Love Still Stands (10 page)

“Yes, yes, I know.” Bethel didn’t need the recitation of her injuries and the words
relating to her female parts only served to deepen her embarrassment. “Do we need
to talk about this?”

Doctor Karen looked around, her thick brown eyebrows lifted, giving her a quizzical
expression. “Do you want children?”

“Jah—yes.”

“Then we need to talk about these things.” She wheeled across the slick tiles within
inches of the table. “There’s a notation in your files about your faith. Your lifestyle,
if you will. I don’t know much about it, but trust me, everyone here is in the same
boat as you. Georgia and I and the other staff members are the only ones who will
see you in this gown. The PT is a different thing. Everyone uses the equipment. Do
you own workout clothes?”

“Workout clothes?”

“A T-shirt. Sweatpants. Shorts. Sneakers.”

Sneakers. She had sneakers. Feeling like a student trying to please her teacher, Bethel
almost raised her hand. “I have sneakers. At home, I have sneakers. But no shorts.
No sweatpants. We only wear dresses.”

“The sneakers are a start. We’ll work something out.” Doctor Karen smiled as if pleased
with her star pupil. “Now let me take a look at you.”

“A look at me?” Bethel clutched the gown to her. “Is that necessary?”

“I’m a nationally certified physical therapist with a doctorate degree. It’s what
I do.” She patted Bethel’s arm. Her hand was cool and soft. “I need to see where you
are so I can benchmark your improvement. Based on your records and exam, I can design
a rehabilitation program for you. I’m not doing this to be intrusive or to embarrass
you. I promise you that. Do you trust me?”

Bethel licked dry lips. She eyed the door. It was only a few feet away. She could
escape. If she could get down, which she couldn’t. If she could reach her crutches
before she fell. Which she wouldn’t. Wasn’t that the whole point? “I do. I trust you.”

Doctor Karen picked up a plastic circle that had two long arms on it. “Lie back. I
need to get a baseline on your range of motion so we can track your improvement as
we go along.” She held up the plastic gizmo. “Don’t worry. This is just like a ruler.
It’s called a goniometer. It won’t hurt, I promise.”

Bethel leaned back and stared at the ceiling. She followed Doctor Karen’s orders.
Lifting and bending, trying to ignore the spasms in her back. She breathed.
In and out. In and out
. It would be over soon. Wouldn’t it?

“Good. Prop yourself up on your elbows.” Doctor Karen laid down the gonio—the whatever
the thing was called—and removed her glasses, letting them dangle from a chain around
her neck. She put her hand on the sole of Bethel’s bare foot. “Okay, I want you to
push down like you’re pushing on the gas.”

“On the gas?” Bethel wanted to follow directions. She wanted to be a good patient.
She wanted to walk again. “I don’t…What do you mean?”

“Push. I want to see how much strength you have in your leg.” Doctor Karen looked
as perplexed as Bethel felt. “Oh, oh, I forgot. You guys don’t drive, do you? Okay,
just push down as hard as you can.”

Bethel did as she was told. Doctor Karen seemed to be watching her face as if trying
to read her expression. Making a clucking noise in the back of her throat, she tried
Bethel’s other foot, then wrote something on the paper on a clipboard. “Does it cause
you pain to do that?”

“A little.” No more than trying to walk did. “Mostly in my back.”

Nodding, her expression concerned, Doctor Karen brushed her fingers across the skin
on Bethel’s right leg. “Do you feel that?”

Suppressing a sudden giggle that had nothing to do with how she felt at that moment,
Bethel nodded. “It tickles.”

Doctor Karen repeated the action on the other leg. “How about this?”

Bethel couldn’t help it. The giggle escaped. Doctor Karen must think she was a silly
girl. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s a good sign. Let’s get you up.” Doctor Karen held out a hand. “I want
to see how you stand and walk.”

The next fifteen minutes were excruciating. Not because of the pain she felt as she
tried to stand straight for the doctor or walk without the crutches and then with
them, but because of the agonizing embarrassment of being so exposed before a stranger,
doctor or not.

Bethel gritted her teeth, acutely aware of the doctor’s light breathing and scent
of lilacs.
Gott, help me. I will not cry. I will not cry
.

“You’re doing fine.” Doctor Karen patted Bethel’s shoulder. “Your range of motion
has actually increased a bit from what Doctor Burns recorded. That’s a good sign.”

Bethel inhaled and blew out air, letting the pain seep away. She managed a nod.

“It doesn’t look like the pain is any better, however.” The skin creased on Doctor
Karen’s forehead as she lifted her eyebrows. “I can give you another prescription
or we can try some injections.”

“No. No, the pain isn’t that bad.” Bethel hated the catch in her voice. She cleared
her throat. “If my range of motion has improved, why can’t I put any weight on my
right leg? Why can’t I walk without the crutches?”

“We need to retrain your muscles. It takes time. And therapy. We need to get you on
the bike. We can do some resistance band exercises, Pilates reformers, some warm water
therapy. I also want you to do some strengthening exercises at home.”

Resistance bands? Warm water therapy? Did that involve getting in a bathtub or a swimming
pool? Bethel drew a shaky breath. “Water therapy?”

“We have a very small indoor swimming pool where you can do exercises in the water.
It puts less strain on your muscles and back, but works the muscles in a therapeutic
way. You’ll see the pool in a minute.” Doctor Karen pursed lips covered in pinkish-purple
lipstick. “Do you have a swimming suit?”

“No.” Physical therapy involved swimming. Who knew? Luke would never allow that, not
here, not with Englisch folks. “Swimming will help me walk again, without the crutches?”

“That’s the idea, but—no pun intended—it’s one step at a time. At the very least,
you could graduate to a cane. How are you sleeping? I noticed on the chart that you’ve
lost five pounds. Are you eating well?”

“I sleep all right. Just more…dreams than before.”

“Nightmares.”

“Sometimes.”

“Loss of appetite?”

“We’ve been moving. We’ve been busy.”

“Moving is stressful on top of what you went through. You’re not back in the classroom,
are you?”

“No.” Stressful? Bethel noticed Englischers tossed that word around a lot. Everything
was stressful. “But I want to be.”

“I’m sure you do, but first we need to build up your strength and that means eating
right and getting plenty of rest. I’ll send home some handouts with you. Lots of protein
and carbs.”

Protein and carbs? They ate the food they grew.

“I also think you’ll benefit from our support group.”

“Support group?” Her stomach swooped and she almost lost the few bites of bacon, eggs,
and toast she’d eaten for breakfast. “Support like…what does that mean?”

“This is a full service wellness clinic. We treat both the mind and the body of folks
with your kind of challenges. We have a staff person who facilitates group therapy
sessions. It’s a chance for you to sit down with some other folks who’ve been through
what you’ve been through. Talk about it. Vent. Get it out of your system so you start
to eat and sleep better. A lot of folks find it helpful.”

School desks and a stove had fallen on other people? Bethel had no desire to talk
to people about her experience. Besides, the more commitments she had here, the longer
she kept Elijah waiting. She checked the clock again. Another five minutes had passed.
“It’s my legs that need help. The rest of me is fine.”

“Sometimes we tell ourselves that we’re fine, but when our bodies are hurt and they
won’t do the things we’ve always been able to do—basic things, like walking—it affects
our mind. The mind is a powerful tool in healing the body.”

“I don’t understand.”

“If your mind thinks you can’t do something, then you can’t. If you believe you can
do something, you’ll be able to do it.”

“To fix my mind, I have to talk to strangers about what happened?”

“Sometimes, it’s easier to talk to strangers. They have no preconceived notions about
who you are. They aren’t judging you. They aren’t asking you to be who or what you
were before your accident.”

Bethel wavered. Everything Doctor Karen said made sense. She couldn’t talk to Leah.
Leah had her own problems and she needed Bethel’s help. All she saw was a sister on
crutches who couldn’t carry her own weight. Literally. And who else was there? All
her friends were married and having babies. Her bruders were married with fraas who
were having babies. Her mudder and daed. They couldn’t understand why no one had wanted
to marry their youngest daughter. Now, even less. If she fixed her legs, she might
still have that chance to be a wife and a mother. To have her new start. Apparently
that started with fixing her mind. “I’ll do it.” She hesitated. “I mean, I’ll talk
to my family to make sure it’s okay.”

“Talk fast.” Her tone firm, Doctor Karen slapped her glasses back on her nose and
gazed at Bethel over the top of them. “You start your first session tomorrow.”

“I have to ask my brother-in-law if it’s okay. We have rules.”

“Your brother-in-law?” Her gaze sharpened. She reminded Bethel of Mudder with her
no-nonsense approach to life. “I’m not sure what he has to do with your health care.”

“He’s not just my brother-in-law; he’s the bishop. He interprets the Ordnung.”

“The what? Never mind. If he gives you any trouble, you give me a call. I’ll talk
to him.”

“We don’t have a phone.”

“No phone?” She contemplated Bethel as if trying to decide if she was serious. “I
can deal with that. I sometimes wish I didn’t have a phone. Especially late at night.
Come get me and I’ll drive out to see him.”

“I don’t think that’s a good—”

“Right now, I want you to get dressed and meet me in the hallway. I’ll show you around
the PT room.”

Despite her concern over Luke’s reaction to sweatpants and therapy groups, Bethel
didn’t need a second invitation. Doctor Karen helped her down from the table and kindly
left the room while Bethel huddled behind the curtain and dressed. A certain, surprising
sense of relief and comfort flooded her when she grabbed her crutches and stuck them
under arms. She could leave the room under her own steam.

That sense of relief drained away when she followed Doctor Karen into the physical
therapy room. It was large and airy with overhead ceiling fans and long banks of strange-looking
equipment. A bicycle that didn’t go anywhere. Rows of weights. A woman wrestled with
a red, stretchy rubber thing tied to a pole. A man in a blue outfit that looked similar
to Georgia’s sat on a bench across from a man in a wheelchair, throwing him a large
striped beach ball. Every time the man caught it between hands with fingers that didn’t
straighten and tossed it back, the man in blue clapped and whooped like a kid at a
baseball game. “Way to go, Jay! Way to go!”

Doctor Karen closed the door behind Bethel. “Can you see why you’ll need sweatpants
and a T-shirt or some other kind of workout clothes?”

Bethel surveyed the other patients. Mostly men, all dressed in sweat-stained T-shirts
and shorts. Shawn McCormack pumped handheld weights, his face red with exertion, veins
bulging in his temples and in his bare biceps. He wore dark blue shorts and a white
T-shirt with the sleeves cut off. His legs seemed skinny and shriveled compared to
his broad, massive chest.

He saw her a second after she saw him. He grinned and pumped the weight over his head.
“Darlin’—I mean Bethel! Welcome to the torture chamber.”

“I can’t.” Her stomach rocking and her heart pounding, Bethel slid around on her crutches
and faced Doctor Karen. “I can’t do this.”

“You need to do this. It’s the only chance you have of getting the full use of your
legs again.”

“I understand that. I want to do it. But not here. I can’t do it here.”

“I don’t understand.” Doctor Karen’s gaze did the once-over on Bethel’s clothes again.
“Is this related to your religion?”

“Sort of.” Her skin burned white hot. She groped for words. “I need to keep myself
covered. I can’t do this.” She waved her hand toward the equipment. “I can’t do this
in front of…other people.”

“You mean men.”

Bethel nodded so hard her head hurt. The doctor would understand, surely.

Doctor Karen wrinkled her nose. She scratched it and sniffed. “I’ll tell you what.
Can you be here at seven in the morning? Is that too early?”

“I’m usually up by five.”

“No one will be here that early to unlock the door. But if you show up around seven
tomorrow, I’ll meet you here. You’ll have the place to yourself for an hour before
we open to the rest of the patients.”

Relief made Bethel’s limbs weak. For once, she was glad of the crutches under her
arms, propping her up. She wanted to get better, but Luke, her new bishop, would never
allow something like this. It seemed selfish to want the place to herself, but it
wouldn’t work otherwise. “I’ll be here.”