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The sweet lass at the reception desk checks me in, and Hugh and I sit down on the uncomfortable chairs in the waiting room.
Kate emerges from the door on the other side of the room, and her gaze zeroes in on me. "Callum, come with me."
I heave myself out of my chair, groaning.
Hugh smacks my arm. "Good luck, mate."
Luck won't help me survive an hour and a half with Kate. First, she'll torture me with exercises. Then, she'll torture me with psychotherapy rubbish.
I hobble across the waiting room and follow Kate through the door that leads into the hall of "treatment rooms." She called them that once. It's a euphemism for the small torture chamber she's leading me to right now. But we don't stop at the room we'd used on Monday and Wednesday. Instead, she shepherds me around the corner into the exercise room and continues across it to another door. Swinging it open, she waves for me to go through it. Then I follow Kate again, helpless to avoid staring at her backside. The lass shouldn't wear tight-fitting trousers if she doesn't want men to admire her erse. The fact that I don't like her has no bearing on the issue. I'm a man. Cannae resist looking at a woman's body, even if I intensely dislike the lass in question.
The firm, round cheeks of her erse mesmerize me.
We're walking down another hallway that has doors on either side. More treatment rooms? I thought we were done with the so-called evaluation, and I donnae want a repeat of what happened on Monday when she "evaluated" me. Kate might get the wrong idea.
She stops at a door and swings it open. "Here we are."
The room looks like an office, with a desk and file cabinets, an armchair too. But I also see a couch.
Bloody hell. She means to shrink my brain today, and she brought me to her office to do it. That must mean she intends to squeeze me for information until I crack. That will never happen. I've been told my head is made of cast iron, though I'm not sure that was a compliment. My brother said it. Last week.
"You can take the armchair or the sofa," Kate says. "Your choice."
"My choice would be to walk out the door. You're meaning to therapize me, aren't ye?"
"Therapize? That's not a word."
"My sister-in-law invented the term."
"Uh-huh." Kate lays a hand on my back, gently urging me toward the armchair. "Why don't you sit here?"
I limp toward the chair and drop onto it. Well, at least this seat has padding and arms where I can rest my, ah, arms.
Kate sits in the office chair behind her desk. I see a name placard that verifies my belief this is her office. The wee sign reads, "Kate Wagner, PhD."
"Should I call you Dr. Wagner?" I ask.
"Just Kate will do."
"What sort of PhD do you have?"
She leans back in her chair, rocking it slightly while she studies me. "I have two PhDs, in physical therapy and psychology."
"Oh." It's all I can manage to say. Two doctorates? I barely finished university and never even thought of trying for a PhD.
"Let's talk about the first time you injured your knee. Tell me about the fire."
"I told ye already."
"The whole story this time." She rolls her chair forward, resting her arms on the desktop. "Why did you stop being a firefighter after that?"
"Because I was injured. Are ye deaf? I told ye that already too."
"Okay. Let's start at the beginning. Why did you become a firefighter in the first place?"
I shrug. "Seemed like the thing to do. I moved to Inverness because there are no wholetime fire stations in Glencoe. I wanted it to be my career, not work somewhere else and be on call for fires. And a change of scenery sounded good."
"Glencoe? I thought you were from Loch Fairbairn."
