Chapter Thirteen

“Is Dax your real name?”

The lilt in his voice was much easier to place this time. He was either Scottish or Irish, Dax thought. He tried to remember on which of his tour dates he’d heard that voice the most. Was it in Edinburgh or Dublin?

“It’s Darren,” said Dax. “But I always hated it, and when I got discovered at eighteen and they wanted to change it, then I was only too happy to let them. I’ve been Dax for so long it’s how I know myself.”

“Right,” said Cameron. “So, I’ll call you Dax, and you call me Cameron. Okay?”

“Sure,” said Dax. “I’ve told Doctor Pravenda to call me Dax so many times I’ve lost count, but she won’t.”

“Consummate professional, that one,” said Cameron, and he grinned. Dax’s mouth was dry, and he reached for a glass of water, but his fingers trembled, and he knocked over the glass, soaking his bed sheets.

He blushed as Cameron grabbed some paper towels from the dispenser and mopped up the water from his chest. “Sorry,” he said. “Sometimes my fingers shake, and I don’t know why.”

“I read that in your notes,” Cameron replied, tossing the paper towels into the trash. “It’s one of the things we’re going to work on fixing. Sometimes spinal injuries manifest themselves in strange ways, and you might find one day you have feeling down one leg, and the next it’s gone. One day your fingers shake, and the day after that, they’re right as rain.”

“Right,” said Dax. “No two days seem to be the same at the moment.”

“Let’s start with your hands.” Cameron came beside him and asked him to stretch out his good arm. Dax did so, and as he held it out, he wasn’t sure if the tremor in his fingers was from the injury or from nerves. Close-up, Cameron Wilson was even more beautiful. He had a light red stubble over his cheeks, and Dax was certain that underneath that t-shirt, he sported red hair over his chest. Maybe more freckles, like the ones that ran down his arms.

“What about the other hand?” Cameron asked. “Can you flex those fingers?”

“They’ve told me to move them,” Dax said, “but it hurts.”

“I know. It will.” Cameron brushed his fingers over Dax’s, as they stuck out of the plaster cast. “Can you feel me touching you?”

“Yes,” Dax said. He could most certainly feel Cameron touching his fingers.

“They’re curled up pretty tightly. Can you straighten them out for me?”

Dax tried, but it was too painful. Weeks of keeping his fingers tensed into a fist, from both his injury and the tension that hadn’t left him since he got the news that his career was in ruins, had left them sore and seemingly immovable. Cameron took his hand gently and went through a series of tests. He tapped here and there, testing the feeling in Dax’s hand, careful to stay away from the area of the break in his arm.

Although the last thing he wanted to do was cause himself pain, Dax knew it was going to be necessary in order to get his body working again. While he was desperate to get back to full fitness, just the thought of the weeks and months of therapy made him exhausted. Cameron tried to get him to move between making a fist and flexing his fingers, but after a few movements, Dax sullenly pulled his arm away. “It’s too fucking painful,” he said, gruffly.

“I know,” Cameron said. He moved away from his arm and went down to his legs. “Let’s make a start on these. This is where we have to do the most work.”

He took out the patient notes at the bottom of Dax’s bed and read through them. Dax watched as he did so. He felt ashamed and pathetic to be in the presence of such a hot guy and be so disabled, and so weak. Cameron was silent as he read. Then he placed the clipboard back into the slot and looked up. He smiled. “Now, let’s get to the real work,” he said, and before Dax could stop him, he tugged the blanket away.

Dax was shocked. He felt the breeze of the blanket leaving his body, and Cameron tossed it onto the floor. He moved the extendable tray that moved across in front of Dax’s chest, clearing it out of the way completely, so that Dax lay on the bed, nothing covering him but the hospital gown he’d worn since his accident. He felt very exposed, with Cameron looking at him intently from his face down to his toes, examining every inch.

He frowned. “What are you doing?” he asked. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable. I’d like my blanket back.”

“No more blankets,” said Cameron. “Not when we have a session. It’s not cold in here, and it’s important your limbs remain uncovered at all times.”

“Why?” Dax asked, rudely. He didn’t care how good looking this guy was. Nobody ever told him whether he could or couldn’t have something. He was Dax Monroe. Millionaire superstar. Worshipped by everyone.

But Cameron Wilson seemed to have absolutely no interest in Dax’s prestige and he hadn’t given any interest since entering the room that he even knew who Dax was. He continued to stare at Dax’s body, and he appeared to be chewing on the inside of his lip, before he took out the patient notes once again and consulted them. Finally, he took a deep breath and smiled. “I think you need another x-ray,” he said. “Either that, or a scan. I think we’re missing something. It appears that your left leg is a little shorter than your right. That wouldn’t happen simply as a result of lumbar fractures. I think you’ve got a small fracture in your pelvis.”

“You can tell all that by looking at me lying down?” Dax was doubtful.

“Want to make a bet?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Ten pounds says you’ve got a fracture in your pelvis.”

“I’ve had so many x-rays I’ve lost count,” said Dax. “And I’ve had as many scans as I have x-rays. If I had another fracture, they’d have found it by now.”

“Does that mean you’ll take the bet?”

Dax sighed. “Sure. If it humors you.”

“It does,” said Cameron. He took out his cell phone, found what he was looking for and held it to his ear. Within seconds, he was put through to the radiology department, and just ten minutes later, Dax was lying once again under an x-ray machine. Cameron stood behind the screen with the radiologist, and they were talking to each other as Cameron pointed to his own hip, indicating where he wanted the clearest picture possible.

Back in his room, Doctor Pravenda joined them, and she and the physical therapist stood looking at a tablet in front of them on a stand. They zoomed in and out at the black and white shot of Dax’s pelvis, until Cameron’s finger suddenly flew up and pointed at something. “There,” he said. “That’s it.”

“That?” Doctor Pravenda narrowed her eyes and zoomed in even closer, and then she raised an eyebrow. “It looks like a tiny fracture, but it’s healed.”

“I don’t think it’s from Dax’s latest injury,” Cameron said. “I think it’s an old one. It’s been there a while but I think it’s what’s causing the leg shortening. We’re talking millimeters, but it makes all the difference.”

“How old do you think it might be?” the doctor asked, and Dax watched them, becoming more and more irritated that they appeared to be talking about him as though he weren’t even in the room.

“I fell off my bike when I was thirteen,” he said in a low voice. Doctor Pravenda and Cameron turned to him. Cameron came over to the bed.

“Did you hit your pelvis?”

“All I know is that the pain was so bad, I didn’t even register it as pain,” Dax said. “It was like someone had kicked me so hard up the ass I couldn’t breathe. I limped home and didn’t even care that I’d left my bike on the street. My friend brought it home for me. I just needed to lie down. It hurt for days but nobody ever said anything about going to the hospital. I just got out of sports for a few weeks.”

“Sounds like that’s it,” Cameron said. He held out his hand to Dax. Confused, Dax shook it and Cameron laughed. “No, you don’t get away with it that easily, Mister.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dax said.

“Ten pounds,” said Cameron. “Cough it up.”

“The injury’s nearly twenty years old,” Dax protested. “It’s nothing to do with my injury now. It’s healed, and it doesn’t count.”

Cameron folded his arms. “I don’t believe we ever established that the injury had to be from the car accident,” he said. “I said there’d be a fracture there. I was right. I won the bet.”

Dax looked at Doctor Pravenda. “Is this how you treat your staff here?” he asked. “Making money from my injuries?”

Doctor Pravenda held up her hands. “I’m staying out of this,” she said. But she looked at Cameron. “Maybe you let him off the bet this time, Mister Wilson?”

Cameron shrugged. “I guess I can let this one go,” he said, and Dax was bewildered. He couldn’t tell if the guy was being serious. He certainly looked like he was, but he knew that British people were known for their dry sense of humor. Maybe this was simply an example of it. Either way, he was uncomfortable. He wanted to speak to Doctor Pravenda alone, but Cameron was too quick for him. He thanked the doctor for coming in, and asked that she leave them alone. To Dax’s amazement, the doctor left immediately with little more than a wave and a smile. Then, they were all alone once more.

Dax wanted to tell his new physical therapist to get out and never come back, but before he could, Cameron lifted his notes once more and wrote something down on them with a pen he brought from his pocket. As he did so, he talked to Dax. “For us to work together, I have to know the exact state of your body,” he explained. “While an injury from twenty years ago might not seem important, everything that affects your posture, your spine alignment, the positioning of your back… it all makes a difference to how you’ll recover. It’ll impact the time of recovery, the exercises you do, and the optimum physical shape you can get back to.”

Taking in every word, Dax said nothing. He felt a little chastened. Maybe the guy knew what he was talking about, after all. He just had a strange way of going about his work. He decided to take a deep breath and try to trust him.

As though reading his mind, Cameron smiled, and the smile seemed warm, and genuine. “I know what I’m doing,” he said. “Trust me.”

In the meantime, he left Dax with his number. It was a strange-looking thing, a mix of numbers in odd places. He was used to the standard cell-phone number arrangement of the USA. But this was different. Zeroes, and sevens. He punched the number into his cell and saved it under Physical Terrorist.