"Hey, Muscles, are you busy?"
At her question, Virgil put aside his tablet on which he had been reading, ready and willing to help her with anything she might need. "Not really, what's up?"
"Do you have any flying hours left to spare?"
That wasn't the question he had been expecting, he was used to her asking him to fetch and carry for her, to make her a drink or to help her to get around. "Not for another ten hours. Do you need to go somewhere?"
"Adam called earlier to tell me he'd arranged a special trip for us but obviously he can't come here."
"A trip?" Scott piped up, shamelessly listening in.
"Yes, a trip," Selene said with a sarcastic roll of her eyes. "He wants to take me to this really cool alternative therapy retreat in Costa-"
"Does John know about this?" Virgil asked, not willing to be held responsible if his brother didn't know and found out he'd taxied his wife somewhere dangerous.
"I don't need his permission to go somewhere with my brother," Selene told them. "I'm his wife, not his child."
"You know it's not like that," Virgil soothed, "but you have to tell him."
"I will, I was just making arrangeme-"
"Tell me what?"
All three jumped guiltily, even though Virgil and Scott were, for once, innocent of any and all wrongdoing. Selene shot a sideways glance at Scott, her backup, her best friend… he was refusing to meet her eyes, looking stubbornly out the window.
"Sel?" John's arms were crossed and even across the room, she could feel the heat of his scowl.
"Ad's pulled a few strings and got us a place in the San Luis Valley, near a hot spring. They have a sweat lodge and every treatment you can think of."
"Costa Rica? No, no way," John said firmly. "It's not safe for you to be off the island at the moment, you know that."
Selene scowled right back at him, daring him to keep pissing her off. She was sore, she was cranky and she was bloody bored. Much as she loved everyone on the island she was fed up with sitting around feeling sorry for herself. She'd been a good girl, she'd sat and rested for nearly three weeks, hadn't lifted a finger over Christmas or New Year, she'd done the small number of exercises she was allowed and she was still feeling stiff and out of sorts.
She'd done everything they had told her to, stuck with everything they had enforced, but the more she sat around doing barely anything, the more she felt like she was losing herself. She felt more like a patient than an active member of the household and if going to a healing retreat could help she was all for it. Western medicine was all well and good, but it focused on healing the body, not the mind or the spirit, and that was where she felt like she needed it the most.
"I want to go, I need to go."
"No, you don't," John insisted. "What you need to do is stay right here, where we can keep an eye on you, and rest up."
"I'm sick of resting! Resting is boring."
"No, resting is sensible and what you need right now."
"I can rest there! That's the whole point of a healing retreat, you retreat! I can rest, relax and hopefully come back feeling like a whole new woman rather than one that has been sat on by an obese elephant with extra junk in its trunk."
She heard Scott snigger and Virgil's amused little huff, but she ignored them, as she suspected John was too.
"Can you do your treatments here? Whatever you need, just tell me and we'll get it for you. Won't you Virgil?" John looked at his brother for backup.
"Erm…sure, of course I will," Virgil stammered, finding himself unexpectedly thrust into the spotlight. "It wouldn't take me long to pick up anything you needed."
Selene sighed, closing her eyes, her lips moving as she silently counted to ten.
"Do you have a problem with that?" John asked before she had even reached four.
"Yes, I have a problem with that!"
"Why? What can you do there that you can't do here?"
"Everything!"
"But we can get you anythi-"
Selene slammed her hand down on the controls of her wheelchair, spinning it round and managing to stop it so it was pointed at the door after only two rotations. See, she was getting better at it! She had only crashed into the doorframe twice today and only ran over one foot. She was practically ready for racing.
Not looking back she started her rolling retreat, but her annoying husband had other ideas. The chair went dead, stopping before she even made it out of the room.
"What the hell?" She craned her neck round to shoot him a death glare so potent he should have combusted on the spot. "Release me!"
John's fingers hovered over his wrist comm. "Guys, can you give us a few minutes?"
John didn't need to ask them twice. They scrambled to their feet, more than ready to get out of this awkward situation before they were forced to pick sides. That never went well.
Selene's outraged screech followed them as they left, and Scott just managed to catch a brief glimpse of her chair zooming backwards, depositing her back by the seating area steps.
"He's braver than I am," Scott muttered to Virgil, who could do nothing but nod in agreement as they hurried down the stairs to the kitchen and safety.
"You can't just run away when you don't like an answer, Sel," John started, keeping his tone as gentle and reasonable as he could.
"I wasn't," she argued. "I was rolling, and it was because I was done with the conversation."
"But I wasn't. You can't just drop this on me and expect me not to ask questions."
She continued to glare at him, her head tipped back to maintain steely eye contact. "I won't answer anything while you're looming over me like that and laying the law down like you own me."
"You're right, I'm sorry." He took a seat on the couch nearest the stairs, deliberately giving her the height advantage as she was still on the higher level. "Please can we talk about this?"
"If you're willing to listen," she countered.
"I'm always willing to listen," he argued but thought better of it when he saw the disbelieving look on her face, and changed the subject. "So, Adam wants to take you to a retreat?"
"Yep." A one-word answer was all he was getting.
"I hate to ask and dash any hopes I might have to the contrary, but it's not a medical retreat, is it?"
"Fraid not."
"So it's not regulated by any health authority in any way?"
"I doubt it."
He tried, he really did, but in the end, there was only one way he could answer. "You aren't going, you can't."
"I'm not going?" she repeated, her tone deadly quiet. Over John's head, she saw Jeff take two steps into the room, clock the situation, and then beat a hasty retreat back the way he had come. Smart man that one, smarter than his son that was for damn sure. "Are you seriously telling me what I can and cannot do?"
"No, of course not."
"You aren't going," she parroted back in an awful impression of his most bossy tone.
John ignored that and pressed on. "I meant that it could be dangerous, not just medically but security-wise too. You don't know where it is, what it's about or who runs it."
"It's a retreat, not a battlefield. People go there all the time, it's very popular and according to Adam, quite exclusive and hard to get into."
"It's still dangerous if they aren't medically trained."
"Look, I love you, but I refuse to be stuck here at home, sitting around doing nothing for the next eight weeks. I need to go, I need to feel more like myself again. I'm going."
"Not without me you aren't."
"Then I guess you had better get packing." Her tone was firm, final. He knew that tone and knew just how stubborn she could be when her heart was set on something.
His sigh was epic but resigned.
"I've done everything that you've told me to, everything your brothers and grandma have told me to do, everything the doctors have told me to do, and I've done it with minimal complaining." He snorted at this but she ignored it. "I've spent all this time with your family, now it's time for me to spend time with mine."
"Adam is going to make you do weird things, isn't he?"
"Noooo," she drawled. "Of course not."
-x-
"What is that noise?"
"Drumming circle, man," Adam said as he reached for the handles of Selene's wheelchair, intending to push her along, but John got there first.
"A drumming circle? I fail to see how noise can help to heal, all it gives me is a headache." John hung Selene's bag over the handles of her chair and pushed forward. Why the place refused to allow any technology, even banning her electric wheelchair, was beyond him. But they had a strict policy, no phones, no communicating with the outside world, no listening to the news or anything that might be upsetting. They wanted you to be at peace, at one with nature, to set aside the trappings of modern-day life. Personally, John couldn't think of anything worse. He discreetly fingered the collar of his jacket where he'd had Brains install a comm for just this kind of emergency. It was reassuring to know that if they found his phone hidden in his bag he still had a backup.
"A drumming circle has many benefits," a wispy sounding voice commented from somewhere to the side of their little party, making John jump. The woman who had spoken looked to be older than dirt and was dressed in the traditional dress of an indigenous American shaman. "They reduce tension, anxiety, depression and stress, something that is all too common in this modern era. It has also been said to boost the immune system as well as release negative feelings and emotional trauma. Here we practice Shamanic drumming which helps connect us with our inner self and spirit."
"Right," John said with a nod. It wasn't that he disbelieved in spiritual things, he would be crazy not to, but some things he found a little harder to understand and anything that involved loud noises was one of them.
"We're the Tempest's," Selene offered helpfully, giving the woman a cheerful wave from her chair.
"I'm sure you're expected. The entrance hall is over there, check-in and store your things in your room. I shall expect to see you in my circle at dusk."
"We'll be there," Selene assured her. "Come on, guys, let's get me rolling."
"Thank you," John called over his shoulder as he heaved her chair through the sloppy mud, the biting cold of the wind whipping his hair back from his face. He would never understand how someone could choose to leave their warm island for somewhere like this. The cold would be terrible for her joint pain, something he had already expressed concern over, but she wouldn't hear of it. I'm English she'd said as if that was all the information he needed to understand her point. Unfortunately, he didn't understand a thing.
The entrance hall was at least a welcome respite from the cold, something he was most grateful for. They had been outside for less than five minutes, just enough time to load up their belongings, plop Selene into her chair and walk from the neighbouring field where he had landed their small plane, and still, he felt chilled to the bone.
Selene and Adam chatted excitedly to the young man who manned the desk inside as he listed all the treatments they had available and signed them up for their chosen therapies. Each sounding more bizarre and uncomfortable than the last.
"And for yourself?" the young man asked, snapping John out of his horrified contemplation of the treatment brochure.
"I'm sorry?"
"What therapies shall I put you down for?"
"Erm…I'm not sure…this… isn't not really my thing."
The look the man gave him clearly asked why he was even there at their mega expensive retreat if he had no intention of joining in with anything.
"Can I not just watch?"
"This isn't a spectator sport, babe," Selene side whispered. "You have to pick some things or they might give your place away.
The young man continued to stare at him as if he were the dumbest creature on the face of the earth then, without saying another word, he tapped the framed menu boards on the wall beside him.
"I…I mean." John frantically scanned the boards. Nothing sounded in the slightest bit appealing. "I guess…"
"You need to relax more," Selene insisted. "So maybe something with a massage that's more calming?"
John made a face at that suggestion. The idea of a massage did not appeal to him in the slightest. The whole place looked quite grubby, he could practically feel the germs crawling on him as he stood there. How much worse would he feel if he was lying practically naked on a table?
"I don't think a massage is for me."
"Reiki then? Or crystal therapy?" the young man offered.
"I'll do the serpent therapy, maybe a short cupping session and some reiki," Adam ordered, pushing his sign-in sheet across the counter. "And sign me up for all the group sessions you have, I like the vibes," Adam continued.
"Certainly," the young man said with a happy smile, obviously grateful that they weren't all going to be as awkward as John.
Once again put on the spot, John did the only thing he could think of, he bowed down to his wife's superior knowledge. "Sign me up for whatever you're doing." Surely that wouldn't be too bad? She was injured, after all, so she wouldn't be doing anything too strenuous or outlandish. Plus it would allow him to keep a close eye on her and ensure that nothing and no one could attempt anything untoward.
"Are you sure?" Selene asked, looking entirely too uncertain for his liking.
"Of course," he assured her, hopefully sounding a lot more confident in his choice than he felt. If she could endure such things then he surely could too. "I wanted to spend time with you while you did this, so what better way than to experience it too?"
She didn't look like she bought that explanation in the slightest, but she nodded her agreement. Picking up the pen she had been handed, she read through the options again, then ticked to select the one she wanted.
"It's not too late to change your mind." She held the paper out to the young man, who made no move to take it from her, his eyes fixed on John.
"No, I'll do what you do."
"Fine," Selene said with a shrug. "Sign him up for the same as me."
"Of course." The young man took the paper, obviously grateful to be able to get on with his job. He spun around in his chair and grabbed a couple of old-fashioned keys. He handed one to Selene and one to Adam.
"These are the keys to the outer doors and one each for your yurt storage chests where you will find pillows and blankets to use."
"Thanks, my man," Adam said, slipping his key into what could have been a pocket in his poncho but was just as likely to be a pocket dimension with the frequency in which he lost things in it.
Selene, fearing their key might suffer the same fate if she kept hold of it, passed it over to John for safe keeping. Besides, he was the one that would be doing all the door unlocking anyway.
"Here are your timetables," the young man said, handing them a couple of sheets of paper each. "There are no clocks in the yurts and only one in the main complex, so listen out for the gongs that signal the hours and half hours. Now, head through those doors and out into the main complex, you have twenty minutes until your first treatment to get settled. There's a map included on the back of your schedules and a menu. Enjoy your stay."
And with that, they were dismissed.
-x-
"We are not sleeping here."
"Why not? We've stayed in a yurt before and you found it quite pleasant if I remember correctly." Selene wheeled herself into the yurt after him, glad that her wrist was finally out of its cast and she was a two-handed being again. The ankle was still immobilised and her pelvis was still healing but at least she was able to do small tasks again.
"That was on a soft, inflatable bed at a decent height. This," he paused to point disgustedly at the two small army-type cots that awaited them, "is not going to happen."
"It'll be fine, it's only a few nights," Selene said dismissively as she looked around the rest of the small tent.
"No, absolutely not. Sel, you can't sleep on this, it's only been four weeks since you had your accident, you need a real bed. One with adequate space and support."
"Well this is all they have, they don't do luxuries here, so we'll have to make do."
"Sel, please, be sensible."
Selene snorted. "Sensible? Me? When have you ever known that to happen?"
"I live in hope. But please, I'm begging you, don't make me drag you home because you'll yell and hate me and I really don't want that."
Selene tipped her head back to look at him. He certainly didn't look like he was happy to be asking such a thing of her, in fact, he looked downright wary like he expected her to explode any minute. She guessed she could understand that, she'd been a little grumpy lately, she just didn't do pain or inactivity well.
"What do you propose we do then?" she asked, willing to give him a chance. For what she didn't know, maybe to back down and let her make up her own adult mind, or to come up with a reasonable solution they could both live with.
"Stay for the day and then go home?" he suggested hopefully, not really expecting her to agree.
"It'll take too long to fly home," Selene argued.
"Hotel in the nearest town?" he countered, his tone firmer now.
Selene looked at him, her head tipped to one side, clearly weighing up her options. There was only so far she could push him out of his comfort zone, especially at the moment. He'd been on edge for the past month, hardly daring to let her out of his sight. He was tired and cranky, working while she was asleep or resting, only going to Five when he had to or until she got so fed up with him she threatened to run him over with her chair if he didn't 'piss off back to space' for a while. Now he was here with her and she knew that he'd do his best to be as respectful as possible, but when it came to her health he wouldn't compromise.
"We'll stay here until the very end of the night and come back first thing in the morning?" she confirmed. "And we'll stay at the resort's hotel, the one they use for day campers?"
"If that's what you want, as long as you sleep in a real bed."
"Deal," she said with a decisive nod. "But how will you book it? There's no phones here."
The look John shot her said she really should know him better than that. He dipped a hand into his overnight bag, rummaged under the lining and pulled out his phone.
"You said you'd leave that at home!"
"And you should have known I'd never be able to do that, it's one of my quirks and you promised to love me despite them."
"You shouldn't throw my love promises back at me like that," she grumbled as he fired off a text command to EOS.
"EOS will order us a taxi for the end of the night and book us into a room that suits our needs."
"I'm still not happy with this, I'd like that to be registered as a formal complaint."
"Noted."
"I won't bother to unpack then, I'll just lock my bag away." Selene gathered the things that she'd managed to tuck all around her in her chair and deposited them into her bag. "Here, you can put your phone in here too." She held out her bag with a pointed look. John dropped his phone in, not wanting to argue.
"This is going to be a really long weekend, isn't it?"
-x-
"Can you repeat that, please?"
"What part, the snakes or the massage?" Selene asked innocently. The rather large but incredible docile boa constrictor she was holding stopped gliding from hand to hand, its head whipping round to stare at John like it was evaluating the tastiness of his soul. He wasn't afraid of snakes, but he also wasn't a fan of getting up close and personal with them. Yet there was his wife, cooing to it like it was a baby.
"What was it that Adam signed up for?" he asked.
"Hay bath I think, then he's doing this after us."
"A Hay bath?" Was that something that might be better? Hay wasn't a favourite of his, it was itchy, sometimes spikey and it set his allergies off. But then anything would be better than this.
"Yep, old-fashioned claw foot tub filled with hay and in you go." The snake turned away from John in favour of tongue kissing all over Selene's face. "Aww look, he likes me!"
"I think I'll sit this one out, I'll come back when you're done." He was already moving towards the door, not giving her a chance to argue. Maybe if he stayed outside the tent someone would think he was lost and point him to the exit. He could dream.
"Fine, but this is your only veto, so make it count," she told him firmly. "You wanted to come along so you have to join in."
He waved his hand in acknowledgement but didn't look back as the door swung shut behind him.
He spent a freezing, but blissfully alone, half hour wandering the grounds, orientating himself with the layout of the complex. The ever-present scent of smoke seemed to permeate the air, so much so that he could almost taste it on his tongue. He heard the distant sound of bubbling, trickling water from the promised hot springs. That wouldn't be too much of a hardship to enjoy, he was sure, so long as they had seats in there on which Selene could rest and her waterproof cast stood up to the challenge.
He stood in the main circle of the complex, surrounded by a mixture of tents, cabins and what could affectionately be called garden sheds, all of which seemed to offer a different treatment. The air was filled with a cacophony of sounds, some pleasant, some not so, making him wonder just how anyone was supposed to relax while there. But he guessed that he wasn't the one in need of relaxation and he wasn't the type of person that this facility was intended for. He was here for his wife and if she was happy and relaxed, then he would try to be too.
By the time he'd completed a circuit of the compound, locating the bathroom facilities that were wheelchair accessible, the dining area and their next therapy session hut, he figured it was time to head back and collect Selene.
He pushed the door open as quietly as he could, not wanting to disturb her peace if they were still working. He didn't think to knock on the door, he knew it was a massage but it wasn't like she had anything to hide from him. That was his mistake.
"I…erm…I mean," he stammered, coming to a halt when he found no words to describe the scene he had just walked in on.
"You at one with the earth," the snake priestess intoned softly as she shook a dry sounding bead rattle around like she was salting the air.
"I am at one with the earth," Selene repeated back in the quietest voice he'd ever heard from her.
"You are grounded." The practitioner caught a snake that was about to dive bomb off onto the floor and guided it back onto Selene's head.
"I am grounded," Selene echoed, seeming not to even notice, or at least care about, the fat ball python she was wearing as a hat.
"You embrace the healing energies of mother earth."
His wife was lying on what looked to be an old bean bag bed from the 1970s. She had not one, not two, not even three or four but FIVE large snakes roaming about her person. One was wrapped around her cast covered ankle, the other, the largest from what he could tell, was curled up on her lap, covering her pelvis and lower abdomen. She had another slithering across her chest, a smaller one wound around her right arm, and the one on her head made five.
"You no longer hurt," the priestess said and Selene copied her once more. "Your body is healing from the inside out."
"My body is healing from the inside out."
"Talking of out," John muttered, opening the door and slipping outside again. He'd leave her in peace until she was done.
-x-
"What's the flame for?" John asked suspiciously as one of the women who would be performing their treatment lit what looked to be a stick with a bundle of cotton on the end that smelt strongly of rubbing alcohol.
"We heat the cups," the woman answered, moving towards Selene purposefully.
John, Adam and another woman were lying on their fronts on massage beds, but Selene, unable to lie on her front, had been provided with a massage chair that tipped forwards enough that she could still have the treatment.
"Babe, it'll be fine," Selene assured him. "Just relax."
"Yeah, chill out, man. Just go with the flow, feel that zen energy in the air," Adam instructed, waving his arms in what was obviously meant to be a feeling-the-energy thing but, as he was lying down, made him look like a bug stuck on its back.
John huffed, he'd never felt less Zen in his entire life. He was lying half naked on a table, surrounded by people that carried flaming stick rags and pushed trays of glass jars around with them. Where was the sanity in that?
"What is this treatment again?" he asked. Knowledge was power and maybe, just maybe, if he actually understood what they were planning on doing, he'd feel a bit better about the situation.
"Cupping is an ancient Chinese practice that helps relieve tension, stress, and encourages healing," one practitioner answered.
"It balances the Qi, dude," Adam continued to explain. "When you get an imbalance of your wind, fire and humidity, you gotta do something about it."
"Wind?"
"You got too much fire, my man. Makes you bad-tempered and hot."
"He's definitely hot," Selene commented none too innocently. She was immune to his glare, as far as she was concerned, if she couldn't see it, it didn't exist. John, for his part, didn't dignify her with an answer.
"Too much fire," Adam confirmed in a solemn voice. John ignored him too. He was too busy watching a therapist advance on an apparently already sleeping client with the flame and his jars. The man held the flame inside the jar for a moment or two then slapped the jar neck down onto his client's back where it stuck firmly in place.
"First we massage the back with oil," a therapist said, keen to stop the bickering going on between clients. John couldn't blame her. "Head in the hole, if you please."
Never had anything sounded less appealing to him than that instruction but he wasn't about to argue. He was doing this for his wife, so he would do it with minimal fuss.
He tensed the moment a dollop of cold oil splattered onto the centre of his back. He could feel it dribbling its way down his side, but the therapist caught it before it hit the couch.
"Try to relax," his therapist instructed and he was sure he heard a small snort of disbelief from Selene's direction. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, willing his muscles to unclench. It wasn't easy. He didn't like people he didn't know touching him at the best of times and this wasn't one of them. But he'd had a number of messages from Selene and liked them, he just hoped this one wouldn't put him off for life.
The therapist, deciding that the only way to get this job done was to get on with it, started his massage.
This isn't too awful, he grudgingly admitted to himself as the therapist's oiled hands slid the length of his spine, her fingers and thumbs kneading the tight muscles. He could do this, lie there while he was basted like a Thanksgiving turkey.
He forced himself to close his eyes and let out the breath he'd been holding. It didn't feel horrible, nor as intrusive as he had expected. He might even go so far as to say it was verging on pleasant. He was just starting to relax properly when she stopped.
"Now for cups."
Welcome back tension. He knew how things worked and in his mind fire and glass didn't mix. He wanted to sit up, to scramble off the table and make a break for it, but a soft sigh and a contented moan from Adam told him they wouldn't appreciate his interruption.
The first thing he noticed was that the cup felt warm on his skin. The second was the pressure. He could feel the skin of his back being sucked up into the cup like it had been attacked with a vacuum cleaner. He'd barely had time to register what was going on when another cup was popped onto his back, and then another and another.
"Keep still," the therapist ordered when he tried to lift his head to see what Adam's back looked like. The movement stretched his back but the cups held firm, moving with it.
He stilled, dropping his face back down into the couch hole. The cups clinked together as he settled
"You wait here," the therapist told him.
"Not like there is anywhere I could go," he muttered. This was his worst nightmare, having to sit still, in one place, with nothing to occupy his mind. It wasn't that he couldn't do it, he just didn't like to. He liked to keep busy, he considered time spent sitting around doing nothing to be wasted. When he had nothing to focus on his mind tended to wander and that wasn't always a good thing.
He tried to relax, he tried to let the soothing sounds of pan-pipe music wash over him, but it didn't help much. Sure, his muscles under the cups felt really good, like all the tension was being sucked out of them, but his mind kept going back over the reason they were at the retreat in the first place. His thoughts kept tumbling over and over, gathering and rearranging the evidence they had over and over, trying to form some kind of logical pattern.
By the time the therapist came back fifteen minutes later and whipped the cups off his back with an audible pop, he was still no closer to an answer, not that he had expected to be.
As soon as he was free of the cups he moved, sitting up and swinging his legs around so he was sitting on the table. An experimental wiggle of his shoulders told him that they actually felt less stiff than normal. His skin still felt tingly, like the start of pins and needles, but in a good way.
Selene's back was covered in large, round red marks, obviously from the cups. They looked like giant hickies and reminded him of the ones he'd seen on Gordon from time to time.
"Is this treatment good for athletes?" he asked a passing therapist.
"Oh yes, athletes often get this," she answered. "It increases the blood circulation into the muscles, drawing out toxins. It encourages the body to speed up the healing process. So any sport that involves a lot of muscle use, such as weight lifting, running, swimming, climbing, will benefit from a session after a big event or even in preparation if training has been hard."
That would explain the tingling sensation he was experiencing, the increased blood flow. He nodded, pleasantly surprised that there appeared to be a relatively scientific reason behind such a bizarre seeming treatment.
"Can someone please bring my wheelchair over?"
Adam jumped to attention, his desire to help his sister at odds with his usual laid-back, snail-with-luggage speed at which he did most things. Working in tandem, Adam held the chair steady while John lifted her gently off the therapy chair, being careful of the metal pole between her legs that held the support she had been leaning against. Once situated, he helped her pull on her shirt, one that closed at the back and settle back into her chair.
"Thanks, guys." Selene wiggled in her chair, rolling her shoulders and stretching her neck this way and that. "Wow, that feels so much better. Thanks, Li, you did an amazing job."
"Very welcome," Li responded with a brief but friendly nod of her head. She was already busily sterilising the cups for the next wave of clients, so they didn't stop too long.
"Where to next?" John gamely asked although he was very much dreading the answer.
"Sweat lodge, then dinner, then the drumming circle," Adam answered happily. "I've heard rumours that their Quinoa and tofu salad is life-changing."
-x-
"I am not sleeping with crystals in the bed."
"Why not?"
"Because they are crystals?"
"I fail to see your point."
"Bed equals soft, comfortable, restful." He picked up the large black tourmaline that had been nestled under the covers at the end of the bed. "This is large, heavy, hard and not at all restful. If that hits you in the night it could really hurt you."
"But I need them, it's part of the package."
"So? The food was part of the package and neither of us needed that," John pointed out. Adam had promised life-changing and all it had certainly been that, but definitely not in a good way."Are you sure you don't want me to order something in?"
"No, no outside food, you know the rules." Her stomach growled traitorously and she glared down at it. "And I need them for my pain."
"You're in pain?" John dropped the crystal back onto the bed without a care in order to grab his bag. "How long have you been hurting for? You should have told me, I brought extra pain meds with me because I knew you'd probably forget."
Selene straightened from her exhausted slump. "It's fine, I didn't forget, I left them at home on purpose."
"What? Why?" His expression was one of pure confusion and she had to fight the urge to giggle.
"You know I don't like taking medication if I can help it."
"But you're in pain, Sel," he pointed out, quite needlessly in his opinion. Why could nothing ever be straight forward when it came to his wife?
"I know that, which is why we're here, what part of that aren't you understanding, babe?"
"Oh, I don't know, maybe the part where you allow yourself to suffer needlessly?"
"Then I suffer," she said with a dismissive shrug. "I'll heal at the same rate regardless if I take them or not."
"But the difference is whether you're in pain for the duration of that healing or resting comfortably!" John argued, his voice rising as his frustration took over.
"I don't like them," she insisted, crossing her arms stubbornly. "They make me feel like shit. I'm all fuzzy headed and grumpy, I need off them."
His jaw tightened, his frustration clear. "You're grumpy because you're hurting."
"No, I'm grumpy because people keep arguing with me, telling me what to do and thinking they know better."
"We do know better, we deal with injuries all the time, you know that."
"And I don't."
"Exactly!"
"But that doesn't mean that I shouldn't be able to have a say in my own life and treatment."
"Of course you can have a say!" John exploded. He started to move, his legs carrying him the length of the room in quick strides, needing to work off some of the frustration. "But this isn't treatment, this is madness! Crystals in the bed, bathing in hay and scoffing mung bean salad isn't going to help you!"
"Yes, it is!" Selene slammed her hands down on the arms of her wheelchair, unable to do much more. She wanted to move as he was, to work off some of her frustration with action. Being forced to sit in a chair and stay where she was put was the worst thing in the world. She already felt like a piece of the furniture, an object that was getting in the way and being an inconvenience on a daily basis, she didn't need to feel like her voice was broken too.
"It won't! There is not a shred of actual scientific evidence that can substantiate those claims!"
"Listen here," Selene said, her voice dangerously low, her pointy finger of doom aimed in his direction. "I've been good, I've done everything that the doctors, Grandma, Virgil, your dad and you have told me to. I've taken the meds even when I haven't wanted to. I've sat on my ass for weeks, I've avoided my friends calls, I've allowed you to screen every bit of contact I've had with the outside world and I've done it all with what I consider to be minimal complaining and if you can't figure out why this is important to me without me having to scream at you about it, then you obviously don't know me as well as you think you do."
"Do you think I did all of this in order to control you in some way?" John asked quietly, shocked that she could even say such a thing, let alone think it.
"No, of course not." She sighed deeply, allowing the anger to fade a little. The whole day had been wonderful, but quite exhausting. She was nowhere near ready for so much activity after doing basically nothing for the past four weeks and it was catching up to her. She was tired, she was hungry for something other than spirit and body cleansing vegan cuisine and she hurt all over. The glow she'd felt from her treatments had long since worn off and she wanted nothing more than to sleep.
"Then what did you mean by that?"
Selene didn't answer, too busy wheeling herself towards the bed. "Help me into bed?" She hated to ask for help but there was no way she could do it herself and maybe, just maybe, it would give them both an excuse to stop and cool off for a minute or two.
Even though they were in the middle of an argument, John didn't hesitate to help her. That was what she loved most about him, the fact that he never took things out on her. Even when she was annoying him in the worst possible way, he never punished her for it.
She remembered a time that Nathaniel had barged past her on the stairs. She'd stumbled down a couple of steps and badly sprained her ankle, so much so that she could hardly walk. She had only gone to the hospital because a neighbour had seen her struggling to fetch the groceries from the car and insisted on taking her to get checked out.
When she had returned home she was on crutches, with her foot in a support sock with orders to rest for a few weeks, keeping it elevated and iced to help reduce the swelling.
At first Nathaniel had been extremely apologetic and insisted on helping her into the house and settling her comfortably on the couch to rest. But that hadn't lasted long. As soon as the neighbour had gone home he'd started blaming her for the accident, calling her clumsy and stupid for getting in his way when he'd been trying to get past her.
Nathaniel's mood had flip flopped the entire length of her recovery. Some days he would be the doting, attentive partner, and others, mostly the times that she dared answer him back, he would make her suffer by refusing to help her or by forcing her to get up and do things for him that he could have easily done himself.
John was so different from Nathaniel in every conceivable way, but it was times like this that she was acutely aware of just how much. She realised that, in the time they had been together, she had changed just as much as he had. If she had been injured at the start of their relationship she would have assumed he'd act exactly as Nathaniel had, and would have adjusted her behaviour accordingly. But now she wasn't afraid to talk back for fear of him abandoning her to suffer alone. She wasn't afraid of him getting pissed off at her and 'accidentally' dropping her or moving her too roughly just to make his point. She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that no matter how annoyed he was with her, he'd do anything for her. And that was worth its weight in gold.
She knew she was being a tad unfair to him. She hadn't meant to get annoyed with him but his attitude had rubbed her up the wrong way. She appreciated the fact that he was there with her, joining in with things that he'd never choose to do off his own back. No, the thing that had annoyed her was the fact that he hadn't stopped to consider or even ask her reasons for wanting to be there. And she didn't feel like pointing it out to him.
"Do you want to talk about this?" John asked tentatively once she was situated in bed, in the spirit of compromise having moved the crystals to her bedside table so she could lie flat and supported.
"Not really, no," she sighed. "It's not that I don't care, and I'm not pissed off with you, I just…" she paused, trying to gather her thoughts and voice them in a way that wouldn't make her sound like a total bitch.
John sat down on his side of the bed, watching her closely. She knew he was studying her face, looking for any clues as to how she was feeling, but he was also assessing her to make sure she was comfortable. She knew that he was doing his best, in fact he was going above and beyond anything she would have expected or even wanted someone to do for her in this situation, but she had to be true to herself too.
"Can you explain it to me?" he asked gently.
"That's the thing, I don't think I can. Because I don't think you'll really understand just from me telling you, it's kind of something you have to figure out on your own."
John didn't look convinced. "How can I figure it out when you won't even tell me what you're thinking?"
"Because you're you, I love you, and I have faith in you and your abilities as a husband." She sat up with a little difficulty, holding in a painted groan.
"What are you doing?"
"Giving my husband a kiss. I assume that's still allowed?"
His eyes narrowed but he obviously thought better of arguing. "Fine, but just this once."
-x-
"How can she be enjoying this?" John muttered under his breath as he watched Adam pour more foul smelling goo over his wife's torso and rub it all over her skin. Apparently it was a herbal poultice that had amazing medicinal benefits. He thought it smelt like a gone off rock pool, or that mouldy bagel he'd found in Five that one time.
"My wife is the same," the man next to him said, making John jump guiltily.
They were sitting on chairs along the outer edge of the round yurt where the treatment was taking place. The smell of smouldering sage was heavy in the air and John had to be careful not to breathe too deeply for fear of starting another coughing fit as he accidentally inhaled the thick smoke. Then again, that might help take away the taste of the mushroom water he had drunk at breakfast in place of real coffee.
"I'm sorry, what was that you said about your wife?"
The man stretched his legs out in front of him, settling back further in his chair. "My wife is the same as your lass, she enjoys all this weird stuff. I couldn't say I'm a fan myself, but it makes her happy."
"That's the only reason I'm here. I just wish she hadn't insisted on doing this right now. She needs to rest and look after herself."
"What happened to her, if you don't mind me asking?"
John kept his face impassive, while mentally rolling through the entire guest list. He wasn't proud of it, but he'd hacked their database the moment Selene had told him they were going, he'd wanted to make sure that everyone there was legitimate. The last thing he wanted was for anything else to happen to her. No one had looked out of place, all their histories had checked out. Surely it would be safe enough if he didn't give away too many details?
"She was in a car accident just over a month ago. She's recovering well but decided she wanted to come here when her brother invited her."
"Ahh, same as my Jodie. She was in an accident at work, nothing as serious as your lass by the looks of it, but enough to have her off her feet and resting for a while. She got bored while at home and started searching the internet and found alternative therapies. Not something I'd've ever expected from her but she found a kind of peace here, so we kept coming back. Her spiritual reboot she called it. Is yours like that?"
John shook his head. "This is nothing new for her, she's always been this way. I learned to accept it years ago, though I must admit I'm finding this time harder for some reason."
The man glanced over at Selene. Adam had moved on to her legs and was carefully smearing the goo onto her skin. "Can't say as I blame you, looking at your lass I'd say she should still be in bed."
"She should, or at the very least at home or somewhere with decent medical care."
"Ah, but doctors can only do so much, can't they, lad? My Jodie explained it to me as the doctors doing their work for her physical body, and this was what helped her spiritual self. And if this helps her, more power to her."
"It's not that I don't support her spiritual practices, I find them interesting for the most part and they are part of what makes her so special. But I don't believe they should mix with medicine and science, especially when it comes to her health."
The man sucked in a slow breath, nodding gently as if he were contemplating John's words.
"Aye, I can understand that, lad," the man said at last. "But maybe you're thinking about this the wrong way."
"How so?" John had no idea where the man was going with his theories, but at this point he was willing to listen to anyone that might be able to shed some light on the crazy that had overtaken his wife. Selene had always been one to shirk western medicine if she could, that much was true, she never took headache remedies or anything to help her monthly pains or the occasional cold. She relied on her body's natural healing, aromatherapy or herbal teas. But this was different, this had been a life or death situation. She could have died right there in that car and she hadn't come out of it unscathed. Because of that accident their lives together, all their plans for the future, might have changed beyond anything in their control.
"When someone goes through something traumatic, like your lass obviously has, it's not just the body that has to come to terms with it and heal, it's the mind too."
John nodded, he understood that. Being in their line of work they often saw things that no one should, but they also saw people that survived things that no human should be able to walk away from. His own brothers had been in situations that still haunted them, not to mention their father, who was still attending monthly therapy sessions to come to terms with his time in space and subsequent rescue.
"Does she need therapy?" John asked aloud, more to himself than the man he was talking to.
"Possibly," the man answered, assuming the question had been directed at him. "But maybe this is her version of therapy?"
Those simple words caused a lightbulb to go off in John's brain. Honestly, he could have smacked himself for how dumb he'd been. Selene had done nothing but be herself and he'd not understood that. Selene talked all the time, talking therapy wouldn't do much for her because she never felt like she needed to talk to someone outside of the family. She was always open and honest about how she was feeling. She'd told him as much the day she had announced the trip, she needed to feel like herself again. Her body was healing, she'd done everything the doctors had told her, had followed their instructions to the letter, even though she had grumbled the entire time. She was taking care of herself physically, but not spiritually. She hadn't been taking care of herself mentally in a way that worked for her. He could kick himself for not seeing that.
He shot a grateful look towards Adam, who was now leaning over her while he plucked randomly at the air above her, tossing invisible things over his shoulder towards the smouldering sage burner. He, as her husband, had thought he knew her better than anyone, but it appeared he still had things to learn that only time and experience, such as a brother would have, could show him. Adam had known what she needed and provided it, just as his brothers would do for him.
He'd been lax in his attentions. Sure he'd been there for her physically and emotionally as much as he could, but he had been entirely too focused on providing what he thought she had needed, not what she was telling him she did.
"Now you get it, lad," the man said, smiling proudly as he clapped a hand down on John's shoulder. "We don't always understand them as well as we'd like, but the trick is to never stop learning and to never stop listening."
"How did you get so wise?" John asked, only half joking.
"Just as I told you, I listened, I learned and we talk about everything. And, when this place came up for sale, we knew it was the right thing for us."
John's eyebrow lifted in surprise. The man in front of him looked as normal as they came. Past middle aged, maybe late fifties to early sixties, he was wearing a plain green woolen sweater and beaten up jeans. His cheeks were ruddy, a ruddiness that extended up to his almost bald head. He looked like a dad, one that went to PTA meetings and ferried his kids around all day in his car. He looked like someone that barbequed on the weekends and enjoyed a beer while watching the game. In short he looked nothing like someone that would own and run a place like this.
"This is my wife's baby," he explained, waving a hand towards the yurt around them. "But I found my place here too. I was a therapist back in the day and, rather like you, I believed that spirituality couldn't compete with more orthadox methods of treatment. But what you realise as you get older, is that nothing in life is orthadox and people have different needs. I work from here now, I still counsel people, it's just in a different way."
"I feel like I should pay you for this session," John joked, needing to lighten the mood.
"I'll put it on your tab," the man joked right back. "Be at peace, lad, your lass looks like she's doing fine to me. Plus her brother just cleansed her aura so she'll be good to go." There was a teasing twinkle in his eye that said he still didn't buy all of the things they sold there, but he understood the importance of them nonetheless.
-x-
"I feel so much better," Selene said with a contented sigh.
"You look better," John said. "Especially after we washed all that gunk off you in the hot springs." She looked lighter somehow, like a little of the emotional weight that had been weighing her down had lifted.
They were back in their little flat for the first time since her accident, he could hear Adam chanting to himself in their spare room across the hall, and she was sitting up in bed, surrounded by pillows, with the remains of a chicken noodle box on her lap.
"Thanks for getting us there and back safely. And I'm sorry again that Adam screamed the entire way into London Airport. He's a little sensitive to air pressure changes when he's been meditating for too long."
"It's fine," he assured her. "He more than earned the right to scream this weekend."
"Yeah, he's a good egg." She pushed the noodle box in his direction in case he wanted to finish it for her. "We might not see each other as much as we used to, but he always knows when I need him."
Moving the noodles to the bedside table, John sat up, careful not to jog her. "I want to apologise."
"What for?" Selene asked, genuinely perplexed. He'd been a good sport all weekend, doing things that he'd never ordinarily do and he'd bought her food from her favourite stall on the market. What more could she ask for?
"For not understanding you, or anticipating your needs."
"Oh, that," she scoffed, waving his worries aside with a sweep of her hand. "I'm over that, it's not a big deal. You shouldn't have to feel like you need to anticipate my every little need and I'm sorry if I made you feel like I expected you to. I wasn't really feeling like myself, but I'm good now."
"I know you weren't, and that's the point." John reached out, offering her his hand, smiling when she instantly dropped her own into his. "You weren't feeling like yourself and you tried to tell me but I didn't listen. I guess I was just so focused on trying to protect you and keep you safe that I didn't realise I was doing the opposite."
"You didn't do anything wrong, baby. This wasn't something anyone could do for me. I needed to feel like I was doing something positive towards my own recovery. Does that make sense?"
John nodded, because it did. It made perfect sense to him in the most Selene way possible.
"I hate relying on doctors and medication. I know, logically, that it was the right thing to do, I know that I need to keep up with my physio and keep doing as the doctors order, but I didn't feel like I was doing anything to help myself, not long term."
She squeezed his hand, tugging on it gently, encouraging him to move closer before she spoke again. "I know, logically, that most of those treatments will have done diddly squat to actually speed up or even help my recovery. But they still made me feel better. Because it felt like me. It felt like I was doing something to help myself. And that's what I desperately needed."
He moved closer, lying down beside her, supporting her as she settled back against her pillows. "I'm just sorry I made you feel bad about needing it."
"You didn't, you just didn't understand it. I knew that it wasn't something I could truly explain, it was something you had to see for yourself. I've spent a lot of time with the family, and I love them all, but I needed to be amongst people that I vibed on the same wavelength with. I needed to feel like I was making a difference to myself."
John frowned, not quite understanding what she meant.
"It's hard to admit," Selene began, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. "But I've felt pretty useless lately." She held up a hand to stop him when he opened his mouth, about to jump in to defend her. "Not just useless, but helpless. Everyone has had to do everything for me, and I've had to sit there, knowing that the reason I'm hurt is because I was helpless to start with. I've not felt that way since Nathaniel. There was nothing you could have done to help," she added quickly, needing to reassure him. "I had to do something for myself. And this was that something. This was me, making a choice about my body and my treatment, doing something that I wanted to do, when I needed to do it."
John nodded. "I understand that now. I'm just sorry that I didn't realise it sooner. You're you, you've always been you, and you needed to do things your way. We've been doing everything my way since you got home and that was wrong of me. I should have asked you sooner, I should have thought about it without Adam having to be the one to see it."
"Baby," she sighed, turning her head so they were nose to nose. "It wasn't your job to do that. I could have spoken out about it sooner, but honestly I felt stuck. It's not anything you or anyone else has done to make me feel that way, it was me, in my head. If I had told you that I wanted to do this and explained you would have understood. But, when it came down to it, I needed someone to give me that push, to lay it out for me. And that's what family is for."
"But I-"
"No, there is no but. You're you and I'm me. And you don't think the way I do. Adam does. That's why it was him that suggested it. You did nothing wrong, you did everything right. This was something I had to do for me, and I had to do it myself. That's all there is to it. You supported me when you didn't understand it, and that's all I've ever cared about, that's all that has ever mattered."
"So you're not mad at me anymore?"
"I never was, I was angry at the situation. This has been good for me, this has got me back on the path to feeling like myself again. I'm going to be fine. Everything is going to be fine."
"I'm going to do everything in my power to keep you safe. I promise you that. I will find whoever did this and make sure that they can never hurt you or anyone else ever again."
"I know, baby, but today is not that day. Tonight is a night to lie next to me and be the one thing in the world that always makes me feel safe."
"I can do that," he promised.
Her lips were soft and inviting and even though their kiss was brief, it contained a lifetime of promises.