A Marine for His Mom by Christy Jeffries

Author:Christy Jeffries
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2015-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

The pain in Cooper’s knee pulsed all the way up his thigh and hip and was spreading into his back as the physical therapist at the Shadowview Naval Hospital maneuvered his leg. He’d rather deal with the pain, though, than have his thoughts cloud over, dulled from the drugs. He still didn’t remember what he’d said to Maxine when he’d last taken his prescription, but he wasn’t going to risk it again. It had taken a while, but they were finally in a good place.

Hell, after the way he’d heard Cessy whoop it up on the other end of the phone receiver this morning, the whole town was going to assume that he and Maxine were in much more than a good place. And he wasn’t sure how he felt about that, although he’d hightailed it out of the cookie shop so that he wouldn’t have to hear her denials.

“Are you taking any pain medications?” The shorter Asian man, who’d told Cooper to call him Jeffrey and looked as if he could bench-press a compact car, asked as he pushed Cooper’s knee almost into his chest.

“No,” Cooper grunted out, not willing to swipe at the sweat dripping off his forehead.

“Not even a little something to take the edge off, Gunny? It doesn’t make you less of a man or a marine. You just had two major surgeries rebuilding pretty much your entire leg. I promise you, when our session is done, you’re going to want something to ease the agony.”

“Great. I’ll be looking forward to it.” His voice sounded labored even to his own ears, but he wasn’t being sarcastic. He really was looking forward to getting off his butt and running again. And if having this guy twist him up into a pretzel would speed things along, then bring on the pain.

Being in the therapy wing brought back the memory of his recent hospital stay. The first surgeon at the naval base he’d been airlifted to said he was lucky the blast from the bomb hadn’t taken out his whole leg. Instead, he’d just shattered his kneecap, severely damaging his tendons and meniscus, when he landed on it following the impact that had knocked him off his feet. But he didn’t feel so lucky. They may have been able to replace his knee with an artificial one, but no military doctors could replace everything he lost. Not his dog. Not his squadron. Not his Corps.

Not his life.

Well, not his life as he’d once known it. Plenty of soldiers had lost a lot more than their stupid kneecaps, so his injury was nothing in the scheme of things.

Cooper squeezed his eyes shut as he moved to a stationary bike, trying to tell himself the pain was of the physical variety and had nothing to do with the feelings he’d forbidden himself to think about.

But listening to Maxine open up this morning had caused some sort of sympathetic crack in his own dam and, for the first time, he needed to take inventory of his emotions.

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