Then they walked back to the medical center. He wanted to walk her to her car, but when she said she was going back up to do some work, he stopped at the front door of the building.

It almost felt like the end of the date—one of those afternoon ‘coffee’ dates with a guy she’d met through a dating app. The safe, out-in-public, daylight kind of date. In case of psychopath.

She really, deeply fucking hated dating that way. But she really, deeply fucking hated setups, too. Overall, she really, deeply fucking hated dating.

This hadn’t been a date, but if it had, it would have been a pretty great one. She didn’t want to simply wave and walk into the building, and shaking his hand seemed ridiculous, seeing as she’d known him since she was a little kid. So she stepped to him and raised her arms, meaning to put them around his neck and kiss his cheek.

Okay, there might have been a tiny butterfly-flutter at the thought of being that close to Joey Pagano, a little aftershock left over from high school, or maybe a tickle of something new, but she meant the hug simply to be an affectionate goodbye to a friend.

He jumped back, throwing his arms up, as if she’d lunged at him with a knife. The result was an awkward thing where she had to take a couple of quick steps so she didn’t face-plant at his feet, and his expression twisted into a combination of shock and shame that managed to hurt her feelings
and
make her feel sorry for him.

Once her feet were secure under her again, and feeling the heat of a blush on her cheeks, one that she was sure matched the color on his, Tina cleared her throat. “Okay. Um. Thanks for going for tea. It was nice talking. I’ll…I’ll see you.”