Chapter 5

Ethan thought of the one place he could escape to and have solace - his office. The office was the one space his second wife never changed. He wouldn’t negotiate on that. The office was his space and would be drenched in dark wood-paneled walls, pocketed with a Jacquard wallpaper design. He loved the traditional design features of his office. It was the only place he once shared with Leigh Anne in his house that was still warm. The floors were hardwood in a crisscrossed finish and stained in a dark maple. A large mahogany desk with a captain’s chair with rivets down the sides was his favorite place to work and drink himself into a numbing slumber.

When his wife entered the room in a drunken stupor, he stood up in a huff and helped her to the chair on the opposite side of the desk. He did whatever he could to hold in the hysterics.

“So, tell me, sweetheart, what mistake do you regret making?” She could barely keep her head up or her shoulders from slouching.

“Not marrying you sooner.” He nearly vomited in his mouth as those horrid words hit his eardrums.

“Sure, honey. I’m sure that’s what it was.” She may have nearly blacked out and wasted, but she wasn’t stupid. Like any twenty-year-old vermouth, she could smell his sarcasm a mile away.

“What are you doing out of bed, my love?” He returned to the couch, quickly concealing the nearly charred photo album.

“What’s that?” The wife questioned in a jumbled string of words. Her hand lazily pointed at the hidden leather-bound book of memories.

“What are you talking about?” he remarked with a confused glimmer of nerves in his eyes.

“Don’t play stupid, E-E-than.” His wife could barely get his name out. Her head knocked back; her mouth dropped open as a snore vibrated against the walls.

Groaning with frustration, Ethan stood up, carrying his wife back to their bedroom to put her in bed in hopes she would sleep off the effects of the alcohol she had consumed. Since Leigh Anne left and he moved Carlie in, the rooms of significance have changed in their design. Carlie liked clean lines and contemporary sharp edges, but Ethan liked the opposite. So they compromised: the room could be white with whitewashed hardwood floors and white bedspreads. But he wanted a four-poster bed with white stained wood.

He tucked her back in and turned to the door to head back to his office to get a good night’s sleep, and he heard her slurred voice, half asleep, half drunk.

“I-I k-know what-you r-r-regret.” Ethan sighed, uninterested, so he pushed the door open and stepped out into the hallway. “Y-y-you regret h-having the a-a-affair with m-me.”

“No, no, I don’t. Sleep it off, Carlie. You’ll forget all of this in the morning, anyway.”

All he heard as he walked out of their bedroom was his wife inhaling the drapes.

Three Weeks Later

No one had seen Mr. Collins for about three weeks. In passing his house on the way to Dusty’s, Leigh Anne checked to see if his hot silver sports car was parked inside the gates. But to her unspoken dismay, it wasn’t.

Typically, she would have been relieved not to see him at work, but to her silent disappointment, she missed him, missing his watchful eye, snarky comments, and dreading his absence. This was not good, not good at all.

That changed when she reached the bar and spotted a familiar car in front of the entrance next to Norm’s beat-up VW bus.

Mr. Collins... she caught herself gasping with joyful anticipation.

Walking cautiously into the bar, she scoped it out first. They weren’t open until 5:00 p.m. on Saturdays, especially since this was the off-season. She spotted Norm, a tall, bald bear of a man with definition and piercings. He keeps his goatee sharply trimmed but cares little for his calloused hands. He’s behind the bar, filling bottles and cleaning glasses, and Lindsey serves the garnishes.  Lindsey is a short, squat girl who can’t be older than 23. She’s sweet but ballsy - keeps her bleach blonde hair tapered in a pixie style with a cherub face, clear green eyes, and a turned-up button nose. She may have tried to befriend her in another life, but Leigh Anne has little use for people nowadays. She noticed Leigh Anne and waved with excitement. Lindsey has tried and failed many times to make friends with Leigh Anne. But every time she tried, Leigh Anne would reject her attempts.

Leigh Anne squeezed past Norm and entered the staff area, where the lockers, the break room, and the kitchen were. Upstairs is where Theo had his office and the safe. She wasn’t expecting to see him, even though she knew he was there.

“Hello, Morgan,” Leigh Anne mumbled nervously to the statuesque raven-haired DJ. Morgan wasn’t particularly fond of Leigh Anne. Frequently, she tried to get Leigh Anne terminated.

Morgan grunted and shoved her against the lockers as she went to her stage to set up the playlist for tonight.

Leigh Anne tried to hold back the tears as she nursed her sore shoulder.

“Great, that’ll leave a bruise,” she confessed under her breath.

“What will leave a bruise?” A voice Leigh Anne was far too familiar with echoed from behind her.

Even though she rolled her eyes, her heart beat out of her chest with something she hadn’t felt in years.

As she spun around, she attempted to conceal her sports bra from his line of vision.

“What are you doing in the employees’ locker room, Mr. Collins?” Leigh Anne could already feel her shoulder swell, tender to the touch.

“Well, hello to you, too, Ms. Klein. This being my business, I didn’t know I couldn’t enter a room in my establishment.” His blue eyes studied her, making Leigh Anne very self-conscious and awkward. “Holy shit! What the fuck or who the fuck did that to you?” His hand reached out to touch her swollen and bruised shoulder.

“None of your business. If you don’t mind, I have a shift to prepare for.” When Leigh Anne attempted to pull her black tank top over her head, she gasped in pain, trying to hold in the scream.

“You’re in my bar, Leigh Anne! If you injure yourself on my premises, I’d say it is my business!” Reluctantly, she let him help her put on her shirt. “You’re not working tonight until a doctor sees you.”

After she adjusted herself with her good hand, she scoffed and snorted. “Yeah, okay, and with what money will I pay for this doctor?” Leigh Anne secured her injured shoulder with her spare shirt. “Because, as you know, I barely get by on the salary and tips here. Playing my guitar is now out of the question. I can’t clean hotel rooms, and I’m sure Gretel will starve now. So, you tell me, with what money will I pay a hospital?” Hitting her head in Homer Simpson fashion, she added, “And if it is my rotator cuff, doesn’t that require surgery?”

“If you tell me what happened, we’ll see if workers’ comp will cover it.”

“It won’t,” she snapped.

“Why not?” He would not let up.

“I’m no snitch, Mr. Collins.”

“Oh, it was someone. Not something.” Theo now stood in front of her with his arms crossed. “It doesn’t matter. There are cameras in here.”

Wait, what? Leigh Anne was humiliated, and her face showed confusion. Could he watch her change?

“No, no, they’re not in the bathrooms. People don’t tend to change in here.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. It’s only the tank I had to put on. I normally am all already before I come in to work.”

He laughed at her embarrassment, but he was not mocking her. “My point is—you don’t have to tell me. I’ll know once I view the camera.”

“Fine, fine. It was Morgan. She pushed me into the lockers.”

“Well, that wasn’t that hard to say,” Theo grinned, grabbed Leigh Anne’s bags, and proceeded to the door. “Oh, and by the way, I lied. There are no cameras here. What do you think I’m some perv?

Those black bulbs are just a deterrent.”

Slack-jawed and stunned, she froze.

“Let’s go, Klein, we’re going to the ER, and you’re getting that shoulder looked at. Don’t worry about the cost. I got it.”

You’ll Need Surgery

They must have sat in the waiting room for at least three hours. With every second that ticked away on the wall clock, another ambulance pulled up, and someone else was on a gurney. They sat in silence. Theo was on his phone, and Leigh Anne rested her eyes. Theo told Norm he was in charge tonight and to call him if anything was dire straits. Leigh Anne noticed the enraged glare he shot in her direction as she tested her set.

“Are you going to tell me how long Morgan has been targeting you?” His eyes never left his screen.

Shrugging her uninjured shoulder, she muttered, “Since I got the job five years ago.”

That got his attention. “Why am I just hearing about this abuse now?”

She hung her head low. Why did he seem to have this effect on her? She wanted to tell him everything. Yet, nothing came out at all.

“Because it’s never been this bad before. I never had a reason to say anything, but I’m sure people at the bar have suspicions.”

“This is something I should have known.”

“Mr. Collins, with all due respect, I didn’t even know you were my boss until three weeks ago. And you have been gone since that first day I found out.”

“Leigh Anne Klein...” A nurse stood at the door leading to the exam triage.

Theo insisted on accompanying her to a private screened cubicle with a bed. Sitting and getting her vitals, she gave the nurse details on how her shoulder had swelled to the size of a baseball. Theo kept tabs on the bar via his smartphone.

“Okay, sweetie, we paged Dr. Lewis—he’s the orthopedic surgeon on call tonight. In the meantime, we’ll get you to an X-ray to see what is happening.” The nurse was kind and calm. She smiled warmly at Leigh Anne as she gave her some pain medication and put a new ice pack on to keep the swelling down. “Bear with us tonight, we’re slammed.”

“Thank you...” Leigh Anne gave her a stare that asked a question.

“My name is Nurse Mendoza, but you can call me Eva, sweetie.”

Eva left Theo and Leigh Anne. They went back to being silent. Leigh Anne turned on the television, a luxury she didn’t have in her tiny house. She made happy adjustments to her new life, and that was one she never regretted.

“No phone?” Theo’s question broke her from her television hypnosis.

“No. Don’t need one.”

“Wait, what? A young woman with no cell phone? Has Morgan hit you in the head, too?”

“I’ve had one. But now, I choose not to have one. I have a basic, prepaid one for emergencies, and that’s all I need.”

“How old are you?” He put his feet up on the attached ottoman.

“Guess,” she shut the television off because she won’t be watching The Bachelor.

“Twenty-five...”

Swallowing hard, she blushed and shook her head.

“Twenty-nine? Thirty?”

“Wow, I feel so special.”

“I give up.”

“Thirty-five.” Leigh Anne almost felt ashamed. “How old are you, Mr. Collins?”

“Twenty-nine.”

She couldn’t contain her laughter. “Well, if I didn’t feel foolish enough calling you Mr. Collins before...”

Nurse Mendoza escorted her to radiology so the radiologist could x-ray her shoulder for Dr. Lewis. It was uncomfortable, but she knew she had to endure it. After the technician took the images, Nurse Mendoza took her back to her cubicle, only to find that Theo wasn’t there. Her heart sank when she realized she was all alone again.

But she was a big girl. She could handle the news alone. She did

just fine by herself for the last five years. What’s the next few hours? Suddenly, her silent thoughts were disrupted.

“Hello, Ms. Klein.” A tall mocha-colored man stood before her with piercing hazel eyes and a tapered crew cut hairstyle—chocolate brown. “I’m Doctor Lewis. I hear you took quite the bump to your shoulder.”

She nodded, unwilling to speak or to stop staring. Dr. Lewis smirked as she shook her head slightly, trying to show a lack of interest in his beauty.

“Hi...” she responded as if waking from a drug-induced slumber.

“So, I looked at your X-rays, and there appears to be one major tear in your rotator cuff. Whatever caused as much damage as you have only made it worse, but it doesn’t mean it wouldn’t have brought you here over time, anyway.”

“Does this require surgery, Doctor?” His voice again. He came back. She wasn’t alone anymore. In a way, she was relieved.

Dr. Lewis looked over his shoulder to see Theo standing behind him with a fast-food bag.

“Yes, s-sir. I’m afraid it does.” Dr. Lewis held out his hand to Theo. Theo took it and shook it gently.

“I’m Ms. Klein’s friend and boss, Theo Collins. I’m also the one who brought her in.”

“Oh, sure. Yes. Sorry, sir. So, yes, I would recommend surgery. Then, of course, rest. We will give her some medication for pain, and she will need physical therapy at the end of it all.”

“H-how long is my recuperation time? I can’t afford rest.” She worried about her home, Gretel, and her financial responsibilities. “Six months, at least.”

“Six months? Are you fucking kidding me? Oh, hell no!”

“Calm down, Klein. It’s already taken care of.”

“No, no, absolutely not!”

“When is the earliest she can have the surgery?” The nerve of Theo, she thought.

“Tomorrow. I had a cancellation. I can get her into a room tonight. If the damage is as severe as the X-rays show, it shouldn’t wait.”

Theo stood in front of her with his back to Dr. Lewis. He mouthed, Accept my help because you have no choice.

“Fine, fine. Suppose it’ll get you off my back... fine. Sign me up, Doc.”