He paused at a door to hold it open, which I thought was a nice gesture until he started speaking. “No,” he said, as I rolled past him. “Your technique’s all wrong.”
He sounded irritated, like we’d been over this a thousand times.
“Well,” I said, “I didn’t know there was a technique, and this is my first time to ever do this, so—”
“Nobody’s shown you how to use the chair?”
I shook my head.
“That’s OT 101.”
“I guess we’re still doing prerequisites.” Another sad little attempt at a joke.
He didn’t smile. Instead, he bent forward to look into my eyes and then squeezed my biceps. Then, in a voice that sounded like he was about to impart vital, deeply insightful information, he said, “Arms are not legs.”
I gave him a look, like, Really?
“What I mean is,” he went on, unamused, “they can’t handle the same amount of work as legs. You have to be careful not to strain them with overuse.”
“I don’t see that I have much choice about that.”
“Not in the big picture, no,” he conceded. “But in the details. Hence: chair technique.” He put his hand over mine—it was warmer than mine was, I noticed—and placed it on the rim of the wheel. “Instead of ten little pushes,” he said, “you want to do one strong push and then coast.”
He stretched my hand down low along the back of the wheel and pressed it into a grip around the push rim. Then he brought it up and forward to push off, and I went zooming down the hallway fast enough to scare me, so I grabbed the rim to stop, and got a little friction burn.
Ian jogged up behind me. “You’re going to need some gloves” was all he said.
Next we covered turning, rotating in place, and popping wheelies—though we didn’t actually practice those. “Are wheelies really necessary?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, though he didn’t explain why.
“Why?” I decided to demand.
“Because you need to know how to control your wheels.”
“Why?”
“Because you need to know how to manage all kinds of terrain.”
“Like for when I go off-roading in the Grand Canyon?”
He looked up. “More like for when you encounter steps. Or potholes. Or a curb.” He turned away. “If you want to go anywhere, you need to know how to manage.”
“I don’t want to go anywhere,” I said.
“You will,” he said as he walked away, all tall and athletic and sturdy. There was something almost mean about how in shape he was, and the way his scrubs draped from his waistband over what any woman with a heartbeat would have to admit was an utterly perfect guy-butt. He was such a supreme physical specimen. I didn’t compare myself to him, exactly, but just being near that kind of robustness made me feel extra weak and shriveled. I looked away.
Anyway, that little Wheelchair 101 moment made us a few minutes late arriving at the therapy gym, and so we signed in a little late, too, which seemed to irritate Ian. “Now we’re late,” he said, noting time on the clock, as if it were my fault.
As if it mattered.
I looked around while he gathered some equipment. If I’d been able to appreciate anything, I would have appreciated the gym. It had all kinds of machines and colors and games. It had a pop-a-shot basketball machine, and a ring toss, and two pinball machines—Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy. It had weights like a gym, and mirrors everywhere, as well as a set of walking bars, a standing frame, and a full-body harness. It had a fine-motor board with locks and latches and screws to work with, and a beanbag-toss game. It had a flight of practice stairs, a minitramp, and a row of recumbent bikes. It even had an entire car, painted a perky aqua, down at one end—I guessed for people to practice getting in and out. Also, up top: quite the speaker system, playing a relentless mix of lite-rock Eagles and Van Morrison tunes.
The old me would have felt tempted to boogie around a little bit, but the new me sat still as a sack of flour.
Ian wrote my name on a big whiteboard that had a slot for every patient on it, with “goals” written out, and smiley faces, and lots of little encouraging sayings. I watched the other trainers while I waited—without exception, an insistently cheerful, optimistic bunch. They laughed loudly, and high-fived, and called their patients things like “champ.” They coaxed. They encouraged. They cheered. They sang along to the music.
One guy with a man-bun, who I would come to know as Rob, was working with an eighty-year-old lady on a walker—and while he wasn’t exactly flirting with her, he was certainly paying her enough attention that she positively bloomed. A female trainer, April, was shooting Nerf hoops with her patient, a forty-something guy in a wheelchair, and high-fiving each swoosh. It was like a big fitness-and-recovery party. All around me, people were moving, and talking, and challenging themselves—and while the patients were more somber, the PTs were nothing short of jovial.
Except for my PT.
I looked over at Ian with his gray frown and his stiff jaw. He was so serious, so sour, so much the opposite of jovial that he practically had a little cartoon scribble of grumpiness above his head.
No wonder he has an open schedule, I thought.
“Late again, Ian,” I heard then. The nasal voice. The same one I’d heard talking to Nina. I looked over to get my first eyeful of Myles, walking toward us. He turned out to have wavy, tight-cropped red hair—clashing boldly with the red sweatshirt he’d zipped over his scrubs—and tight, hard little brown eyes. He looked exactly like his voice.
Ian didn’t respond.
“Hate to have to mark you in the book,” Myles went on, almost glaring at Ian. “But rules are rules.”
Ian held menacingly still, eyes averted.
“Just gotta watch that clock and stay timely.”
Then, I didn’t mean to stand up for Ian, but I did. “He was helping me with wheelchair technique in the hallway,” I said. It just popped out.
Myles shifted his eyes to me. “That’s not PT. That’s OT.”
“But he was correcting my technique.”
“Not his job,” Myles said. “Right, champ? Not your job.”
Ian just worked his jaw.
Myles went on, “Wouldn’t want people thinking you don’t know what your job is.”
I started to argue again, but Ian gave me a look.
Myles was baiting him. “Wouldn’t want people thinking you have no right to be here.”
Ian: Silence. Then more silence.
“Good talk,” Myles said after another minute, clapping Ian on the shoulder.
Then he turned to me and said, “If you need any more advice, I suggest you come to me. I’m just right there in my corner office.”
I saw Ian squeeze his hand into a fist and then stretch it out.
Then Myles pointed at Ian and said, in a pseudo-inspirational tone, “Go work some miracles.”
Did that guy want to get punched? I even wanted to punch him. “Sorry,” I said, once we’d made it to the far side of the gym. “I was trying to help you.”
“Don’t help me,” Ian said, shaking his head. “Don’t do that again.”
Then he walked off.
He stopped across the room at a mat table and looked exasperated to find that I hadn’t followed him. He made a “get over here” motion, and I wheeled in his direction.
When I reached him, he handed me a transfer board and said, “You know what to do.”
I hadn’t let my armrest down on my own before, and it took me a minute to find the latch—during which time Ian kept his eyes focused out the window, breathing impatiently every so often.
“You could help me, if you’re in such a rush.”
“I’m not here to do it for you. You’re here to do it for yourself.”
“I didn’t ask you to do it for me. I just said you could help.”
“At this point, that’s the same thing.”