Page 8 of Lines We Cross
She stared at me straight faced for a few beats and then went back to lifting my leg out of the brace. Guess she didn’t like winks and total compliance.
“Have you been in the brace twenty-four seven since the surgery?” she asked, all matter of fact.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Icing twice a day?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Minimal walking?”
“Yes, to everything. I’ve followed doctor’s orders to a T, I promise.”
She made a non-committal noise and then got off the table.
“Flip over.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I’m sorry?”
“Turn over. On your stomach.” Her cheeks were a bit pink, but that could have been due to the aforementioned heating problem.
I complied, embarrassed that even turning over was a major ordeal with a leg that responded like dead weight. When I was settled with my face in the mat, she climbed back on the platform and grabbed my ankle above the tennis shoe.
“This might hurt.”
With nary a second to let that thought settle in, she lifted my foot, bending my leg at the knee for the first time in over two weeks. I gritted my teeth as the first wave of pain rolled through my leg and up into my stomach. She cranked a bit more and I grit my teeth so I wouldn’t curse her out or beg her for mercy.
“Might. Hurt?” I managed to spit out. I was sweating like a sinner in church. Though those might have been tears and not drops of sweat landing on the mat. I wasn’t sure at that point.
“We need to get some flexibility going and then we’ll work on strength. Lateral movement will be last as that’s the most delicate part of what we’ll be doing. Hold still and I’ll measure your starting flexibility.”
I thought I was holding still, but I tried harder. Mostly I just swallowed hard and hoped I didn’t puke. She put some plastic measuring thing up to my knee and then wrote some things on a clipboard that magically appeared. When she put my foot back down, letting the leg go straight, I thought I might cry some more, this time out of pure joy.
“Ten more sets of bending and then we’ll move to some quad strength exercises,” Rae informed me, sending the joy right out the front door.
It was many excruciating minutes later that I came back from my happy place to find ice on my knee. I may have blacked out there towards the end. Sweat left rivulets down the sides of my hot face and by that point I didn’t even care. I just hoped to make it out of there alive. Who needed two functioning legs anyway? I could live with only one. Anything to get out of another torture session.
Rae was beautiful, I’d give her that. The kind of beauty that hurt your teeth just looking at her. But she was mean.
And surprisingly strong for a woman.
“You doing okay, Max?” she asked. Like she cared.
“You’re the devil, Rae,” I grumbled back.
She barked out a laugh and part of me perked up at the knowledge I could make her laugh. I guess I wasn’t dead after all.
“Don’t be such a baby. Aren’t you a little old to be whining?”
I whipped my head up and peered up at her, not even a shine on her upper lip after an hour of contorting my leg while I helped very little. She was sparring with me, throwing my own words back in my face.
She was the exact kind of woman I didn’t need right now. I needed someone to kiss my forehead and grab me a drink. Maybe put a pillow under my knee and be sweet while I was in pain. Now that I thought about it, I always went for the sweet ones. The women who babied me and made me feel like an important hero even though all I did for a living was throw a ball around.
I frowned.
“When the timer goes off, take the ice off, put the brace back on, and I’ll see you in two days for round two, champ.” Rae smirked and walked off to help an elderly man who’d entered the clinic.
She wasn’t sweet at all.
