Hello everyone. Thanks for all the reviews and the technical help.
Disclaimer: Don't own the Dukes, no infringements intended.
CHAPTER 6
Tornado Warning!
Texas
Twister
That's what the license plate read on the back of the black Chevy Camaro that was flying down Highway 15, but this wasn't Texas. This was Highway 15 in Hazzard, Georgia, and someone was a long way from home. A lot of folks might have thought that the young lady was lost, but Sandy knew she was exactly where she was supposed to be. So far, the directions she'd been given had been right on the money, and if they were still accurate, her turn should be coming up. The name on the mailbox said Duke, she'd found her destination.
Pulling up alongside the orange car, Sandy stopped a minute to admire it. 'General Lee,' she laughed to herself. 'Seems they like their heroes here about as much as we do in Texas.' Adjusting her rear view mirror so that she could see herself, she removed the small, but unmistakable Stetson, tossing it onto the seat next to her. Then she dug out her brush, and pulled it through her long, auburn hair that had been smashed down by the cowboy hat and tossed around by the breeze, thanks to the removable t-top. A glance at her makeup, an application of lipstick, a quick check of her watch, and she was ready to begin her new assignment. Reaching under her hat, she pulled out the file, flipping it open for a very quick review, though she'd already read it several times and was familiar with the details.
'Bullet penetration 1/4 to 1/2" deep along entire right, middle side of skull, affecting several different areas and functions. No additional complications besides original injury. Persistent damage believed to be temporary and/or re-trainable via proper therapy. The date of the incident was a little over a month ago. Victim was a young male, in his mid twenties, and had been left unable to use arms and legs, and had lost the ability to speak, though he was able to comprehend and communicate by the blinking of his eyes and movement of head. Very slight improvement in mobility had been noted, as well as ability to laugh and make sounds. Family had been insistent on caring for him at home rather than in a rehab center.'
That was her assignment. The strengthening and re-training of one Beauregard Duke. She closed the file, wondering as she did about all her new patients what he would be like, what he had been like before. Mid twenties was way too young to spend the rest of his life trapped in a body that wouldn't cooperate, and she was there to ensure that didn't happen.
Holding the folder, she opened the car door and stepped out. If her license plate hadn't said where she was from, her clothes would have given it away. She was dressed in boots, tight fighting jeans, a denim blouse tucked in with a large belt buckle in the front. When most people met her, they wondered how a girl that stood barely 5'4" tall ever earned a nickname like the Texas twister, but it didn't take long to see that it fit her personality to a tee. Her middle name was determined, and it was that mentality that made her so good with her patients. Her un-deterrable spirit usually rubbed off on them, too. Her long, red hair reached the middle of her back, but her face showed no flaws or freckles that often accompanied such coloring. Her eyes were large and emerald green, and stood out against the auburn strands that framed her face. She could have been the poster child for Texas tourism.
Walking up the steps, she softly knocked on the door. Uncle Jesse, Daisy, and Luke had been expecting the visitor, though they hadn't told Bo anything about it. He'd been traumatized by Bertha, and this time Luke was going to make sure that he wasn't putting his cousin at the mercy of another masochist. Bo was in the living room, sitting in his chair staring at the TV. He heard the knock, but figured it was probably someone from town. The other Dukes had huddled in the kitchen wanting to see who they got this time. Luke flung open the door in an authoritative manner, letting whoever was standing behind it know that he was the boss. As his eyes took in the young lady, his aggressiveness melted. She looked nothing like Bertha. She looked nice, but she looked young, too young to know anything about how to help Bo. They needed someone with some experience, and she looked like she might have just graduated from high school. She was beautiful, but Luke believed that the agency had screwed up again, sending them a cattle rustler instead of a speech and physical therapist. He'd never seen anyone in the medical profession dressed like a ranch foreman before.
"Howdy!" she said, giving him her Texas sized smile. "I'm looking for..."
She never got to finish. Luke put his hand up, stopping her before she could say it. "Bo," he said. "His name is Bo." Then lowering his voice, he whispered, "he hates the name Beauregard."
"Oh! Ok," she said, playing along. "I'm looking for Bo Duke," and she grabbed a pen and made a notation on the folder, then stuck out her hand.
"Hi!" he smiled back, getting lost in her eyes for a minute. "I'm Luke Duke, Bo's cousin. This is Daisy Duke, Bo's good-looking cousin, and our Uncle Jesse Duke." He introduced her to his family, but forgot to let go of her hand until she glanced down at it. Taking it from Luke, she repeated the action with the rest of the family.
"It's nice to meet you. My name is Sandy Maverick, and the agency sent me to work with Bo. I'm a licensed speech and physical therapist," she informed them, knowing that her young appearance made most people question her qualifications.
"I don't mean to doubt you, but exactly how long have you been doing this?" Luke asked.
"That's ok, Mr. Duke," she said.
"Luke, please call me Luke."
"Okay, Luke, I've been doing this for four years. I assure you I am qualified, I have an extremely high rate of success, and I can provide you with references."
Luke looked down, feeling a little sheepish. "No, that's ok. It's just the last one they sent us, we'll she was really something else."
"She was mean to Bo," Daisy said.
"Well, I assure you that it's not my intention to ever be mean to a patient, although there are times when you have to be firm."
"Firm is one thing," Luke said. "Mean is something else."
"I agree," she said, and he relaxed, thinking that she didn't look anything like Bertha. "Can I meet my patient?"
The Dukes looked at each other, and so far, they liked what they saw. "Sure," Luke said. "He's in here."
"Bo," Luke called to him as they walked into the living room. "There's someone here who wants to meet you."
Bo's head was down. He'd overheard enough to know that his next therapist had arrived. He was still hurting over what the last one had done, and still feeling like a burden to his family. He was also a little scared of what the next one would be like. As she stood in front of him, he could see that she was wearing boots and jeans, a strange uniform for a medical professional. He refused to look at her.
Before anyone could say anything to Bo, Sandy squatted down so that she was below his eye level. She slid one of her hands under one of his, and laid the other one on top. Looking up, she smiled. "Howdy, Bo! My name is Sandy. You and I are going to be working together to get you out of that chair, back out on that farm, and talking again like I have a feeling you used to be quite good at." She giggled as she said the last part, and so did the rest of the Dukes, saying that Bo always had been a talker. "And, so he will be again," she assured him, squeezing his hand.
She analyzed him as she looked at him, but kept smiling so that he wouldn't know she was doing it. She saw the wound that the bullet had left behind, not quite healed, and not yet covered by hair. She noticed that the other side of his head was adorned with beautiful blonde locks, and she was willing to bet that he was uncomfortable with people being able to see his healing scar and the loss of his curls. She studied the way he was sitting, shoulders slumped and looking very dejected. She was also willing to bet that it was a combination of being depressed over his situation, compounded by the abuse he'd suffered from her predecessor. She knew that she was going to have to make up for that wrong if she wanted him to trust her and to work with her. Inside, she was fuming that someone could treat another person so cruelly. She could tell from his build that it looked like he was fairly tall, and on the skinny side, guessing that he'd been slender even before the weight he'd lost in the last month and a half. All things considered, he was nicely built. She looked at his face, and couldn't help but see just how handsome he was. She had no doubt that in a small town like Hazzard, he'd probably been considered a very good looking man, not that he wouldn't have been anywhere else. It was just that smaller towns meant fewer choices, and she could only imagine that the girls were probably wild about him. She'd dealt with a quite a few people over the years, ranging from children to the elderly, but she didn't think that she'd ever had a patient quite like Bo before. She peered a little deeper, and looked into his eyes. They were beautiful, a midnight blue. She imagined that they could twinkle when he was happy or feeling playful, as much as they could show pain when he was hurting, which is what they were saying right then. Her job was to make them twinkle again, and she smiled as she noticed that he was finally looking at her.
Bo wanted to pretend that she wasn't there. He doubted she was going to do any better with him than the last one, even if she was nicer. Unlike Battleaxe Bertha's gruff voice, hers was soft as silk and friendly, laced with a southern accent though not a local one. She sounded so kind and confident that he almost believed her for a second. He didn't know what he was expecting, probably something a little closer to Bertha, but when he finally did look at her, he couldn't believe what he saw. Kneeling in front of him, she was young, and she was beautiful. Bo stared back in disbelief, hardly able to believe that this little gal was going to teach him how to do everything in life again. She didn't look old enough or strong enough. His eyes were huge, and when she saw that he was watching her, she smiled at him. The corner of his mouth shot upwards as he did his best to return her smile. The Dukes witnessed it, too, and couldn't believe that Bo had already responded to her.
"Okay Bo, now that I have your attention, the first thing I'm going to do is to be honest with you. We've got a lot of work to do, and it's not always gonna be easy, and you're not always gonna feel like doing it. We're gonna have some great days together, you and me, and we're gonna have some pretty bad ones, too. Do you remember before you were shot Bo, having good days and bad days?" Bo nodded. "Well, that's just life. It happens in everything, and this isn't gonna be any different, but I promise that I will listen to anything you've got to say. What I won't promise is that I'll always agree with it or let you off the hook that easy," she laughed, winking at him, and he chuckled. Hearing his ability to laugh, she let go of his hand and picked up her file and pen, making more notes. Bo watched her, missing the feel of her soft hands holding his.
"Okay, first thing we're gonna do today is find out a little more about Bo Duke," she said, sitting down on the floor where he could still see her. She knew that they were going to be discussing him, and without the ability to speak, it was going to sound as if they were talking about him. They were, so she wanted him to feel included. In establishing a rapport with her clients, she often sat on the floor rather than on the furniture. She wanted them to be able to see her, and she wanted to be able to watch them. It also gave them a subliminal hint of power, sitting taller than her, and making them feel as if they were in charge. She never relinquished her authority, she just made them think she did. "Bo, you're file says that you've been working four hours a day, six days a week, from eight a.m. to noon. Does that work best for you?" she asked, then looked at him. As if responding to a spoken remark, she continued. "Well, ya know, some people are morning people and some aren't. If there's a time that works better for you, we'll change it. This part, you're the boss at. So, how bout it Bo? Does that time frame work well for you?" Bo nodded. "Okay, how bout for the rest of your family?" She said, turning to them.
"Yeah, it's fine," they all told her.
"So far, this has been one of those really good days," she said, smiling back up at Bo, who again, returned it. "What we'll do then with our time is to to spend the first hour on speech, the second hour on upper body movements, the third hour we'll go back to speech, and we'll finish the last hour with lower body functions. I split it like that because the speech is the hardest and the most frustrating, but the body functions are the most physically demanding. This helps to keep from getting over tired or over agitated in any one area."
"That makes sense," Uncle Jesse commented, and she nodded.
"Okay, now Bo, I want your family to tell me a little bit about you so that I can get to know what you like and don't like. I know you'd probably rather tell me yourself, and someday, when you're able to, I'll let you, and then we'll see how close your answers are to what your family told me. If there's something that they say that you really don't agree with or that you really do agree with, well, you know how to let me know that, right?" Bo nodded. "Yep, I knew that. You know what else?" she asked, pausing as he shook his head. "I already know one little secret about you Bo, and that's that you don't seem to care too much for your full, given name. Is that right?" Bo nodded, and she laughed. "Well, I'll make a deal with you. I won't call you by it unless I think you're not paying attention, okay?" He nodded again. "Let's shake," she said, taking his hand. "I want you to let me know that you agree to those terms by trying to press down on my hand." He looked at her as she slid her hand under his again. "There's no right or wrong answer here," she assured him, and she did feel him press a little. "Now, let's try the other one," and he did the same. She noted that his left hand had more strength. "Now, let's hear what your family can tell me about you," she said, turning to them.
"What do you want to know?" Uncle Jesse asked.
"Anything you think is important for me to know about Bo," she said.
"Ah, you like cars, huh?" she confirmed when Luke said that he did. "Is that orange car General Lee yours?"
Bo nodded and Luke told her that the General was theirs. They'd built it from scratch.
"Really? That's impressive."
Next, they told her that Bo liked the girls. He tried to look embarrassed when she shot him a sly look. "Somehow, I gotta feeling they like you, too," she said, and everyone noticed that he actually blushed.
Mostly, they told her that Bo had a big heart, would help anyone who needed it, was a great cousin and nephew, and that they loved him very much, missed him, and wanted him back.
"That's nice, Bo, that you have a family that really loves you that much," she told him, and he nodded, looking from one to the other, to the other.
"The last thing that we're going to do today is to actually find out where you are with everything, so I'm going to ask you to do some things in each of the areas that we've already talked about. I want you to do what you can, and not to worry about what you can't. That's what I'm trying to determine right now so that tomorrow we can start changing those can'ts into can dos. Okay?"
The family watched as she started with his legs and feet, then worked up to his arms and hands, and finally finished by asking him to make sounds as well as any words that he could. He said Luke without any problems, and the Dukes confirmed that he had been saying his cousin's name for a while now.
"By the time we're done with you darlin', you're going to be a regular chatterbox," she told him, and he laughed. Then she looked at him, and stated very seriously that he must really love his cousin to have learned how to say his name first.
Bo looked at her with all the innocence of a newborn and nodded. Luke couldn't help but get choked up, walking over to his cousin, and telling him that the feeling was mutual.
"Okay Bo, we're done for today. I'm letting you off a little early, but don't get used to it," she warned him. "Tomorrow, we'll be like the Marines, sort of, we'll do more before noon than most people do all day, or is that the Army?"
"Luke," he said, but she didn't understand why.
"Luke was a Marine," Daisy told her.
"Oh!" she said. "Well tomorrow, you're gonna feel like one," she promised him. "You rest up good today, cause you're gonna need it." Getting up from the floor and gathering her things, she said that she'd let them get back to their chores, then thanked them for their help. Before she walked out of the room, she put her hand on Bo's shoulder. "Bye Bo. We'll see you tomorrow."
Luke and Sandy noticed that he slightly raised his right hand as if making a gesture of goodbye. He looked up at her, and Luke could have sworn that he looked disappointed that their session was over.
When they walked into the kitchen, Uncle Jesse asked if she thought she'd be able to help Bo.
"I do, and I will certainly give it everything I've got, and right now, I'm getting the impression that Bo will, too."
"Talk about a change in attitude," Daisy said.
"It's all in the approach," Sandy told them. "They have to be kept involved in the process, and feel like they have some control over it. Otherwise, it's very difficult, and control is usually the main issue. All of a sudden a person like Bo finds that they're in a situation where they have no say over their own lives anymore. They have to have some in their recovery. It's only logical if you think about it."
"C'mon," Luke said, "I'll walk you out."
"Okay," she agreed, thinking that he might have something he wanted to talk to her about or questions that he wanted to ask away from the others.
"You were really wonderful with him," Luke told her, trying to express his gratitude on how she had handled a potentially awkward and volatile situation, though he knew his cousin well enough to know that she was pretty enough to keep his attention for a while. He'd seen the way he looked at her, and knew that Bo found her attractive. For that matter, he did, too, but it was the way she treated him, talking to him as if he wasn't injured at all. She treated him with dignity and respect, and he could see a difference in Bo's eyes from that morning to the time she left. It was like a little of the old Bo was already back. Of course, it didn't hurt that a pretty lady was paying attention to him. That alone had to be good for his self-esteem, and despite his lack in self-confidence due to his current appearance, she had commented right away that she thought he'd been pretty popular with the girls. She had been up front with him, telling him it was going to be hard, but she had also treated him as an equal, letting him know what to expect. She was professional, kind, courteous, and funny all rolled up into one. She'd managed to make Bo laugh more in the few hours she'd been there than he had in the last month, and he knew that if Bo could laugh, he could work very hard. He had a feeling they'd be doing a lot of laughing over the coming weeks. "He actually laughed several times, and he looks happier right now than he has since before this whole thing started. I just wanted to thank you for being so good with him."
"It came very easy with Bo. He's a likeable guy," she replied.
"Nice car," Luke commented, as they got closer.
"Thanks," she said, opening the door. She threw the file on the front seat, than leaned in to get her hat.
Luke was reading the license plate. "You're from Texas?"
She was just putting on her Stetson as he asked the question. "I sure am, darlin."
"Texas Twister?" Luke questioned.
"That's what they call me," she said.
Now that he thought about it, she did sort of remind him of a cyclone, affecting everything in her path. The difference was that tornadoes destroyed; she created and rebuilt, but both tasks required a lot of fury and determination. He couldn't wait to tell Bo what his therapist's nickname was. Somehow, he knew that his baby cousin was going to get a kick out of it.
"Mr. Duke?" she asked, setting the hat on her head.
"Luke, please call me Luke."
"Sorry. Luke, I need to ask you if you're ok with a more casual type of dress, or if you like the actual uniforms. I have them so it's whatever you prefer."
"We don't care how you dress. Just as long as you come back, and help Bo."
"I'll be here tomorrow at eight. Count on it."
"We will," he said, as she climbed in behind the wheel. "Thank you again."
"Oh you're quite welcome, but save the thanks till after the real work starts tomorrow."
"I think this is gonna work out just fine. I'm sorry I doubted your qualifications," he apologized, leaning in the car window.
"Don't be. You're entrusting me with someone you obviously care for very much. You not only should question my qualifications, you have every right to. That doesn't offend me. I let my record speak for itself."
"Well, thanks again," he said, stepping away from the car as she waved out the window, and pulled away from the house.
Luke went inside to find Bo. "Guess what her nickname is?"
Bo gave him a blank stare, saying that he didn't know. "Texas Twister!" Luke told him, and Bo did start laughing.
"She's nice, isn't she Bo?" Bo nodded. "You like her, don't you?" Bo nodded again. "I do, too," Luke told him, as he pushed him back to the table for lunch. "Ya hungry, kiddo?" Luke asked, and for the first time, Bo nodded that he was. The Texas twister had already left Bo with an appetite.
