You

by Nella Tyler

  “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 couple 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.

  The truth was that while part of me had wanted to go to the party, I had ended the day tired, and I knew I wouldn’t be a very good addition to the festivities. I love the holidays—but being around a bunch of happy couples was not my idea of a great way to celebrate, and I knew that I’d be one of maybe five people at the party who didn’t already have someone. With odds like that, I’d either end up being chased underneath a fake mistletoe branch by a desperate guy for a “joke,” or I’d be in the corner most of the night, talking to whoever passed by but mostly just looking a little pathetic. I’d told Cynthia that I had a bunch of stuff to catch up on at the apartment, but mostly I was catching up on one of my favorite sitcoms.
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  I took my food out of the microwave and stirred it, checking the bottom of the Tupperware to make sure it had heated through. I decided that just because it was a night in, it didn’t mean that I couldn’t celebrate a little, and opened the fridge to get the half-empty bottle of wine out of the door. I doubted that the vintners that had bottled it expected for someone to pair it with a tuna casserole, but I figured that a white wine at least went with fish.

  Glass of wine and Tupperware in my hands, I went back into the living room of my apartment and started the stream of my show up once more. There was a third and final load in the washer—delicates, including my underwear and a few dresses that I thought I might eventually pick out to wear for drinks with the girls at the office another time—and a stack of files that needed to be updated. I had to be careful about what parts of the files I updated from home; I couldn’t risk anyone seeing them, but there weren’t always enough hours in the day to get everything written down, and the office after hours was a creepy place. I didn’t bring any identifiable information home with me—just the narrative parts of the file where I could transcribe my notes about how a patient did at a particular task, how they were improving...things like that. I’d put them back the next morning and the woman responsible for digitizing them would get to them whenever they came up on her list.

  I finished my dinner quickly, trying to get as involved as possible in my show; it didn’t seem to have the same allure as usual, but I kept hoping it would click, that I’d start laughing at one of the character’s antics and everything would be right with the world. I had started to work on my files, listening to the show more than watching it, and I heard by phone across the room, buzzing and ringing where it was plugged into the wall. “Huh.” I put the file I was writing on aside and stood up, able to feel the lingering fatigue in my legs. “Maybe I would have been better off hitting the gym instead of coming straight home,” I said, thinking out loud as I walked across the room to where my phone lay on a side table.

  The number flashing on the screen was totally unfamiliar, and for a second I thought about just letting it roll over to voicemail. It could be someone from the clinic, or someone calling me from a friend’s phone because of an emergency. I took a quick breath and unplugged my phone from the charging cable, tapping the “accept” icon and bringing it to my ear all at once.

  “Hello?”

  “Mackenzie?” The voice was tantalizingly familiar but not enough for me to immediately place it.

  “Speaking,” I said, taking the safe assumption that it had to be someone I didn’t know that well.

  “It’s Patrick—Patrick Willis, Landon’s dad.” I smiled, walking back over to my couch and sitting down.

  “Is something wrong? How’s Landon doing?” It had been a day off for Landon’s PT, so I hadn’t seen him earlier in the day.

  “He wants to go ice skating this weekend,” Patrick said, sounding both amused and concerned. “I told him I had to check with you to make sure it was okay.”

  “As long as he doesn’t overdo it, he should be all right,” I said, thinking about the question. “Stay close to him, if you’re going with him, and if he looks wobbly, get him off the ice for a few minutes. His muscles are still weak.”

  “I remembered what you said about the stabilizer muscles,” Patrick said. “I just didn’t know if they’d stand up to a long day of skating.”

  “Probably not a whole day,” I said. “He’ll tire out pretty fast on the ice, but it would actually be a good thing to do with him—functional therapy, they call it. He’ll work the muscles out in a way that we just can’t really duplicate in therapy.”

  “Is that good?” I nodded even though I knew Patrick couldn’t see me.

  “It is. Our goal with the PT is to get him up to natural functioning, so little things that he can do to further that are great.” I licked my lips and picked up my half-finished wine, taking a quick sip. My heart was beating faster in my chest. Down girl! He’s a patient’s parent—off-limits. “I would say if he wants to do something and feels up to it, obviously keep an eye on him, but he should at least try. Other than any kind of contact sports, of course.”

  “Of course,” Patrick agreed. “Is—is skating not a contact sport?” I laughed and had to bite my lip to stifle it.

  “Not strictly speaking,” I said, as soon as I could recover my composure. “I’m thinking of things like hockey, or soccer or football, things like that where he’s likely to end up getting hit or hitting the ground as part of the game.” I thought for another moment. “If you want to feel safer, I’d say get him one of those ACE bandage braces for his knee. He doesn’t have any real problems with his ligaments, but with the weakness he’s still got going on in the other muscles, it’ll give that leg some more stability.”

  “Thank you so much,” Patrick said, and the relief in his voice was so intense it almost embarrassed me. “I didn’t want to have to tell him that he couldn’t go ice skating.” I grinned. He really is a good dad, all things considered.

  “He’ll probably get tired pretty quickly,” I told Patrick. “It takes a lot more effort to do something like that when your muscles are still weak. Make sure he takes lots of breaks, keep his fluids up, and if he starts looking wobbly, insist on him sitting down until he can stand steady.”

  “That all sounds good,” Patrick told me. I could hear him smiling somehow. “Thank you again for taking the call on your free time.” I smiled to myself.

  “I’m not really up to anything tonight, so it’s no trouble to answer a quick question,” I told him.

  “You must really love your work,” Patrick said, making it almost a question.

  “I do,” I agreed. “I love working with kids—they’re so resilient, and they’re willing to work hard. When I was doing my rotations, before I finished the program, I worked with all kinds of patients…and kids were the ones that appealed to me the most.”

  “Did you always know you were going to go into physical therapy?” I shook my head.

  “No, I kind of fell into it,” I told Patrick. I knew that I should probably get off of the phone—the conversation was getting a little personal—but I couldn’t help myself. “I was a gymnast in high school, and I got a really bad torn ACL during a practice, and of course with that you have to have really aggressive PT.” I licked my lips and finished off my wine in a quick gulp. “That was how I got interested in it.”

  “Not too different from how I got into my line of work,” Patrick said, sounding almost surprised. “I started off studying something completely different in college, but I took a summer job at an information security company and just sort of…stayed put.”

  We chatted for a few more minutes, talking about the people we worked with, about how we’d ended up in our fields, and then I finally couldn’t ignore the fact that I was having a personal conversation with a patient’s father. I told Patrick that I had to get my laundry, but that I’d see him again at Landon’s next session, and he said he and Landon were both looking forward to it. I ended the call, and in spite of telling myself that Patrick was probably just one of those guys who liked to have a listening ear, that he was off-limits to me, I couldn’t help but feel a warm little tingle all over my body; I hadn’t felt comfortable or excited like that in months—maybe years. I pushed the thought aside and finally did get to my laundry to fold it so it wouldn’t wrinkle before I went to bed.

  Chapter Six - Patrick

  After talking to Mackenzie about how Landon wanted to go ice-skating, I was glad to take my son to the park over the weekend. He’d had physical therapy the day before, but when he woke up in the morning he was so excited I didn’t think he’d miss the trip even if he somehow managed to break his leg all over again. I made him eat a good breakfast: oatmeal, scrambled eggs, bacon and toast along with some juice, and we went on our way to McKinley Park.

  I kept in mind what Mackenzie had told me and before we left I’d convinced Landon to put on a knee brace under
his long johns. It was getting colder and colder, and the forecast called for snow that night, but the day itself was sunny and bright when we got to the park and made our way to the rink. We’d gotten there early enough that it wasn’t super crowded yet—right after the park opened for the day—and I told Landon that as long as he didn’t try and get away from me, and as long as he was willing to stop for a while whenever I told him to, we could skate for as long as he wanted.

  I kept an eye on Landon just like Mackenzie suggested, making sure I took him off to the benches when he started to get wobbly or looked tired, but he managed to keep it up for at least half the day, spaced out between his breaks. When he got bored of the skating rink—or, as I suspected, too tired to keep going, especially with the bigger kids on the ice zooming around without a care in the world—we wandered around the park for a little while. I bought him a hot cider and some roasted nuts, and we munched on our snacks while we wandered around looking at the decorations.

  Finally as it was starting to get dark, I decided it was time to head for home. “We need to get you in a nice hot bath buddy, and get a pot of soup in you.” It was coming up on winter break, and the last thing I wanted was for Landon to get one of the flus going around before it was even his vacation, especially since that would mean he’d have to stay away from physical therapy for a week. I could tell he was tired out—the ice-skating had been tougher than he’d thought—but Landon was trying to pretend like he had as much energy as ever.

  I got him into the car and we started back for the apartment, navigating the busy weekend traffic. “Dad,” Landon said, his voice sleepy from the back of the car. “Do you miss mom sometimes?” I felt as if the kid had kicked me in the stomach—something he hadn’t done intentionally in years.