“If Fleur’s reached the kind of standard she has in dance, then she’s clearly no stranger to meeting a challenge.” Rick ventured an opinion. “Perhaps the difficulty for her now is that she can’t see any challenge ahead of her. I can imagine that for someone like her, that must be very demotivating.”
“And your solution?” Alex pursed his lips.
Rick grinned. “This is a wonderful place, but maybe that’s just the problem. It’s making everything a bit too easy for Fleur. We need to find something that will confront her and give her a reason to start fighting. I think that then the underlying emotional issues that are getting in the way of her recovery might become more apparent and we’ll have a chance to address them.”
Alex exchanged a glance with Cody, and then nodded. “Agreed. And we can rely on you to pursue that approach?”
It made sense. He was a new face, and that meant a fresh start and a chance to succeed where others had failed.
“Yes. I’d welcome the challenge.”
The next hour was devoted to a bombardment of names, smiles and handshakes as Alex and Cody took him on a whistle-stop tour of the clinic. This place had everything. But the smiling faces, the state-of-the-art gym equipment and the beautiful setting didn’t provide the one thing that he guessed his newest patient might need.
He spent half an hour with Ellie at lunchtime. She had obviously been exploring her new surroundings, and excitedly showed him around the daycare center. Their second goodbye of the day was only marginally less harrowing than the first, but Ellie took it in her stride, running back to the play area where she’d already made some friends.
Rick walked determinedly to the private room marked on Fleur’s notes. The door was open, and he could see a figure lying on the bed, her back to the door. She didn’t move when he knocked so Rick walked inside.
“Hello, I’m Dr. Richard Fleming. I’m going to be overseeing your rehab for the next few weeks.”
The woman rolled slowly onto her back, giving him a smile that was clearly a matter of doing what was expected of her. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”
It was like a before and after. The woman in the photograph didn’t know the meaning of failure. The one in front of him looked beaten. It was nothing to do with the fact that her dark hair was in a messy plait instead of a shining waterfall around her shoulders, or that she had a small healed scar on her lip. It was everything to do with the blank look in her eyes.
“Yes. Fresh off the plane.” Rick sat down in the easy chair beside her bed to signal that this wasn’t a flying visit.
“You’re... English?”
“Yes, from London.”
She gave a small nod. Rick reckoned he could have told her that he was from Mars and she probably would have shown the same indifference. But he was going to get a reaction out of her, and if he had to work for it, then so be it.
He opened the file he’d brought with him, deliberately angling it on his lap so that Fleur couldn’t see the contents. “As I’m going to be your new doctor, I’d like to review your case notes with you.”
“All right.” She didn’t move.
“And that’s better done while you’re sitting up.”
The sudden, momentary flash of defiance in her eyes stirred something deep in Rick’s gut. If he managed to succeed in what he was setting out to do, there would be a whole new set of problems to contend with. But he’d deal with those, because Fleur was going to start fighting, and the most obvious place to start was to give her a reason to fight him.
He resisted the temptation to position one of the pillows behind her back, leaving her to do it for herself. When she was settled, he unclipped his pen from the top of the file, scanning the paper in front of him as if he was reading something that she wasn’t allowed to see.
“You’ve completed all of your physiotherapy sessions...”
“Yes.”
“And...your progress is satisfactory. Shall we say three out of five?”
From the look on Fleur’s face, Rick would bet that she had never been marked as a three out of five for anything.
“Three out of five?”
“Yes, I think that’s fair.” Rick ticked one of the boxes on the form he’d prepared. “And how do you rate the clinic, in terms of meeting your needs?”
“The clinic’s great. It’s the best there is.”
Rick nodded. “Well, the clinic’s only as good as the results we can achieve. So I suppose that’s a three out of five as well.” He shook his head disapprovingly, and marked it down on the form.
Fleur sighed. “Alex and Cody aren’t going to like that very much.”
“I imagine not.” Rick glossed over the matter and turned his attention to the next question.
The first thing Fleur had noticed about him was that he was handsome. Tall, with a shock of corn-colored hair and a square jaw. It looked as if he was nicely built under that white jacket as well. And the accent...
His accent was to die for. He sounded like a gentleman, but his blue eyes had just a hint of the rogue in them. But this Dr. Fleming seemed intent on diverting her attention from his very obvious appeal by making himself as obnoxious as possible. Fleur endured the three out of five. And since the two out of five that he then gave her for motivation was clearly intended to annoy her, she ignored that as well.
What did he know? He knew nothing about the island, and nothing about her. She agreed to his examination, letting him check the movement in her right leg and shoulder. Not thinking about his scent, or the way that she suddenly felt she had something to prove to him.
“Your shoulder’s improving well.” He seemed almost reluctant to say anything positive about her progress, and Fleur couldn’t help smirking when he turned his back.
“Yeah, I had a bit of trouble using the crutch with my right arm at first. But it’s a lot easier now.”
He nodded, thoughtfully. “Seems you’ve adapted well. To using crutches, I mean...”
He managed to make even that sound as if it wasn’t good enough. He reminded her of her first proper dance teacher, who had pushed her through challenge after challenge, and then on to dizzying success. Fleur didn’t want to think about that. Dance was over. Not a part of her life anymore. That kind of vivid lightning didn’t strike twice in the same lifetime.
“I’d like to see you walking. Nothing too taxing—I’d just like to observe.”
Another hoop for her to jump through. But she could walk. She could blank her mind to everything, and put one foot in front of the other. And there was always the chance that Dr. Rick Fleming might concentrate on observing and stop talking.
He was getting to her. Rick had caught Fleur in an eye-roll when she’d thought he wasn’t looking. And the weary apathy had given way to something a little more tight-lipped.
But Rick needed something more from her. If that meant he was going to have to act out the role of villain, then so be it.
“We’ll be going out of the department, so you might like to get changed.” Fleur would look wonderful in anything, even the shabby, stretched-out sweatpants and top she was wearing now.
“All right.” Her restraint was impressive. Rick hadn’t been aware that he could be quite this annoying, but Fleur was stubbornly refusing to react. If she could be persuaded to divert those energies to getting rid of her crutches and walking, then she’d make a great