Page 48 of The Promises We Broke
The moment I saw Gage struggling to move from the kitchen table to the living room, I knew exactly how badly he'd set himself back. The careful way he was holding his left shoulder, the obvious swelling in his casted leg, the tightness around his eyes that spoke of pain levels he was trying to hide. It was like watching him regress three weeks in the span of two days.
Booker's hand clasped my shoulder as he moved around me wordlessly to leave. Reece paused to give me a brief hug.
"Call me later," she said as she stepped back. "Delaney wants to escape the house for a girl's night that I think we might all desperately need."
I nodded wordlessly, my brain too busy cataloguing the man in front of me.
My professional assessment was immediate and clinical. Significant inflammation, reduced range of motion, probable tissue stress from overexertion. My personal reaction was afierce surge of protectiveness that I had to swallow down before it showed on my face.
This was exactly why I couldn't be his therapist anymore.
"How bad is it?" I asked, setting my therapy bag down by the couch and pulling out my assessment tools. The routine of preparation helped ground me in professional mode, even as part of my mind was cataloguing every careful movement he made.
"Bad enough that Booker gave me the look."
"What look?"
"The one that says 'I told you so' without actually saying it. It's always followed up by this eye squint that means he's considering kicking my ass." He settled onto the couch with obvious discomfort, extending his casted leg with care that suggested even small movements were painful. "Scale of one to ten? Probably a seven."
I made notes on my tablet, fingers moving automatically through familiar documentation while my brain processed the implications. "And two days ago?"
"Two."
The jump from a two to a seven in forty-eight hours was significant. This was the kind of setback that could add weeks to a recovery timeline. I should have felt clinical concern for a patient who'd sabotaged his own progress. Instead, I felt the overwhelming urge to ask if he'd taken anything for the pain, if he'd been icing the swelling, if he needed me to call Xander for stronger medication. They were professional questions, but they very much had a personal motivation behind them.
Professional boundaries, I reminded myself. For what might be the last time.
"I'm going to do a full assessment," I said, pulling on gloves with hands that were steadier than I felt. "Range of motion,swelling evaluation, pain levels at different pressure points. It's going to be uncomfortable."
"I figured."
I started with his shoulder, fingers finding the familiar landmarks of muscle and bone, feeling for heat, swelling, resistance. His skin was warm under my touch. Warmer than it should be, indicating inflammation. I could feel the tension in muscles that had been relaxed and healing just days ago.
"Tell me when the pain increases," I murmured, guiding his arm through a series of movements that would have been routine a week ago and were now clearly difficult. My hands moved with practiced efficiency, but I was hyperaware of every point of contact, every sharp intake of breath that indicated discomfort.
"There," he said when I reached about sixty percent of his previous range of motion. His voice was controlled, but I could see the strain around his eyes. "And there."
I made notes, moved to the next assessment, tried not to notice the way he was watching my face as I worked. Professional touch, I reminded myself. Clinical evaluation. Nothing more.
But when my fingers found a particularly tender spot and he sucked in a sharp breath, I had to fight the impulse to soothe the hurt with gentleness that had nothing to do with physical therapy. The urge to apologize for causing pain, to comfort him, to let my touch linger in ways that were purely personal rather than clinical.
"The leg is going to be more complicated," I said, moving to examine the swelling around his cast. The inflammation was visible even through the plaster, the skin above and below tight and discolored. "I can see the inflammation from here. When did you first notice it?"
"Yesterday morning. It was manageable then."
"And now?"
"Now I feel like an idiot who's undone weeks of work because he couldn't handle his feelings like an adult."
The self-recrimination in his voice made something clench in my chest. This was the part I couldn't handle anymore. The way his pain, both physical and emotional, felt like my pain. The way I wanted to tell him that healing wasn't linear, that setbacks were normal, that caring enough to fall apart sometimes was better than feeling nothing at all. Because he'd needed it. He so desperately needed to process some of that guilt and grief he'd been bottling up all these years.
What he'd done at the house, finally letting himself feel everything he'd been holding back for eleven years, was probably more important for his overall healing than maintaining perfect physical therapy progress.
I forced myself to focus on the clinical assessment, documenting the extent of swelling, testing sensation and circulation, checking for any signs of complications beyond simple inflammation. But every measurement, every gentle probe, every careful evaluation was complicated by the way I wanted to take care of him rather than just treat him.
"Circulation is good," I said, more to fill the silence than because he'd asked. "No signs of compartment syndrome or nerve impingement. Just significant fluid retention and tissue irritation from overuse."
"How long will it take to get back to where I was?"
