She opened her eyes and looked at him and she didn't have an answer for that because there wasn't one. Marcus had found a VA outpatient clinic a little over an hour out, but Cole had made one phone call from the front seat. A low short conversation with somebody he called only doc and hung up and told Cody to change course. We're not going to the VA. He said we're going to a buddy of mine, orthopedic guy. He owes me from a long time back and he doesn't ask questions and he doesn't send bills to people I bring him.
Emily had started to protest and Cole had held up one hand without even turning around. What did I say in the garage? What did I say? You said it's handled, Emily muttered. I said it's handled.
She stopped arguing. That was new for her, and she noticed it about herself, the way you notice a sound that isn't there anymore.
Her whole life, she'd fought every offer of help until it went away. Because taking help meant owing, and owing meant being a burden, and being a burden was the one thing she could not survive being. And here she was letting a Hells Angel reroute his whole afternoon to drag her to a doctor. And she wasn't fighting it. She was too tired to fight it. And under the tiredness weighed down where she almost couldn't feel it, there was something else, a small, terrified, unfamiliar thing that she eventually recognized as relief.
The doctor's name was Sam Portoris, and he was a wiry old man with reading glasses pushed up on his forehead and hands that were gentle in a way that surprised her. He met them at a side door, took one look at the way she was holding the leg, and had her on a table. Within 5 minutes, Cole stood in the corner of the room with his arms crossed and would not leave. And when a nurse suggested he wait outside, he looked at her in a way that ended the conversation.
Dr. Portoris pressed and prodded and asked her to bend it, straighten it, tell him where it hurt, and Emily answered every question in the flat clinical voice of someone who'd learned to talk about her own body like it belonged to somebody else. And then Portoris got quiet. He pulled his glasses down onto his nose and pressed one spot just below her kneecap and asked her very carefully how long ago the original injury had happened.
"About three years," Emily said.
"And it was never surgically repaired?"
"No." Portoris was quiet for a moment. Emily, he said. Who's been managing this for you? Who's your doctor? And Emily said simply, I am.
Portoris looked up at her over the glasses. He looked at her for a long moment. Then he looked over at Cole in the corner and something passed between the two men and Cole's face went dark.