Ainslee felt sweat fusing her to the hard plastic seat on the MAX the day after her trail ride with Myra. She’d had to walk a quarter mile from her apartment to catch the train and she was dreading the two blocks from the station to her physical therapist’s office. The temperature was pushing ninety on a cloudless summer day, and the heat, combined with her sore muscles, made Ainslee cranky. She had refused to sit in one of the handicapped seats near the door, so she stood in line with a crowd of people who were disembarking at her stop and slowly filed through the door.
She stood near the brick wall of a department store and considered her choices. Head north to the therapist’s office, or cross the street and rest in an air-conditioned café? She had already dropped out of three different PT programs. None had been failures—she’d seen improvements along the way, but she’d always found some reason to stop going. She didn’t get the point of endless sessions. No therapist would ever make her whole again.
This therapist, however, was the link between her and Myra’s riding program. He had filled out an application for her and had encouraged her to try the lessons. He’d be certain to tell Myra if Ainslee went AWOL and didn’t make her appointment. The imagined look of disappointment on Myra’s face was enough to make Ainslee push away from the building and start walking north.
Her thighs protested her accustomed way of walking with her prosthesis. She usually tried to keep tension in her hips, controlling the swing of her walk to make her limp as unobtrusive as possible, but yesterday’s trot on Deacon had turned her muscles to mush. She stepped out of the flow of people and rested near the curb. She thought about Myra’s words to her, and the way she had been pushing herself off balance by trying too hard to restrict movement. The memory of Myra’s hands on her leg and under her thigh made her uncomfortably aware of every sensation in her legs. The friction of denim and the warmth of the sun seemed to set her nerve endings on fire, but she tried to ignore her arousal and focus on the concept Myra had been teaching.
Ainslee started walking again, but she stopped fighting her prosthesis and let her leg find a new, natural way of moving. Instead of trying to hide her limp and move like she used to before her surgery, she relaxed her hips and swung her leg forward. She wasn’t sure how she looked from a bystander’s point of view, but she felt some relief in her aching muscles. Once she was inside the office and on the treadmill warming up for her appointment, she kept the same loose stride.
“What did you change?” Dr. Campbell asked, coming over to where Ainslee was exercising. “Your gait is better. Range of motion, smoothness. What are you doing differently?”
Ainslee told him about her experience with Deacon’s trot and the way she’d incorporated the lesson into her walk. She was able to balance without the handrails while he increased her speed. “I feel more inside myself,” she said, struggling to find the right way to express what she was feeling. She’d never had to think about her body before. She’d walked, jogged, sparred, and made love without giving the processes much thought—her body had simply done what she wanted it to do. Not anymore. “I guess I was detached in a way, like I was moving the legs of a puppet.”
“Perfectly normal,” Dr. Campbell said. “At first, the prosthesis is a foreign object. Something to be manipulated and controlled, not a part of you.”
What if I don’t want it to be a part of me? Ainslee didn’t ask the question out loud. What was the point? She didn’t have any choice now.
Dr. Campbell raised the incline on the treadmill and Ainslee had to work too hard at keeping her balance to let her thoughts dwell on her misfortune. Her respiration increased, and she reveled in the feeling of balance and strength even though she was nowhere near her former fitness level.
“Riding is improving your core strength and your upper body control,” Dr. Campbell said, with a hint of satisfaction in his voice. He’d never be unprofessional enough to say I told you so, but Ainslee had a feeling he was thinking about the conversation they had when he’d first brought up the possibility of lessons. Ainslee had been reluctant, and he had listed the benefits she’d likely experience. She’d been afraid of the idea—she had been afraid of almost everything at first—and she’d much rather have exercised on a safe treadmill than on an unpredictable horse. He was right about the physical aspects of riding, and she was seeing the results more clearly today than she had so far.
When they moved to the parallel bars for a single-limb standing exercise, Ainslee could feel an even more pronounced improvement. She held one of the bars with her right hand while she balanced on her prosthesis and slowly lifted her sound foot onto a box in front of her. When she’d first had to perform this exercise, she had gripped the bars with both hands and had rushed to get her left foot on the solid box. Now, she repeated the movement several times while she told Dr. Campbell about the way she balanced on her right leg to mount Deacon.
“I also had to keep my weight on my right leg when I climbed in the hay barn one day while I was waiting for my ride to pick me up,” she said, omitting the part about Myra kicking her out of the lesson. She took her hand off the parallel bar and stepped onto the box without any assistance. “The bales were stacked about twenty high and I got all the way to the top. It felt good to accomplish something tangible, even though it wasn’t a big deal. I’m sure the teenagers at the barn climb up and down those bales like monkeys.”
“I’m proud of you, Ainslee,” he said. “I don’t care if the climb would be easy for anyone else. I know what it took for you to get to the top.”
Ainslee smiled at his words. She was proud of herself, too, but it felt nice to hear from someone who understood her situation. She was accustomed to having him and her other doctors look at her with worried expressions, their concern for her clearly evident on their faces. She had felt a little guilty about her own lack of engagement in her healing process when everyone else—including Myra—seemed to care so much more than she did. Still, she had been too wrapped up in her own mind, where she needed to hide and heal. She hadn’t had any energy left over to reassure them.
Today, though, she felt able to move past her own thoughts and pay attention to someone else’s. She wasn’t sure if it was because she was physically stronger or if it was due to the trail ride with Myra when she’d felt her world expand a little as they moved outside of the arena and in the woods. Dr. Campbell was obviously pleased with her riding experiences, and she felt good about making a doctor smile instead of frown with worry.
By the time she finished her exercises and got back on the train, she felt as if every muscle in her body was going on strike. She sagged in her seat and watched the buildings rush by as the MAX took her back toward her apartment. She felt physically bruised, but she’d become even stronger because of the exertion. She only wished her emotional, fearful, angry parts could heal as quickly. Those parts of her still recognized how comparatively weak she was.
She sighed and leaned her head against the window. She was grateful to Myra for helping her get some of her strength back. The exercises she did on Deacon during lessons were obviously making her stronger and more flexible, and Myra’s advice and astute observations had made Ainslee rethink how she walked and moved. Ainslee had to be very careful not to confuse her gratitude with real attraction, even though she didn’t seem to need the same distinction with her other doctors and therapists.
Ainslee stretched her legs in front of her and kneaded a tight knot in her thigh. She felt Myra’s hands on her again, as if the sensation had been burned into her mind. Ainslee had been poked and prodded by numerous people since her accident and surgery. She usually recoiled from their touch because it was symbolic of her weakness. But she craved Myra’s hands on her. When Myra had held her leg and helped her learn to balance in the saddle, Ainslee had felt safe and supported. But the burden was too much to place on anyone else. Ainslee needed to find a way to stand on her own.
Still, harboring a small, secret dream of the future seemed healthy enough. Ainslee couldn’t fool herself forever—her interest in Myra wasn’t some sort of transference or misinterpreted gratitude. She would have felt the same attraction to her if they’d met before the accident. The only difference was that Ainslee wouldn’t have been afraid to act on her feelings when she was whole.