Unsuspecting Blessing.

xiv

xiv

"That's good," the physician—Mr. Myers was how he introduced himself to Julia—said, as he aided her across what looked like a set of gymnastic balance beams. Brian saw the sweat form on Julia's face, and her skin looked paler than usual.

She must be in terrible pain, Brian thought, but necessity trumps all; though she expressed determination with her movement and slight groans with each bend of the wounded leg. Brian, at this point, felt awkward watching her struggle to walk like he was being some sort of peeping tom with the level of intimacy the session demanded. Without announcement, he left the room to give Julia and her instructor—if that was even the right word, he argued himself—privacy. The first session had nothing to do with Brian; it was more like a prerequisite to see what would be needed on the path to recovery; and eventually he would have to be present to learn the techniques and processes to begin helping Julia on a day-to-day basis with relearning how to walk, and not only that, but how to walk better.

He thought, on his way down the hall and to the stairs that would lead him to the first floor of the two story building, that just relearning how to walk would not be the best option because of how severe the break was in her femur. He recalled looking at the x-rays for the first time and feeling queasy with pity for the poor girl, then he thought about the resolve in her slow steps minutes before. On the first floor, which smelled nothing like the hospital thank God, there were many rooms for probably two dozen different types of physical therapy, an office section, and a reception area. Near the office section of the first floor, right outside the entrance to it, there stood two vending machines side-by-side. One filled with drinks, the other with food. Brian snuffed out two dollar bills from his wallet and bought a small, not-worth-the-price package of beef jerky. Usually he did not spend money on things that were overpriced and poor in quantity, but the stress he felt from knowing he would have to learn how to take care of Julia in another form made his stomach ache. Though, he wondered, the real origin of the stress.

The stress in his stomach turned to anger and fear, then eventually into some anxious creature that would scratch at the stomach lining and tickle the inside until it made Brian want to dry heave. He stopped at the reception desk, and asked where the bathrooms were.

"Are you a patient?" the lady behind the desk asked.

"No, but my friend is," he said, knowing what was going to come next.

"Well are bathrooms are patients only, sir you would have to—"

"Please," he interrupted, nearly raising his voice, "it's an emergency."

"Okay," she gave in, "if you walk into the office area," she pointed to it, "it will be on the left side."

Brian hurried into the bathroom and the door slammed shut behind him, the noise of it all, including his own feet beneath him, pounding in his head like a gong echoing through a temple. He looked in the mirror, then ran the sink with cold water. He washed his hands underneath, and placed them on his forehead. He felt sick. And he knew why he felt sick, it was the same reason his relationship in the eighth grade burned up like an unattended match. Jealousy. The age old foe, the line drawn between pacifism and violence, the bearer of unwanted mutation that formed the green-eyed monster. He thought back to his freshman year in high school, when he read The Great Gatsby for the first time, and his teacher Mrs. Sharlot used the term to describe Daisy's husband. He could not remember the name of the husband, but he knew he did not want to be like him. The jealousy, he knew, grew in his stomach the more he thought about Julia having help from that physician, Myers. Forming an image of the man in his head only caused a shadowy blackness in the shape of a man to appear, he could not force himself to really think of what Myers really looked like.