JE created the characters below.

Jenny (JenRar), once again, I owe you a huge debt of gratitude for your hard work as the beta on this story.

Chapter 12 – Forward Progress

Something about pulling a plastic tube out of a guy's penis tends to facilitate a bond, and over the last three days, Manny had slowly become easier to live with. He would still withdrawal from time to time, but I knew better than to push him to talk when he had that faraway look on his face. We'd gotten into a routine of sorts, where he'd have a smoothie for breakfast, we'd do his stretches and resistance exercises together before getting him up for a short walk, ending with him sitting in the easy chair until lunch. I'd fix us something simple for our mid-day meal and then help him hobble back to bed for a break. While he was resting there, I'd reclaim the easy chair and work on searches or other stuff Tank sent over via Cal each day.

A few of the files were ones the guys had tried everything to catch the skip and had been unsuccessful, so they were giving them to me in the hope I'd find something they couldn't. Because it was the entire file, I could read their field reports of surveillance and attempted takedowns, which I found absolutely fascinating. Strangely, reading a two page surveillance report was a lot more entertaining than sitting through the two-hour shift itself.

Occasionally, I had questions about abbreviations or procedures, not understanding why the guys did certain things and elected to not do others. Since my mouth had a mind of its own, I tended to say what confused me aloud, and Manny assumed it was a question for him, so he patiently explained RangeMan takedown procedures to me. Something about the whole process made me feel like I understood what happened when the guys went out in the field much better, and in the process showed me how much I didn't know. It was truly a wonder I'd survived this long in the business.

Bobby managed to sneak by for a quick visit in the early hours of the morning and declared Manny to be in incredible shape, obviously pleased with his progress. Bobby hadn't even tried to disguise what he was saying when he asked how I was holding up being locked in the house with Manny. I rolled my eyes at the memory of Bobby drugging Manny to knock him out and quickly pointed out that some of us were able to get along with others and didn't need to resort to medically bullying them. Bobby took the ribbing in his usual good-natured way, but he did give a lingering meaningful glare to Manny before leaving.

After I returned to the den, Manny seemed agitated and kept moving around. I knew that despite his progress, movement would still jar his injuries, so there was no way that degree of agitation was good for his body.

I didn't think through what I was doing but went over and touched his forehead and cheeks to check for a fever. He seemed normal to me, and I briefly let the thought filter through my head that I was treating him the way my mom used to treat me when I was sick and home from school.

He stopped moving as soon as I touched him and just looked at me. "Why are you doing this?" he asked when I dropped my hands, assuming whatever was bugging him wasn't a fever.

"What?" I was confused. "I thought you seemed worked up and wanted to be sure you weren't beginning to run a fever. Bobby said the biggest risk was still infection at this point."

"I'm fine." He waved off my concern and asked his question again. "Why are you doing all of this?"

"All of what?" I was still a little in the dark about exactly what was confusing him.

"Running searches for the guys, trying to figure out how we work, taking care of me, and standing up to Bobby on my behalf. There's no reason for you to be so involved…" I felt like there was more to what he was saying, but he'd wisely censured himself at that point.

"I run searches because I'm good at it. I'm naturally curious about things, so I tend to ask questions when there's something I don't know. I stood up to Bobby because you have been much nicer to me since Cal threatened to beat you up the last time." I couldn't help but smile at that memory. "And I'm taking care of you because you needed someone to do it, I was able to, and I like the thought that I'm helping somebody. Why? Would you like a different person to watch over you now that you're doing so well?"

"No," he quickly blurted out, leaving no doubt that his response was sincere.

It soothed the sting I'd felt when I briefly thought he was saying he didn't want me around him. I knew I wasn't a real nurse, but I had pushed through my own discomfort to do the very best I could for him.

While I was trying out my own version of a blank face, he spoke up once more. "I feel like I owe you an apology for being such a dick at first."

"Hmmm..." I pretended to remember our bumpy start. "Yeah, you weren't exactly living up to the gentleman code, were you?"

"And why do you do that?"

I blinked a few times, not sure what he was referring to this time.

He must have picked up on my continued confusion, because he added, "Why do you let people off the hook so easily? Don't most women enjoy giving guys the silent treatment or yelling and screaming at them?"

"I think I recall yelling at you," I reminded him, "but only when I thought you deserved it. There's no reason to scream now, and I've never been good at the silent treatment. I like to talk too much."

He took longer than I thought was necessary to consider my words. "So when you got the call that Ranger needed you to help with me, what made you pick this place to hide out?"

"That's a good question," I answered, wishing I knew what had popped the idea into my head, too. Not able to come up with something satisfactory, I tried changing the subject. "Why? You aren't enjoying staying in the color experiment house?"

"The pajamas have grown on me," he replied, looking at the gold and blue-striped pants he was currently wearing.

I had no memory of my great-grandfather in those pants, but I'd intentionally passed over the more conservative, solid color options and had only brought him the loud, outrageous clothes instead for my own amusement.

We chatted for a few more minutes, with me standing at the edge of his bed, and I wondered in another week or so, when this whole thing was over, if he would act any different around me when we saw each other at Haywood.

When the conversation settled down a little, I saw he was still moving more than usual, so I asked, "What's gotten into you today? Where's the famous RangeMan zone that allows you to be completely still for hours on end?"

"I'm getting antsy from being stuck in the house all day," he admitted, looking a little sheepish.

I glanced around, not seeing anything that I thought would make a suitable distraction until my eyes fell back on Manny. "How would you like to wash that hair?"

I'd mentioned it a couple of times over the last week, but we'd either gotten sidetracked, or I couldn't figure out how to manage it around his injuries, but Bobby had said he could move freely now using pain as his guide in what to avoid, so if he could stand bending over the kitchen counter, I could wash it in the sink.

"Damn, this is an all-time low, that I'm excited to get my hair washed in order to have something other than television as entertainment," he complained.

"I could always ask Cal to bring you a laptop of your own and a pile of searches. Can you imagine how happy Rodriguez would be to have two people totally devoted to fulfilling all his search requests?" I teased, pulling the covers all the way back and stepping to the side so Manny could sit up and put his legs off the edge of the bed.

He was leaning less and less on me every day, and I figured if we could just get him something long enough, he could probably make due with a cane or crutch, and then I wouldn't be necessary.

In the kitchen, he grimaced when he leaned over, but once he got his arms braced well in front of him, he seemed to be okay. That allowed me to take my time, and I scrubbed his hair twice before adding some of my finest conditioner and letting it soak in. I figured I'd taken more time than I should have, so I rinsed that out and let my fingers stroke his hair. I saw his good knee bend a little, so I took that as a sign that he needed to get out of this position. Turning off the water, I toweled his hair before helping him stand up.

I held onto him until it seemed he was stable and then asked if that felt any better. He gave me the sweetest smile, almost like he was too lazy to hold it back, which made me feel as though I'd just won the lottery. Then it hit me... Manny totally liked having his hair messed with. I was a big fan of having hands in my hair, but because of how outrageously crazy it was, I think most people tended to avoid running their fingers through it out of an irrational fear that something might be lurking in there that could hurt them.

"Why don't you sit in the easy chair, and I'll brush your hair out for you so that it dries right," I suggested, seeing the agreement on his face before he ever said a word.

He moved slowly but steadily back to the den and plopped down in the comfy chair, leaning up just enough that I could easily take care of his silky hair. I took my time running the brush through it and then followed up with fingers, wishing my own hair would cooperate like this just once and lay down so beautifully after doing nothing but washing it.

Once I figured I'd spent as much time as I could get away with playing in his unfairly perfect hair, I patted his shoulder and then sat on the shag carpet at his feet and stretched my head from side to side, pulling the muscles in my shoulders that were getting knotty.

"You okay?" Manny asked, not missing a detail in typical Merry Man fashion.

"I'm good," I assured him, "I've just got a few tight muscles that need to be stretched."

His lips drew tight, obviously not happy with my answer. "I'm too heavy to keep leaning on you."

"No, you're fine. It's a whole bunch of things really," I said, trying to talk him out of his first assumption about why I'd be sore.

He began to look around from his perch in the easy chair. "I need something sturdy that I can use to support some of my weight so that I'm not leaning as heavily on you. You don't have a cane or a crutch, do you?"

"I've got the walker in the closet," I reminded him, getting a grumpy growl as his obvious rejection of that idea.

"You said your great-grandfather used to work with wood. Do you have any of that?" he asked.

"Wood?" I was a little lost. "He had some boards in the basement from a project he'd begun but not finished.

"How do you know he was working on something and it wasn't just his storehouse of wood?" he asked, getting bolder in asking for personal details than he had been just a few days ago.

"It was on his workbench and completely smooth," I told him. "He'd sanded it down like silk before he would work on it."

"Did he work with machines or hand tools?" Manny asked.

"Both," I explained. "In the basement, he has some tools – mainly saws, presses, and a lathe – but he had his hand tool kit, which he used for carving and shaping things up here in the living room."

"How big is the wood in the basement?" He was looking more eager, and I noticed he was still for the first time today.

I used my hands to show him the diameter of the smaller pieces and described them as being about five feet long.

"Can you get one of them upstairs on your own?" he wondered, causing me to jump up and head down there, keen to do anything possible to keep him engaged and not so agitated like he'd been earlier.

It took a little wiggling to get the smallest piece upstairs, but when I got it to Manny, he smiled and said, "That will work." Then he asked about the hand tools.

I picked up the box from the living room and brought it to his other side. He lifted the lid slowly, as though he thought the greatest treasure was about to be disclosed. Something in his easy treatment of the tool box touched me.

"It's okay. Nagypapa would be pleased to think of someone using his tools, especially if he thought they knew what they were doing," I encouraged him.

And that was the exact moment I felt things between Manny and me shift. He heard me hint that he might not know how to use hand tools, and in response, he rolled his eyes. He might have been making fun of me, because that was definitely a go-to reaction of mine, but I had a stronger feeling that it was because he was insulted and had let his guard down enough to really show an emotional reaction around me.

I couldn't stop myself. I laughed out loud. "All right, tool man." I tried to appease him as I pulled myself together. "Have at it."

At that moment, the phone the guys gave me to use began ringing, so I jumped up to answer it. Tank was checking in to let me know that Ranger had called him this morning and told him that some questions had been asked about Manny and his wife. He didn't want me to worry, but it seemed as though the Hernandez family had a vested interest in the woman who took on the hospital administration to get her husband out of their care when he was so badly injured. He reminded me to stay out of sight, but he was confident we wouldn't be found until Ranger had eliminated the threat.

It took a while to get all that information from Tank, as he was initially content to just say, "Ranger checked in, and it may take a day or two longer than he last thought to clean everything up."

I, of course, thought there was more to it than that, so I had to hit him up with all sorts of questions until he finally gave in and spilled the whole story.

I'd glanced at Manny a few times while interrogating Tank and saw he was using a pencil in the tool box to sketch something out on the wood. He also seemed to be enjoying my side of the conversation with Tank, based on the slight smile on his face.

After I hung up, I came over to see if I could figure out what he was trying to do with the wood.

"You're like a dog with a bone, aren't you?"

His comment confused me until I saw him glance at the phone. "Ohhh, I just think Tank needs to work on his skills of communication, so anytime he tries to get away with just saying one word, I force him to use several in its place."

Manny worked on the hunk of wood, repeating some of the same motions I'd watched Nagypapa make years ago, but after four hours, I was worried about him staying in that position, so I suggested he take a break and stretch out in the bed. As though he needed a visual to go with the suggestion, I yawned and stretched at the same time.

He seemed to consider me, staring at me just long enough to make the room feel uncomfortable. "Let's see if there's a movie to watch," he suggested, allowing me to help him up and back to the bed positioned directly in front of the television.

Manny found an old Harrison Ford movie where he was helping to save the world from communists, and I took a seat in the now vacant easy chair. It wasn't directed at the television, so I had to turn my head to the side. After ten minutes of that, my neck was sore, and I was rubbing it, unable to watch the television. I attempted to move so that I was sitting sideways in the seat, but my back didn't have anything supporting it, so that wasn't comfortable, either. His bed took up the bulk of the floor space, which meant lying on the carpet was out of the question.

I was just about to give up and go stretch out in the bed down the hall when Manny spoke.

"If you can be still, why don't you get up here and sit next to me?" he offered. He wasn't pushing, but he'd seen my discomfort, and being a guy, that required he come up with a solution for it.

I was about to politely thank him for the offer but remind him that he was still sporting some serious injuries, which necessitated he continue to rest, but he made a hand gesture with his good arm and began shifting to the side so that he wasn't taking up the center of the mattress.

"It's not like I bite, and you're already immune to my bark, so you have nothing to worry about."

Seeing that he wasn't going to let this go, I gave up arguing, grabbed the cell phone so that I wouldn't have to jump up suddenly if it rang again, and walked over to carefully climb into the bed next to him. It was surprisingly big enough for us to sit side-by-side, as long as he didn't mind our bodies touching from our shoulders down to our legs.

He didn't pull back, but he did sit still for the first time all day, so I figured this might end up being good for him. Coming to that realization helped me to relax, and it didn't take long before the monotony of a movie I'd seen plenty of times before and the warmth of a strong body next to me lulled me to sleep.

I wasn't sure if I was dreaming or not, because I could have sworn that I heard Nagymama shushing me and telling me to just rest and not move. I obeyed, despite the fact that I could hear voices, neither of which sounded happy.

"You're lucky she's leaning on you, or I'd be hitting you right now," a voice that sounded remarkably like Cal threatened.

"Are you struggling to make your pickups lately so you have to resort to picking fights with guys in hospital beds?" Manny responded calmly, in a whispered tone.

"You're obviously not that injured. You managed to get a woman in your bed," Cal responded, not bothering to keep his tone soft the way Manny was.

"Piss off, man. She was exhausted, and all the sleeping she's been doing in that chair has her muscles in all kinds of knots. I knew she was only making it worse, so I talked her into sitting up here with me to watch a movie more comfortably, and then she fell asleep."

His explanation sounded logical to me.

"Right, and the fact that the television is off means…" Cal wasn't buying it.

"It means I'm not a complete asshole, and when I noticed she was asleep, I figured she needed the rest, so I turned it off to keep from waking her up," Manny explained, starting to lift his own voice in response to Cal's accusations. "Weren't you the one hitting me a few days ago for not treating her with the appropriate level of respect? Now that I'm being nice, you're still threatening to hit me. What gives?"

I thought it was a fair question.

"Now you're just taking advantage of her and trying to play the injured card to get her in your bed," Cal blurted out, making it really hard for me to continue pretending to sleep.

"I'm going to let that go since you and I go way back. You know me better than that. I was the one acting like an asshole to keep her from getting tangled up in my life, so there's no way I'd exaggerate a limp to get her to notice me just for shits and giggles," Manny defended himself once more.

"You keep bringing that up and I'm going to find a way to wipe your memory clean," Cal said, his voice almost making him sound embarrassed.

I'd faked my nap long enough that I worried I couldn't wake up now without giving myself away, so I couldn't risk a peek to see if Cal was blushing. He was one of the few really light-skinned guys at RangeMan, and we shared a tendency to turn red at the drop of a hat when embarrassed.

"What, you don't like the reminder of how you once had to fake an old war wound to get a girl interested in you?" Manny taunted.

Cal made a noise that made it clear he did not like the reminder, but Manny continued to talk.

"How about the fact that when the night was over, you forgot to keep limping, and she picked up on it and threw you out, keeping your uniform shirt. Then three days later, it was mailed to Ranger with a note that told him to keep his staff away from unsuspecting young women, especially if they were trying to impersonate real soldiers."

That was one memory too many for Cal to endure. "All right, man. I don't have to stand here while you stroll down memory lane. I was just dropping off more food and some new files for her. I'll take these old ones back, because they look done."

I could hear Cal moving around, and then he stopped at the edge of the den to say he would have the control room reset the alarm remotely. I guess that answered the question of how he'd managed to get in here in the first place.

"I don't want it to seem like every time I'm here, I'm riding your ass, but you are minding your attitude around her, right?" Cal made it sound like a question, but underneath, there was still a clearly spoken threat.

"She's sleeping on me, man. Obviously we're getting along," Manny replied, making a very valid point.

"Just be sure that's as close as you two get. She's been through enough shit in her life, especially with men. The last thing she needs is somebody like you confusing her even more," Cal warned, making me wonder what the somebody like you comment was supposed to mean.

"Relax, big brother," Manny sarcastically replied, obviously accepting Cal's self-appointed position of a relation to me. "She's way too smart to let herself get involved with somebody like me. There are too many ghosts in my past for there to be room for anybody in my future."

While I appreciated what he meant, that he'd had more than enough relationships of his own bust up, I had to struggle to hold back the laugh that wanted to bubble out at the words he chose to use. I was, after all, seeing and hearing the ghosts of my long dead great-grandparents. I was hardly one to judge.

They rambled a little more, and then Cal made his way out. I wondered how long I needed to keep up the pretense of sleeping before I could wake up without Manny getting suspicious.

"Nosy bastard," Manny mumbled under his breath as soon as the door closed and the alert beeping began that signaled Haywood was resetting our alarm.

I had been happily pillowed with my head on his shoulder, but after he got his grousing over with, he lowered the back of the bed so that we were lying back more than sitting up. Then he moved his arm so that my head was resting against his chest and his arm was holding me to him. Two things hit me at once. First, Manny had a great and unexpectedly comfortable chest. And second, I had no desire to pretend to wake up anytime soon.

I felt him taking long, deep breaths and was amazed at how the tension began to ebb from his body. Once he was relaxed, he spoke so quietly, I knew he didn't believe I was awake to hear him. "You sleep now, Steph. You've watched over me long enough. Now it's time for me to step up."

Strangely, I could have sworn I heard a different male voice reply, "It's not about turns. You do what you want because you want to do it. She doesn't want you to act loving... She wants you to be loving."

Manny's chest vibrated, like he was holding in laughter. "Shit, I'm losing my mind," he spoke to himself, echoing my own thoughts of late. Then he addressed the voice I'd heard and replied, "I know nothing of loving. I only know loss."

"Then learn with her. She is the same," the voice I thought was Nagypapa instructed.

"We're nothing alike," Manny disagreed.

"You are virtually the same," Nagypapa pointed out. "She has tried to be what many have wanted and lost part of herself in the process. The man that can draw that piece of her back out will find the rarest of treasures."

I guess Manny was as confused by the riddle as I was, because he asked, "What would I find?"

"A woman who loved him," Nagypapa responded, "And a woman to love in return."

"Who are you?" Manny blurted out, obviously not recognizing the voice the way I had from my past.

"Someone who learned this lesson the hard way and wants to save you the trouble. Besides, I love that child and want the best for her," Nagypapa replied cryptically, avoiding the actual answer to Manny's question.

"If that's true, you shouldn't be pushing me to be with her," Manny pointed out. "There are plenty of men who could offer her a much more stable life."

The most beautiful laughter filled my ears, and I was sad when it died out. "That child has never wanted a stable life. Why would I want to force that on her? Besides, you are obviously a man of great courage."

This time, it was Manny's turn to chuckle. "Courage? You obviously don't know me."

"No, but I know Laney, and that's enough for me." Before Manny could ask a question about how my great-grandfather knew his sister, Nagypapa added, "Besides, who else but a brave man would dare to wear those pants?"

"These were your pants," Manny said in defense of his fashion statement.

"They were in my drawer, but I never had the courage to wear them."

With that final taunt, I felt his presence leave, and as Manny's chest vibrated with laughter, he drew me closer to him and then whispered against my hair, "Shit, Steph... You come from a family crazier than mine."

It didn't sound like an insult, so I let him hold me to him, and after having pretended to sleep for so long, it seemed like a good idea in reality, so I let the darkness take over once more.