Page 35 of How to Walk Away

But if Ian was aware of my unhappiness, he didn’t seem to care much. He drove us on and on, testing everything: ankles, toes, thighs, hip flexors. He did pressure tests all up and down my legs, poking me with a little pin, and I saw him write down the word “spotty” in his chart over and over.

He was keeping a list of all the muscles that didn’t work. It was far longer than I’d expected, but, to be fair, just the list of muscles in the legs was far longer than I’d expected. Ian’s “not working” list included several leg muscles that had Latin names starting with “biceps,” which seemed needlessly confusing, since “biceps” made them sound like arm muscles, and my arms were fine. Ian totally ignored me and made his list anyway, which, in the end, looked like this:

biceps femoris

biceps semitendinosus

biceps semimembranosus

tibialis—anterior and posterior

peroneus longus

gastrocnemius

soleus

flexor digitorum longus

I wondered if I should ask what some of those muscles were, but as the list grew longer, I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

It was physically exhausting, and it was emotionally grueling, but I really think the worst part of the whole experience was, of all things, thenot talking.

I’m a talker from a long line of talkers. My mom might be talking to you about the curtains and who should be sent to Guantánamo for choosing them, but she’s talking to you. My dad might be placating my mom, but he’s doing it with words. I don’t think I have ever once, in my entirelife, spent that much time one-on-one with another human being and spoken as few words as I did with Ian. Over the entire afternoon, you probably couldn’t make one full sentence out of the words we exchanged.

It bothered me. Viscerally.

But I was too tired, demoralized, shell-shocked, discouraged, and numb to do anything about it. It was Ian’s job to work the conversation, dammit. All the other trainers—and I had plenty of time to take stock—were doing the vast majority of the conversational grunt work, giving their patients the gift of conversational pleasure without the usual work, and leaving the patients free to concentrate on their tasks.

With Ian, I got the opposite of conversational pleasure. I got the cringe of uncomfortable silence. Plus the comparative disappointment of knowing I had the worst trainer in the room.

Silent, surly, and relentless. We didn’t finish our session until all the other perky people were long gone and my entire body felt like Jell-O. I thought for sure Ian would help me back into the chair at the end, but he just slapped the board down and turned his gaze back to the window.

I gave a long sigh as I looked at it.

I didn’t ask for help, because I knew I wouldn’t get it.

I had to readjust my catheter tube, which had come untaped, and then I started scooting my butt sideways across the board.

But I was more exhausted than I realized, because just before I reached the chair, as I shifted my weight onto my lead arm, my elbow gave way and I went pitching forward.

I should have hit the floor, but almost as soon as I realized I was falling, Ian caught me. I would have bet you a hundred dollars that his entire focus had been out the gym window, but he must have been using his peripheral vision, because I was caught by his steady arms and settled in my chair before I even fully got what was happening.

“Thank you,” I said, before I remembered that he was kind of the reason I’d fallen in the first place.

Before he stood back up, he checked my expression, meeting my eyes for the first time. “I’ve tired you out,” he said.

“In more ways than one.” I noticed his eyes were blue. Dark blue—almost navy.

“You worked hard today.”

As mad as I was, it felt weirdly nice to have that acknowledged.And you,I thought,stared out the window.

He studied my face another second, and then he stood up and said, “Time to get you back to your room.” I’d seen the other PTs pushing their clients’ chairs—especially the elderly and the tired—at the ends of their workouts, and I just assumed that Ian would do the same.

Wrong. Of course.

He and his perfect butt just strolled off toward the exit, and I had no choice but to scramble after him in my chair.

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