A.N- Thanks to everyone who reviewed and a special thanks to Norrific for always being incredibly thoughtful and helpful. You're the best, woman!
Physical Therapy goes as well as it ever does. Tara tries to be a good patient. She does all the exercises they want her to work on at home, but she doesn't let them know how often she takes off her brace. She didn't wear it for much of the morning. She mostly uses it when she sleeps and when she's around the boys because they are too young to understand how careful they need to be with her hand. But Amber, the physical therapist, with her overly cheerful voice, doesn't need to know that. Amber thinks she sees an improvement in Tara's mobility over the last week, and Tara shrugs and admits she hasn't noticed any changes.
"Well, nerves grow slowly." Amber sing-songs at her like she's a child, and Tara stifles the urge to remind her she's dealing with a surgeon. "And maybe you can't see it, because you're always dealing with it, but I can see there's been a distinct improvement this week."
Maybe it's true. Maybe Amber's right. Maybe there's been an improvement. But Amber's words, no matter how condescending the tone, are dangerous because they sound an awful lot like hope. And Tara's learned over and over again in the last few years that all hope leads to disappointment.
Tara takes the elevator up to Margaret's office. They have a meeting scheduled, and Tara knows she's a little early, but she finds Margaret already in her office with the door open.
"I found a spot for you," Margaret bursts out by way of greeting. "Actually I found two." She says and Tara drops into a chair and finds she's at a loss for words. "As you know, there's nothing available in the NICU but there's room in pediatrics and in obstetrics. I've talked to the heads of both departments. You've got a job, you just need to pick one." Margaret finishes and Tara can tell by Margaret's proud smile that she worked very hard to secure a position for her.
Tara's throat tightens. So grateful to have a job and so touched by Margaret's efforts. This woman has gone above and beyond for Tara in so many ways. Still it isn't surgery. It isn't taking tiny babies on the brink of death and repairing their broken bodies. Tara wipes away her tears, both the ones filled with gratitude and the ones stuffed with self-pity, before they can fall.
"It won't be the same." Tara admits.
"Of course it won't." Margaret agrees lightly as she smiles, seeming to have no time for Tara's self-pity. "You'll actually have to talk to patients now and improve that bedside manner."
"My bedside is okay." Tara laughs. It's a choked, wet sound, rusty and unused, but it's a real laugh.
"Please, all surgeons are terrible with patients." Margaret scoffs, still smiling. "Trust me, this I know."
Tara reaches over the desk and touches Margaret's hand. "Thank you, so much for everything you've done." She says sincerely. "Really… Thank you."
"This is what I'm here for. You know I could do this for you at another hospital. You don't have to stay here. You could still go."
"No, I can't. This is my home." Tara says and she means it. There's no way she could abandon Jax. Not when his arm is being twisted and he has no choice. Not when he needs her to stand beside him. He would never abandon her… ever. He hasn't abandoned her now, even when he looks at her sometimes like he's worried she's losing her mind. If she leaves, she's leaving with him, not without him.
"Okay, well I had to try." Margaret says, her tone growing more serious. "There's one other thing we still need to talk about." Margaret pauses and looks down at the papers on her desk, rustling and rearranging them, stalling for time.
Tara knows then what's coming, what Margaret doesn't want to talk about. There's no getting around the truth that Tara would have been back to work weeks ago if she hadn't re-smashed her hand the day after her first surgery. It caused further damage to her median nerve, slowing her recovery and alerting the staff -her employers- to potential emotional problems with their injured Dr. Knowles.
"Go ahead and say it," Tara says and closes her eyes, presses her lips together, and waits.
Margaret tells her she's sorry, and breaks it to her in gentle tones, but no amount of Margaret's string pulling can waive the full psychological evaluation Tara will have to undergo before she's cleared to return. Tara's face flames with embarrassment. She still can't believe she lost it and let loose the feral piece of herself within the hospital walls. Tara nods her assent. She'll submit to the evaluation. She thanks Margaret and hugs her before she leaves.
The walk to her car is unbearable. Tara keeps her eyes down and her feet moving. She's worked long and hard on her control, taming her impulsive and often destructive desires, cleaning up the wreckage of her childhood. Making sure her children know peace within the walls of their home, making sure they know they are loved. Doing more with herself than anyone, her father and Gemma included, ever thought she could accomplish, and it almost slipped between her numb fingers.
Tara climbs into her car and slumps down pressing her forehead against the steering wheel. Wendy sometimes works as a drug counselor on the same floor as the hospital psychologist. Tara might run into Wendy, the woman who sparked the fit of fury that has the administrators so concerned, when she has to go and be evaluated by him. And as humiliating as it is, Tara knows the hospital is giving her a pass. They didn't need to find room for her in their ranks. They could've just let her go, and so Tara attempts to quiet her bitterness. She tries not to think about the knife she keeps in her purse, and she tries her absolute hardest not to wonder if burying the knife in the office door of the hospital psychologist would qualify as an automatic fail.
She's actually gotten pretty good with the knife, Tara thinks as she drives home. It was a gift from Chibs, who pressed it into her palm after she spent an afternoon with him and Jax, shooting and re-learning how to handle a gun with her left hand. He told her to carry it on her always. Samcro may have views about hurting the wives and children of their enemies, but it was past the time to stop expecting their enemies to show the same consideration. Tara showed the knife to Jax that night after the boys went to bed and was surprised by the alarm that filled his face.
"Do you know how to use a knife?" He asked her while he examined the blade.
"I know how to use a scalpel." She answered and he shook his head, worry creasing his brow.
"It's not the same thing, Tara. Knives are up close kills, messy, nothing like guns, and you don't ever introduce one into a fight unless you know how to use it. Otherwise the other guy takes it away from you and uses it on you."
So out they'd gone into the back yard for an impromptu lesson and sparring match, Jax giving her the basics on how not to fall on her own sword. Tara tried to absorb everything he said, practiced and tried to memorize every slash of his arms, and only objected when he showed her the places on his body where she should try to stick her knife if he was her opponent.
"No," Tara corrected him, moving his hand two inches lower and a little to the left. "This is a more direct hit. Deadlier."
"How do you know that?" He asked her, sounding amazed.
"Jax, I know how to use a scalpel." She reminded him and he nodded at that.
"Kinda scary babe," he admitted before he licked his lips, one hand moved to cover hers and pressed it to his chest. "And so fucking hot." He said with a laugh.
From then on they traded information, Jax teaching her the secrets of getting inside her opponent's mind and Tara showing him the less obvious and most destructive places to open up a person's body. They worked and fought, being careful of her bad hand which was still in a cast, until they were tired and panting, and then the energy shifted between them as they looked at each other.
Tara dropped her knife on the back porch and seized Jax's shirt in her good hand, and pulled him into a bruising kiss. Tara was surprised they made it to their bedroom that night, the need between them was so great, but they did make it and it was rough and hard, and everything Tara wanted at that moment. It was also the last time they'd had sex, because in the morning he had to help her dress, and she almost dropped Thomas when she went to lift him out of his crib, and the honest things they'd whispered into each other's sweat slicked necks were swallowed back up by a loaded silence.
Tara pulls up in the driveway, beating Elyda and the boys home by seconds. Thomas is conked out in his seat but Abel excitedly slaps his hands against the car window and waves to Tara. As soon as he's unhooked from his car seat, Abel launches himself at her legs, bursting with all the details of their day at the zoo. Tara banishes Jax and the psych eval to the back of her mind, and focuses all of her attention on her boys.
They put Thomas down in his crib, and Elyda helps Tara prep dinner and put it in the fridge while Abel has a snack and tells Tara all about the giraffe that stretched out its long tongue and even longer neck to take the offered leaves from Abel's hand.
After Elyda leaves, Abel runs to get his crayons and his coloring books. Initially, when she came home in the huge sling and cast, Abel was stricken by her injury, worried she couldn't draw with him anymore. Tara couldn't bear the quiver in his lip so she put him on her lap and gave it a shot with her left hand. The pictures she does with him are so simplistic that she manages just fine, and if the lines were a little wobbly at first, she's gotten better with practice. It was those brightly colored ducks and spotted dinosaurs she made with Abel that gave her the nerve to put a paintbrush in her left hand.
Abel doesn't come back with his crayons though. He comes back clutching his birthday present from Lyla, a set of finger paints. Lyla swore up and down they were washable, but her smile was too innocent as she welcomed Tara into the "toddler years," and said that it was the "perfect gift" because Tara painted too. Tara laughed, told Lyla she was the worst sort of evil, and threatened to bill her for the carpet cleaning. Then she hid the paints at the back of Abel's closet. And yet, he keeps rooting them out and asking to play with them.
"Please Mommy," he pleads, holding out the paints and the giant pad of paper that came with them. It's there on the tip on her tongue to say no. It'll make a mess and be a hassle, but she finds herself saying yes to those big, hopeful eyes.
She strips Abel down to his Iron Man underwear and they spread out the paper on the kitchen floor. They work together to open the pots of paint and she teaches him how to carefully dip his fingers into them and then spread the color on his paper. Abel lays on his stomach, his feet kicked into the air as he works, laughing at the swirls of color he's creating. Tara dips her fingers into the yellow paint and decides to make a lion. She wipes her fingers on a paper towel and goes for the red next.
"No Mommy, like this!" Abel squeals excitedly holding up his hands. One is blue and the other is green. "Both hands, Mommy! I paint so fast." Abel boasts.
Tara takes off her brace and moves her fingers. What can it hurt if she tries to paint with her bad hand? She can count it as physical therapy. Tara touches the red paint with the tips of her fingers, and she can feel the coolness of it. Her sense of hot and cold is coming back. She works the red into the mane of the lion, making a fiery orange on the paper when it mixes with the yellow.
Using her damaged fingers as a blunt instrument works better than she thought it would. The picture, while crude, is still obviously a lion, and Tara discards Abel's two-handed approach and focuses on her right hand. The finer details of the face are harder, but Tara doesn't give up, pushing her fingers to follow her commands, and here she sees it, what Amber was talking about. Her hand does move better. It listens better, feels more sensations, and even though she scrutinizes her progress every day, she somehow wasn't paying close enough attention.
Tara finishes the lion and shows it to Abel, who claps his hands, mixing his different colors together, and doesn't know what to do with the swelling, tingling, feeling in her chest that makes her want to dance around the room.