Chapter Text
Tina looked down at the slip of paper in her hand, squinting at the smudged numbers of the address and trying to make sure she had the right one. In her hurry to escape the doctor’s office, she shoved the referral with still wet ink into her pocket without another thought.
Now, she questioned her judgment. There was no way her doctor sent her to someplace called Mount Saint Healin’s.
Then again, she hummed in surrender, that seemed par for the course for their town. Who was she to expect a place to be called Seymour’s Bay Physical Therapy?
Beggars and choosers, she shrugged. Pocketing the referral, Tina winced as she accidentally grazed her hip. With a final sigh, she waited until she could “casually” follow behind someone else opening the door and then “inconspicuously” limped after them into the building.
Tina’s unwitting assistant noticed right away and doubled back to hold open the door just a little longer, pity seeping out of every pore while watching her pathetic attempt to make it to the front desk. She thanked them through the embarrassment.
“Hi. I- uhh, hi,” Tina said with a wheeze. The receptionist waited patiently until she caught her breath. After a big sigh, she offered a weak smile and explanation. “My doctor made an appointment for me. I hope? She said she was calling today.”
“Oh, Dr. Salt, right?” The receptionist confirmed. “She’s great at what she does! Not so great at planning ahead, but thankfully we were able to squeeze you in. Have you had a PT consult before?”
“If PT stands for pier treat, where I get to check out all the man candy at the beach, then I sure have.” Before even seeing if her joke would land, she corrected herself with nervous laughter. “Ha ha, I’m kidding, no I- no. I haven’t. Sorry, I’m nervous.”
“No worries, it happens!” Standing behind the desk, the receptionist gestured for Tina to leave her stack of documents on the counter. “Welcome to our facilities, I’m Kashae, and I’ll be processing your paperwork. It looks like you’ve got everything here, so why don’t I take you on a little tour?”
“Will that uhh… involve a lot of walking? I’m good to just… see things from here actually.” With a cursory look around, Tina nodded as she appraised the well-decorated lobby’s assortment of art and potted plants.
Momentarily startling her, she glanced at a poster of the team and saw someone who almost looked suspiciously like her old flame, but she brushed it off as that old habit of spotting her ex everywhere rearing its head. And here she thought her cold turkey method had been a success.
Wait, she had to convince the receptionist she didn’t need a tour.
“Yeah, nice,” Tina hummed thoughtfully. “Good, um, walls. And ceiling. Veryyy nice.”
“Ooo, that bad, huh?”
“It’s… not good.”
She thought back to the incident that wound up sending her here in the first place.
“Sweetie, wait just a second, we’ll help,” Linda assured her as she darted through the piles of cardboard to Tina. “Won’t we, Bobby?” She said with a strong hint that Bob needed to put down the vegetable peeler and pick up packing tape. “Here, lemme just-”
“Lin,” Bob called from the kitchen, sensing his wife moving towards a box. “Remember, no heavy lifting until your sprain’s completely healed. I’ll be there in a second.”
“Aw nuts,” Linda humphed and eyed the brace wrapping her wrist. In the face of not being able to help, she switched gears to offer a back up plan. “Well, you could also change your mind? Unpack all this and move back in and live with mommy? Doesn’t that sound nice?”
“It does, but I… almost got it,” Tina said, balancing the box of her journals on another box of her journals. After graduating from Pennington University, she was done with dorms and finally found something a little more permanent. Something perfect. That meant being a real adult, collecting her stuff, and moving it out—instead of using her parents for free storage. If she was going to lug these boxes into her new apartment, she needed to get used to doing it herself.
Her stack wobbled, but she took another step closer to the stairs.
Had she really written this much erotic friend fiction? Maybe Bob snuck some of Linda’s dime novels in here. He was always jealous of Fabio and the way Linda giggled when she saw him.
“Dad, did you-”
And those were the last words she spoke as a woman who could walk without wincing, tumbling down the stairs and landing in a black and white heap of college-ruled pain.
“My baby!” Linda cried, hurrying to Tina’s side. She tried her best to right her daughter, but the jostling only made the shooting pain in her hip worse.
“Ow! I’m- not okay.”
Later, after some ice and a swarm of apologies, they sat in the kitchen together. Bob pointed at Linda’s wrist and offered, “We know a good doctor.”
“Dr. Pepper!” Linda exclaimed as he dug around in their junk drawer.
“Salt, Lin, Dr. Salt.”
“No, Pepper.” Her eyebrows furrowed when Bob produced the business card proving her wrong. “Why do I remember it…”
“You thought it was funny and kept making that joke until it stuck.”
“Ohhh…”
“Hip labral tear,” Tina said finally. “Nothing too serious right now, but I remember when my dad tore his labrum. I know I need to treat it. And I’d like to do it without surgery, if possible?”
“You’ve come to the right place,” Kashae said with a nod, already heading towards one of the doors leading to the back. “If you want, you can wait right here, and I’ll go get the therapist to meet you.”
“That would be great.”
Alone with her thoughts, Tina scanned the lobby and waited.
No one else seemed to be injured today; the area completely empty. Or, maybe they had better things to do on a Monday morning. Whatever the case, Tina hoped the sparse amount of people wasn’t a sign of poor care.
Not like her insurance could afford to send her anywhere else, but a girl could dream. Mostly the dreams consisted of finding some big corporate hot-shot who would put her on his insurance plan and make sure she never got injured again (… and someone who was also kind and loving and took care of horses and had an accent, all the important stuff too).
Until then, it was just her on her lonesome employee only plan, hobbling through life and trying to make clumsiness work for her.
She shook off the dread, reminding herself she had no reason to be worried. The lobby was nice, so they had to have good therapists.
Tina squinted at the poster that caught her eye earlier, trying to get a better angle at who might be treating her, even from so far away. Something in that swoop of chestnut hair on that one man seemed so… familiar…
Huh, was that…
“Sorry for the wait!” Kashae announced her arrival back to the lobby. “Please meet your new physical therapist.”
“Hi there, I’m- Tina?”
“Wow, your name’s Tina too?” She asked while turning to face who would be helping her heal for the next few weeks. “Because I’m-”
Her sentence stopped midway.
A man she hadn’t seen in four years stood with his arm extended while surprise took over his face. She tried picturing a vest over the tighter-fitting scrubs (shouldn’t those be loose?), but the image didn’t come together in time, and she scrambled to remember the conversation.
“I’m Tina,” she finished lamely.
“Yeah, I know,” Jimmy Jr. said. He blinked a few times and cleared his throat. “I’m- uh, Jimmy Jr.”
“Yeah,” she sighed, as though the reveal literally knocked the wind out of her. “I know.”