Talk of the Town

Despite the seeming truth of his advice, I learned from my daughter's seething tirades against me that Dennis himself was having trouble moving on. She came home just last week looking for a fight. Chelsea was the master of manipulating her father, but I could see through her.

My daughter was sure that she could goad me into an argument, and I would tell her to get out. Then she could go and live with her father, which was what she really wanted.

But she unknowingly gave me a piece of information that helped to give me hope. In the midst of our argument, she told me about finding Dennis out on his deck crying.

Despite the fact that he was telling me to look forward, and get over the past, he was having as much trouble as I was doing so.

I tried then to take a serious and unbiased look at my situation. I had screwed up my marriage to levels that were probably improbable if not impossible to repair. But if I corrected the problems one after another maybe there was hope.

It would, of course take time, but time was all I had.

The first thing I had to do was to take care of the baby. As my daughter had pointed out, one of the primary reasons that Dennis would talk to me on the phone but wouldn't ever come into his own house was the fact that seeing me with my belly swollen with another man's child was torture for him. It was simply too big a reminder of how I had destroyed our relationship.

The strange thing was that now that I knew whose child it was, I would have had a termination done in an instant, but it was too late for that. I would have the child and then give it up for adoption. It would be better for all concerned.

I know that it is a terrible thing to blame all of my problems on a child who even had yet to take its first breath, but I had my priorities. And my priority was getting Dennis back.

No one seemed to want this child. I didn't want it. Dennis said it himself. If I hadn't gotten pregnant, or if the child was his, then we would have had a chance. Brad didn't want it. He was denying paternity and hiding from me. Not even Brad's parents, the child's presumptive grand parents wanted anything to do with it. The best thing for all concerned would be to give the child up for adoption where he or she could have a family that wanted a child.

After that, I could work on getting Dennis back.

* * * * * *

Jaime

After my mistake, I avoided Dennis. I felt like a fool every time I looked into his eyes. Every time I thought about how nice he was to me, I felt like shit. He was everything that I should have been. He had been through a divorce like I had. But instead of crying in his beer and hiding from the world he plunged back in. The fact that I saw him sitting on his deck crying his eyes out told me that he had his share of set-backs just like I had. But he tried very hard to get over them.

Seeing him made me feel like I hadn't tried hard enough to get over my issues. I also felt bad because from the very start, Dennis had been nothing but kind to me. Even after my enraged bitch routine when we first met, maybe I wasn't ready to move on just yet. We all get there in our own time, maybe it wasn't time for me yet. Maybe for the meantime it was better for me to be alone.

I was out as usual that Saturday morning that my life began to change. I was hiking a particularly difficult section of the woods that I had never been to before. There was a tiny, creek meandering through it. The water was still moving, even though it was November. Normally, it probably would have been frozen by now. But again that abnormally warm November weather was working in my favor.

I breathed in the clean air. It was untainted by chemicals or exhaust fumes. I was walking along the edge of the creek occasionally stepping from rock to rock to avoid getting my expensive walking shoes wet. That was all I remember.

Apparently, I slipped on one of the rocks and hit my head. When I woke up, I was wet to the point of freezing. And I had the headache to end all headaches.

I pulled out my cellphone and called 911. They asked if I was in danger and my location. Once the operator found out that I was in the park and not in danger, she transferred my call to park services. Unfortunately, because of budget cuts, park services didn't work on the weekends. The recording asked me to leave a message, and they would get back to me. I was on my own.

My foot was wedged between two rocks, and my ankle was throbbing. Luckily, the cold of the stream was probably keeping the swelling down, but it really hurt. And for some reason, I couldn't reach it. Then I remembered my phone. I went through my contacts. My mom and sister were in a different state; they were no help.

It suddenly dawned on me that I had no friends. Okay, I had one person that seemed to want to be my friend. So having no choice I called him.

"Dennis, this is Jaime," I said. "I hate to ask but I need a favor."

"Okay," he said. I almost hung up on him then. He was so kind, and so eager to help me that I felt awful about it.

"Where are you?" he asked.

"I don't know," I told him the situation. His response showed me that not only was he kind; he was smart as hell.

"Okay obviously your phone works and you have a good signal," he said. "What kind of phone is it?"

"It's an older iPhone," I said. "It's an iPhone 5. I didn't want to upgrade." He laughed.

"Go to the iTunes Store and download one of those geocaching apps," he said. "Then call me back. If you're on AT&T you don't have to hang up on me."

I looked through the apps and picked one of the free ones. "Why am I doing this?" I asked. "And I should probably tell you I don't have much battery left."

"We need to work quickly then," he said. I heard rumbling in the background.

"What are you doing?" I asked as I watched the download progress.

"Coming to get you," he said. I swear it sounded like he was warming up a TV dinner in a microwave. Then I heard the sound of a car door closing.

"Got it," I said proudly. I had no idea why I was doing it. I didn't even know what geocaching was.

"Open it," he said.

"Well duh," I said sarcastically. A touch of my inbred bitch crept out.

"Okay, look at the screen," he said, ignoring my attitude. "Somewhere up there is a series of large numbers. Read them to me slowly."

I did as he asked and felt good about it, for some reason. "Now what," I asked.

"Now talk to me," he said. And I did. I told him how afraid I was. I was somewhere in the middle of the large park. I hadn't seen another person since I woke up.

"You have other things to worry about," he said.

"Like what," I asked.

"I would have come and gotten you no matter what," he said. "But you framed the request like a favor. That means that you owe me a favor in return, and you never know what I might ask you to do."

"What you're doing is ..." I began. I stopped. I was too emotional. Then I just popped it out. "I'd do anything you want."

"Ooh, that was not something you should have said," he gushed. "You're a tall, pretty redhead. There's no end to things I could want." I was trying to think up a snarky answer when my less than 10% of battery remaining warning came on.

"You think about what you want," I said, aware of what I was hinting. "I'm going to turn the phone off to save the battery. Please hurry, Dennis. You have a big area to search."

I knew that it would probably take a few hours for Dennis to find me, if he could. Then I realized that I hadn't told him even where to begin searching. I just decided to relax for a few moments. Even if he knew the park he'd need to get to the park first, and it would take him a few minutes to drive there.

I don't know if it was the pain in my ankle or the cold of being partially submerged in the four inch deep cold water, but I drifted off to sleep.

When I woke up, not very much time had passed. I felt hands all over me. The next thing I knew, I was being lifted and put down on a soft cushion. My eyes opened and there was Dennis leaning over me.

He sat me up and handed me a cup of warm coffee. I sipped it gratefully. He wrapped me in a huge fluffy towel.

"I'm going to get out of the jeep, and you can slip out of your wet clothes and into these," he said. "They're going to be big on you, but they're new and clean, and they'll let you get warm."

I quickly skimmed off my wet top and bra. I put on the thick sweatshirt he'd left. I took my shorts and panties off with the sweat pants covering me and slipped my legs into the sweat pants. Then I put on the thick warm socks. I knocked on the window, and Dennis came back. He took all the wet clothing and the towel I had been wrapped in, and put them in the back behind the seat.

He wrapped me in a huge blanket and then laid me down on the seat behind the driver's section.

He gave me a couple of pills for the pain in my ankle. Then he got in the front seat, and we took off.

"Dennis, where are we going?" I asked.

"Hospital," he said. "You need X-rays."

"Where'd you get the Jeep?" I asked.

"It's my winter car," he said. "It's four-wheel drive and it protects my Mustang from having to go out in snow or rain." I dozed off after that.

I was asleep when we drove into the parking lot. He wrapped the blanket around me, picked me up like a baby, and then carried me into the emergency room.

He put me into a wheel chair and rolled me to the desk where he registered me and rolled us over into a treatment cubicle. One of the good things about being in a small town is that there weren't very many people there.

He spoke to the nurses and the doctor and never left my side. He watched from the control room as they did the x-Rays of my ankle. He held my hand and spoke to me to cheer me up while we waited for the results.

"Where are my shoes?" I asked.

"In the back of my Jeep," he said, "with the rest of your wet clothes."

Then I remembered that the warm clothes that I was wearing were his.

"Don't worry," he said. "I'm sure they can be washed and will be as good as new. It would be a shame to lose that outfit. Whoops ... I shouldn't have said that."

"So ... You're interested in women's clothes?" I asked.

"Can we change the subject," he said.

"Nope you started this," I quipped. His statement struck a nerve with me. "What's so special about that outfit. I have lots more like it."

"It's not the outfit," he muttered. "It's the way ... I ..."

"Dennis, just spit it out," I said. I was worried again. But I had been wrong about him before. Somehow I needed to know if Dennis had some hidden fetish for wearing women's clothes or something. I had been fooled before.

"Alright," he said, "But you're only going to get pissed at me again. We were getting along really well. I just don't want to ruin it."

"Just tell the truth, Dennis," I spat.

"Fine," he said. "I don't give a fuck about your God Damned outfit. I don't even remember what color it was. What I liked about it was the way it made your ass look. Those long legs and that heart-shaped butt were driving me crazy. I can't help it Jaime. I'm a guy. I'm sorry if it ruins things when we were on our way to finally becoming friends."

I laughed so loud and so hard that everyone in the waiting room looked at us. Dennis tried to pull his hand away from me, but I grabbed it back.

A few minutes later, a doctor approached us.

"I have good news and bad news," she said. "But it's probably not THAT bad seeing the way he carried you into the hospital and can't seem to let go of you even now."

She smiled at us and sat down next to me. "Your ankle isn't broken. That's the good news. The bad news is that it's a really bad sprain. You're going to need to stay off of it completely for at least two to three weeks. After that you'll probably need some PT. But three weeks from now, probably just after Thanksgiving, you'll have forgotten that it happened. At least, you were smart. You went hiking together. I'd hate to think of you out there in the woods alone. Have a good evening, folks."

"Wait," I said. "What am I going to do for two to three weeks?"

"Enjoy it," she smiled. "Let your husband wait on you hand, and foot. And it's doctor's orders. Don't try to put any weight on that ankle, or you may be back in here for surgery. And the surgery is really messy. They end up using a lot of pins to re-attach the connective tissue to the bones." She shuddered.

"And those ortho guys ..." she shuddered again. "They're like the mechanics of the surgery world. It would be far easier just to take it easy for a while. Once you have a bunch of metal screws holding you together, you're never without pain. Your hiking days would be over. You'd be lucky to walk without a limp." She smiled at me again. Then leaned over and whispered in my ear.

"And look at him. He's just like a big puppy. He's dying to take care of you; so let him."

As she walked away, I looked at Dennis. "You CARRIED me into the hospital?" He nodded.

"There weren't any wheelchairs in the parking lot," he said.

Even as he gently put me back in the wheelchair for the trip back to his car, my thoughts went back in time. I remembered another time and another man. That time it was a case of severe gastric distress. That time I WAS married to the guy. He spent the entire time that we were in the emergency room on his phone. He called everyone we knew to let them know that HE had brought me to the emergency room.

He called all of his friends and a lot of mine. He called MY parents and HIS parents. He was so busy calling people that he never noticed when they moved me to a room and pumped my stomach. It turned out to be food poisoning. Apparently the new Cajun-Japanese fusion restaurant that he'd insisted we try, used some sort of ingredients that irritated the lining of my stomach.

Once he got off of the phone and came up to the room they'd put me in. He spent time chit chatting with the nurses, found out what was going on with me and then started a whole new round of calls to tell everyone what was wrong with me. He'd spent more time on the phone telling people about what happened than he had with me.

Dennis had never left me. I thought about that as he drove us home. He put me back down on the back seat wrapped in the warm thick blanket again. The movement of the car and the painkillers they'd given me, conspired against me, and I was asleep before we got home.

I did vaguely recall him telling me that he was going to get my car. I think I laughed when he talked about how bad it was to leave a Mustang alone in the woods.

Several hours later, I awoke and the pain in my ankle was so bad that it was throbbing. I reached for my bedside table, and it wasn't there. I felt a moment of fear as I wondered where I was.

I settled back and noticed that I was on a big soft bed with a really thick comforter on it. There was a table beside the bed, but it was on the opposite side. I found a lamp and found the switch at its base. I turned the lamp on and realized that I was in a man's bedroom. There were huge posters of cars on all four walls. The cars were all Mustangs.

"Dennis," I yelled. It took him only a few minutes to come into the room. He looked as if I had awakened him from a sound sleep.

"Dennis, why am I here?" I asked. He yawned and sat down on the edge of the bed.

"I'm supposed to be taking care of you," he yawned. "I also didn't have any keys for your house, and you never said I could go into your house."

"Dennis, who said you were supposed to care for me?" I asked.

"The doctor did," he said. "Remember, you have to stay off of your feet for two to three weeks?"

"Dennis, my ankle hurts really badly," I said. "And I'm hungry."

He left the room and came back in a few moments with a pill container and a glass of water. "What would you like to eat?" he asked.

"It doesn't matter," I said, "as long as it's quick."

He came back in about five minutes with a tray with a bowl of soup and a salad. I took a spoonful of the soup, and it was really good. There were big chunks of meat in a thick broth with all kinds of vegetables in it.

A drop of the soup ran down my chin and onto my chest. Dennis took the spoon from me and started feeding me like I was a baby. I remembered what the doctor had said about him wanting to take care of me.

Maybe I had just been alone for too long. It has been my experience that any time someone did something for you; it was usually because they wanted something from you. But in that situation, I just gave in. Whatever Dennis expected from me; I'd pay it. It may have been a mistake, but I needed him at that moment.

It was three days later that I realized I was in trouble. For the sake of my sanity, I needed to get out of that house. Dennis was simply too kind to me, and if I allowed myself to become accustomed to it, who knew where it would lead.

I'd fallen once. I had sworn that it would never happen again. Dennis had called the hospital and found out how to take care of my ankle. For the first three days, he'd iced the ankle three or four times a day. I hated that.

Then he'd begun soaking my ankle in warm, scented water. I loved that. But I loved it even more when he would gently massage my aching leg. I never saw it coming, but I soon began not only to enjoy his attention, but to crave it.

So I cheated a bit. I milked my ankle injury for much longer than I needed. I actually could have gone home after the first week. Dennis did ease his way back to work then, but he came home to check on me every day at lunch time. So I was never alone for more than four hours. Even after I could put enough pressure on my ankle to hobble around, I just didn't want to go home.

We did the silliest, most fun things that I had ever done. We watched the first snowfall in swimsuits on his deck, in the hot tub. Dennis had a fire pit on the deck that kept the immediate area warm. Dennis was always trying to come up with things to keep me occupied.

"What do you want for your first favor?" I asked him one evening while we were playing scrabble.

"First favor?" he asked.

"I owed you a favor for coming to get me," I told him. "I figure I owe you another one for taking care of me."

"Okay," he said smiling. "Dinner."

"That's too easy," I laughed. "We have dinner together every night. A favor is supposed to be something that you need me to do for you."

"What I want is a dressed up, sit down, upscale, downtown, grown-up dinner with the most beautiful redhead I've ever seen," he said. It was over. I was in full warfare. I was a woman torn in two. Two different aspects of my personality were fighting.

One side of my psyche told me that Dennis was the man I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. The other told me that I had been fooled once before and that if I allowed myself to be fooled again it would destroy my sanity.

"Are you talking about me?" I laughed.

"Jaime, I don't know any other redheads," he laughed. "And to tell you the truth, the little bit that I did was more for me than for you. I've thoroughly enjoyed having you here, and your ankle is healing fast. Soon you'll be at home, and I guess I'm hoping for a way for us continue spending time together."

"Dennis, you idiot, after this, we're always going to be friends," I told him. "I know I can be a bitch, but even I know when someone is on my side."

He looked down at the floor. I knew that something bad was coming.

"Jaime, I'm divorced," he said. "My divorce seemed like it was easy to people who watched from the outside. But it ripped my heart out. I'm not like you Jaime. I'm not confident and secure. I fell in love with one girl. We were together for the past twenty years. There was never anyone else for me.