Archive of Our Own

I’m more nervous than is probably reasonable while I’m sitting at home waiting for Joey to come by for my first official massage therapy appointment. I finally wrapped my head around it enough to tell him yes, I want to schedule one, but now that the day is here, I feel almost like backing out. There’s something terrifying about it. I want it with every inch of my skin, but some part of my heart is being made uncomfortable by the thought of losing this deprivation which has defined me for decades.

That’s dumb. It’s just scary because it’s a lot and I’m not used to it. But it’s going to be nice, and I need to stop freaking out about it.

Joey told me I should try to relax a bit before he got there. I’m supposed to put the NSAID lotion on an hour beforehand and to use just a little bit more than I normally do. I did that and now I’m curled up on the couch with the blanket that the crew gifted me listening to music with my eyes closed. I’m breathing slowly and trying to imagine the sensation of skin against my skin, which is something that my brain is in the habit of chasing me away from after twenty-five years of not allowing myself to fantasize about it. 

More than twenty-five years, honestly. I don’t really love thinking about this, but I was totally touch-starved back on Earth as well. Apart from that one romantic relationship that ended so poorly, I didn’t have anybody in my life who it was acceptable for me to touch more than casually. I remember one instance, pretty early in that relationship, where she put her hand under my shirt and had been just kind of trailing her fingers over my back while we were watching a movie together. It had felt addicting. I hadn’t ever been particularly enthused about the sex—it was fine, I enjoyed it most of the time, but it wasn’t what I was actually craving. I just wanted the cuddles, which had been embarrassing and had felt really immature at the time. Now I know that my younger self had the right idea. Never once in the twenty-five years I've lived away from Earth have I lamented not being able to have a sexual partner, but I'd have been willing to give up my right arm for a shoulder rub or something.

Now I don't even have to give up my right arm. I just. Get to be touched. By someone who professionally knows how to make it not hurt and who seems inherently incapable of thinking any of my responses are weird. I'm so lucky.

Joey arrives and knocks and comes in when I invite him in. “Hey, Grace,” he says. “You look cozy!”

“I'm obsessed with this blanket,” I tell him. “I've been carrying it between the couch and my bed like I'm a toddler. It's so soft.”

“Glad you like it. We can get you a second one,” he offers.

“You've all given me so much already,” I protest weakly.

He raises an eyebrow. “Okay, Mr. Savior of the Planet? And we're going to keep giving you everything we can for as long as we can. Happily. We have extra blankets. We would give you one of ours even if we didn't have extras. We'll get you a second one.” And he sits down in the armchair. “So, how are you doing today?”

When I recover slightly from the first part of what he said, I reply, “I'm alright. How about you?”

“I'm doing good. With the social pleasantries out of the way, how are you, Grace? I mean physically. How's the pain today?”

Right. He is a medical professional here for a medical reason. I sit up a little more and wince. “The lotion has been helping so much. I don't usually get higher than a 5 on your pain scale when I'm using it. That's where I'm at right now, maybe 4.5.”

“Better than the 6, 6.5 baseline you've been at for a while,” Joey says. “That's good. I really want to see that number down below a 4 soon, in comfort if not in function. That means even if you wouldn't be able to get up and walk around without hurting, you could be in bed or in your wheelchair without as much of the background noise of pain.”

Immediately, I tear up.

“Oh, Grace,” he sighs.

“Sorry, I'm just…I haven't…I…”

“You're okay. I get it. I know. You've been really hurting for a long time,” he acknowledges very softly. “We'll keep working on the medication situation, too, but in the meantime, I'm almost positive I can get you down to at least a 4 today. My actual goal is a 3. Sound good?”

“Sounds like magic,” I say shakily.

He holds his hands up. “I've got a little of that, I've been told. You still want to give massage therapy a go today, right?”

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

“Where would you be most comfortable to get started? We could do it here, at your bed, or on the exam table in your room with the Hail Mary's medical robot,” he says. “And you'd be laying down. Or sitting up if that would be more comfortable for you.”

Two of those locations do not feel like options to me. I'm not going to lay down on that cold table in the medical room unless I have to, and it just feels weird to do it in my bedroom. “I'd rather stay out here on the couch, if that's okay.”

“Absolutely,” Joey assures me. “Not a problem. I figured that would be your preference. And like I said, I'll have you either lay on your stomach or sit facing an arm or the back of the couch if there's a comfortable position to do that for you.”

“I'll lay down, I think.”

“And last big question for now, do you want to keep your shirt on or take it off? Entirely up to your comfort level,” Joey says.

I shift.

“Truly okay either way,” he says.

“I…can I admit something? I'm just a bit self-conscious about how scrawny I am these days,” I make myself say.

He nods with an openly sympathetic expression. “Grace, if it makes you feel any better, I've had patients who were far closer to starvation than you are. You're a bit undernourished, for sure, and your spine protrudes and your ribs aren't very padded. But you're not skin and bone. And there's no judgement here. It's only about whether you want me working on top of and around the shirt, or on bare skin.”

That does help, actually. I take another second to think about it and then I take my shirt off.

“You want to lay down now?” Joey asks.

I shiver slightly and lay down on my stomach on the couch, holding the blanket bunched up under my chest and head. It's softer on my skin than the worn upholstery of the couch. I have my head turned to the side so I can breathe and I close my eyes. My stomach is fluttering with anxiety or anticipation or both.

“Is it okay with you if I sit down on the edge of your coffee table?” asks Joey.

“Go for it,” I mumble.

“Alright, Grace. You're going to feel my hand go from the back of your neck to the base of your spine and back up a few times. I'll keep it light, no major pressure. Tell me if it hurts or if you want me to stop.” His warm hand curls around the back of my neck and my body reacts, tensing and pressing up against him with simultaneous need and overwhelm. “Deep breath,” he tells me. “Relax, Grace.”

Deep breaths are hard, but I try anyway. Relaxing is harder.

Just like he said, his hand strokes down my spine all the way to the waistband of my pants and back up to my neck. My breathing gets super shallow. It's like something in my nervous system is completely broken, or at least…I don't know, uncalibrated.

“Is this too much?” Joey asks.

“I don't think…” I struggle to say. “Don't think that's a useful question, Joey, sorry.”

“Do you want me to stop?” he clarifies.

“No.”

“Okay, then you just focus on breathing. In through your nose, out through your mouth,” he says as he makes another sweeping pass up and down my back. “I tend to err on the side of being a little too chatty during appointments, by the way, but if that's not helpful and you'd rather I be a little quieter, you can tell me. I won't be offended.”

“No, I like the talking,” I manage to say. “It makes it less…strange. I think. Ohh—” I bite my lip hard enough to hurt to cut off the pathetic little noise I was about to make.

“I've gotcha,” Joey says. “Breathe, remember. Just focus on that.” Again, his hand travels the length of my spine. And again, I tense. This time I flinch away.

The skin everywhere else on my torso is aching, I realize. It's not just that it's overwhelming where he is touching me, but also that the rest of me is begging for the same sensation. “Joey?” I say in a trembly little pleading voice.

“Yeah?”

“I…can…can you…”

“You can ask me for stuff,” he tells me after a minute of silence when it's probably pretty clear that I'm not going to figure out what I'm trying to say on my own. “Do me the favor of telling me what would help you the most. Make my job easier, if it helps to think about it like that. What would feel the best for you right now, Grace?”

That does help. I sniffle into the blanket. “You're just…just touching the center of my back right now. Can you do, um, other places? Like, off to the sides, ‘n my shoulders?” A bit of shame for asking for anything more when this is already so much curls in my belly.

“Ohh, of course. Yeah, I gotcha. I probably should have started with that, just letting you get used to being touched. Then I can focus on massaging for the pain once it feels like it's leveling out for you. Alright, here you go.” And he smooths his palm over the top of my shoulders, just like that. 

It was that easy. I just had to ask. I'm left reeling. 

“I'm going to touch with both hands now,” he warns me. “Breathe. I know it's a lot.”

I squeeze my eyes shut to force back tears as now two hands rub at my shoulders and then slide slowly down my upper arms. His touch moves back up, then to my shoulder blades, then out to the sides of my ribcage. I gasp. My heart feels full to bursting. A flood of neurotransmitters that I'm not used to is overwhelming my deprived oxytocin receptors. The fire on my skin and in my chest and my brain feels so good. 

In towards my spine and then out all the way to where my sides touch the couch, Joey rubs methodical ovals down my back. Somewhere along the way, I start weeping. A few tears trickle down the edge of my nose and soak into the blanket.

“This is definitely better, I can tell,” Joey says. “You were tensing and recoiling a bit before, but this is actually relaxing you. Might be because of how tender your spine is, too. Even though I don't think I was putting enough pressure in the middle to hurt, your body was nervous about any touch near where the bones are so fragile.”

I can't talk without my voice breaking, so I don't say anything. 

Like he knows, Joey says, “You okay?”

“Mm-hmm.” I shake with a tiny sob and try to hold my breath.

Joey keeps doing the same motion as he reaches my hips and starts back up. “You're allowed to cry,” he says, so very gently.

I bury my face in the blanket. “You people are too nice,” I say, muffling a louder sob.

“I know,” he says. “We're unbearable. Don't cover your face, you need to breathe.” Now he rubs circles on my upper back. “It's okay, Grace. You're doing fine. This is a normal reaction, I promise. Breathe. Just breathe.”

His other hand presses lower down on my back and rubs from side to side, and a memory hits me. Not a missing memory returning from Earth, but a painful one from twenty-something years ago on the Hail Mary when Rocky and I were well on our way to Erid. I had choked on a bit of the coma slurry/Taumoeba mixture that I was freezing and swallowing before deciding to use an NG tube to avoid having to taste the gross sludge. The choking had been awful. I nearly died, I bruised my stomach terribly giving myself abdominal thrusts over a chair, I had thrown up afterwards, and I couldn't stop crying and panicking. Rocky had been comforting me as best as he could, but all I had wanted was for somebody to hold me, to take care of me. And I had tried to rub my own back to self-soothe. It worked, kinda. But it had also broken my spirit a little to think about how nobody was ever going to do that for me again.

I wish I could go back and tell my younger self that he was wrong, that he was going to feel human touch and physical comfort from somebody not through a xenonite barrier again someday. I think back to that moment and just let myself sink into it even though it makes me cry harder. If I let myself remember it, really remember it, really feel it while this is happening, maybe it'll finally heal.

“You're still allowed to cry,” Joey says, “but you seem more upset now, Grace. Is this still just that you're feeling overwhelmed, or is something else going on?”

“How do you…read my mind like that?” I sob.

“Oh, man. I'm not reading your mind, Grace, I can just feel your body reacting to something.” He touches the base of my neck and then my waist. “You're tightening up here and here while you're crying. What's wrong?”

Through tears, I tell him. I tell him about choking and about how miserable and scary it had been to struggle so much to eat. I even manage to articulate how having to try to comfort myself so I didn't make myself more sick had made me feel so small and alone. Even though Rocky had been right there, and would have done anything for me, he couldn't give me what I had needed. And I had never told Rocky about this because I knew that he would just feel guilty.

Joey rubs my back the whole time I talk. “Grace, I'm sorry that happened to you,” he murmurs. “That…that's awful. I hope you know that it's a totally reasonable thing to have trauma about. If what I'm doing now is helping to heal that trauma, I'm really glad.”

“This feels…” I struggle for breath. “Like something I should have brought t-to Ha-Eun, not you. S-sorry.”

“I don't think it could hurt to talk to Ha-Eun about it, too. But it's okay. You can talk to me about anything you want.” He sighs. “I told you that I was a non-denominational chaplain on Earth, right? I worked in hospitals. I've sat with people through a lot of hard nights, dried a lot of tears. I'm not a psychologist or a counselor, but I'm a pretty good listener. If what you need is emotional support and reassurance or a shoulder to cry on, you can always come to me.”

Oh. Oh. “That last one sounds r-really nice right now,” I barely manage to choke out.

Joey makes a wordless noise of sympathy and understanding, and he helps me sit up and wraps me in a hug, both of us leaning in across the gulf between the couch and the coffee table. And I do cry on his shoulder. And it is really nice. After a moment, he pulls the blanket up around me, and that is also really nice. “Breathe,” he says. “You're okay. It's okay. Cry as much as you need. Just remember to breathe, too. And when you feel better and you can calm down, I will still be here and we can try the massage again.”

I think being told that explicitly helps me calm down much faster than I otherwise would have. There's a part of me that is trying to hoard this comfort, this touch, like I've been doing with the food. I am so afraid of losing it after having it again for such a brief amount of time. But Joey knows that, even though he claims not to be able to read my mind, so he can reassure me about it. He will still be here. He is not going to leave before I am okay and settled and have had enough contact for today.

I feel better. I calm down. I stop crying. Everything feels warm and floaty. I think I'm exhausted. I sit back away from Joey, whisper a thanks, and lay down on the couch on my stomach again without another word.

“If I do the massage for the pain now,” Joey says in a low voice, steady and calm, “do you think that'll be okay? Or do you need more touch to get acclimated first?”

My skin is all tingling pleasantly. I already feel wrung-out, but I'm not feeling the empty ache everywhere that was making it so I couldn't tolerate the focused touch on my spine before. “Think I'll be okay,” I mumble.

“Then—I'm going to say this a lot, sorry if it's getting repetitive—just breathe, okay? Take deep breaths. Try to relax.” His palms rest on either side of my lower back. “I'm going to be doing some exploratory touches to locate tight muscles and tender spots. Listen, now, because this is important. Especially for a patient with fibro. If it hurts, I want you to make noise. Your instinct is going to be to grit your teeth and stay quiet, but that's not what I want you to do. Say ow. Flinch and cry out. Don't suffer in silence. This is not supposed to hurt. If there's ever something I'm going to do that I think will hurt but the benefits outweigh the hurt, I will tell you and I will do what I can to keep it at a tolerable discomfort. Okay?”

“Okay,” I agree.

“If I find out that I did something that hurts and you didn't tell me so I didn't know to stop doing it, I will be really disappointed,” he insists.

I laugh weakly into the blanket. “I got it, Joey. I'll be very vocal if something hurts. I promise. You don't have to hit me with the ‘I'm just disappointed’. I'm the teacher, that's my line.”

“Alright. As long as you understand that it's really important.” He presses in with the tips of his fingers and drags them to the side slowly. I start to tense, but it doesn't hurt, so I let out a breath and slowly relax. “Doing okay?”

“Mm-hmm.”

His fingers circle and prod at my lower back. He hits a painful spot right against my spine on the left side, and he's right—my instinct immediately is to bite down on a corner of the blanket and keep myself silent. Instead, I let out a short groan. 

“Ow,” I say out loud. “Where your left index finger is.”

The pressure there is gone right away. “Noted,” Joey says. “Thank you.” He moves outward from my spine and must find something concerning in the muscle there because he digs his thumb in a little and moves it in a tight circle. I feel something shift under his touch. “Feel that?” he asks.

“I sure do.”

“Nasty knot right there. That's a muscle trying to support your L1 vertebrae, and it's working so hard it's spasming. This whole area here is probably a pain hotspot, right?” He traces a wider circle around the knot with his other hand.

Sure enough, that's one of the most painful places in my back. I nod.

“Let me just…” His thumb continues to work down into the tight muscle. His other hand is busy rubbing more lightly around it, obviously trying to keep me relaxed.

As soon as the pressure starts to hurt, I suck in a sharp breath through my teeth. “Ow.”

He eases off. “Good job. Thank you.”

It's silly how much I like hearing that. I saved two biospheres with intelligent life from extinction, but hearing good job from a medical professional makes me glow with pride. Ridiculous. I'm a grown man. And ohhhh, what he's doing feels so good. He shifts from kneading a circle into that muscle to manipulating up and down over it, alternating between pressure that hovers on the edge of hurting and slow, soothing strokes. Both have me feeling like he's reaching underneath my skin and pulling the tension out by the teeth. There's a little bit of sharpness when he presses down into the center of the knot. It's satisfying, not painful, like scratching a mostly-healed scab. I hum softly, unable to find words to tell him how much it's helping.

“You're doing great,” Joey murmurs. “It's going to take a while, ‘cause I can't really dig into the knots without hurting you, but this is all going to get untangled. Keep breathing. Slow and steady.” His fingers spread out over my back, putting less direct pressure right on the painful spot he found. He's going back to the searching motion. “I'll come back to that spot, I promise. I know it's not fully loosened up yet. I'll circle back to it. But if that one is tight, I bet…yep, there it is.” A little further from my spine and higher up on my back, he finds another knot. “Let's get this one to relax, too. Deep breath, let it out slowly.”

I start to do that, and then wince. He's not pushing harder than he was on the first spot, but something in my nerves here is reacting more. I get the radiating, persistent fibromyalgia pain and I let myself whimper. “Sorry,” I say tightly, “that hurts. Ow, ow, ow…”

“Ooh, shoot, okay.” He rubs the pain away with a flat palm as I breathe shallowly in discomfort. “Sorry about that, Grace. I've gotcha. I'll be more gentle. I'll go for the lower knot on the other side first and then come back to this one, okay? Give it time to recover.”

“Thanks,” I say in a small voice.

“Of course. You're really tense again, try to relax.” Instead of just saying it and expecting me to be able to do it by myself, he goes back to the soothing pattern of both hands stroking from my spine down to my sides and back again. I shiver and relax. “There you go. Alright, let's find the stubborn little bastard on the right side…aha, there it is.” Joey does all of the same motions on this spot that he had on the other side, and it feels just as good. I find myself letting out another contented hum. “That's a good noise, right?” he checks.

I think I probably flush a little because my cheeks feel warm. Luckily my face is mostly hidden in the blanket. “Yeah,” I mumble. “Sorry, I don't mean to be, um—”

“No, no, shush. Don't apologize. Happy noises mean I'm doing my job well. Hey.” He gives me a little tap between the shoulder blades. “You're just a mammal. Remember that.”

I have to chuckle. “Fair enough.” I let go of a little bit of the shame and allow myself to make a few more of those noises as he continues.

“Going back to the spot that got painful now,” he warns me. “I'm going to start much more gently there and work up to the highest pressure that won't hurt.” Just like he says, he touches that spot with two fingers and presses lightly in a little circle. I can feel that he's seeking out the edges of the spasm in the muscle. “When it hurt before, was it fibro pain or did it feel deeper and more like I was hitting an injury?”

“It was the fibro, I think.”

“Gotcha. Going to increase the pressure just a bit. Try not to tense up. I'm not going to push hard. I don’t think it’ll hurt. Breathe.” His hand shifts so that the back of his fingers, his knuckles, are sliding across the spasm. “Is this okay?”

“Mm-hmm.” I can tell that he isn't quite getting to the part of the muscle that's really causing the issue. “You can push a little harder.”

Clearly cautious, he does. When I don't react, he keeps going. First with his knuckles, then with his thumb, and then with the heel of his hand, he works persistently to get that muscle to stop spasming. He cycles through like that, sharp side-to-side motions with the knuckles, small focused circles with the thumb, then gentler circles and a rocking motion with the soft part of his hand. I'm slowly going entirely limp under his hand as he repeats that several times. He gives me a break when he's satisfied with the results in that spot, rubbing lightly at the back of my neck and shoulders before attacking the same muscle on the other side (which is also spasming, though not quite as badly). 

I think he can tell that I'm…well, not quite falling asleep, but falling into a weird, dreamy, almost meditative state, because he's not as chatty as he was at the start. He's occasionally checking in with a quiet, “How are you doing, Grace?” which I try to answer with some kind of positive word or noise. Just like he said he would, he goes back to those first spasms he noticed and works on them some more.

I don't think I've ever felt more like a space blob than I do right now. I feel like all of my blobbiness is melting down into the couch. I'm going boneless, which is pretty impressive since I'm usually very bony. I'm sure I'll hit a wall eventually where being touched is too much again, but right now, I can't imagine ever wanting this to stop. I'm so glad I'm alive to feel this good.

The wall ends up being less of a face-first smack into solid bricks like it was in my intake appointment and more of a stumble into a knee-high fence. I get some jolts of discomfort that pull me back from the trance-like state of mind I've been in. Joey isn't using any more pressure than he has been, but my skin is getting more sensitive and I realize that it’s going to start really hurting if he doesn't stop or use a much lighter touch. I take a deep breath, and I say, “This is really, really helping, and I think it's going to be too much soon. It's just starting to hurt. It's not bad yet, but…”

“Ah, good, thank you for saying something before it got bad. Perfect.” Joey's hands rest flat on my back. “Good. Is it too overwhelming to be touched at all now or was it pressure pain?”

“Pressure pain,” I clarify. Then, boldly, I say, “I don't actually want you to stop completely, if…if you still have time.”

“I have so much time for you, Grace,” he assures me. “You know, we've only been in this appointment for about forty-five minutes. I officially booked you for two hours this afternoon. And I don't have anything urgent after that. We are in no rush.”

“Only forty-five minutes?” I say, surprised.

“Yep. I am so glad you told me that you were reaching a point where it was going to start hurting. If we can avoid any stress and tension in those muscles for a little bit, it's going to be much better for pain management. Here, okay, here's what we're gonna do. You're gonna drink some water, because the massage will be releasing all sorts of lactic acid and stress hormones and other chemical buildup into your bloodstream and we want to help your body flush all of that away. I'm going to help you do a few stretches, and after you've moved a bit, I'll have you put a number on the pain when you lay back down. And then I'll do more really gentle massage until you feel like you're done for the day. How does that sound?”

“Sounds good. You're the professional,” I say with a sudden yawn. “God. Yeah. It's crazy to me that this is…medicine.”

Joey gingerly helps me to sit up and presses a glass of water into my hands. He's keeping a close eye on me, which is good, because I sway with dizziness upon first getting upright. “What do you mean?” he asks with a frown.

Come to think of it, I have no idea what I mean. I attempt to articulate it. “From what I remember, medical professionals just kind of…prescribed pills or treatment and sent you on your way. I did physical therapy once when I broke my ankle in undergrad, but it was just ‘do these exercises twice a day, yes it hurts, suck it up and do it anyway’. It was a sort of ‘no pain, no gain’ situation.” I drink the water. “It just feels like your priorities are different than most medical professionals I remember interacting with on Earth.”

“They probably are,” Joey agrees. “I see what you mean now. Medicine, even physical therapy, isn't generally expected to feel good. Is that what you're saying?”

“Yeah. Yeah, exactly.”

“Firstly, I am lucky enough to get to set my own appointment times,” Joey says with a laugh. “Doctors on Earth, especially in the past, are so rushed. The healthcare systems in a lot of places have more patients than doctors can reasonably take good care of, so it becomes that sort of in and out as quick as we can situation. That's better now than it used to be in a lot of places, but it's hard to get perfect when there just flat out aren't enough medical professionals for the population they're working with. I have the luxury of only having thirty-five patients out here, most of whom don't need even weekly appointments. And I don't have management and insurance people breathing down my neck to get me to hurry up and see more patients.”

“That makes sense.”

“Also, maybe it’s not so much that my priorities are different and more that my skillset is,” he adds. “Because my priority is improving your health and quality of life, and that’s pretty universal for most healthcare providers. But my skillset is doing that through things like advocacy and massage and careful movement at the right level for my patient. Yeah, I do prioritize minimizing pain whenever possible, which I guess isn’t always how people do it. And look, I won’t say I’ve never told a patient to push through PT pain when they’re recovering from an injury, and that being sore is hard to avoid and to use ice packs and distraction and breathing exercises when it gets hard. But there is a world of difference between treating someone with an acute injury with a good chance of a full recovery, and managing pain for someone with multiple chronic pain conditions who hasn’t had relief or treatment for decades. Everyone in pain deserves kindness and pain management, of course, but…” He kind of shakes his head. “I’m not going to lie, Grace. Your situation is really, really severe. There’s a lot going on in your body that you will never actually recover from. Any kind of rigorous exercise would only make it worse. But there’s still plenty that I can do to help you feel better, so that’s what I’m going to do.”

“Oh.” I swallow.

Joey gives me an encouraging little smile. “So, yeah, I’m gonna be more gentle with you than I would be with someone who isn’t in this much pain. It'll be okay, Grace. We're going to help you get to a point where these conditions are manageable even if they aren't fixable. I promise. Are you ready to do some stretching?”

I manage to agree, though for a second I think I'm about to cry again. Joey has me lay down flat on my back on the couch with just a little bit of the blanket under my head for a pillow. He sees me wincing and has me bend my knees, tucking a pillow under them. That takes some of the pressure off my lower back. I'm also starting to notice how loose and not-as-painful my back is as I move. The massage really did help.

“It still probably feels a little sore,” he says. “Try to take a deep breath, all the way down into your diaphragm, and then relax into the stretch as you exhale. Settle into the position. In a minute here, I'm going to help you pull your knees closer to your chest one at a time, and that will give you a nice gentle stretch in your lower back. A tugging or a twinge is normal, severe pain is not. I'm going to slide my hand under the side of your back right here, give you a little extra support.”

“I really, um…” I say as he shows me how to do the stretch, “...appreciate that you tell me everything you're going to do before you do it. That, uh…helps.”

“Standard practice,” he says simply. “But yeah, it helps. It's your body, Grace, it's only right that you get to know and have the chance to have a say in everything that's happening to it.”

My chest gets all tight. I'm having a hard time breathing, all of a sudden.

“Grace?” Joey says, clearly worried. “Let's take a break for a second.” He sets my knee back down. “Hey, you okay?”

“‘m fine,” I lie, my voice very strained. “Just had a weird, uh, moment.” Then I’m almost hyperventilating.

“Looks like a little more than a moment. You're safe, it's alright,” he reassures me. “Oh, you need to breathe. I'm going to help, okay? Is it okay if I put my hand on your belly?”

“Uh, sure.”

His hand rests down lightly just below my solar plexus. “Take a deep breath, Grace. Make my hand go up as much as you can.”

I take in a gulp of air. I'm trembling for some reason as I stare up at the ceiling.

“Good, there you go. Let it out slow, through your mouth. You've got this, good job. Keep lifting up my hand and then letting it fall as much as possible, breathe right down into your belly. Perfect, you're doing great.” Joey watches me with concern. A couple of involuntary tears gather in the corners of my eyes and slip down the sides of my face towards my ears. “Keep breathing. You're okay. It's all okay.”

“S-sorry,” I choke out after a minute. “I don't know what came over me.”

“I said something kind of stupid to a guy who spent years in a coma while a bunch of things happened to your body that you had no say over in the moment and weren't even aware of, that's what,” Joey responds. He sounds frustrated with himself.

Oh, yeah.

“That's it, right?” he checks.

“You're, um…” I sniffle. “Pretty clever. Yeah. That's…I think…”

“I'm sorry. That didn't occur to me before I said it.”

It didn't occur to me that it would seem reasonable to anybody that I have…whatever, anxiety or trauma or some other kind of distress over the induced coma even when they thought I had entered it willingly. But I guess it was pretty terrifying no matter how you slice it. Especially because it killed two of my friends. I let out a little hiccup of a sob.

“You're okay,” Joey murmurs. “You’re safe here. You’re safe with me.”

“I'm sorry,” I repeat.

“It’s okay. You don't have anything to apologize for, it's okay.”

“I'm just tired, I think.”

“Do you want to be done for the day?” 

“No,” I beg. “No, I'm sorry, I'll pull myself together, I…”

“Shhhh,” he says quickly. “It’s okay, Grace. I'm not going anywhere if you don't want me to.” He shifts so he's sitting closer to my head, swapping which hand is on my stomach so he can dry my tears with the side of his thumb. “Breathe, just breathe. You're safe. Nothing's going to happen to you now without you saying it's okay.”

“You're really, really nice,” I find myself saying to him, not for the first time.

“Oh, Grace,” Joey says helplessly.

I'm kind of mortified, but I couldn't have stopped myself from saying it. “I just mean—thank you, for…for being patient, I know I'm not…the easiest person to take care of, when I'm getting all…it's not really your job to…”

“Forget about my job,” he interrupts. “You're a person who's upset. I just want to make sure you're okay. More deep breaths, now. Is there anything else I can do?”

I shake my head. “It just…ha. You hit a sore spot again, I guess. Just, not a physical one this time. It's okay.” I close my eyes and take a shaky breath, focusing on lifting Joey's hand and letting it fall back down. That's a pretty effective way to make sure I'm actually taking deep breaths without just relying on me knowing how to do it in the moment. In an absolutely not surprising at all revelation, I have the thought that Joey is very good at this. I can absolutely see him doing chaplain work at a hospital. It's comforting, also, to know that I'm almost definitely not the patient who has needed the most support in his career. However much of a mess I am with him, he's probably seen worse. “I think I'm okay now,” I say when I no longer feel like there is something sharp lodged in my chest. “I can do more of the stretches. Can we just go slow?”

“As slow as you'd like,” Joey says. “I'm going to help you do the knee raise a few more times, if that's okay?”

“Yep.”

He keeps talking me through it as he goes. It's not the most immediately satisfying stretch I've ever felt, but I think I can tell that it's opening and loosening up some stuff in my lower back. Then he has me turn over and prop myself up with a pillow under my chest and tuck my knees up and lower my butt down to my heels in what he tells me is a “modified child's pose”. With that one I can really feel the stretch, to the point where it gets uncomfortable. I tell Joey that it isn't feeling great. “Pain or discomfort?” he checks.

“It feels like if I stay like this for too long, it's going to really hurt. Especially in the lower back, around my spine.”

“You're having to use too much muscle strength to keep yourself up,” he says immediately. “This stretch should feel relaxing, like you can just rest in it. Hold tight. I'm going to fold up your blanket and tuck it under your chest on top of the pillow to give you a little extra support. Can you raise yourself up on your arms just a couple inches? Good, there you go. Okay, rest back down. Good. Cross your arms over each other just above your head. Now relax.”

“Ohh,” I sigh. The padding and height from the blanket fixed it. So much pressure is getting taken off my spine and my hips.

“Better?”

“It actually feels nice now, yeah.”

“You probably tensed up a bit getting here. Can I do a bit more massage while you're in this position?” he checks.

“Still can't handle much pressure, I think,” I warn.

“Super gentle. I promise.”

“Then yeah. I'd like that.” I hold back a happy sigh as he massages lightly and very intentionally at the muscles in my lower back. Then I think better of it and let out the sigh after all. The touch is melting away the pain and tension there that is being brought to the surface by this stretch.

After a couple of minutes, I realize that I am in less pain than I have been in a very long time. Probably more than a decade. A few more silent tears fall.

Then my knees ache from how they're folded up under me. I mumble that to Joey. He helps me out of the stretch position and has me just lay flat on my front again with my blanket under me. Soft fabric against my bare chest and belly plus the relief from pain and the quiet tingly hum all over the skin on my back from being touched by other human skin in the way that we evolved to need all combines to make me shockingly, blissfully content. 

Joey's hand trails up and down my back. “Moment of truth,” he says warmly. “Let's put a number on it, Grace.”

“Like…2.5.”

“Really?!” Joey asks, sounding delighted.

“What was it you said? In comfort, if not in function? I'm not about to start doing cartwheels,” I laugh. “And that's just the back pain, you know, my knees are still hurting a lot and none of this has helped the burn scars. But I'm feeling pretty darn good right now.”

“That makes me so happy, Grace. Oh, that's amazing.”

“Someone should bottle the feeling of getting a massage after twenty-five years of not touching another living creature,” I say. “Sell it as a drug.” For some reason, I’m getting teary again. “I don’t know how to thank you. I can’t put this into words.”

“Oh, Grace, it’s okay. I gotcha. You don’t need to put anything into words. I can feel it in how relaxed your body is. That is all the thanks I need.”