Shift Happens (Providence Family Ties 2)

The technician had turned away to dispose of the casts, but she was doing her best not to laugh.

Not saying a word, Sasha lunged for her purse and started rifling through it, like she’d die if she didn’t find what she was looking for.

“Can I help you?” When she held her hand up to stop me from getting closer to her, I crossed my arms and waited.

Barely lifting her head to acknowledge me, she dug down to the bottom, pulling out a rolled-up pair of leggings, and then stuck her hand back in again.

“She asked if the saw we took the cast off with would work on the hair on her leg,” the lady said quietly, having walked up beside me to watch the show. “I don’t have another appointment for forty-three minutes, so let her do her thing.”

“What’s she doing?” I asked distractedly, frowning when Sasha pulled a tampon out and shook her head.

“Not a clue, but it’s better than most people’s reactions.”

On the next withdrawal from the bag, she pulled out a small white packet and her eyes lit up.

Opening it, she pulled out what looked like a wipe and went to town on her foot.

“Is that a deodorizing wipe?”

“Looks like it,” the lady snickered, covering her mouth with her hand as Sasha cleaned methodically from heel-to-toe, even separating her toes and rubbing frantically between them.

Then her hand was back in her purse, and the look of frustration on her face was killing me…

Until she found what she was looking for and held it up in the air. A pink razor. “I knew I’d put one in there last night.”

“Uh, baby, I think you need to wet the skin, or at least have lotion or something.”

Groaning, she dropped her hand, but then she perked up as an idea hit her. “Do you have anything in this room?”

“Hand sanitizing gel,” the woman pointed at the dispenser on the wall. “But I wouldn’t recommend you use it to shave. It’d be like spraying perfume under your arms after you’d waxed there.”

What the hell kind of shit did women do?

Having five brothers, our house had been mainly male orientated, so I didn’t have a clue about shit like this.

Leaning into me and reading me correctly, the lady shook her head.

“We don’t do that, but every woman’s experienced the sharp painful burn when they’ve put deodorant or something on after they’ve shaved. Waxing yanks the hair out, so even if you’ve never done it before, you can imagine how painful it’d be to put perfume on after that.”

My dad was so lucky he’d had all sons. If I had a daughter, I’d end up going crazy learning new shit like this.

Oh, shit, my brother had a daughter. Maybe I should warn him about this phenomenon?

A growl coming from Sasha’s direction brought me out of my thoughts to see her rubbing her leg with a deodorizing wipe.

“That'll have to do. I refuse to walk out there with the Amazon rainforest on my leg.”

So, for the next five minutes, we watched her sweep the razor up her leg methodically. Then she moved onto running her hand over areas, which she’d then wipe with a new wipe before doing it all over again.

“Jesus, I didn’t realize so much went into this type of thing,” I gestured with my hand.

“Oh, yeah. And this is nothing compared to the bikini line. Leg up, leg down, leg up to the side and as far out as you can get it, bent over to get all the way to the back… It’s a whole ritual of hell.”

On the third rotation of the hand check followed by more swipes of the razor, I glanced down at my watch. “Are you sure you don’t have another patient coming in soon?”

I was hoping she’d say yes.

“Nope. Normally you’d have a quick consultation with a physical therapist, but Sasha’s been seeing one throughout her rehabilitation, and I gather she has four more appointments with him.”

I’d arranged for the appointments during and after to make sure she got the best treatment. “Was that the right thing to do?”

“It’s unusual,” she admitted, “but it’s amazing how quickly you can lose muscle tone when you’re not using a limb. In addition to that, Sasha didn’t just have one limb immobilized, she had two, so it was a great idea.”

The tension ebbed out of me, and I was sure I visibly relaxed.

“Okay, I’m ready to boogie. When can I go back to classes?” Sasha asked as she hopped off the bed, and I instinctively lunged to catch her.

Unfortunately, what she hadn’t realized was that, even though the bones were healing, she’d still have some pain in the limbs affected for a while.

That’s why her eyes shot open as she looked up at me in shock. “Ooo, that didn’t feel great.”