A woman approached them, swooping in on feet that seemed to glide. Dressed in beige scrubs and white tennis shoes, she reminded him of an amped up version of one of his therapists. She looked like she could bench press an Army jeep.
“Caleb Walker?” she boomed. She didn’t shirk from the tough handshake his brother offered her. “I thought that was you driving up.”
“Don’t they call from the guard shack?” Caleb asked,
“Smart man. You’ve got our security figured out.”
She turned to Phoenix and stuck out a hand. “Tara.” He tucked his cane under his left arm to meet her grasp. She sported the eager grin of a therapist checking out fresh meat. He’d seen that look before. She was assessing the level of his injuries, his physical capability, how far she could push him, how motivated he would be.
“Below the knee.” He answered her unspoken question, letting go of her hand and hiking up a pants leg. Not that the two inches of visible plastic and metal could verify the presence of a real knee.
“Oh, yeah? The guys are going to be jealous.” Odd concept.Someone jealous ofme. “Actually, I was just going to ask your name.”
“Sorry, Tara. I’m Phoenix.”
“Phoenix, your brother is persuasive. Not just anyone gets a tour of MAT-C,” her eyes sparkled at his twin as if she found humor in some private joke.
“He is persuasive. Tightlipped, too. Unfortunately, I didn’t know we were coming here. This was a surprise.”
Tara straightened and pointed down the corridor. “Well then, let’s show you.”
She started down the hall, with no doubt they’d follow the command in her voice.
Phoenix looked around, curious. They passed a stocky guy in shorts and forest green T-shirt, speeding along in the opposite direction. Full-length prostheses stood on the empty footrests of his wheelchair. Phoenix realized he’d never met another amputee his age. At home, the rehab center housed mostly older residents. Many were diabetics who’d lost a lower extremity to the disease. Or, in one case, a young child born without tibias, the bones below the knee. He felt a rush of camaraderie that inspired him to try to catch the guy’s eye, but the soldier was already gone.
The narrow dark hallway soon opened up to an enormous gymnasium. They looked into a gigantic matted area filled with tables and parallel bars, like the ones where he and Nadine worked, but amplified to arena size. Everywhere, wounded military worked out with or without prostheses. He’d never seen so many people missing limbs.
“We used to have twice the number of amputees when we had more troops in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Tara said, as she watched him take in the sight of dozens of injured soldiers. “Once our military gear got better at protecting torsos, and medics got better at stabilizing patients, our guys were surviving their injuries. Even with the bad guys getting better at making bombs. IEDs started out as a joke, a soda can that would just pop. Now, they’re blowing up Humvees, but still, more guys are coming home.”
Caleb surveyed the sight of patients and therapists hard at work with pride as if he’d invented the place.
It struck Phoenix how much his brother must care to go to all this trouble. “Howdidyou get us in here?” Phoenix asked his twin with newfound respect for his abilities.
Caleb shrugged. “Your business partner, Dex, helped. He said you guys have some military account. Plus, I signed away our firstborn kids.”
“You’re not having children,” Phoenix reminded him. “And me, either,” he added, upon further reflection of his sorry state.
“You signed a liability form,” Tara explained to Caleb, leading the way onto the main floor. “It just says you won’t sue us if you get hurt.”
Phoenix navigated between clients and their therapists stretching hip flexors, working out with weights and running on one or two prostheses.
“Watch it!” called a man catching a medicine ball, nearly stumbling into Phoenix.
“Sorry,” he said, swerving out of the way with a sidestep that made him stumble. Phoenix’s cane prevented him from falling.
As they traversed the aisle between padded tables, they passed young guy after young guy, one with a metal frame around a bare leg, squatting with a heavy ball, another solid on a real leg and a prosthetic one, shooting hoops. The sight of men and women missing an arm, with bandaged residual limbs, wheelchairs and prostheses took on a new sense of ordinary.
Here he fit right in. He grinned at nothing in particular.
“I have someone I want to introduce you to,” Tara said.
She led the way to a soldier on a mat. The blond-haired guy, fair in complexion, repeatedly sat up to count each repetition for the therapist holding his prosthetic legs. When he noticed the approaching visitors, he stopped and pushed up to a standing position.
“I’m Aaron. Welcome to Walter Reed,” he said, offering his only hand, his left one, to Phoenix, then Caleb.
“Thanks,” Phoenix said, managing the right-hand-to-left-hand greeting.
Another guy nearby, practicing lunges, stopped and introduced himself to Caleb. “Hey, man, those tats are sick,” he said, mopping sweat off a ginger-hued crew cut.
