by Nella Tyler
“We’re up, bud,” the man said, standing quickly. He looked at me uncertainly. “Should I carry him back or…” I shook my head.
“Let’s let Landon use his crutches for this,” I suggested, holding the door open for them to come back. “We want to get him back to normal as quickly as possible.”
The two came through the door and I led them towards the clinic area, trying to decide how I felt. Landon looked to me like the kind of boy who would run off the second he got the chance—the kind of kid who needed extra supervision during his sessions to make sure he didn’t overdo it. Probably gets that trait from good old Dad, I thought as I stopped at the first station I needed to use for the evaluation. Landon’s dad—the file said his name was Patrick—was actually pretty good-looking, once I got over my irritation with him for being late; as Landon monkeyed around on his crutches impatiently, Patrick watched his son carefully.
“Okay,” I said, setting the chart down and taking up a blood pressure cuff. “This is probably going to mostly be pretty boring for you Landon, but I need to make sure I know where you are in terms of your health right now, and how well you can do things like balance and stand straight and all those other things.”
“He’s a very healthy kid,” Patrick told me. I steeled myself for him to start complaining as I got Landon to sit down in a chair so I could get a good pressure reading.
“Sometimes injuries can throw things all around,” I said, fastening the cuff around Landon’s arm. “Having to change habits, and not being as active, things like that…we just want to have a good baseline for your son’s health before we get started on working with him.” I glanced at Patrick and saw him nodding his approval. Well, that’s a surprise, I thought. I started the general health evaluation, taking down Landon’s blood pressure, pulse, and taking him through the different tests for respiratory capacity and everything else we needed to know. I was glad to see that he wasn’t incredibly fidgety—I had been dreading, at the end of my day, having to keep a five-year-old on task while we went through what was admittedly a boring process.
“You’re doing great, buddy,” Patrick told his son, taking the chair I pointed out to him while we started on the functionality tests.
“This one is going to see how your balance is,” I told Landon; as always I almost completely ignored his father except when I had to explain to him the rationale behind what I was doing, or ask him for help in positioning his son. I took Landon through the different tests: checking his balance, checking his coordination, and his flexibility. He chattered all the time, asking me about anything that popped into his mind; I let him—after all, as long as he was making the movements and focusing enough to not risk hurting himself, I was happy.
“How long did you have to go to school to learn to be a therapist?”
“I had to go for years,” I told Landon.
“It’s very difficult to study for,” Landon’s father informed his son. “They have to go to school and get a special degree, and then they have to work with patients, and take tests.”
“So you must be really smart, Ms. Mackenzie.”
I laughed.
“I like to think so! Do me a favor, Landon and step up onto this platform—just the one leg. I want to see how you move. If you need help or if something hurts, let me know, okay?” Landon nodded.
“Do you have a husband? Or kids?”
I blushed at the question—it was common enough that I thought I would eventually stop blushing at it, but it was too close to my parents’ concern for my love life for comfort.
“Nope,” I said, smiling at Landon and not looking at his father at all. “I love to work with kids, but I haven’t found anyone I want to get married to yet, so no kids for me.”
“Do you want to get married some day?”
I nodded. “I think it’d be nice if I found someone,” I told Landon.
“Do you live with your mom and dad?”
“Nope—I live right here in the city, on my own.” I grinned at Landon, patting his back as he stepped down from the platform. “The other leg now, if you would?” Landon nodded and concentrated in the task at hand, lifting his foot to step up onto the platform.
“Do you get to eat ice cream whenever you want? Dad says I can’t, because I’ll rot my teeth out.”
“Well Dad is right—if you ate ice cream all the time you’d lose all your teeth,” I said, glancing at Patrick in amusement.
“Dad also says I can only watch one scary movie a week,” Landon informed me. “Even though I never get scared!”
“What about that nightmare you had back in June?” Patrick looked at me and grinned slightly—it lightened his face up, made him seem more handsome. I pushed that thought aside.
“That was just because of something that Pete said,” Landon protested.
“Whenever I had nightmares, I used to get into bed with my mom and dad,” I told Landon. “And you know—they were always caused by something I ate. I loved watching scary movies as a kid, too.”
“I get into bed with Dad sometimes,” Landon told me. I knelt down and put the strap of a weight-bearing machine on his ankle. “I don’t have a mom.”
The matter-of-fact way that he said it made my heart lurch in my chest and I looked over to see how Patrick was taking it.
“A lot of people don’t have moms,” I told Landon. “Real quick, Landon, see if you can pull that up with just your leg.”
By the time I’d finished evaluating the little boy, I was exhausted from all the chatter, but pleased. “He has very good general health,” I told Patrick and saw the relief that flooded across his face. “The prognosis is excellent. I think Landon here lucked out with where he broke his leg. It’s going to take some aggressive therapy, but we can get him back up to speed.”
“Just what I need,” Patrick joked, tousling his son’s hair. “But you’re sure he’ll be able to do everything like normal?”
“Possibly even better than before, if we go about this right,” I said, smiling to reassure the man. “If you can get him to do some exercises that I’m going to show you in between sessions—but don’t overdo it—he’ll bounce right back from that break in no time.”
“Whatever we need to do,” Patrick told me. I gave him a few instructions, and then sent the two on their way with the hint that Landon should take a nice, long bath with some Epsom salts in the water before he went to bed. As I watched them leave, I had to admit that even if he’d been late, Patrick was obviously dedicated to his son.
Chapter Four
Patrick
“Come on back, Landon and Patrick,” I smiled at Landon’s therapist, following him through the door and into the therapy area. The first appointment I’d met with her, for Landon’s evaluation, it was almost difficult for me to take her seriously until halfway through the session; she was so gorgeous that I couldn’t quite believe that she was actually a real therapist. I could tell too that she didn’t have a really high impression of me—there was a little look on her face when she let us into the back of the clinic that told me that she was just waiting for me to confirm her bad impression.
Mackenzie reached down and gave Landon’s hair a quick tousle as she led him over to one of the machines. “We’re going to start out with some stretches, okay big guy?” I stood back so that I wouldn’t distract my son, watching him interact with the therapist. She was short—though I hadn’t noticed that at first; her hair was some brown-red color, her skin was as pale as the porcelain plates my wife had gotten for our wedding. She looked too fragile and precious to be able to do the things I’d seen her do with Landon in the first few days of our sessions. Her scrubs made it almost impossible to make out what her shape was like, but I thought privately to myself that it was probably very good indeed, based purely on how strong she was.
I watched my son get into his exercises with the kind of single-minded focus that he had whenever there was anything physical going on. It was all I could do when I got him home at th
e end of the night to keep him from trying to jump around and climb the furniture. “I think we might be able to discontinue the crutches after this week,” Mackenzie said, glancing at me from where she was supervising Landon on some kind of pedaling machine. “He should hold onto them in case he feels like he needs them, but the strength is returning really well.”
“It’s pretty hard to keep him using the crutches anyway,” I told her, sitting down on one of the benches. Around the room, there were kids of all ages working away with other physical therapists, and I silently said a prayer of gratitude for the fact that Landon’s reasons for being in PT were not as serious as some of the cases I’d seen in our first few sessions.
“They slow me down!” Landon finished his exercise and started to snatch his feet free of the pedals—only to stop, with a look on his face that told me that he remembered almost too late that Mackenzie had scolded him for doing just that two days before.
“Well, you’d be really slow if you hurt yourself again, don’t you think?” Mackenzie made a face at Landon, the expression dissolving into a grin. “There are these things called tendons, here in the backs of your knees,” she explained to him, reaching down and brushing her fingers on the area. “They help your knees bend and move. If you try and start running around like normal with your muscles weak, then it puts strain on the tendons and ligaments that hold everything together—and if you hurt those, it hurts a lot. So better to listen to your body, don’t you think?”
“But my body wants me to run!” Landon squirmed, giggling into Mackenzie’s face. She laughed, shaking her head.
“I don’t think it does,” she said, keeping her tone firm even as she grinned. I tried to keep from laughing myself. “Your brain wants you to run because I bet you get bored easily, huh?”
“Yeah,” Landon agreed.
“Do you do psychotherapy too?” Mackenzie glanced at me and shrugged, the smile still curving her lips.
“But we really want to make sure that your leg is up for it before we let you just run like crazy. If you tear something in your knee because your muscles can’t hold you up properly, you might not be able to even walk for a long time.” Mackenzie gave my son a quick, serious look. “I think you’d hate that.”
“And that kind of injury hurts a lot,” I added, giving Landon a look of my own. I remembered Landon’s injury and a shudder worked through me; I’d broken my share of bones as a kid, playing hockey and lacrosse, and I knew how much it hurt. I’d also torn my Achilles tendon—and it was hard for me to say which injury had actually hurt the most.
“But the good news is that I think you can start walking short distances on your own,” Mackenzie told Landon, guiding him from one machine to another. “I’ll still want you to use your crutches when you’re in school, and you should be really careful when you’re playing, but if you’re just going to the bathroom at night, or from the living room to bed, you can do that without the crutches.”
“Okay!”
I smiled to myself and continued watching as Mackenzie worked with my son, keeping him on task and entertained, distracting him from the inevitable pain that came along with getting his muscles back into shape. Even after only a few sessions, I was able to see a difference in the way that Landon moved around. He was starting to feel more comfortable—and he was definitely sleeping sounder.
I’d asked Mackenzie about it after the second or third session; Landon was full of energy right when we got home but within about an hour he would be near to falling asleep on the couch, right over his dinner plate. “You may want to see about putting more protein in his lunch,” she’d suggested. “He’s building muscle, which takes fuel. After the first week he’ll mostly be back to normal, but you’ll be able to speed his recovery up with really, really good nutrition.”
As if she’d read my mind, Mackenzie asked what Landon had had for lunch that day. “I had a tuna sandwich, an apple, carrots, and some pudding,” Landon told her. “Oh! And dad packed me almond butter too. It was the chocolate kind. I had that during recess though.” Mackenzie grinned, including me in her smile, and I shrugged, feeling proud of myself.
“That’s a great lunch! Did you eat all of it? You need lots and lots of food to get back to being strong,” Mackenzie said.
“All of it!” Landon nodded. It had been a minor miracle when Landon had decided that he liked tuna sandwiches—they were easy as anything to make, and I could at least make sure he was getting vegetables a few days a week. I tried to change it up—too much tuna wasn’t good for kids, at least I’d head that from one of the moms in the office.
“Tell her what you had yesterday,” I prompted Landon.
“A hamburger! Dad put a fried egg on it for me.”
“He’s a fiend for eggs,” I explained to Mackenzie. She helped Landon finish the exercise he was working on and gestured for him to take a break.
“Eggs are great,” she said. She looked at Landon and wrinkled her nose. “I had chicken and rice for lunch. Not very exciting at all.”
“Did you make it yourself?”
“I did!” Mackenzie smiled more broadly at Landon than I thought any woman could possibly smile at a child that wasn’t her own, and I wondered for a moment if she smiled like that at all of her patients. “It’s my grandma’s recipe. Very good for you.”
“Dad says that Brussel sprouts are good for me, but they taste so nasty,” Landon said to Mackenzie.
“They are very good for you indeed,” Mackenzie said. She glanced at me. “If you want, I have a recipe for them that tastes really good.”
“I’d love to hear it,” I said, thinking about the struggle to get Landon to eat certain vegetables. I didn’t think it would be any easier if his mother had lived—but it was hard not to wish for someone who could share the burden with me.
“What I do is to cut them in half, roast them in the oven with some salt and pepper and oil, and then toss in some dried cranberries and some pecans at the end. I’ve accidentally eaten a whole pound sprouts that way, they’re so good.”
She went back to working with Landon, and I watched, sitting by myself and trying not to eavesdrop on the other sessions going on in different parts of the room. Landon had really opened up to Mackenzie—normally he tended to be a little shy with new adults until he’d gotten to know them a bit, but he was chatting away, telling Mackenzie about his Christmas list, about his classmate Jessica, about the classroom pet turtle. I tried not to laugh at how excited Landon was as he went through the exercises; as the session started to draw to a close, Mackenzie brought him to a table with heat and cold pads, TENS pads, and more. “I’m going to give you a quick rub-down, okay big man?”
“Is that okay, Dad?” he asked me.
I nodded. “It’ll help you keep from being sore tomorrow, buddy,” I told my son. Mackenzie reached into some kind of jar and scooped up some blue-green gel, and started rubbing along Landon’s leg, stopping just above his knee as she spread the goop around.
In minutes, Landon was sprawled out, a blissed-out look on his face. “Oh man it feels tingly and nice,” he told me, looking at me upside-down from the table.
“It’ll wash off in the bath,” Mackenzie told me. “Actually, if he runs into soreness at night or in the mornings, you could probably use some of this.” She picked up the jar and showed me the label. “But if it’s persistent pain, you should take him to the doctor.”
A few minutes later, Landon was grabbing his crutches and moving around in circles as I stood with the physical therapist. “He’s doing really well,” Mackenzie said, putting the clipboard aside and sitting down at her desk. “I’m really pleased with his progress. He’s going to have to keep going, but I can tell you’ve been working with him in off-hours,” she said, giving me a little smile.
“Even after only a couple of sessions?” Mackenzie nodded.
“He’s retaining the exercises really well—which tells me he’s practicing them away from here. I’ll evaluate him in another c
ouple of sessions, just to measure his progress, but he’s making a very good recovery overall.”
“I’m relieved,” I said, grinning as I saw Landon talking to one of the other kids his age that had finished up. “I’m actually worried sometimes that I’m not doing things right—that I might be undoing all the progress he makes here.”
“Unless you’re pushing him beyond what he can do, you should be fine,” Mackenzie said, smiling at me. I had an idea and for a second I rejected it; but then I thought about it again and decided to go full speed ahead.
“I know this probably isn’t the thing to do, but could I have your number? In case something happens, I’d like to be able to call you and hear if I should take Landon to the hospital or if I’m just being overprotective and worrying too hard.” Mackenzie looked up at me for a moment, her big, bright eyes uncertain, but then she shrugged.
“As long as you keep it professional, I don’t mind,” she said finally. I watched her grab a scrap of paper off of a pad on her desk. She scribbled a number on it quickly and handed it to me. “I’m always happy to answer questions or help people with concerns that they have.” I nodded.
“I really appreciate it,” I told her. I realized that Landon and I had stayed more than ten minutes past the end of our appointment time. “Come on shrimp,” I called to him. “We need to get you home and get some dinner in you.”
“I’ll see you again soon, Landon,” Mackenzie told my son, waving back at him as I led my little boy out of the clinic.
Chapter Five
Mackenzie
I wandered into the kitchen in my apartment as the microwave chirped at me again and again, words flashing on the screen telling me that my food was ready; it was only about eight o’clock, but I was already starting to get sleepy and I told myself that it was for the best that I hadn’t gone to Cynthia’s party after work. “Just look at what I would have missed out on,” I said wryly to myself. I’d managed to get two loads of laundry done and take a shower between leaving work and finally getting hungry enough to heat up some leftovers in the microwave. If I’d gone to the party, I would have ended up crashing at ten or later, with the laundry undone, and I’d have to wake up an hour earlier to get my shower in so that I could get my hair dry before I left for work.