Page 67 of A Hero Comes Home

Until I can’t anymore.

And then the scales fell off . . .

Sally went into the white hospital-like room at the rehab center with Jake where he shucked down to his briefs and hitched himself up onto a metal table. He was wearing a pair of the black-and-silver-striped boxer briefs she’d bought him for Christmas before his last deployment. They made his butt look even better than usual.

Noticing her perusal, he laughed.

She was about to slap said butt when a tall, slim, extremely physically fit black man wearing rimless glasses walked in, carrying a clipboard. Jake introduced him as Martin Alexander, his massage therapist.

He wasn’t at all what Sally had expected. Though she wouldn’t admit it to Jake, she’d been half expecting some voluptuous blonde in a skintight, thigh-high nurse’s outfit that would show a thong when she bent over.

Jake winked at her. With his one eye! And she knew that he knew what she’d been envisioning. Maybe that was one reason why he’d invited her to come with him.

Turned out that Martin, a fortysomething former marine, had a master’s degree in physical therapy, and he specialized in injured military men. In fact, he was some high uppity-up in Wounded Warriors, which Sally found out about when he told them that the biker division of his organization planned to participate in the Lollypalooza parade.

First, Jake lay on his back, and Martin worked his thigh muscles. “I see changes, Jake. Do you feel any improvement?”

“A little. Going up and down the stairs still brings tears to my eyes—eye—but not as much as the beginning when I almost passed out.”

Sally’s heart went out to her husband because she knew he was making the effort mostly because the kids wanted him upstairs at bedtime. Yeah, having him in her bed this weekend was a bonus, but knowing Jake and his sexual creativity, they could have done the deed anywhere. And had, numerous times in the past.

“Sally, come over here and put this on,” Martin said, handing her a white cotton over-the-neck apron that tied around the waist. “I want to show you what to do with some oil, and I don’t want you to soil your pretty dress.”

She stepped over and caught another of Jake’s winks, which she ignored. He’d told her how he fantasized about her in a baker’s apron and nothing else. She assumed he was imagining the same thing with this apron.

“Put some oil on your hands and use just your fingertips, like I am, on the thigh muscles. Can you feel the knots in there?”

She nodded. It felt like cords of hardened plastic under the skin.

“The goal is to work those muscles that have scar tissue on them until they soften up. Don’t be afraid to knead hard. He may piss and moan, but, with massage and a structured exercise routine, he might eventually recover some of the tone and movement.”

Sally noticed that he said “might.” That had to be disheartening to Jake.

Martin showed her different ways to work the thigh and calf muscles, which were marked with odd one-inch scars everywhere. Dozens of them. She also gave a smaller amount of attention to the good leg, which had the same kind of scars, but way fewer. She wanted to ask Jake what had caused these scars but sensed that he wouldn’t relish her asking in front of someone else, maybe not at all, the way he was so closemouthed these days.

In truth, Jake had always been secretive about his Special Forces work.

When he was home, he didn’t want to talk about where he’d been, what he did, or with whom. It was only by chance that she occasionally learned something about Delta Force missions on TV. Once she’d made the mistake of Googling Delta Force and learned some things she’d rather not know. She’d had trouble sleeping that night.

After working his leg for about a half hour, and, yes, Jake did piss and moan, with good cause, Martin turned him over onto his stomach.

Sally gasped. She’d felt the ridges on Jake’s back when they made love. She’d seen him naked since his return, of course, but she must not have noticed the extent of his injuries. In retrospect, she recalled that when they’d gone to the beach, he’d worn a T-shirt. To avoid the direct rays of the sun, she’d thought. Now, she wasn’t so sure.

“Okay, Sally, the massage here will be pretty much the same as the legs. The scar tissue tightens up, and if Jake isn’t careful, he could end up with a stooped posture to compensate for the pain. Watch what I do. I won’t have you work on his back today because you’re too short with him on this table. At home, it would be better if you straddle him to get maximum pressure. Like on the floor, or a firm mattress.”

Jake, whose face was turned away from her, snorted back a laugh.

If they’d been alone, she would have smacked him on his very nicely rounded butt.

After that, when Jake was about to go into the weight room for exercise and then the whirlpool, Sally said, “I think I’ll go out and hit some of the shops in the strip mall across the street. I rarely get to just browse.”

“Good idea,” Jake said. “I should be done in an hour.”

Sally was troubled when she left the rehab center. She wasn’t sure why. Even so, she strolled through the different stores, buying herself some lingerie in a boutique and kites for the boys in a beach shop. Then, in a drugstore where she’d gone in to get some basic toiletries, she found something special for Jake at the checkout that made her smile. When she got back to the rehab center, Jake was still in the locker room getting dressed, so she sat near the front desk and flipped through a magazine.

One of the attendants, a college-age kid, came up to the girl working the front counter. “Hey, Diane.”

“What’s up, Andy?”