“I can very much relate to that,” he says with a little smile.
We walk slowly down the hall, past the few rooms, and through another set of double doors into what looks like a big gym. The floor is covered in a slightly springy blue mat from wall to wall and there are big blue exercise balls, parallel bars, massage tables, and a bunch of equipment I don’t recognize.
There’s an old woman walking between the bars, a young guy missing a leg lying on a table, and a woman with a walker next to her doing some exercises. They’re all working under the watchful gaze of a person in scrubs with a little nametag dangling over their chest.
Dr. Lofthouse leads me over to one of the tables and helps me up. “Okay, lie back,” he says.
“Dr. Lofthouse, what exactly will all this be like?” I ask.
“Call me Brent. And it’ll be pretty basic. You had a really nasty complex break of a large bone. It takes a while for a bone like that to heal. We need to help speed up that healing process, but we also need to make sure that the bone gets strengthened and the muscles around the bone don’t atrophy.”
“Sounds intense.”
“We’ll be seeing a lot of each other over the next couple months.” Her smiles at me, cocks his head slightly. “I hope that’s okay.”
“I think, uh, it’ll be fine.”
“Good.” He leans me back and lays me down. I’m wearing tight black yoga pants and gray long-sleeve shirt. “Do you mind?”
He puts his hands on my leg and I shake my head. He rubs the muscle around my broken femur, the biggest bone in the leg. I wince a little bit but he’s gentle, massaging the muscles gently.
“Good,” he says. “You’re in good shape. I’m guessing you were active before this?”
I nod. “Ran every day.”
“Good for you. I forget sometimes. I get lazy and I’m a doctor.”
I laugh a little. “You don’t look like you forget to work out.”
His eyes meet mine and I blush a little bit, feeling like a total moron for saying that. But his gaze takes me in like he’s seeing me for the first time. He stays like that for a long moment, looking at me, before he lets his eyes roam down my body.
He’s not hiding it. He looks at me, every inch of me, not just my leg. “You don’t either, you know.”
“Thanks.” I can’t help but blush.
He smiles again and puts his hands back on my leg. This time, he puts them higher up, close to the ache between my legs. “Okay. I want you to push up against my hands. Like you’re trying to lift them.”
I nod a little and raise my leg. He doesn’t push back too hard but it’s still difficult. I stop and groan a little bit.
“Hurts?” he asks.
I nod. “A little.”
“Okay. Let’s try again.” He moves his hands down lower. “Go ahead and push.”
We repeat that until his hands reach my knee. When he’s done, he helps me down off the table.
“Let’s do some stretches, some really easy stuff, then we’ll do a little workout. And that’s it for today.”
“Great, sounds good.”
“I’m going to have to touch you some more for this. Is that okay?”
“That’d be great.”
He grins. “Good. I’m glad you feel that way.”
I blush again, feeling so stupid. I don’t know why I said that. He’s a doctor, he touches people all the time, this isn’t a thing at all. I shouldn’t be trying to flirt with this guy.
He moves me over to an open space on the floor and we do some stretches. Really simple stuff, hands to my knees, leg up in the air, stuff like that. I don’t have much range of motion but his hands are all over me at least. He’s not touching me inappropriately or weird at all; in fact, he’s doing the same stuff the others PTs are doing.
But for some reason, it makes my heart race. Maybe because he’s so handsome or because I haven’t been touched like this in a very, very long time. Either way, he keeps sneaking glances at me, and I swear he’s checking out my lips and breasts. By the time we’re done, my heart’s racing.
“On to the exercises,” he says. “You won’t like this part as much.”
“Who says I liked the last part?”
He smirks and shrugs. “Just a guess.”
“Well, okay, whatever. It felt good. I haven’t been stretched like that in a long time.”
“Glad I can be of service.” He motions for me and I follow him over to the parallel bars which are now empty. He has me walk over there and do some simple lifts and bends, really simple and basic exercises that would’ve been so easy before the accident, but are painful and exhausting now.