“Ok, Mr. Skeene, let’s not get a God complex either. I know you fought death and won, but I don’t want my greatest comeback story end up with a tragic ending, OK?” Dr. Medcafe joked and then his smile disappeared and his tone became serious. “Please, keep up with your physical therapy. Let them do their job. Let the nurse take care of you. Listen to your body. When it’s tired, please rest it. I don’t want to admit you back in here, OK?”
“Sure thing, Doc,” Qu reassured him, shaking his hand from his seat in the wheel chair.
“Take good care of him,” Dr. Medcafe instructed Qu’s parents.
“Oh we will, and thank you,” Qu’s mother smile, as she began to push her son out the hospital room.
“As for you little lady,” Dr. Medcafe began, gently taking hold of Tierra arm and ushering her to the nurses’ station. “I just wanted to say that I have never in all my years as a doctor seen anyone demonstrate the amount of strength, faith and love that you did. He’s a lucky man to have you in his life.”
“Well, he’s been the closest thing I’ve had to a brother since we were little. He means the world to me.”
“You mean you’re not his wife?” he asked, even more impressed with her actions.
“Wife?” she laughed. “No, Butterball basically took over looking after me when my father died 18 years ago. We’re just really good friends, family, ya know.”
He shook her hand and looked in the direction of Qu, who was sitting in his wheelchair by the elevator watching their interaction like a hawk. He smiled, knowing what the look in Qu’s eyes meant, and avoided the question he was about to ask Tierra.
“Take good care of him, as if I have to tell you that.”
He watched Qu, his family, and Tierra entered the elevator. Dumbfounded by the fact that Tierra was just his friend and not his wife, he could only hope to be that lucky enough one day to find such a woman to share his life. He smiled, thinking how it was obvious she had no idea Qu was head over heels in love with her.
“I wonder how that’ll turn out?” he said out loud.
“What? That’s the kind of love dreams are made of,” one of the nurses at the station remarked. “I wish my husband loved me like his wife does him.”
“She’s not his wife, their just good friends,” he revealed.
Dr. Carmine Medcafe and the nurse both waved as the doors closed.
The Doctor and the Nurse just stood there for a moment, until his pager went off.
“Ok, back to work,” he said, reaching for the phone.