“Casey Marie.” Her tone was clear and Casey sat up. “Just point where it hurts.”
With her hands under her thigh, Casey pulled her leg up toward her face, lying back on the table again. “Mostly around here.” She did a twirly circle with her finger around the entire stump that was a couple of inches below her knee.
“Sorry. She’s not too scientific.” Paige peeked at Jake to see if he was becoming exasperated. Nope. Didn’t seem to be. In fact he seemed relaxed and…pretty perfect.
“No problem.” He carefully inspected the stump for any signs of excessive pressure. She didn’t think there were any—she checked every day—but maybe he’d see something she didn’t.
“Do you like your leg?” Casey asked.
“Yes,” he said, moving to inspect the prosthesis itself. “Do you like yours?”
Casey shrugged. “Sometimes. Did you get it when you were a baby?”
“No. I was nineteen.”
“Oh. That’s old.”
Paige thought she caught something deep in his eyes, the memory of it, maybe, but the shadows disappeared as quickly as they’d come.
He gently helped her daughter put the prosthesis back on, making sure the sock was perfect and the fit suited him. When he was satisfied, he lifted her from the table.
“I don’t see any definite pressure points or problems with the components, but even the slightest change in gait can cause discomfort in her thigh or hip. If this doesn’t work, we can do some scans and have her walk on a treadmill that records and assesses her gait.”
Casey walked along the table and picked up a rounded piece of something.
“Casey—”
“She won’t hurt it,” he said lightly. “Hey, Casey, can you come walk in front of me?” He knelt again, making himself about eye level with her hips. He had her walk back in a straight line away from him, then toward him several times. Every now and then he’d have her stop so he could tweak the alignment screws with an Allen wrench.
Casey kept her balance with a hand on his shoulder and was relatively quiet, only asking “What are you doing?” five times. A record low. They both watched him work with skilled efficiency, his head bowed, intent on his task.
Long lashes rimmed his eyes and a faint scar ran through the hair along his left temple. It made her want to touch him, ease some old hurt she didn’t even know about.
“Okay, why don’t you take a few laps around the room. See how it feels.”
Casey walked around the table, increasing her speed with each step. Jake straightened and watched her progress with such care and concern it went straight to her heart.
Casey stopped in front of one of the biggest monitors displaying a split screen. On the left side, a 3-D image of a human climbed a wall like a video game. On the right, a series of numbers flashed on points of a graph every time he moved.
“Is that a robot?” Casey asked him.
“No. It’s a man.”
Casey looked to Jake like she might be four, but she wasn’t stupid.
“It’s a man out there,” Jake said, half laughing. He pointed in the general direction of the testing side. It was clear Casey still didn’t understand. Jake lowered himself into a nearby chair and rolled until he was beside her. He pointed to the screen. “See, that’s a computer image of a real—”
“No, I can’t see.”
Before Paige could move, her daughter helped herself to Jake’s lap for a better view. Jake glanced up at Paige, not like he minded, more like Casey was picking teams and he was shocked she’d picked him. Strange because he had a natural way with kids. Did he have some of his own?
“Right. So that’s a man named Mike, climbing the rock wall, and Mike has electrodes attached—”
“What are leg trolls?”
“They’re…” He thought a minute and Paige liked him even more for his effort.
“Electrodes are like special stickers on Mike’s prosthetic hands that send a message here to my computer. Green is good, everything’s working. Red means the hands aren’t doing what they’re supposed to.”
“So it tells you it didn’t work?”
“It tells me I need to work harder.”
“Oh.” Casey’s gaze tracked along the table, bouncing from one thing to the next. “Do you like gum?”
“Yes,” he answered, going with the whiplash change in topics.
“Do you like squirrels? I like how their tails twitch. Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Casey!” Paige’s cheeks heated, and she hated how much she wanted to know the answer. “I’m sorry, she’s inquisitive.”
“That means I ask a lot of questions, but that’s because I need to know stuff.” She slipped off his lap to go look at more stuff.
“That’s okay. It’s good to ask questions. And I don’t, by the way,” he said, turning his attention to her. He tilted his head and grinned playfully and all the air was sucked from the room. “Do you?”