I want to say, Wait, maybe we should hold off. I say nothing.
“Miranda, you’re very stiff. Please relax.”
“Okay.”
He wraps both arms around my raised leg that’s propped on his shoulder. He grips the flesh, his fingers pressing deep into my thigh. He tugs hard on the leg. I gasp. I gasp from the pain.
“What are you doing?”
Mark just looks at me, expressionless. What am I doing? Really, Miranda?
“Working on your hip. Helping it release. Now that your back has settled we can be a little more aggressive about this.”
He gives my leg another sharp, jerking tug. Then another.
I wince. “That really hurts.”
“It only hurts, Miranda, because you’re so stiff. You need to relax your leg. I told you. Relax.”
“I’m trying.”
“No, you’re not,” he says.
And he tugs again, harder now. And I gasp again. And he looks at me coldly. No mercy, no pity, only annoyance, anger now. It’s simply going to hurt if I insist on being stiff like this. He jerks my leg again, pulls hard as if he’s trying to pull the leg out of the hip socket. I cry out, and he shakes his head. Ridiculous. My refusal to relax. My insistence upon pain. My theatrics, he always forgets I’m an actress. I am the sad cartoon brain after all.
“It’s great that you’re better, Miranda. But you have to trust. You have to stick with the exercises. You can’t neglect things. If you’d continued, if you’d stuck with the program, who knows? Who knows where you would be by now?”
He smiles at me in my straps. And suddenly I know. I’m exactly where I would be. I would be an old woman walking sideways down a basement hallway full of orange cones. Teetering across a ladder of rope, limbs flailing wildly. Sitting hunched on a medical table in a blue paper sack, letting Mark stick needles in me while I try not to scream. I’d be strapped to this table, to Mark, for eternity. To Mark, whose arms will keep gripping me, tugging me, pulling me until I’ve learned my lesson, until I fucking learn to relax.
I close my eyes, try not to cry out anymore.
After it’s over, he unstraps me. Removes his gloves. Tosses them in the wastebasket.
“How do we feel?”
I try to stand up. But my right leg stays rigidly bent at the knee. The weight is on my foot again. Crushing it with a vengeance. I feel the concrete forming in my leg. I can feel the tears forming in my eyes as I sit back down on the medical table.
“Awful. My foot. It—”
“Might need to put some ice on it tonight.”
“Ice? But you said—”
“Forty-eight hours, remember? Give it forty-eight hours to settle, Miranda. That’s when I’ll see you next. Let’s try to stay on top of this thing, okay? We’re making progress. Little victories.”
“I can’t stand up now. I can’t stand up straight anymore.” I hate the sound of my voice. Like a dog that’s been kicked.
“Try again.”
And I hate him. So much.
I stand up again and immediately go limp on my right side, my leg going rigid and caving in. I stumble forward.
“Whoopsie,” Mark says, limply holding out his hand, which I have no choice but to take. “Steady now.”
But Mark’s limp hand isn’t enough. I’m still unsteady.
I take a step forward with Mark holding me lightly by the hand. This time when I stumble, I fall down. I’m lying on the rubber floor.
“Miranda, you okay?” But my answer is irrelevant. These are just more of my theatrics. Why must I constantly undermine his attempts to make me well? I stare at his shoes, so close to my face. Black leather. Pointed. Tapping.
Do you like tricks, Ms. Fitch?
“Miranda.”
I see the fat man on the stage, singing. Smiling at me while I lay collapsed on the vibrating floor, collapsed and immobilized by his pain. My wrist throbbing where he touched it.
“Miranda.”
Then it’s Mark I see. Smiling at me fallen on the floor. He’s reaching his hand out to me, limply. Presumably to help me up. I think of the fat man reaching his hand out to me, while the middling man smiled. I’d love to show you a trick.
I reach out a hand to Mark. I grasp him firmly on the wrist. I look him in the eye and grip, grip, grip as I slowly pull myself up.
CHAPTER 14
IN MY CAR, staring through the icy windshield at the dark parking lot of SpineWorks, engine on. Heart’s beating fast. Ran out here in my medical gown and a windbreaker I stole off the rack on my way out the door. Did anyone follow me out? No. Parking lot’s empty. Not a soul in sight. I gaze down at my hands gripping the wheel. Trembling. I’m trembling all over. I watch my shuddering breath leave my mouth in clouds of smoke. Foot on the gas pedal. I should go now. Fucking drive off, but I just stare out the windshield, grinning at the dark. I’m humming to myself. Why am I humming? I’m not happy. Not happy, no, I’m terrified, aren’t I? I’m worried about Mark, how I left him, pale and crumpled on the chair in the treatment room. Mark’s face when I grasped his arm to pull myself up off the floor. How his face suddenly drained of color. How his mouth fell open. How he tried to pull away from my grip and he lost his footing, stumbling backward. How I watched him hit the wall with the back of his head. Collapse onto the hard plastic chair where I’d put my clothes, my coat. There he sat. Slumped forward. Head down.