“I was going to avoid you until Friday, but I thought you should get an update,” Armie admitted.
That made her grin because she could guess why. “I was probably going to cancel out of sheer cowardice, but then your real fake girlfriend showed up and pissed me off, so now there’s zero chance of me not showing up.”
Even though real-real dating Armie was probably going to make the situation with Miranda worse, she wasn’t about to back down.
And that felt good. That made her feel better than she had in a long time.
She followed his daughter, and hoped he enjoyed the view.* * *• • •
“You are a perfectly healthy young woman,” Lila said twenty minutes later.
“With the exception of the fact that I can’t move my legs?”
“Let’s just call you healthy.” She didn’t have any pressure sores or ulcers. Her weight was in a healthy range. It could be hard for wheelchair-bound patients to get enough exercise. Noelle’s injury was at L-3, low on her spine. As injuries go, it could have been much worse. And honestly it surprised her that Noelle was completely confined to that chair. “Do you have any feeling in your legs?”
“Some,” she admitted. “I can move my toes a little, but I’ve lost all coordination. It’s cool. I’m okay with it. Doc told me about it a long time ago. He said if I was going to walk it would have been in the first few months.”
But only with proper PT. Her records showed that she’d gone to a local therapist for a couple of months and then she’d stopped trying to get on her feet. Now her therapy was about keeping her muscles from atrophying and building her upper-body strength. If she had some feeling in her legs and could move her toes even the tiniest bit, then the injury was incomplete. Messages from the brain were still able to get to her legs. She should have more function than she did. “I want you to think about upping your physical therapy. I think you gave up too soon, and I’m not sure these orders the doctor gave you are the best course of action. Given where your injury is, you should be able to stand and perhaps walk with braces.”
She shook her head. “Nope. Can’t do any of that. I wanted to talk to you about something else.”
She was surprised that Noelle wouldn’t consider it, but then, she didn’t know the case well. She needed to study the records before she pushed harder. “All right. What did you want to talk about?”
The young woman seemed to steel herself. “I want to know how normal you think I can be.”
“Pretty normal. Are you having trouble getting around? I’ve noticed almost every business in town has a ramp of some kind.” She’d been surprised at how well equipped the town was.
Noelle pushed her glasses up her nose and shook her head. “I don’t mean that. When I came to live with my dad, everyone was great. They tried to make it easy for me. I was talking about being able to do things other women do.”
There was something about the way her fair skin had gone slightly rosy that made Lila think she was talking about something beyond braiding her hair or singing karaoke. She’d mentioned her period. “Are you talking about having kids? There’s nothing at all in your records that makes me think you would have a problem. Even with a complete spinal cord injury, most women can still have children. Yours is much less severe. It didn’t harm your internal organs. Is your period regular?”
She waved that off. “Yeah, it’s fine. I didn’t want my dad to think he could come back here. He’s nosy about the medical stuff. I get some privacy if I mention the girl parts. But honestly, I did want to talk to you about my girl parts. Will they work? Not my ovaries.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t expected that. “Are you talking about your clitoris?”
She nodded. “If I fall in love with a boy, a man, can I have sex?”
Ah, now she understood why Noelle had been desperate to not have her father in here. She was sixteen. Lila was surprised this hadn’t come up. “Have you tried?”
“Having sex with a boy? No. My dad pretty much watches me twenty-four-seven, and when he’s not someone else is. And it’s not like there’s a boy I would want to do that with. I don’t know yet. I’m asking because I might want to someday, but what if I can’t? There’s this guy in my physical therapy group. He asked me out. I said no, of course. It’s too soon. I’m not looking to have sex with him.” She struggled for words.
Lila understood, and she was a woman who planned ahead. “But you want to know if it’s possible for the future because you don’t want to get into something that can’t possibly work.”