By the tenth time the physical therapist saw the woman and instructed her to lay face down on his plinth table, he knew her well, which is to say he understood her body. He knew her left hip was stiff due to an inflamed L4 vertebra, torqued by a side-impact car accident four weeks prior. He knew the pain crept down her leg and up her spine.
“Roll onto your back,” he instructed, stepping back to watch the woman struggle onto her elbows, shifting her weight on the narrow bed. “This next one can be uncomfortable.”
The woman settled, a frown folding her forehead. “Great.”
She didn’t talk much, and that troubled the physical therapist. Sometimes his clients wanted to discuss the weather, or sports, or politics, and he prided himself on being well-liked. But he didn’t know anything about the woman, and knew making a connection would keep her coming back, bolstering the possibility of a positive review. He hoped today he could finally crack her.
Thumbs together, he pushed down and under her pelvis, digging at the psoas muscle. “Any exciting weekend plans?” He thought of his wife as he maintained pressure, of the way her hair had quivered across her face with slow sleepy breaths as he slipped out that morning. They made love every Friday evening and he licked his dry lips in anticipation.
The muscle surrendered soft under his hands and he glanced at the woman, whose eyes were scrunched, her lips tightened into a pale pink flower bud. Sleep crusted at the corners of her eyes and a tawny mole curled against her nose. She wasn’t attractive—not like his wife, who carried herself with swanlike grace and still drew glances from far younger men. He tried to be neutral about the bodies that came through the office, but he was human after all.
“Sorry, I—” The woman stammered.
The physical therapist released his hold, rubbing the splotch of red skin with the heel of his hand. He’d manipulated the muscle for too long. “Yeah, that one isn’t fun.”
The woman shook her head, like she’d resigned herself to pain a long time ago, and met his eyes. “My weekend plans are to take a long bath and catch up on emails.”
“At the same time?”
The woman’s cheeks flushed and he tensed. The physical therapist had been so pleased to get more than a grunt out of her that he’d asked the question before thinking it through, startling himself. He was a calculated man and the misstep moistened his armpits.
“Ooh, that’s a good idea. Efficient.” The woman’s jaw line disappeared into a fold of chin that jiggled as she laughed.
For a moment, the physical therapist considered pressing his mouth against it, imagining the softness against his lips. The thought passed as quickly as it’d arrived, becoming rancid as he stepped outside it, horrified. “Sorry, what?”
“I said we’re also going to make tacos, and I asked about your own weekend plans.”
The physical therapist patted her ankle as he glanced at the clock, hoping the woman wouldn’t notice her session was ending five minutes early. “I’m not sure yet. We’ll see what my wife has planned.”
On Saturday, he went to the gourmet grocery a few blocks from Wash Park, a shop he chose because it was too expensive for the baristas who loved to park their silly little Honda Fits in front of his house so they could walk around Smith and Grasmere Lakes and take pictures at the boathouse and pretend they were rich. His wife’s list was written on the back of a dry cleaning receipt in barely legible cursive: hummus, celery, oak milk, grn salsa. He paused, irritated. Was omitting the two e’s really necessary? Had it saved her adequate time amid her busy life? Then he chuckled at himself. Two e’s didn’t matter one way or another.
Pomegranates were back in season, and he knew she loved them, so he sniffed a few before placing a perfect specimen in the shopping basket. He loved his wife, loved making her feel cherished. Together, they were a well-oiled machine: while he worked on bodies, she had a show on the local public radio, interviewing the state’s movers and shakers. She did the laundry and made dinner; he grocery shopped and tended the yard. Their daughter had recently graduated college and moved cross-country for her girlfriend’s job. Normally on Saturdays, she came home, and he’d check the oil in the Subaru he’d bought her, and they’d play a game of chess. In her absence, he’d felt a little off, restless even.
The green salsa was tucked on the bottom shelf, under fifteen different choices for red. He preferred red salsa—it was classic—but Vera favored green so that’s what they ate. As he reached, his knuckles grazed against a box of taco shells and he thought of the woman from work. He wondered if she was using a box like this or if she preferred making things from scratch. She seemed like a from scratch kind of person, like him.
He needed a haircut and a white strand swept across his eyelids as he shook his head, clearing his mind. His wife often commended him for his ability to leave work at work, and yet here he was, thinking about a client. Annoyed, he knocked the box of taco shells, leaving it on its back.
By the time the physical therapist had seen the woman for four months, they’d established a repertoire. He knew just where to dig his fingertips to manipulate the gluteus medius, and sensed that he no longer needed to ask permission before pushing her jersey leggings down several inches and tucking them into her threadbare cotton underwear while slipping into atypically easy conversation.
When they talked, he was genuinely curious as to how the characters in her life were faring, how she was navigating the wildcards thrown her way. As far as he could tell, the sentiment was mutual. She asked him questions, not just about the weather, but what he was excited about, what was hard.
And so many things were hard these days. The economic downturn meant fewer people were able to afford frivolity like caring for their bodies, so the physical therapist regularly had swaths of blank hours in his calendar.
“I’m just not sure what to get her,” he muttered, pushing his thumbs against her spine.
The woman folded in half, reaching for her toes without having to be asked. Her obedience quickened his breath.
“How old will your wife be?”
His hands inched up and she bent forward again as he chuckled. “She’d be mad at me for spilling secrets, but she’ll be sixty.”
“Wow.”
Her wonder left him feeling exposed, like his wife’s age shone a spotlight on his own thinning hair, or the deep grooves under his eyes. He wondered how the woman saw him. “Does that seem old to you?”
“Not really.” She shrugged, her thoracolumbar fascia tensing under his hands, a snake of muscle running alongside her knobby vertebrae. “Just seems like a big milestone. After my accident, it seems like a feat to get to sixty.”
“How old are you?” The physical therapist knew he could look this up in her file, and hoped it wasn’t a question that brushed unduly close to something too casual between them. Maintaining strict boundaries was a tenet of physical therapy, whose practitioners suffered the highest rates of sexual harassment or assault in the entire medical field. His office had protocols in place to ward off handsy clients: avoid being alone with them, avoid personal connection. When all else failed, a therapist could simply hand a note to their front desk manager, who would blacklist the patient for future scheduling.
“I’m thirty-two.”
Wind whistled from between his teeth in astonishment. “Almost half our age.” Where had the time gone?
“You definitely need to get her something special.”
“Lay on your right side,” he said. As she climbed onto his table, he scratched at a rough patch on the back of his neck. “I know I do, but I’m stumped.”
The woman hoisted herself onto her elbow, her eyes lit with amusement. “It has to be really good.”
He scooted her legs where he wanted and then leaned forward, pressing his chest against hers while pulling on an arm, her other hand resting casually on his shoulder blade. Her back cracked three times in quick succession, like a rock skipping across a lake.
“What makes a good gift?” As the physical therapist asked this, he thought of his wife and how she always got him what he needed, even if he didn’t yet realize he was without. The problem was that his wife didn’t need anything, and if she did, she got it herself.
“Something that makes her feel cherished, that tells her that you really thought about her.”
“Does your husband give you gifts like that?” He knew he was toeing the line again, that he should’ve used the more innocuous word partner.
“Sometimes, but he could do better.”
“Roll onto your stomach.” The thought of the woman married to some young idiot made the back of his tongue go sour, but he knew better than to entertain such thoughts, so instead he reached for the needles and pushed her pants down past her hip.
“I suppose we could all do better, though,” the woman mused, before peering over her shoulder. “Wait, are you dry needling again today?” She groaned.
The physical therapist nodded, ripping into an alcohol swab. He’d recently been certified in the technique, using monofilament needles to agitate trigger points in muscle tissue, and had started using it on the woman, who hated the procedure. When other clients expressed dislike to dry needling, he’d pivot and introduce another technique instead: heat, tennis balls, massage. It wasn’t for everyone. But he knew the needles were helping the woman, and she didn’t fight him. Her vulnerability was a tangible current coursing under his hands, and he wanted to gather it up like a hose, looping it against a hook on his house.
That weekend, the physical therapist’s wife surprised him with dinner reservations at his favorite restaurant. He never wondered where he stood with her, which was one of her many ideal qualities. She was a powerful woman who earned his admiration. He referred to her as his equal, as his partner, to his colleagues. Which is why, when the physical therapist caught himself mid-daydream, anticipating Tuesday morning when he’d be able to tell the woman about his steak au poivre, he was startled. Yes, he’d had her schedule memorized for weeks now, but surely that was just an indicator of his superior treatment and client repertoire.
He swiped at his mashed potatoes with the tines of his fork and wondered what it was about the woman that’d captured his attention. She was a wounded bird, was all. Though it was more than that, of course—it was the way she looked at him with sad-eyed reverence, the way she nodded eagerly at his every suggestion. He dragged his fork again, watching gravy bleed into the paths it carved. She needed him.
With a gummy swallow, he realized that must be it: he felt needed again. His wife didn’t need him. His daughter didn’t need him now, either. He dabbed the cloth napkin at the corners of his mouth, assuring himself that it was perfectly natural for a man to need to be necessary.
The woman really did need him. Once, recently, she’d even cried, convinced she’d never get better. He’d hugged her, too long maybe, but no—it was his job to care for his patients.
He took a sip of red wine, glancing across the table to wink at his wife, and wondered how long the perfect union between him and the woman could last. Eventually, she’d get better. Eventually, she wouldn’t need him anymore.
His wife reached across the table and found his hand. “I sure do love you.”
“I love you, too,” he said. He really did.
Two days later, he was on his knees in the exercise room, demonstrating a bird-dog strengthening exercise for another patient. A post-natal mother, young and blonde and spandexed, was struggling with diastasis recti and needed abdominal strengthening to rejoin her muscles.
He only half-listened to the mother’s questions, breezing through exercises with indifference because his next appointment was with the woman. He never brought the woman out here and imagined her sitting in the exam room, waiting for him. Exhibiting the correct form for a plank, he wondered if the woman’s shoes were still on, or if she’d already slipped them off in anticipation of his arrival.
His mouth was wet so he swallowed hard before knocking twice and entering the room. The woman’s socked feet were stacked one on top of the other, and she reached back to gather her curls into a messy bun on top of her head. The physical therapist didn’t like buns, thought they looked like uncouth cats curled atop women’s heads. His wife would never have worn a bun, had shorn her hair short and chic decades ago. A disappointing knot of annoyance toward the woman settled in his bowels.
He glanced at his clipboard. “Remind me, which hip is still bothering you?” He knew full well it was her left, and exactly where, and exactly why. But he tried to ask her an off-canter question every few weeks, to convey a sense of unfamiliarity, to let her know she was just one of his many patients.
“Oh, it’s my left.”
“That’s right, that’s right.”
He’d never admit it, not even to himself, but he’d been looking forward to dry needling the woman since he woke up. Protocol required that he examine her first, determine if she really needed it, but the procedure couldn’t damage her. It was helping her.
He rushed through the assessment, prodding her lower back, the palms of his hands warming against her. She’d grown more vocal about her disdain of the procedure, but she never asked him to stop.
“On your stomach,” he instructed, his heart fluttering with plans to target the iliotibial tract. Hooking a thumb at her waistband, he pulled her sweatpants down first, halfway down her thigh, before repeating with her underpants, rolling them together to keep in place. Typically he’d lay a blanket across a patient’s backside for modesty, but he knew he didn’t have to with the woman.
The physical therapist had forgotten about her hair-do and was in such a good mood he decided to treat himself. He’d do ten needles, and use a combination of the pistoning and winding techniques to really make her muscles dance.
The woman clutched the cushioned edges of the plinth table as he tapped the sterile tube encasing the first needle, and began twisting the monofilament toward the bone.
She grumbled and in that moment, he wanted to stroke her hand and tell her everything would be alright. He wanted to dig the needle deeper.
“I’ve been thinking about your wife’s sixtieth birthday present,” she said between gritted teeth.
Tap. Another needle. She’d been thinking about him. He grinned, grateful she couldn’t see his joy. “Oh, yeah?” He tapped a third needle, rubbing at her ilio band as it vibrated under her skin.
“You said you don’t do PT on your wife, so why don’t you get her one of those massage guns?”
Tap. “No, she wouldn’t want one of those.”
“Didn’t you say her shoulders are sore all the time?”
Not only had the woman been thinking about him, but she’d really been listening during their time together. The thought was so warm, butter rolling across cast iron, that his grip went limp and he dropped the fourth needle.
It landed soft as snow on her upper hamstring and time suspended. His breath caught, snagged in his chest, and he watched helplessly as the fine needle rolled toward her gluteal fold and disappeared.
For a moment, the physical therapist was at a total loss. He couldn’t ask her to get up, she had needles inserted. But he couldn’t just go rummaging between her legs, either.
“Uh,” he finally said, and it sounded more like a dog’s growl. He wanted to apologize but knew this was one of those moments when he couldn’t, shouldn’t, admit wrong-doing. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I dropped a needle.”
“Okay?”
“If you could just,” he tapped the inside of her left leg, and she obediently scooted it to the edge of the bed.
He could really see her then, and maybe even smell her, though in his panic he couldn’t be sure. He’d never admit it to himself, but he’d wanted this, her like this. Now that he had it, just inches away, nausea swelled at the back of his throat. If the nosy front desk manager popped in right then to tell him another patient was waiting, he could lose everything. He’d never be able to explain this to his wife. Scorn roiled across his chest and he wanted the woman gone.
Grabbing a reflex hammer from the cabinet, he fished the needle from where it’d landed on the table deep in the canyon of her thighs. He threw it in the sharps box like it was hot.
“Your body decided it was done with needling,” he sneered, barely able to contain his sudden contempt for the woman. He grabbed a folded sheet, hastily covering her backside, and plucked the other needles. There were still ten minutes left in their session, but he had to be done. It was over. “Sorry, uh, I don’t feel well,” he mumbled, and flung himself into the hallway.
He hid in the bathroom, sitting cross-legged on the toilet, until he was sure she was gone. While waiting, he bought a massage gun for his wife, and wrote a quick note suggesting the woman seek other treatment. When he emerged, he handed the paper to the front desk manager without making eye contact, and headed to his next appointment.