Page 39 of Tangled with the Tight End

I fill the machine with cold water and ice. Then I bring it out to the living room.

“It will be ready in five minutes,” I tell him. Then I say, “Let me brainstorm a solution for you. We can’t have you going too long without cold compression.” I tap my finger to my chin. “I can put the water in early. Before I leave each day. Maybe we’ll have to put an ice chest out here with bags of pre-measured ice in it.”

“Or a mini-freezer,” Declan offers.

“Wow,” I say. “Fancy schmancy.”

He chuckles again. “It’s just a small freezer. Not fancy. They sell them at Home Mart.”

“Will you have it paneled to match the room? You know … so it blends into the aesthetic?”

“Are you making fun of me, Winona?”

The way he says my name feels familiar—like we’re friends.

“I am,” I confess.

And I’m not even sorry about it.

“I won’t have it paneled,” Declan says with a smile.

“Well, have your people order you one, okay?”

“I’ll get right on that,” he says.

And he does. He picks up his phone and I don’t know what he does, but a minute later, he sets it down and says a mini-freezer will arrive this afternoon.

“Where were you before this?” he asks.

“At Sycamore Assisted Living.”

“Assisting nurses?”

“No. I was … helping some of the residents there with a few things.”

Declan studies me. Then he says, “Nice.”

I put my hands on my hips, not sure how to present the next piece of our care plan to him.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks.

“It’s … well … you need a shower.”

“I do. Can you smell me from there?” He actually sniffs his own armpits.

“No. But, unless I’m wrong, you haven’t had a shower since you got home.”

“I took a shower at the hospital—the day I was discharged. And I’ve … well … anyway. Yes. I need a shower.”

“And … I’m supposed to be the one to give it to you.”

“A shower?” he asks, seeming as horrified about our predicament as I am.

I’ve given patients sponge baths and showers—old women, pregnant women on bedrest, even old men. But Declan? He’s the first young man I would—hypothetically—have to bathe.

Oh. Fantastic. Just fantastic.

“Well, let’s get this over with,” he says, pivoting and moving his leg off the couch.