Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (34 page)

“Whatever we need to do,” Patrick told me.
I gave him a few instructions, and then sent the two on their way with the hint
that Landon should take a nice, long bath with some Epsom salts in the water
before he went to bed. As I watched them leave, I had to admit that even if
he’d been late, Patrick was obviously dedicated to his son.

Chapter Four - Patrick

“Come on back, Landon and Patrick,” I
smiled at Landon’s therapist, following him through the door and into the
therapy area. The first appointment I’d met with her, for Landon’s evaluation,
it was almost difficult for me to take her seriously until halfway through the
session; she was so gorgeous that I couldn’t quite believe that she was
actually a real therapist. I could tell too that she didn’t have a really high
impression of me—there was a little look on her face when she let us into the
back of the clinic that told me that she was just waiting for me to confirm her
bad impression.

Mackenzie reached down and gave Landon’s
hair a quick tousle as she led him over to one of the machines. “We’re going to
start out with some stretches, okay big guy?” I stood back so that I wouldn’t
distract my son, watching him interact with the therapist. She was short—though
I hadn’t noticed that at first; her hair was some brown-red color, her skin was
as pale as the porcelain plates my wife had gotten for our wedding. She looked
too fragile and precious to be able to do the things I’d seen her do with
Landon in the first few days of our sessions. Her scrubs made it almost
impossible to make out what her shape was like, but I thought privately to
myself that it was probably very good indeed, based purely on how strong she
was.

I watched my son get into his exercises
with the kind of single-minded focus that he had whenever there was anything
physical going on. It was all I could do when I got him home at the end of the
night to keep him from trying to jump around and climb the furniture. “I think
we might be able to discontinue the crutches after this week,” Mackenzie said,
glancing at me from where she was supervising Landon on some kind of pedaling
machine. “He should hold onto them in case he feels like he needs them, but the
strength is returning really well.”

“It’s pretty hard to keep him using the
crutches anyway,” I told her, sitting down on one of the benches. Around the
room, there were kids of all ages working away with other physical therapists,
and I silently said a prayer of gratitude for the fact that Landon’s reasons
for being in PT were not as serious as some of the cases I’d seen in our first
few sessions.

“They slow me down!” Landon finished his
exercise and started to snatch his feet free of the pedals—only to stop, with a
look on his face that told me that he remembered almost too late that Mackenzie
had scolded him for doing just that two days before.

“Well, you’d be
really
slow if you hurt yourself again, don’t you think?” Mackenzie
made a face at Landon, the expression dissolving into a grin. “There are these
things called tendons, here in the backs of your knees,” she explained to him,
reaching down and brushing her fingers on the area. “They help your knees bend
and move. If you try and start running around like normal with your muscles
weak, then it puts strain on the tendons and ligaments that hold everything
together—and if you hurt those, it hurts a
lot
.
So better to listen to your body, don’t you think?”

“But my body wants me to run!” Landon
squirmed, giggling into Mackenzie’s face. She laughed, shaking her head.

“I don’t think it does,” she said, keeping
her tone firm even as she grinned. I tried to keep from laughing myself. “Your
brain wants you to run because I bet you get bored easily, huh?”

“Yeah,” Landon agreed.

“Do you do psychotherapy too?” Mackenzie
glanced at me and shrugged, the smile still curving her lips.

“But we really want to make sure that your
leg is up for it before we let you just run like crazy. If you tear something
in your knee because your muscles can’t hold you up properly, you might not be
able to even walk for a long time.” Mackenzie gave my son a quick, serious
look. “I think you’d hate that.”

“And that kind of injury hurts a lot,” I
added, giving Landon a look of my own. I remembered Landon’s injury and a
shudder worked through me; I’d broken my share of bones as a kid, playing
hockey and lacrosse, and I knew how much it hurt. I’d also torn my Achilles
tendon—and it was hard for me to say which injury had actually hurt the most.

“But the good news is that I think you can
start walking short distances on your own,” Mackenzie told Landon, guiding him
from one machine to another. “I’ll still want you to use your crutches when
you’re in school, and you should be really careful when you’re playing, but if
you’re just going to the bathroom at night, or from the living room to bed, you
can do that without the crutches.”

“Okay!”

I smiled to myself and continued watching
as Mackenzie worked with my son, keeping him on task and entertained,
distracting him from the inevitable pain that came along with getting his
muscles back into shape. Even after only a few sessions, I was able to see a
difference in the way that Landon moved around. He was starting to feel more
comfortable—and he was definitely sleeping sounder.

I’d asked Mackenzie about it after the
second or third session; Landon was full of energy right when we got home but
within about an hour he would be near to falling asleep on the couch, right
over his dinner plate. “You may want to see about putting more protein in his
lunch,” she’d suggested. “He’s building muscle, which takes fuel. After the
first week he’ll mostly be back to normal, but you’ll be able to speed his
recovery up with really, really good nutrition.”

As if she’d read my mind, Mackenzie asked
what Landon had had for lunch that day. “I had a tuna sandwich, an apple,
carrots, and some pudding,” Landon told her. “Oh! And dad packed me almond
butter too. It was the chocolate kind. I had that during recess though.”
Mackenzie grinned, including me in her smile, and I shrugged, feeling proud of
myself.

“That’s a great lunch! Did you eat all of
it? You need lots and lots of food to get back to being strong,” Mackenzie
said.

“All of it!” Landon nodded. It had been a
minor miracle when Landon had decided that he liked tuna sandwiches—they were
easy as anything to make, and I could at least make sure he was getting
vegetables a few days a week. I tried to change it up—too much tuna wasn’t good
for kids, at least I’d head that from one of the moms in the office.

“Tell her what you had yesterday,” I
prompted Landon.

“A hamburger! Dad put a fried egg on it
for me.”

“He’s a fiend for eggs,” I explained to
Mackenzie. She helped Landon finish the exercise he was working on and gestured
for him to take a break.

“Eggs are great,” she said. She looked at
Landon and wrinkled her nose. “I had chicken and rice for lunch. Not very
exciting at all.”

“Did you make it yourself?”

“I did!” Mackenzie smiled more broadly at
Landon than I thought any woman could possibly smile at a child that wasn’t her
own, and I wondered for a moment if she smiled like that at all of her
patients. “It’s my grandma’s recipe. Very good for you.”

“Dad says that Brussel sprouts are good
for me, but they taste so nasty,” Landon said to Mackenzie.

“They are very good for you indeed,”
Mackenzie said. She glanced at me. “If you want, I have a recipe for them that
tastes really good.”

“I’d love to hear it,” I said, thinking
about the struggle to get Landon to eat certain vegetables. I didn’t think it
would be any easier if his mother had lived—but it was hard not to wish for
someone who could share the burden with me.

“What I do is to cut them in half, roast
them in the oven with some salt and pepper and oil, and then toss in some dried
cranberries and some pecans at the end. I’ve accidentally eaten a whole pound
sprouts that way, they’re so good.”

She went back to working with Landon, and
I watched, sitting by myself and trying not to eavesdrop on the other sessions
going on in different parts of the room. Landon had really opened up to
Mackenzie—normally he tended to be a little shy with new adults until he’d
gotten to know them a bit, but he was chatting away, telling Mackenzie about
his Christmas list, about his classmate Jessica, about the classroom pet
turtle. I tried not to laugh at how excited Landon was as he went through the
exercises; as the session started to draw to a close, Mackenzie brought him to
a table with heat and cold pads, TENS pads, and more. “I’m going to give you a
quick rub-down, okay big man?”

“Is that okay, Dad?” he asked me.

I nodded. “It’ll help you keep from being
sore tomorrow, buddy,” I told my son. Mackenzie reached into some kind of jar
and scooped up some blue-green gel, and started rubbing along Landon’s leg,
stopping just above his knee as she spread the goop around.

In minutes, Landon was sprawled out, a
blissed-out look on his face. “Oh man it feels tingly and nice,” he told me,
looking at me upside-down from the table.

“It’ll wash off in the bath,” Mackenzie
told me. “Actually, if he runs into soreness at night or in the mornings, you
could probably use some of this.” She picked up the jar and showed me the
label. “But if it’s persistent pain, you should take him to the doctor.”

A few minutes later, Landon was grabbing
his crutches and moving around in circles as I stood with the physical
therapist. “He’s doing really well,” Mackenzie said, putting the clipboard
aside and sitting down at her desk. “I’m really pleased with his progress. He’s
going to have to keep going, but I can tell you’ve been working with him in
off-hours,” she said, giving me a little smile.

“Even after only a couple of sessions?”
Mackenzie nodded.

“He’s retaining the exercises really
well—which tells me he’s practicing them away from here. I’ll evaluate him in
another couple of sessions, just to measure his progress, but he’s making a
very good recovery overall.”

“I’m relieved,” I said, grinning as I saw
Landon talking to one of the other kids his age that had finished up. “I’m
actually worried sometimes that I’m not doing things right—that I might be
undoing all the progress he makes here.”

“Unless you’re pushing him beyond what he
can do, you should be fine,” Mackenzie said, smiling at me. I had an idea and
for a second I rejected it; but then I thought about it again and decided to go
full speed ahead.

“I know this probably isn’t the thing to
do, but could I have your number? In case something happens, I’d like to be
able to call you and hear if I should take Landon to the hospital or if I’m
just being overprotective and worrying too hard.” Mackenzie looked up at me for
a moment, her big, bright eyes uncertain, but then she shrugged.

“As long as you keep it professional, I
don’t mind,” she said finally. I watched her grab a scrap of paper off of a pad
on her desk. She scribbled a number on it quickly and handed it to me. “I’m
always happy to answer questions or help people with concerns that they have.”
I nodded.

“I really appreciate it,” I told her. I
realized that Landon and I had stayed more than ten minutes past the end of our
appointment time. “Come on shrimp,” I called to him. “We need to get you home
and get some dinner in you.”

“I’ll see you again soon, Landon,”
Mackenzie told my son, waving back at him as I led my little boy out of the
clinic.

Chapter Five - Mackenzie

I wandered into the kitchen in my
apartment as the microwave chirped at me again and again, words flashing on the
screen telling me that my food was ready; it was only about eight o’clock, but
I was already starting to get sleepy and I told myself that it was for the best
that I hadn’t gone to Cynthia’s party after work. “Just look at what I would
have missed out on,” I said wryly to myself. I’d managed to get two loads of
laundry done and take a shower between leaving work and finally getting hungry
enough to heat up some leftovers in the microwave. If I’d gone to the party, I
would have ended up crashing at ten or later, with the laundry undone, and I’d
have to wake up an hour earlier to get my shower in so that I could get my hair
dry before I left for work.

The truth was that while part of me had
wanted to go to the party, I had ended the day tired, and I knew I wouldn’t be
a very good addition to the festivities. I love the holidays—but being around a
bunch of happy couples was not my idea of a great way to celebrate, and I knew
that I’d be one of maybe five people at the party who didn’t already have
someone. With odds like that, I’d either end up being chased underneath a fake
mistletoe branch by a desperate guy for a “joke,” or I’d be in the corner most
of the night, talking to whoever passed by but mostly just looking a little
pathetic. I’d told Cynthia that I had a bunch of stuff to catch up on at the
apartment, but mostly I was catching up on one of my favorite sitcoms.

I took my food out of the microwave and
stirred it, checking the bottom of the Tupperware to make sure it had heated
through. I decided that just because it was a night in, it didn’t mean that I
couldn’t celebrate a little, and opened the fridge to get the half-empty bottle
of wine out of the door. I doubted that the vintners that had bottled it
expected for someone to pair it with a tuna casserole, but I figured that a
white wine at least went with fish.