Page 37 of Revive Me

I must be wearing a dumbstruck expression because she notices. “Can you feel that?” she asks, misinterpreting my surprise.

It’s not that thereissensation that’s stunned me. It’shertouch.

She feels…warm.

Swallowing roughly, I nod. She puts her other hand on my calf, and I watch as she starts to massage the muscle.

I think I hold my breath the entire time. She drives her thumb into the meat of the muscle, kneading and pulling. Slowly working her way along my leg, it isn’t until she reaches my ankle that the sensation changes.

Having an incomplete spinal cord injury means I lost some sensations but not all. The neural pathways that still connect to the brain are the areas where I can still feel—the other ones, it’s either numbness and tingling or nothing at all.

“Have you ever done anything with sensory re-education?” Lily asks, her massage becoming more of a brush of her hand instead of a knead of the muscle as she glances up at me. “I lost you around the ankle, didn’t I?”

Swallowing roughly, I nod. “I didsomesensory stuff. But I was never…” I trail off.I was never consistent with it.

Lily hesitates for a moment before saying lightly, “We can add a few minutes of it onto our sessions, if you want.”

My eyes drop down to her hand. I can barely feel her touch where she has it, and I kind of hate it. Iwantto feel it.

I want to feelher.

But I try to play off my mounting desperation anyway. My voice sounds rough as I say, “You don’t have to do that. I know you’re at the end of your shift by the time I come in.”

She looks up from where she had her eyes trained on my foot, and locks onto my face instead. I can feel her studying me: my words, my intention behind them—my general fear around therapy. And I sense she can see through all of it.

Pulling in a small breath, she says quietly, “Touching you isn’t exactly exhausting.”

My eyes widen. There’s no way to misinterpret her comment. It’s the closest she’s come to the professional boundary between us, and I’m at a loss for words as to how to respond to it.

Her gaze still locked with mine, she sees my speechlessness and seems to make the decision to just push right past the moment. Looking back down at my leg, she says, “You reallyshoulddo some sensory re-education. With me or someone else. Neuroplasticity is the most heightened in the first year, but you can still do a lot with it right now.”

The part thatI’mgoing to push past is the idea of doing this with anyone else. “You’re right, I should be adding that into my therapy.” Clearing my throat with a cough, I add, “If you wouldn’t mind taking the extra few minutes, I’d appreciate the help.”

“Of course. How about this…” She looks around, then crosses the room to grab a towel. “I’ll go over your legs with a towel first, then I’ll follow with a massage. We’ll try a different texture every session.”

I nod, feeling weirdly nervous. “Okay.”

The towel’s texture is an odd one. Despite using one every day when I shower, the sensation of Lily dragging it over my skin, sometimes lightly and sometimes with a little more pressure, feels new. Especially when she reaches an area where I lost nerve sensation, the shift from feeling the rough texture to feeling only pressure is bizarre.

Lily takes her time moving the towel over my feet, my calves, and over the lower part of my thighs. After a few minutes, she sets the towel aside and says, “I’m going to wash my hands with cold water before I massage you. The temperature shock might help with things.”

Once again, I nod automatically, trying to ignore the bubble of nerves in my stomach.Why the fuck am I so nervous?

When she lays her hand on the top of my foot, I suck in a startled breath.

“Shit, that’s cold,” I say through gritted teeth.

Chuckling, she moves to the other foot. Same jolt of surprise. When she moves to my ankle, her hands feel slightly warmer, but still cold.

I frown when I realize what just happened.

“You feel that, don’t you?” Lily asks with a smug grin.

I don’t respond, too stunned by the sensation of temperature on a part of my body that’s been mostly useless for the past two years.

Slowly, Lily slides her hands around to my heel. And then over my ankles, up my calves, and to my knees, tracing her hands over my skin and reacquainting my body with her touch. Before long, I’m lost in a haze of awe and sensation.

Her hands have warmed as she’s moved up my leg, but it isn’t until they register aswarmon my quad that something occurs to me that makes me tense up.

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