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“Well Kylie was right. So was I, for that matter. Are you wearing a brace?”
“No,” he grunted and used the handrails to pull himself up another step. “I’m seeing my friend Dane—”
“Dane, your beer-bonging college roommate?”
“That was over ten years ago. Nowadays he’s Dane the orthopedic surgeon. He’s giving me excellent advice like avoid stairs.”
Two tours in Iraq, one in Afghanistan, and never so much as a hangnail. But you completely jack yourself up here in the good, old US of A, on a freaking training exercise.
Now here he stood—a thirty-one year old marine in the prime of his life—navigating the stairs like a geezer.
“No flying then, I’m guessing?”
“I’m grounded.” He wasn’t allowed anywhere near a helicopter, much less the actual cockpit, until Dane, and, ultimately, Colonel Harding, his commanding officer, declared him flight-worthy. In the meantime, was there anything more useless than a helicopter pilot who couldn’t fly? Fate had a seriously fucked-up sense of humor.
“That sucks.”
“Yep.” And that’s really all there was to say. Everyone in the family knew how much he loved to fly. “I gotta go. Give my love to Kylie. Tell her I’m here for her whenever she wakes up and realizes she got the wrong McCade.”
“Sure thing, Mikey. Start holding your breath right…now.” The phone went dead.
He clicked off, smiling. It was almost too easy to get a rise out of his brother these days—Trevor was head-over-heels when it came to Kylie. And though he enjoyed rattling Trevor’s cage every once in a while, the truth was, the fly-by relationships he’d specialized in over the last several years had started to feel pointless and empty. Someone special to come home to sounded pretty damn good.
Actually, just getting home sounded pretty damn good. He stared at the last stair like a sworn enemy. His phone rang, giving him another reprieve from the uphill battle. He pulled the device out of his pocket, assuming Trevor was hitting him back with more unsolicited older brother advice, and answered with an impatient, “What?”
“That’s some nice phone etiquette right there, Emily Post.”
Dane’s familiar sarcasm flowed over the line. “Sorry, I thought you were Trevor. I’m kinda in the middle of something here. Can I call you later?”
“No. Don’t call me later. My agenda tonight involves a cute, stacked, blonde receptionist from the pediatric group upstairs in my building.”
No shocker there. Dane considered dating a sport. He attributed his success with the ladies to growing up with four older sisters and claimed the experience gave him special insights into the female psyche. Michael thought it had to do with the fact that Dane bore a passing resemblance to David Beckham. “And this
affects me how?”
“Just like there is no ‘I’ in ‘teamwork,’ there is no ‘U’ in ‘my date.’ I want to keep it that way, so listen up. You’ve got an appointment tomorrow afternoon at 4:00 p.m. for a therapeutic massage at the Camp Pendleton Massage Therapy Clinic. It’s the place just outside Main Gate. Don’t be late.”
“Ah shit,” he closed his eyes and tried to block out the image of lying on a massage table while some beefy Swede pummeled him, “what happened to, maybe, you’d recommend massage?”
“You forced this on yourself when you asked me to call Harding and give him an update on your back. He asked me, point-blank, if you’d completed all the treatment I’d recommend, and did I consider you one hundred percent recovered. I had to admit no, on both counts. I told him I could keep sending you to the chiropractor for adjustments to force your spine into alignment and get that bulging disc off the nerve until the swelling subsides completely, but unless someone does the therapeutic massage work on the underlying fascia and muscles, your vertebrae will just keep springing back into their old position.”
He had a childish urge to throw the phone down. Only the prospect of the pain he’d inflict on himself in the process of leaning over to retrieve it stopped him from giving in to the impulse. “So, what you’re telling me is, I’m off flight status until I get a massage?”
“I’ve recommended a round of five, every three-to-four days. Then we’ll assess.”
“Twenty more days before I’m back in a chopper! Are you freaking kidding me?”
“I told you, Harding wants you hundred percent back to normal, or not at all. There’s no ‘well enough’ with him—he’s very conservative. Complete the treatments, stay on his good side in the meantime, and by this time next month, you’ll be back in the saddle…cockpit…whatever.”
“Massage therapy. Christ, is that it, or do I have to get a bikini wax too?”
“I’m sure you could use both, considering what a whiny little bitch you’re being about this, but since I can’t think about a dude’s bikini area without wanting to stab my eyes out, I’ll leave it to your discretion. Now say, ‘Thank you, Dane, for keeping alive my shot at flying again. You’re my hero.’”
“Yeah, you’re something all right, but ‘hero’ is not the word.”
“How about ‘trainer’ then, Saturday morning at the gym on base? I’ll come by your place at eight.”
His vertebrae wanted to say hell no to another waltz with agony conducted by sadistic Dr. Dane Anderson, complete with unending circuits of pelvic tilts, lumbar flexion, upper back extensions, and partial sit-ups, but, frankly, the exercises felt more likely to yield progress than something as passive as lying on a table while someone poked and pounded his muscles. “Eight works.”
