* * *
Razor
“I fucking hate hospitals,” I grumbled as Katie wheeled me into the office, parking me in the ‘handicapped’ area and sitting in an open chair next to me.
“Everybody hates hospitals. It’s universal. Besides, this isn’t a hospital, it’s a medical office,” Katie replied as she checked me in via the app on my phone.
“Same fuckin’ difference,” I snapped.
“I thought you were under strict orders to be nice today?” she reminded me as she dropped my phone into her purse.
“Nice to the physical therapist and the other medical professionals, not you.”
“I’m a registered physician assistant,” Katie protested.
“Yeah, but you’re notmyphysician assistant.”
She pivoted to face me with a huff. “I can still wheel you out into traffic, you know?”
“You took an oath to ‘do no harm,’ remember?”
Leaning in a little closer to me, she bit out, “My grandfather was a practicing doctor for forty-two years and he used to say his version of the Hippocratic oath was, ‘Do no harm but take no shit.’”
“Your grandfather was a proctologist?”
Katie let out a laugh that was way too loud for a medical office waiting room, garnering side-eyed looks from the room’s fellow waitees.
“If you don’t start behaving, I’m gonna punch you in your bad shoulder,” Katie hiss-pered, grabbing a magazine and flipping through the pages.
“That would probably feel better than whatever Helga the gigantic, mustachioed physical therapist is gonna do to me.”
“Helga?”
“If I don’t get a Helga, it’ll be Chet and his thirteen-step system to achieving a life of better overall wellness. Which includes a diet of raw cactus and participating in mixed martial arts cage fights three times a day.”
Katie sighed. “Your lifecoulduse some serious balancing.”
“The only thing I need to balance on is a fucking bike. Not being able to ride is driving me up a wall.”
“Shhhh. Remember, you’re not Razor here. You’re—”
“Giovanni,” a female voice called out from behind as if on cue.
Katie stood and dropped the magazine back on the table in front of us. “That’s us,” she said, before turning me around to see the woman attached to the voice.
She definitely wasn’t a Chet, and she was a good goddamn away from a Helga. In fact, she was straight up beautiful. Five-foot-five (ish) and fit as a fuckin’ fiddle. Her chocolate brown hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, and her ice-blue eyes peered through thick, horn-rimmed glasses. She reminded me of the ‘hot nerd girl,’ in all those teen movies. The one you’re supposed to believe is plain looking just because she’s wearing glasses, but she’s clearly a total smoke show.
“Right this way,” she said with a smile.
Katie wheeled me through a set of double doors and down a long hallway, giving me ample time to study my physical therapist’s ass. Holy hell, this woman was put together.
“We’re going to hang a left here,” the hot therapist said, pointing to a plaque which read “Physiotherapy,” before leading us to a large, open area with a padded floor. The area was filled with an array of machines, contraptions, and devices, most of which were painted with bright primary colors. No doubt done so to help disguise these implements of torture.
We passed by all of these and into a corner where she squirted sanitizer on her hand and sat on a stool facing me. “Right, Giovanni, my name’s Waverly and I’ll be taking a look at your shoulder today, is that right?”
“Um, you can call me Gio. Um, people... I mean... everyone calls me Gio.”
“Well, it’s very nice to meet you, Gio. I’m sorry it had to be during these circumstances,” Waverly said.
