The Man Who Saved Me

One day, she promised herself, she would do it. She would find him, and thank him.  Words would never be enough, but she’d find a way.

Of course, it was frustrating that she really only knew his name and the fact that he was a part of Doctors Without Borders.

He’d left for a mission soon after her surgeries. She didn’t know where he was or what he was doing anymore.

Shonali was startled to see that it was light. Another day had really begun, and it wasn’t gray.

It was bright, sunny and brisk. Just like her life now.

Shonali grinned at the world that she saw right in front of her and wasn’t aware that a couple of people jogging on the street faltered, stunned.

She had a smile that could possibly launch a thousand ships.

Or, more probably, a thousand bikes.

Standing at the window of her apartment over her shop, framed by the morning light, Shonali made quite a picture.

Her hair curled in ringlets that she loved. She’d never considered straightening it. Usually, it was pulled into a bun to keep it out of the way and convenient for helmets.

Shonali would always be grateful for helmets, too. Without one, she would probably have died, on the freshly paved road, beside the bike she had loved almost like a child, four years ago.

Well, at twenty-eight, she was older and wiser.

And much stronger.

And busier, she reminded herself as she turned her back on the view from her window and walked to her kitchen.

Shonali cast a longing look at the bed. She’d gotten to bed late because she’d been trying to track down a part for a bike she was restoring. She’d managed, but it had been about two before she could sleep.

And then she had been up by five, wrenched from sleep by nightmares that she wished she could, somehow, leave behind.

Maybe she needed the kind of closure that would only come from tracking down Dr. Adam Catten and thanking him, maybe with a homemade pie of some sort.

Shonali grinned as she made her coffee.

That would be poor repayment for what he’d done for her. Her pie might end up giving him food poisoning.

Coffee and breakfast were Shonali’s culinary achievements. She loved a good, hearty breakfast, and she needed coffee in the morning to get herself ready to face the day.

Maybe she could make him coffee and breakfast, thought Shonali with a wicked gleam in her eyes.

She shook her head, bemused, after getting half the cup of coffee down her. Apparently, her brain needed caffeine to function.

She’d had a ridiculous crush on her image of the golden doctor who had saved her. It was probably a normal thing. Shonali had never been a damsel in distress, so the one time she’d needed rescuing, she’d probably been very ill-equipped to deal with it.

It was a huge change from taking care of herself, which she had done since she was about twenty and had moved from home.

Not that her family hadn’t been wonderful, but Shonali had needed space, and she hadn’t fit in very well.

Nobody in her family had been big on bikes and racing, and Shonali had always been enamored with both.

Her family was fairly traditional and conventional.

Shonali was not.

So the very first time she’d found a knight in shining armor – or at least, a knight in scrubs of some dull and unflattering color – she’d found herself romanticizing him.

Shonali had to remind herself not to be too tough on herself. After all, she’d needed something to keep her going during those grueling days of recovery, when she’d had to have a couple more follow-up surgeries, and physical therapy had been brutal.

If she’d weaved a few fantasies about her prince charming, who could blame her for that? At least, her savior had actually saved her.

It had taken a year before she had almost full function of her leg back. But Shonali hadn’t wasted that year. She’d spent it taking the first steps towards making one of her biggest dreams come true.

Her grandfather had helped, by giving her a little inheritance. He’d given her his old shop.

Shonali had been shocked. By real estate prices alone, her grandfather could have sold that building and lived his life in luxury.

But he had wanted to give it to Shonali.

Now she knew that he’d been making sure her spirit would not be broken. She had loved bikes from the core of her soul, almost all of her life. Having that love taken away from her might have crushed something deep inside her.

So he had given her a chance to make her dream of having a shop where she could restore old bikes, and even build custom bikes, come true.

Not that she could’ve done it without Carlos, too. She might own the building, but Carlos had even more expertise than she did, and the funding to get the business up and running.

And he’d had two uninjured legs to do the legwork.

They’d been doing well since then. Shonali knew that she had justified her grandfather’s faith in her. So what if she still had to work shifts as a barista, because she insisted on pumping most of the profits back into the business? She had been able to cut down on shifts lately, and the boss knew that she was an asset. She made the best damn cup of coffee he’d ever had, and that their customers had ever had.

He knew that she could soon afford to quit. But working there, meeting people and knowing the regulars, was as much therapy as working on her bikes.

But she still hadn’t managed to get her grandfather on a classic Triumph.

If that part of her life had gone well, another part had gone to hell in the last two years, though. Her unrealistic, ideal images of the glorious Dr. Adam Catten had made her turn down so many men that she’d finally said yes to the wrong one.