Page 113 of Fierce-Ivan
“You might need a few days to get your strength and be steady on your feet. However,” the nurse said, “I’ll tell you what I tell the children that are on crutches. There isn’t anything wrong with your butt and chances are you learned how to go up and down stairs sitting and scooting that way.”
Kendra held back the grin. It’d been on the tip of her tongue to suggest that herself.
“I’m sure he’ll be able to figure it out if he wants to get up and down the stairs enough,” she said.
“It says here that you live alone,” the nurse said.
“I do,” her father said, looking at her.
“He does. I don’t live there. He has neighbors close by.”
Her father snorted. “The list of your medications and when to take them are here along with wound care. If you can put a chair in your shower, I think that is the best thing for now to help. You don’t want to get the cast wet.”
She listened to the rest of his instructions, the nurse handed her the crutches that were against the wall. “Have you tried to use these yet?” she asked.
“Yes,” her father said. “They aren’t hard.”
“We make sure all the patients can use them before they leave,” the nurse said. An aide walked in. “Tom will wheel you out to the side door if you want to pull your car around.”
“Thank you,” Kendra said. “Do you want me to carry these to the car or do you need them now?”
“I’ll get them from you when the car is around,” her father said.
She left and walked out, almost at a run at this point. The sooner the better to get him home and out of her hair.
By the time she pulled her car to the side, he was waiting there with the aide. She parked and got out and grabbed the crutches from the back so he could use them to put his weight on.
“It took you long enough,” her father said.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s not like I was parked close. I had a long way to walk.”
“You’ve got to have a handicap sticker in your car for your mother,” her father said.
“I do. Yet what may be shocking to you, we hardly ever use it. And I never use it when she’s not with me. There isn’t anything wrong that she needs less distance to walk.”
Her father hadn’t changed. Still taking the easy way out.
When they got to his house, she was positive her teeth were going to crack she’d been grinding them so hard in the car. He probably heard them since he wasn’t saying a word either. Nothing more than he didn’t like the music she was playing.
Rather than turn it off, she turned it up.
The driveway to her father’s home had always filled her with dread as a child, but now it was with joy to get him out of her car.
She parked and got out and moved to his side to open the door for him, got the crutches out and held them for him.
He took one and put his good foot down and then the other. He was moving slowly but not horribly. She stayed close to him like she did her mother at times, but not enough to trip him up.
“How are we going to get in the house?” she asked. He didn’t have keys on him.
“Clinton left the back door unlocked. He has keys, so he came over before work to get clothes. Hopefully he remembered, as he can be forgetful.”
“I’d think you’d be grateful that he went out of his way to get you clean clothes for today.”
Her father just snorted again. A move he did a lot, now that she thought of it. One when he didn’t want to talk about why he was being an ass or was wrong.
She moved past him and went to the back. Thankfully the door was unlocked and she went in, through the kitchen, dining room and into the living room to the front and opened it.
“Don’t even say I wasn’t moving fast,” she said when he opened his mouth. She was walking as fast as she could short of jogging in the house, but she did do a speed walk to the back of the house.