Second Chance Dad by Roxanne Rustand Page A

in my court.”
    He shrugged slightly.
    â€œI’m focusing right now on your knee. Sitting on a chair in a normal, upright position with feet flat on the floor requires a ninety-degree angle of the knee joint. Typically, people want to achieve a minimum of a hundred-twenty degrees of flexion—being able to bend the knee much more—for ease at climbing stairs. Your injured knee is at just around seventy-five. Which means your joint isn’t bending well at all.”
    He nodded.
    She glanced toward the front door, which led to a covered front porch and just a slight step off onto the gravel. “You don’t seem to have many steps to worry about here, but what about when you’re in town?”
    â€œI manage.”
    â€œBut not well.”
    He tipped his head, silently conceding the point. And how could he not? She’d seen what happened in the grocery store.
    â€œYou have a great deal of scar tissue, from the surgical repair as well as the injury itself. You also have contraction of the tendons in a situation like yours, so it becomes painful to even try to extend and flex the leg more fully.” He nodded.
    â€œWe sometimes send patients into the hospital for anesthesia, so a doctor can manipulate and loosen those tight tendons and the inflamed knots of scar tissue without the patient feeling pain while it’s being done. But now…well, this has all gone on for too much time, so the doctor hasn’t given an order for that. We’ll need to take a different approach.” She eyed him patiently. “Any questions?”
    â€œSo you’re planning some sort of Marquis de Sade therapy.”
    â€œStrengthening exercises on your own. Deepmassage. And yes, it may be uncomfortable. But , the better you hold up your part of the bargain with the exercises you do here at home, and the more regular your PT appointment are, the better it will be.”
    â€œGreat.”
    â€œHave you been given a portable TENS unit before? It’s about the size of an iPod or a Walkman that fits in a pocket or hangs from a belt, with wires leading to patches placed in the most painful of areas. A mild electric pulse stimulates endorphins in the brain and over-rides your own pain signals. It sort of tells the brain to accept a good signal instead of the ones that arise from chronic pain.” He shrugged.
    â€œLook, I know you do know all of this,” she said.
    Her voice was warm and compassionate, though as always, there was also an underlying thread of steel beneath her words that surprised him, given her young age. She looked as if she might be just nineteen or twenty, though with the years of college needed for a degree in physical therapy, she had to be in her early to mid-twenties.
    â€œI know you could describe all of this in far more technical detail than I’m using now,” she continued. “You’ve probably even prescribed these units to patients. But when it comes to yourself, maybe you haven’t been…willing to think about the possibilities.”
    Unwilling.
    Undeserving.
    Unable, maybe, given the enormous guilt and sorrow that had settled over his days like a blanket of suffocating impenetrable smog.
    But the hint of censure and challenge in her eyes belied her tactful words, and he realized that she thought he was sitting alone in this cabin, choosing to wallow in self-pity and apathy.
    But that wasn’t it at all.
    He stirred uncomfortably under her steady gaze, unaccountably caring about her opinion and wanting to prove her wrong.
    â€œI’ll do fine without a TENS.”
    â€œBut—”
    â€œThanks, but no.”
    â€œOkay. If you change your mind, let me know. I can bring one out, and most insurance plans will cover it, so you needn’t worry about that.”
    Given the stark, barren cabin, hardly upscale, and the old Jeep Cherokee parked by the shed, she probably thought money was an issue.
    Which was, come to think of