Rachel's Accident (8 page)

“Mhmm,” was my only answer. I took it as a yes since I had no other option whatsoever. I couldn’t ask Jess to bring me some clothes. She didn’t have the time. And I couldn’t go home and get some either since I couldn’t leave Ethan alone for too long. And it was a long drive to my apartment. That left me with his clothes and what I could get in a five mile radius around his house.

I quickly packed my wallet and keys and drove over to the 24 hour supermarket. I could leave him for an hour but not longer than that. I bought groceries for the next few days and spied women’s panties and snatched them up. Then I quickly hurried back to him and went to bed as well.

The days went by in much the same way. I helped him shower and brush his teeth in the morning, cooked three meals for him, which I then fed him, worked with him on his projects, changed his bandages twice a day and helped him get ready for bed at night.

We had developed a nice routine and he was getting better every day. The burns on his hands were gradually healing and he didn’t need as much pain meds anymore, which meant he was more lucid and less acting like a child.

I could leave him alone when he was sleeping off his meds in the afternoon. During that time I would put our clothes in the washing machine or clean a little bit. I couldn’t do as much anymore. With the lowered dose of his meds he didn’t sleep as long anymore either.

In our third week together he was already walking around on his own. I still needed to help him shower and change, which was getting harder and harder for me. When he was still acting like a child I could concentrate on something he was telling me in his childish manner. But now he was more lucid than ever and talking in his deep masculine voice or not talking at all, which made
me even more conscious of him.

Even in his weakened state he exuded sex
appeal. I could appreciate it all, but I couldn’t act on my attraction to him. Not only because he was now my patient, but also because I was much too exhausted every day to do much more than the bare necessities.

In the evenings after I put him to bed I went out for groceries and put the finished laundry away. Then I fell into bed after tiredly struggling out of my clothes, or more like his clothes.

In the mornings my alarm woke me up early, so I could take a quick shower and get dressed before he woke up. I did all that while still half asleep, walking around and acting like a zombie. After my daily shower I was quite alert, though. The last few seconds before I got out I turned the water on cold to wake me up. It was grueling torture.

“You look tired,” Ethan commented at breakfast one day.

He was right. I had dark purple circles under my eyes, but I couldn’t let that get me down. I needed to be there for him. It had been my fault he was in this situation in the first place, so it was my responsibility to make sure he got better.

“I’m fine. Don’t worry,” I tried to assure him.

He frowned at me. “You should lie down for a while.”

“I can’t lie down. I need to help you.”

“I can manage for a little while without you,” he assured me emphatically.

I still bulked at leaving him alone. “Are you sure?
” I would stay awake as long as it took to take care of him.

“
It’s
fine, go,” he encouraged me, giving me one of his heart-stopping smiles.

I reluctantly got up and looked at him closely.

“Go,” he said emphatically.

I sighed and made my way to the nearest couch to lie down for a short nap.

When I woke up I was disoriented. Then I shot off the couch as it came back to me. It was now dark out, which meant I had slept for more than eight hours. I had only meant to doze for half an hour or so not sleep the whole day away. Oh god, Ethan.

I rushed up the stairs in search for him. “Ethan,” I called, afraid that something might have happened while I was out.

“In here,” I heard from the direction of his office.

I hurried over and burst through the door, expecting the worst. But what I found was a lot different than my imagination had pictured this scenario. Ethan sat in his office chair at his desk and was placidly typing away at his computer.

When I stormed in he looked over his shoulder and smiled at the sight of me.

“Did you sleep well?”
He
enquired. “You look a lot better.”

I could do nothing more than gape at him. I needed to shake myself out of this shock. He was okay. That was the most important right now.

I relaxed my stance and cleared my throat. “Are you okay to type with your hands? Doesn’t it hurt?”

I walked over to him and inspected his hands closely. He had taken off the bandages to be able to type better. They looked good, almost all healed over. But the burn scars where not pretty. The flesh was still a little pink, but all in all nicely healed.

He closed his hands around mine and smiled up at me. “They don’t hurt anymore,” he assured me.
“I didn’t even have to take any of the pain meds anymore. And when I warmed some leftovers in the microwave everything was okay.”

I breathed out a sigh of
relief
that was soon followed by a pang of disappointment. This meant that he didn’t need me anymore.

“Okay then.” I slipped my hands out from under his and straightened to my full height. “Since you’re all better I guess
I’ll
leave you alone again to work. Sorry for the interruption.
I’ll
go home now.
I’ll
see you Monday.
”

Before he could answer I walked out and closed the door behind me. It was late. I needed to pack my things and go home.
And most of all I needed to get rid of this disappointment, making my stomach tie into knots.

I trudged over to my room. Well it wasn’t really mine, now was it? Reluctantly I packed my new underwear into my purse and made the bed I had slept in. Then I went over to the walk in closet and
gathered the shirts and cargo shorts I had borrowed from him. I walked into his room and put them away in his own closet. Come tomorrow I would wear my own clothes again.

I finished up pretty quickly and then walked out and to the next bus station. The ride home
felt like one of the longest of my life, it seemed to stretch into eternity.

When I lay in my own bed that night I stared up at the ceiling, thinking about him. I missed him and the house, even though I had only been away from him for a few hours now. I couldn’t sleep due to my way too long nap in the afternoon, so I tossed and turned until in the wee hours of the morning I finally fell into blissful unconsciousness.

I woke up early the next day, still tuned into my routine when I was taking care of Ethan. I suspected it would take a while for me to get back to the one I had had before his unfortunate incident.

Today was Sunday, my and Jess’ free day, and I needed a distraction, so I woke up my roomy and dragged her along to a little shopping trip to the mall. She came along with protest and still half asleep, but that was both nothing a cup of her favorite coffee wouldn’t help.

We had fun and talked about all the things that I had missed in her life and she had missed in mine. During my stay at Ethan’s house we didn’t have the chance to talk very often since she was busy with work and med school and I was busy with Ethan.

I grew quiet after I had told her about
my time with Ethan.

“You already miss it, don’t you?”
She
asked, surprising me. You could easily forget how observant she was.

I just shrugged not wanting to admit to it. It had only b
een a day since I was
back
home, but it didn’t really feel like home.
I could deal with my missing his company. Tomorrow after school I would be over to his house again for my usual cleaning routine. The house must have gotten real dirty while I had neglected it. That was something to distract me, at least a little bit.

I didn’t really want to talk about it anymore and Jess respected that, so she distracted me with more talk about her latest prospect of a boyfriend and general comment on the hot guys that passed by us in the mall. We ate lunch in a small restaurant and shopped some more.

When we got back home it was evening and we were both exhausted. We made dinner together
and ate in silence. Soon we both retired to our own rooms.

The next day I went to school for the first time in a month again. I had missed very much, but everything the professor was talking about I already knew from my work sessions with Ethan. That left me nothing to distract myself from thinking about him. He had explained the things I hadn’t quite understood with far more patience and finesse than the professor could ever muster up.

But then again I wasn’t the only student sitting through his lectures. The professor had to teach hundreds of students in as little time as possible. He couldn’t respond to every single student individually.

Before I knew it the lectures for today were over and I was on my way to Ethan’s house.
I walked up the long driveway and opened the front doors with my keys. Without thinking I was up the stairs and was about to walk into his office before I came to my senses. I couldn’t do that anymore. I wasn’t his nurse anymore, just his housekeeper. And housekeepers didn’t walk in there without knocking.

No, that wasn’t quite right. It was a taboo zone for everyone. Now that he was all better again it was a no go for her to be in there at any time when he wasn’t hovering over her when she was cleaning.

With a heavy sigh I went back downstairs and got out my cleaning equipment. Since I had neglected cleaning all the rooms I started at the very beginning again. But the cleaning wasn’t holding as much appeal to me as it had before. Of course, I still loved to see everything sparkling and shine again, but I missed working on projects with Ethan. It had been so much fun and I missed it greatly. But I knew that was over and I had to concentrate on my own work now.

I cleaned until it was time to start
dinner. Then I quickly stashed everything away, more than eager to cook something for him. I immersed myself in cutting and pealing and mixing all the needed ingredients together. The cooking took my mind off things for at least a little while.

At seven on the dot I heard the door to his office open and close again, then the footsteps down the staircase. As he neared the kitchen his pace picked up until he reached the door. There he stood watching me.

“You’re here,” he said.

“I am. I work here
,
remember
?
”

I was completely astonished when he walked over and hugged me tightly. “I missed you,” he breathed in my hair.

“I was only gone for a day,” I tried to tell him with a slight laugh. I couldn’t really find much humor in his actions. I had missed him, too, like crazy.

“It was too long,” he grumbled.

Why was he acting like this? This wasn’t his normal behavior. Yes, he had acted clingy when he was under the influence of his pain meds. But he hadn’t acted this way before. Wait, had he taken pain meds again?

I pulled out of his embrace and narrowed my eyes at him. “Did you take something again?” I asked him suspiciously.

“No.” He shook his head
. “Why?”
He
asked, confusion creasing his brow.

“Well, you only used to act like this when you were on your meds. Before
,
you kept your distance.”

“You’re right. It’s not appropriate for me as your employer to act like this. I’m sorry.” He took a step back and looked to the ground awkwardly.

“Well, no matter. Let’s eat, okay?” I tried to divert his attention from our mutual awkwardness.

“I think
I’ll
eat in my office today.”

He wouldn’t look at me anymore as I prepared a plate of food for him, and then he was gone. I felt completely bereft of his company. Why had I said that? It had felt so good to be in his arms.

A lump formed in my throat and I couldn’t eat anything at all. I
put my clean dishes back in the cabinets and got back to cleaning the beyond dirty rooms. It was only an occupation for my hands, though. My mind was heavy with guilt and doubts.

But I knew as well as him that it would be a mistake to let anything happen between us. We were still employer and employee. This just couldn’t work. He was the kind of person, who would soon tire of someone like me and cast me away. And I just wouldn’t be able to live through that and then continue working for him.

I continued my work for a while and then went home. I couldn’t stay there any longer with him ignoring me. It physically hurt to have him so near, but not being able to see or touch him. Somehow over the course of the last two months while I worked for him and then treated him back to health I had fallen in love with him.

I didn’t know
what to do anymore. I wrote him a note and laid it on the kitchen table. The note read two simple, unmistakable words.

I quit.

I left the key to the front doors on the note and with that I gathered my things and left.
First thing tomorrow morning I would grovel and beg for my two old jobs back. I wasn’t beneath begging for what I needed to survive.

I must have looked horrible when I got home because Jess immediately rushed over to me and asked me what was wrong. I spilled out my heart to her while the lump in my throat grew and tears started spilling over. When I was finished I was sobbing into her shoulder.