Operation: Healing Angel

by Margaret Kay

  Cooper exhaled hard. “We don’t have that intel.”

  “We proceed with the plan. Sherman, are you ready to go back and pay the UPC and observer off and try to buy some pills?”

  “Yes. I’m wired up to record it, audio and visual this time.”

  “Good, we’ll be watching and listening in,” Shepherd said.

  “Mother, remain in place and let’s see if you get called for that piss test. I think you are right that after they’ve sold to you, they will set you up to extort money to cover up the findings,” Cooper said.

  After he disconnected the call, he dialed into Ops. Yvette was on with Madison. “Delta Team will be notifying you momentarily that they’re sending Sherman back in wired up. I want to be patched in,” he said.

  “Roger that,” Yvette said. “We got the text from Lambchop and are standing by. We were just going to notify you of it. I’ll have the recording loaded into the system five minutes after the Op is concluded.”

  “Thank you, Yvette,” Shepherd said.

  He and Cooper didn’t have to wait long. The stream began moments later. They watched and listened as Sherman revisited the duo who had shaken him down earlier. He paid them the demanded amount, two weeks’ pay, “a bargain,” he was reminded by the shrill voiced UPC, Petty Officer Tanisha Rogers.

  “Since I’m already paying for it being in my system, you don’t happen to know where I can get a few more pills, do you? Just in case the muscles don’t calm down as I expect them to.”

  “Maybe,” the man he’d identified as Petty Officer James Swanson replied. “The referral will cost you a Benjamin.”

  “A Benjamin? I was thinking a Grant.” He pulled one from his pocket and held it out to them.

  “Where do you think the Birdman has the camera stashed?” Cooper asked. “He wouldn’t be wearing a cover inside, but it sure looks like it’s capturing video from the top of his head.”

  Shepherd chuckled when the camera swept over the room and gave a brief glimpse of Sherman in a mirror. He wore recruit standard issue, black-rimmed glasses, what were referred to as birth-control glasses because they were so nerdy no man would get laid wearing them. “Now there’s a picture for this year’s Christmas party.”

  Cooper laughed as well.

  “A Benjamin,” Swanson repeated. “You better pull a few more bills out if you want that referral.”

  “Fine,” Sherman muttered, producing another fifty-dollar bill. Swanson tried to take the bills from his hand, where the camera’s view was focused. Sherman held tightly. “Do not fuck me over,” he warned, his voice a growl.

  Then the view the camera displayed snapped to the man’s face and Shepherd saw the fear pass over his features.

  “You’re a fucking psychopath,” he said.

  “What do you think Sherman just did?” Cooper asked.

  “I can only imagine,” Shepherd replied. He chuckled. impressed by whatever it was. “But I will ask him when he’s done.”

  “Here, take it and go,” Petty Officer Tanisha Rogers said, handing Sherman a folded-up piece of paper. “And we’ll be seeing you again. Make sure you bring a month’s worth of pay with you the next time. Two weeks was a onetime special. You have a clear result, my friend.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” Sherman said.

  They watched the camera feed and listened to the background noise as he made his way back through the passage. Then he entered a room, closing the door. Sloan and Mother were inside. The view from the camera swiveled and Sherman’s smirking face displayed.

  They watched Sherman place a set of comms in his ear.

  “I haven’t had that much fun in a long time. I think Swanson shit himself.”

  “What the hell did you do?” Shepherd asked.

  Sherman laughed. “I gestured slitting my throat as I warned him not to fuck me over. He got the message, alright.”

  “What’s on the paper?” Shepherd asked when he stopped laughing.

  Sherman unfolded it. He held it up. “Must be code. It’s a triangle with a squiggly line through it beside the name, Lieutenant Kimball, M.D.”

  “I guess the next step is to get an appointment with the good doctor,” Cooper said.

  “They have this running way too smoothly,” Sloan’s voice came through the feed. “This shit has been going on for too long.”

  “Yeah, you have to wonder how they kept it under wraps for so long,” Shepherd remarked.

  After Diana parked in the private parking garage, she sent Sam a text to let him know she was back. He requested that she meet him in the apartment. She was excited to get started with the new therapy plan. She’d gotten a text confirming the delivery of the equipment she arranged for earlier that afternoon.

  She pushed through the door to his apartment and found both Sam and Doc in the living room area. She was disappointed. She wanted to greet him with a hug and a kiss, but didn’t want to advertise to Doc that she was in a relationship with a patient. Plus, she wasn’t sure if he’d told anyone about them being together. Vic had this type of access to his apartment. It wasn’t a stretch that Doc would think her access was identical without it meaning they were together. “Hello,” she said, her gaze sweeping between them.

  “I asked Doc to join us so he will know the new therapy plan,” Shepherd said. He held his hand towards her. When she crossed the room and joined him, taking his hand, she was surprised that he pulled her down and planted a kiss on her lips. “How was your day?” He gave her a warm smile.

  “It was good. Yours?” She felt her cheeks heat. Well, that answered that question. Sam had told Doc. She wondered who else knew they were together.

  “It has been busy. And I am pretty sore. Did you tell me you were cancelling Lexi?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t get the chance to. I was thinking about your new therapy plan on my drive to school this morning and made some decisions, including cancelling her lunchtime visit. I think you will be best served by me doing the massage after your therapy session. I think you will be quite sore after.”

  Doc laughed. “Sounds like she’s planning on putting you through the wringer.”

  Diana laughed as well. “Now that Sam has more feeling and wants to try to stand and walk, I figured we needed to progress this quickly to get him stable on his feet before he falls and hurts himself again.”

  “I promised I wasn’t going to do that again.”

  Diana laughed again. “Sam, we both know you’re going to push it. I’d rather you push it during your sessions than outside of them.” She nodded towards the hallway. “Speaking of which, shall we?”

  As he changed his clothes, she checked the setup of the equipment. She adjusted the new parallel bars so that Sam could stand upright, with the bars at the correct height for him to grab if he felt unstable. She wanted his walking to be as natural as possible.

  When he came back into the room, she explained what she wanted him to do. It was simple. He would stand and walk between them while holding on, no matter how stable he felt. “Walking on the treadmill while in the harness, you will find, is very different from walking on your own. This is the proper way to try to walk.”

  Shepherd laughed. “As opposed to how I tried it Saturday night.”

  Diana smiled and waved her hand dismissively. “You said it, not me.”

  Doc chuckled.

  Shepherd parked himself at one end of the bars. He reached up and grabbed them, even though he was sure he could just stand without holding on. He pulled himself to his feet. “I feel stable. And I can feel the floor under my feet.”

  “Slowly start to walk the length of it but keep your hands on the bars at all times,” Diana said, laying her hand atop his and giving it a gentle squeeze. “And if your legs give out and you cannot hold yourself up with your arms,” she said as she ran her hand up his arm and gave his bicep a squeeze. “Make sure if you fall, you do not arch your back.”

  “I love the faith you have in me,” Shepherd remarked, throwing her
a sarcastic smile.

  “It’s there alright or I wouldn’t have ordered this equipment.”

  Shepherd found it more difficult than he expected to walk the length of the bars. He found it even harder to turn around so he could go back. By the time he made it back to his starting point, he had broken a sweat. He turned and walked the length of it again. He repeated this four times before Diana directed him to take a seat back in his wheelchair. She knew from her experience and training and by watching the effort he made that he had reached his physical limit to safely continue the exercise.

  She handed him a towel, and he patted the sweat from his body. “Okay, that took more effort than I thought it would,” he admitted. “I don’t get it. I walked in the harness for a couple of hours every day.”

  “The harness supported almost all of your weight. You moved your legs independently without the weight pushing down on you and keeping you in place. That is why you fell, twice that I know of, trying to walk on your own.” She suspected he had tried to walk and fallen a few times she didn’t know about. “It’s the same principle of loading weight into a backpack or strapping arm and leg weights on to get a good workout in. The added weight equals increased effort needed to walk or run.”

  Shepherd smiled at her. She was good, calling him out in such a nice way. “Only the two times. And that makes sense. A much different effort level is needed to go on a run with added weight as opposed to without.”

  “We’re going to call five complete laps back and forth on it your limit for now. Tomorrow, you do three sets of the five throughout the day. We’ll do a set in the morning before I head to work and another tomorrow when I return.” She assumed Doc knew she was staying there. “Doc, will you be able to be in with him for a set midday?”

  “Yes. Whatever you need me to do,” Doc promised.

  “That is one of three exercises you’re going to do three times a day,” she said, her eyes locked onto Sam’s. “I’ve cancelled all of your appointments at the clinic. You can do all the work here for the next few weeks. I expect you to put your exercise time on your calendar and not skip any of it. I’ll increase the number of reps of each to keep challenging your body to progress you as quickly as safely possible.”

  Shepherd was not surprised that she was cracking the whip. He expected nothing less from her. There was a clear path to get him out of the wheelchair. She would make sure he stayed on it, not that she had to worry. He was extremely motivated, which was probably another reason she was being such a task master.

  “Okay, exercise number two. Stand up and hold on to the bars.”

  He knew his body was already fatigued, but that didn’t stop him. He stood and waited for her direction.

  “Without swinging your legs, I want you to slowly raise each leg forward, up as high as you can.”

  She again watched to see how much effort he had to give to complete each rep to decide on the number of reps and the height he should lift each leg. His right leg, as she’d seen while she’d been treating him, was much stronger than the left. She set the number of reps at more for his right leg than the left. She repeated the evaluation with him, raising each leg behind him, then each out to the side. She wrote the number of times for each on a white board that she would post beside the equipment.

  Shepherd was again shocked at how fatiguing the effort was. He realized he had a long way to go before he would be back to his prior, full strength, if ever. That was a depressing thought. Even though he had worked out so hard every day, there were muscles that had atrophied terribly. No wonder he had fallen when trying to walk. Having the sensation beneath his feet back wasn’t enough.

  “The last exercise three times a day will be some work on the floor,” she said. She went to an open area and sat. “Come join me.” She patted the floor beside her.

  Once he was on the floor, she ran him through three exercises, crunches, the superman stretch, and the dead bug exercise. He had strong abdominal muscles. Crunches were no problem, but each of the other two presented a physical challenge he hadn’t expected. She showed Doc how to support him through each. It was clear his muscles in his lower back were critically weak. And holding his knees to his chest while lying on his back was nearly impossible.

  “I think we should put the dead bug on the back burner until I am stronger,” Shepherd said.

  “Pushing yourself to do the dead bug is what will make you stronger, Sam. If you have no strength to hold your knees to your chest and then extend a leg out, you have no business trying to walk on your own. And that is our goal, to get you there as soon as your body is ready for it.”

  Shepherd’s respect for her multiplied in that second. She was tough. She would not let him weasel out of anything. She would push him to get him back walking. She was just what he needed. And he couldn’t help but smile when she had referred to it as their joint goal. He couldn’t wait for them to be alone so he could show her how much he appreciated her.

  She picked up the wobble board she had also ordered. “I want you to split your time in your office between standing with the help of the lift and the harness and sitting on the wobble board to build core strength low in your pelvis and in your back.”

  Shepherd couldn’t help the smile that formed on his lips when he envisioned himself sitting on the wobble board in his office. It would be a comical sight, he was sure. “I will,” he committed.

  “Now, I’ll stretch you out. Doc, I’m going to do basically the same as before, stretching all his muscle groups. But instead of doing it to keep range of motion, I’m going to apply a post exercise focus to it. I’ll follow that up with a good, relaxing massage and if he has the time, a soak in the hot tub downstairs. I think a mini stretch after you work with him at midday will be good. I’ll show you the key muscle groups that you should work on. I’ll do a mini stretch after the morning session, and the good, deep one will be in the evening session.”

  After Doc left, Shepherd grabbed her and pulled her onto the table with him and held her tightly. He kissed her deeply.

  When their lips separated, Diana was breathless. “Wow,” she said with a smile.

  “You are amazing. Doctor Diana Palmer. I am the luckiest man alive to have you in my life. I love that you ordered this equipment and have such an aggressive therapy schedule in mind for me.”

  Diana waited a beat, expecting more. “But?”

  “There’s no but. You’re going to push me hard and I appreciate you for that.”

  Diana chuckled. “I have to push you hard or you’re going to do something on your own and hurt yourself again. Sam, we both know that.”

  Shepherd chuckled. “I promise you that I will stick to your program and try nothing on my own.”

  She reached her lips to his. “Thank you.”

  She gifted him with a powerful kiss that he didn’t want to end. Then, much to his disappointment, she pulled herself from the table. “Where are you going?” He asked.

  “We are going back to your session. You need a good massage now. I ordered a large heating pad like we have in our massage rooms. It’s not in yet but lose the clothes and the phone so I can help relax those muscles we just worked so hard.”

  She placed a sheet on the table for him to lie on, and she poured coconut oil into the palm of her hand. Shepherd had to focus on relaxing and not on the sensation of her hands gliding over him. She was right. This was about helping his muscles, not a romantic interlude. That would come later.

  Quebec

  Shepherd’s phone rang, waking them both at zero one hundred hours, Tuesday. “Shepherd.” He felt the bed shift as Diana sat up.

  “Sorry to call so late,” the voice of SecNav came through his phone. “We have a situation in Norfolk.”

  “A different one than my team is already on the ground for?”

  “Yes and no,” SecNav replied. “Manning had a man undercover with a local supplier. He was the source of the info that spawned the Op your team is on. He was found dead a short time
ago after going radio silent for nearly a day.”

  “Cause of death?” Shepherd asked, switching on the low wattage bedside light. His eyes met Diana’s. He thought for a moment about taking the call out of the room, but decided this would be an opportunity for her to see what life with him was like. She had to know and decide if she could live with it.

  “Shot, execution style. And there were other injuries consistent with a beating and possible torture. We have to assume he gave up whatever he knew, and he knew about your team on the ground.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Shepherd demanded. “Why the hell did an agent under deep cover know about my team?”

  “You’ll have to ask Manning that. I just found out about it myself. I wanted to get a hold of you before Manning did. I’m sure he will call you shortly.”