I hit the hand sanitizer pump on my way out.
“Christopher,” Adam calls.
“What?”
“His name is Christopher.”
“Oh. Okay. Thanks.”
Heading toward the drawn curtains of therapy table number four, I mentally go over my knowledge of such severe cases. I’ll have to see if Dr. Sanders, our resident sports medicine doctor, allowed for any other treatment options in the man’s file if the patient doesn’t respond well to TENS.
Drawing back the curtain, I see a pair of sneakered feet hanging off the end of the table. The TENS unit is lined up next to the table, most of the wires still sitting on the cart with their leads.
“Hi Christopher, I’m sorry for the delay. Adam’s a bit under the weather, so I’m going to finish getting you set up.”
“Chris is fine,” a deep timbre calls, muffled by his face-down position. “Whatever you’ve got to do, just as long as I don’t have to lie like this all day.”
Whipping the curtain closed behind me, something familiar about the sound of his voice has me spinning around quickly. I jerk to a halt when the patient comes into full view, or rather, the view of his back from feet up. He’s too big to fit on the table, explaining why his feet are dangling off the end of it. And for that matter, he’s almost too wide. I haven’t seen shoulders that wide since…
I swallow at the close buzz of dark hair at the back of the man’s head and give myself a mental shake. Jesus. It can’t be. And so what if it was? I’m at work and…well, it just can’t be. I’m just being paranoid ever since unpacking that box from Mom last week.
Walking around to the TENS unit, I glance at where Adam placed the first two leads—on either side of the L3 lumbar vertebrae. It’s an easy map going off the long surgical scar that runs from L1 down to L4, where the waist of the man’s jogger pants is folded over. It was a lot of work, I can tell. To top itoff, there’s another incision scar several inches above it on his thoracic spine.
“Adam said you have broken hardware? Is it all in the lumbar?”
“Yeah. They broke years ago. I had the nerves burned off, but they’re growing back. I can usually manage it, but I fell off my porch last week and torqued it.”
I have to bite my cheek from uttering an expletive over the horror that must have been. Swallowing, I place a lead in the next position, absorbing the reverberating sound of his voice. As I do, I can see my hands trembling.
The center has three distinct scents—hand sanitizer, sweat, and rubber from the floor mats. The whiff I catch, however, is a mix of shower clean and a soft natural musk. I’ve dreamt about that smell thousands of times. I smooth my fingertips over the next lead to ensure it sticks, and can’t prevent touching a bit of his skin when I get to the edges. A tingle shoots up my arm. I do a double-take at the TENS unit to make sure it isn’t on by mistake, but the panel is asleep. Try as I might to convince myself of some logical explanation, the thickness in my lungs tells me the truth as I stare at the two lower back dimples I remember tracing countless times.
It’shim. It’s Chris.MyChris.
Raking my gaze up his back, I take in every inch of bared flesh. Arms bent at the elbows, his large biceps frame the back of his head. I swallow when I stare at his hands, loosely closed above his head, a familiar, distinct disfigurement to a few knuckles I know he broke during college. My mouth waters, remembering how they so easily took me apart.
His body shifts, and I hear a soft grunt, jolting me from my stupor. He’s clearly in pain, making me see his casual comment about not wanting to lie here all day in a different light. Trying toget my breathing under control, I move to the panel on the TENS unit and press the power button.
“Um…all right. I-I’m going to start at a low level and work my way up,” I manage to get out, rattling off my usual speech from memory. I can’t even think straight right now, staring at the controls like I’ve never seen them before.
I’ve heard people say that if you ever meet your celebrity idol, it ruins the appeal for you. Similarly, I’ve heard the same is true for running into your youthful crush. I know for a fact that whoever thinks that has obviously never crushed the way I did on Chris Mightener because he has the same effect on me right now that he did fifteen years ago, if not more pronounced. My stomach flips, and I have to will my body to stop trembling.
“You’ll feel a tingling sensation. Let me know when it gets too intense.”
I bite back a delirious laugh.Ifeel a tingling sensation and it’s way too intense.
He grunts in acknowledgement, and I realize he’s likely done these before, having played sports and gone through all the things he has with his back. Flipping the switch to initiate the current, I turn the dial from one to two and then from two to three. He says nothing. He doesn’t even move to indicate he’s feeling the prickle of the electric current, so I inform him as I move the charge higher to each subsequent number.
“All right,” I pause. “That’s six.”
“Okay,” he says, sounding unfazed.
And so it goes for the next few iterations until I get to nine. Ten is the highest you can go. The more damaged and irritated the muscles are, the less likely a patient is to feel the effects of the current. Not many people make it to a nine before crying uncle.
“And here’s ten.” I wait for a reaction, a word, anything. “Can you feel that?”
His response is delayed as though he’s considering. “Mm,” he grunts, stirring too many memories I don’t need to think about right now. “I guess there’s kind of a faint tickling sensation.”
I was starting to worry I’d done something wrong in my distraction, but a glance at the monitor shows the pulses are still being administered. It should come as no surprise that he’s got that much swelling and pain, considering what his back has been through.
