It must have been something in the way Martin said it. He nodded once, not really sure what to say in response.
“Have you ever worked with vets before?” Arnold asked.
Martin shook his head. “But it’s a lot like working with anyone else so far. I’m enjoying it.”
Arnold gave him a rueful chuckle, and shook a finger in Martin’s direction. “You’re certainly mastering the art of sincerity. It’s okay. We’re a tough bunch, especially when it comes to admitting we’re in pain. You spend your whole tour — or all of them, if you go back — learning not to complain, then you come back and they want you to rate your pain on a scale of one to ten. Like they don’t realize that kind of thing doesn’t have any context anymore. Anyone wig out on you yet?”
“No, sir. What do you mean?” Martin asked.
Arnold tapped his temple. “You know what I mean. I think that’s why so many of the kids that come in here end up quitting. Combat makes you jumpy.”
“Well,” Martin said, “it hasn’t been a problem for the most part. The only patient I’ve had any problems with is — ah, sorry. I shouldn’t talk about it. But I don’t think it has anything to do with trauma. I think he’s just an asshole.”
“Is he a marine?” Arnold asked.
Martin opened his mouth, surprised again. “How did you know?”
“Cause all marines are assholes,” Arnold laughed. “The navy are all stuck up nerds. Air men are all adrenaline junkie kids.”
“And the army?”
Arnold grinned. “Bunch of horned up idiots with big guns.”
After a second Martin laughed with the old man.
When it was spent, Arnold got a distant look, and sighed as he shifted his hips, his face stiffening with obvious pain.
“Lay down,” Martin said, pointing to the hospital bed. “Let me take a look at your back.”
Arnold shrugged and did as he was told. He pulled his shirt up so that Martin could reach his back.
All the tissue around the surgical scars was tough, adhered to the muscles and barely moving under Martin’s fingers. “You feel it here?” Martin asked when he found a particularly bad cluster of knots right against the spine.
“That’s the bastard,” Arnold groaned.
Martin worked the tissue gentle and deep, careful to avoid putting too much pressure where the surgery had been done, even if it was a few months healed. When Arnold gave an appreciative grunt, Martin found himself thinking about Taggart. Scott had told Martin that Taggart couldn’t just be reassigned, and if he did he’d be back on the waiting list to get in. It was a mixed bag.On the one hand, Martin didn’t look forward to seeing him, but on the other he didn’t want Taggart to have to wait for PT, either. The longer it took to get started, the harder it would be to rehab him.
After a few minutes, Arnold spoke up again. “Don’t be too hard on your marine,” he said quietly.
“I’m trying,” Martin said. “We’ve got some history, is all.”
“That’s even worse,” Arnold said. “If you knew him before he was deployed, you might be a reminder of who he was before. A lot of us that come back with issues . . . don’t really like to think about that.”
“What do you mean?” Martin asked. He moved up along Arnold’s spine, and started work on another spot.
“When I first got back,” Arnold said, his voice just slightly strained as Martin massaged the knots in his back. “I was so used to having an enemy, you know, that when I didn’t have one anymore I just sort of made everybody into one. It was the only way to feel like I was still normal. Except, I wasn’t, anymore. Not at first. Wife left me — and she did the right thing, at the time. I got fired from every job I tried to hold down. This was back probably before you were born, I’d guess. Took me almost ten years before I was better. Even then, I look back on the days before I enlisted and sometimes it just makes me angry again. I’m not saying you should let any of us off the hook and act however we want — just, sometimes we don’t know what we’re doing.”
“How did you start to feel better?” Martin asked.
Arnold chuckled. “Well, a lot of therapy, for one thing. Private, though. I got a pretty decent job in construction back about thirty years ago, managing build sites. Then I met someone that understood me, or at least tried to.”
“And married her?” Martin guessed.
“No,” Arnold said, a little sadly. “No he . . . he passed away about twelve years ago now. We met in the eighties, you know?”
Martin was glad Arnold couldn’t see his surprise. “Oh. I wouldn’t have — I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Nobody would have thought I was gay,” Arnold chuckled. “Thank you. But me and Ian had a good life together. I don’t have any regrets. Back when I was in the service, you know, it was a big taboo. Well, it was a big deal out of the service, too. Times change. They don’t even throw you out for being gay anymore. Though, that’s not to say it’s entirely accepted either. Baby steps.”
Scott returned soon enough, with the chart for Arnold to fill out. When Arnold sat up, he twisted his torso back and forth a few times, and gave Martin a thumbs up.
“Well done, kiddo,” he said. He took the chart from Arnold. “This one’s a keeper, for sure.”
“Good,” Scott said. “Cause he’s taking over most of your PT.”
“Got you in the weeds, do they?” Arnold asked as he filled out the form, circling and checking things as he went.
“Until Washington figures out our funding,” Scott sighed. He took the chart from Arnold when it was filled out, looked it over, and put the sheet with the rest of the old veteran’s file. “Alright. We’re gonna do some core strength work. You ready?”
“I believe I am,” Arnold said.
“Great,” Scott said. He waved Martin over. “Alright, rook. Take notes.”
Martin did and Arnold’s PT was clearly an effort for him, but Martin thought it went well. They shook hands after the session, and Scott took Arnold to the nurse’s station to set up his next appointment. Martin watched them go, and checked his schedule for the next appointments.
He didn’t see Taggart’s appointment there, but then Taggart wouldn’t be back for another couple of days to start the first leg of therapy. Maybe Arnold was right, though. Maybe Taggart just didn’t realize what he was doing. Martin tried to imagine how he might have reacted if Keith had come back missing a leg and traumatized by four years of combat.
He sighed. The least Martin could do was keep holding out a hand. After all, if Taggart eventually took it, it would be worth it, right?
10
Taggart sat with his arms crossed, staring at that god-awful wire sculpture mess on Doctor Kate’s shelf. Whose idea of art was that, anyway? He wondered distantly if maybe Kate had made it herself, as a sort of hobby. Maybe she wanted to be an artist but never really made it work, so instead she continued to be a therapist. Not that she wasn’t good at her job — he supposed, anyway. How did you judge whether a therapist was any good? He was still crazy, after all, and it had been over two months. If he was getting gradually less crazy, he couldn’t tell.
“Taggart?” Kate asked. She’d leaned over to catch his eye.
He blinked away the head fog he’d gotten lost in. “Sorry, Doc. Just lost in thought.”
“What were you thinking about?” She asked.
Taggart shrugged. “Nothing.”
She tilted her head a bit, and waited.
“Alright,” he sighed and pointed at the wire sculpture. “I don’t like that thing.”
She looked to where he pointed and frowned. “Which one?”
“The one made of wire.” Taggart smiled. “You asked.”
“You spend a lot of time looking at it for something you don’t like,” Kate said softly. “What does it make you think about?”
He chuckled and shook his head. “That someone got paid for doing a crap job.”
“Does that offend you?” She asked.
&nbs
p; “No,” he said. But maybe that wasn’t quite true? “I don’t know. Maybe. I think you should have to do a good job at whatever you do if you’re gonna get paid for it, you know?”
Kate made a noncommittal sound, before she stood and retrieved the piece from the shelf. She put it on the table between them. “What about it don’t you like?”
Taggart looked at it for a bit, choosing his words. “It’s just a mess. It doesn’t really look like anything. A sculpture is supposed to be like a person, or a bird, or, you know — a thing, right? This is . . .”
“Maybe it's a sculpture of a mess,” Kate offered, smiling.
He laughed. “Yeah, okay. I guess in that case it might be pretty good.”
“Maybe it just depends on your perspective,” Kate said. “And about knowing what it is. Have you ever looked closely at it before?”
Taggart shook his head. “Just seen it on the shelf a few times.”
She turned it a little, so that Taggart could see a small metal plaque affixed to the wooden base on one side.
He leaned in and read the small letters, and grunted. “Mental Anguish? What kind of a name for a sculpture is that? How do you make a sculpture of something like Mental Anguish?”
“I asked myself that same question when I bought this,” Kate said. “And for the record, I got it for a steal.” She winked at him.
“Yeah, okay,” Taggart chuckled.
“You know why I have all of these things?” Kate asked. She waved at the shelf, and nodded toward the small display on the other side of the room.
“You’re a collector,” Taggart guessed.
She smiled and shrugged one shoulder. “Sure. But I have an ulterior motive. People on the whole tend to be drawn to things which remind them of something. Either something good or bad. We see ourselves in the world around us. What we dislike about ourselves we tend to notice in other people or in symbols. What we like about ourselves we tend to use when we find connections with other people and things.”
“So you think this thing reminds me of something I don’t like about myself?” Taggart snorted, and looked the sculpture over again, turning the base to look at it from different angles.
A strange thing happened to it. Or to the way Taggart saw it. Kate was quiet as he turned it just so, and what was a mess of wires from one direction became a face with a neutral expression. It was so precise that he had to look at it from one specific direction. If it was turned even a millimeter to the left or right, the face got lost in the tangle.
“Huh,” he grunted.
“What do you think it means?” Kate asked. “What does it make you think about now that you’ve had a closer look?”
Taggart frowned at her, and turned the statue a little to one side so he didn’t have to look at the expressionless face. “I don’t know. That it’s an optical illusion.”
“It is,” Kate agreed. She pursed her lips. “I’ve been thinking about group therapy. I know you don’t want to do it, yet, but I think that you would benefit from some more regular, thorough form of support or emotional communication.”
He stared at her. “What, like more therapy? Or, more often?”
Kate shook her head. “Not exactly. You said before that you had dogs growing up, yes?”
“Sure,” Taggart said. “Bunker and Romy.”
“I’d like you to consider potentially adopting an emotional support animal,” she said. “Over the past couple of months I’ve seen you beginning to open up a little more, and that’s good progress. An animal, like a dog, might help you reconnect to some of those earlier childhood feelings of empathy and connection.”
“A dog,” Taggart repeated. He rolled his eyes. “You serious? Me? What am I gonna do with a dog, Doc?”
“It’s just something to think about,” Kate said. “There’s a shelter near us that rescues dogs, specifically, from local kill shelters and rehabs them.Gives them basic house training and obedience work. They also take in some of the dogs that fail out of more advanced programs, like seeing eye dogs. Some of my other patients have seen a really marked benefit from adopting a dog from them.”
“What good is a dog gonna do me, though?” Taggart asked. “How’s a dog gonna make me better?”
“There is no magic pill,” Kate said. “And you’ve already voiced an aversion to medication, which I’ve respected. An emotional support animal, of any kind, can be a means of rediscovering empathy, and building good habits of consistent responsibility and attention. It’s a big step, I realize that. I just think that you’re ready for it, and that it would reflect itself in more consistent progress during therapy. I only want you to think about it.”
Taggart simmered quietly. Getting a dog? Hell, he could barely stand to be around his own sister these days, and she’d practically raised him. Any dog would be out of it’s mind if it wanted to be anywhere near him.
“How about this,” Kate said. “Visit the shelter when you get a chance. Just spend some time there, meet some of the dogs, and see what you think. The people at this facility are accustomed to working with all manner of different types of people. If you’ll do that for me, I’ll stop haranguing you about both group therapy and this. Deal?”
He sighed, and nodded. “Fine. Deal. I don’t know when I can go, and I can tell you right now I’m not taking a dog home, but I’ll do it if it’ll make you stop pushing me.”
“You do realize that pushing you is my job, Taggart — don’t you?” Kate raised an eyebrow at him.
“Yeah,” Taggart said, staring at the ugly wire sculpture again, “these days it seems like everyone thinks that’s their job.”
11
Sure enough, on Monday, Martin saw Taggart’s name on his schedule. This time with a note from Scott about the first three exercises they had planned.
Martin groaned when he saw the schedule, but tried to keep the things Arnold had said in mind. Just offer a hand, he told himself each time he looked at the clock and saw Taggart’s appointment getting closer and closer. At least it was the last appointment on his shift — if this one was as bad as the last, he could just run back to the little room he was renting and hide.
The day flew by, almost as if time itself was rushing him purposefully toward the source of his stress, until finally, Martin had no more distractions or patients available. All that was left was the vague hope that Taggart had decided not to show up out of protest.
He went to the PT room on his schedule and found it empty.
Well. That was that, then. Apparently Taggart really didn’t want anything to do with Martin — enough that he was willing to go back on a waiting list rather than work with Martin again. It was a mixed feeling, though. Not entirely relief, although that was some of it.
Had he really done that bad a job? He and Taggart hadn’t even gotten to the real physical therapy yet. Was it his bedside manner? Normally that wasn’t a problem. It wasn’t even like their history had put Taggart in the tough spot.After all, Taggart had bullied Martin, not the other way around.
He closed the door to the room and headed toward the nurse’s station to see if he could leave early, or if Walter wanted help with one of his patients. Walter was a little more hands-off than Scott, so chances were Martin was out early.
“Hi, Maria,” he said to the nurse manning the station. “Looks like Taggart Coulson is a no show for my six o’clock. Any word?”
Maria shook her head. “You’d think these folks would know the importance of keeping a tight schedule, given that — oh, no. He checked in. He just got moved to a different room.” She frowned, and a moment later her eyebrows went up. “That’s right — the table in room PT-9 is broken. The hydraulics on the table aren’t working. You’ve been moved to PT-4. Sorry, I told Henry to print out new schedules for everyone. Must have missed you.”
“No problem,” Martin said stiffly. “I’m new still. So. Alright I better get to it then.”
He’d just started to feel like his nerves had unwound — now he felt th
em tighten back up, worse than before. He was already going to be a couple of minutes late and had no doubts that Taggart was likely to jump on that as a reason to give him hell.
Just remember who’s in charge now, Martin told himself. And all that other stuff too. Trying to remember to be the bigger man, or whatever, was a lot more difficult when he was actually walking into this situation. Easier said than done.
He opened the door to room PT-4 and, sure enough, found Taggart leaning against the table, his arms crossed, his expression brooding.
The way Taggart had his arms crossed made the muscles in his arms and shoulders stand out, and those of his chest bunch together under his tight gray shirt. Martin had to drop his eyes to keep from looking too closely. For god’s sake, man.
“Sorry I’m late,” Martin said quickly, as soon as he entered. “They moved you from the usual room, I thought you’d — well. I thought maybe we were calling it off. Change your mind?”
“Don’t know yet,” Taggart said. “Depends on what we’re gonna do today. Want me to take this off?” He rapped his knuckles on the outer shell of the prosthetic leg.
“Not today,” Martin said. He approached Taggart longwise, like a dog that might snap at him if he seemed too confrontational. “We’ve got a few exercises to start working on. The point of them is to help you maneuver with your prosthesis more easily, so we’ll do them with it on.”
“Oh, so we’re finally doing some real work,” Taggart said. “Great.” He didn’t sound excited, but then again, neither was Martin.
“Pretty basic stuff,” Martin said. He went to the equipment in the corner and extracted a large balance ball from the pile. “Balance, mobility, and strength. Ready to start?”
To Martin’s surprise, Taggart was a great deal easier to work with this time. He didn’t complain about having to do the balancing or mobility exercises. The strength exercise did pose a bit of a challenge, but Taggart made a clear effort not to snap at Martin when it proved to be more difficult than Taggart expected. They were, all in all, not at one another’s throats. Martin considered that a small victory, though he wasn’t sure why or how he’d won it.
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