Cari Lynn - The Doctor's Recovery

Her duty as an only child was to continue the Fiore filmmaking tradition as her father had always envisioned. Her responsibility as the only Fiore child was to take care of her mother just as her father had always done. Just as she’d promised him she would.

Eddy pulled a smaller leather case from the paper shopping bag he’d brought in and dropped it on her lap. “The guys and I got you something.”

Mia unzipped the top and gaped at the digital camera tucked inside. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Take pictures. Open your creative mind,” Eddy said. “It’ll be a good distraction while you’re here.”

Her creative mind was open and ready to finish the final documentary in her father’s acclaimed series. Her creative mind was already at full capacity with her film work. Art must always send a message that impacts many lives, Mia.

Pictures of IV lines, needle containers and hand sanitizer hardly impacted lives. Portraits wouldn’t pay the mortgage on her mother’s house. Unless, of course, those same pictures were taken in the aftermath of a bombing in the Middle East. Yet she wasn’t in Syria and Bay Water Medical wasn’t inside a war zone. Photojournalist wasn’t her job title. Neither was photographer.

Besides, only her body had been damaged in the accident, not her mind. Not her creative side. She ran her finger along the zipper, the uneven edge matching the uncertainty knotting through her. What if she’d lost something more precious like her passion? Not possible. More than just her livelihood relied on her finishing this film and securing new contracts. “You expect me to take pictures? Here?”

“It’s a camera, Mia, not a bow and arrow.” Eddy swatted at the air as if annoyed by a pesky mosquito, not his good friend. “We aren’t suggesting you have target practice out in the hallways.”

No, it was worse than that. Her friends suggested that she betray her father’s memory by wasting her time with still photographs. “What happened to crossword puzzles and books to fill the time?”

Eddy grinned and walked to the door. “Have to think outside the box to keep the creativity lines open.”

He’d quoted her father. But her dad had meant with film work. With the important work that touched many lives. With the film work that supported her mother all these years. The soft knock on the door followed by the cheerful greeting from her physical therapist saved Mia from correcting Eddy’s misconception. She set the camera bag on the rolling table and pushed it away, along with her doubts.

Time to concentrate on therapy and exercise. Walking without pain. Moving without pain. There was nothing wrong with her creative mind. Nothing that a camera could fix. The hospital walls compressed in on her. The bland, dull paint made everything stark, barren and exposed her uncertainties. Clearly, she’d been alone with her own thoughts too much. She needed breathing space. “I want to walk the entire floor today, not just this hall.”

“How’s your pain?” Robyn unclipped several of Mia’s monitors.

“Tolerable,” Mia said. Numbness and pain wouldn’t interfere with her therapy. She had to prove she’d made progress, and that had to start now. With every hour she remained inside Bay Water Medical, her resolve leached into the pale walls like blood into white carpet.

“We’ll take it slow and easy,” Robyn said.

“We can stop at the nurses’ station,” Mia suggested. “Take stock. Turn back or keep going.” She had no intention of returning to her room until she’d walked every linoleum-covered inch of the third floor.

Mia managed to cover only one hallway before she leaned against the nurses’ station and tried to wrestle her pain back into submission. Another physical therapist accompanied a woman. Her pure-white hair and the unsteady grip of her hands, all knuckles and veins, on her walker betrayed her age even though gravity had failed to diminish her height and transform her into one of those pint-sized seniors. The pair paused beside Mia.

“Helen, let me see your hand.” The charge nurse, Nettie, leaned over the counter toward the older woman. “I swear you must have a green arm because no normal green thumb could’ve saved my plant.”

The silver woven through Nettie’s black hair broadcast her experience with life, making her a cross between the neighborhood’s favorite nana and the matriarch of a dignified political family. Nettie’s straightforward nature and disdain for sugarcoating made her one of Mia’s favorite nurses on the floor.

Nettie tapped her phone, spun the screen around and grinned proudly. “I was ready to toss that gardenia into the Dumpster, and now look at it.”

Mia assumed she’d have a dead thumb if she tried to grow anything. Her mom believed in silk plants and Waterford crystal to decorate a home with life. Her father believed nature belonged in its native habitat. Mia wasn’t sure if she agreed, but she’d need more than a home for a plant. She’d need to give it her time and attention, and that was in short supply.

“Isn’t it just lovely.” Helen pushed her glasses up. Her smile bloomed up into her eyes, filling her fragile skin with light. “The scent when it flowers will fill your entire house.”

Roslyn, a nursing assistant with the ink still drying on her certification, glanced at the phone over Nettie’s shoulder. “The city gardeners could learn something from you.”

“I’m an amateur with no formal schooling,” Helen said.

But the older woman had passion even without formal training, and that mattered. A passion that glowed from within her like the sunrise streaking burnt gold across the plains in Zimbabwe, rousing the wild to life. Only Helen awakened someone’s love for nature.

“You’re a plant whisperer, Ms. Reid.” Awe lowered Roslyn’s voice into a church whisper.

“Nothing like that.” Helen patted her hair as if she’d revealed too much and needed to tuck her secrets back in place. “I’ve grown my share of gardenias over the years. Once you understand their temperament, they thrive and blossom.”

“If only you had a cure for a temperamental man, Helen.” Nettie’s grin lifted her eyebrows. “We could bottle it, make millions and retire in style.”

“I have better luck with plants.” Helen reached for her walker, her movements slow, as if someone lowered the dimmer switch inside her.

“Nonsense.” Nettie looked at Mia. “She’s got a son working more hours than sanity recommends down in the ER. You raised him right, Helen.”

The plant whisperer is Helen Reid. As in Wyatt Reid’s mom. The one Wyatt had told Mia was recovering from hip surgery down the hall from her. Helen had an inch or two on Mia even hunched over her walker. Wyatt’s height hadn’t come from only his father’s side. But Wyatt’s personality fit into every inch of his six-three frame. His willpower alone displaced any soft spots. Nothing on Wyatt appeared weak. Everything about Helen was fragile, from her thin frame to her shaky grip on her walker. She reminded Mia of one of those flamingos at the zoo, standing on one thin leg, regal and proud yet looking as if the slightest jostle would topple her. “Are you Wyatt Reid’s mother?”

“He’s my son, but he hasn’t needed me as his mother in quite some time.” Her voice wilted like her white curls that drooped against her head as if faint from dehydration.

“Wyatt mentioned he was on his way to see you when I spoke to him last night,” Mia said.

A three-point walker turn and small shuffle brought Helen face-to-face with Mia. Her eyes, not slate like Wyatt’s but hazel, blinked behind large round glasses, reflecting an all-too-familiar calculated focus. Mother and son were not that different.