Page 6 of Scoring the Mountain Man

I sit back on my feet, giving him a bright smile and allow him to take the brace off.

I take it from his hands and place it on the floor next to me. “Do you want to roll up your pants leg or would you prefer I did it?” I ask him sweetly.

“I will,” he responds.

I don’t allow the smile on my face to fall from his indifference and it’s probably best that he does it as I’m not sure I could handle touching him like that right now.

Get it together, Aubrey, you have a job to do,I chastise myself internally.

He pulls his sweatpants leg up over his knee and I look at the scar from his surgery.

“It seems to be healing nicely, and there doesn’t seem to be any swelling around the knee, which is good. I think you are ready to move to the next step.”

“Good,” he says roughly and I can’t help but laugh.

“You say that now, but we shall see what you say when I leave,” I tell him. “Now, we are going to do a series of exercises and I’m going to time you. I want you to lie down on the floor.”

He looks at me as if I have lost my mind.

“Come on, the faster we do this, the better I can see where you are at in your recovery,” I say with a smile.

He pushes himself out of the chair and keeping his knee straight, he slides onto the floor before turning and placing his back on the floor.

“Okay, now I need you to keep your leg straight and tighten your quadriceps by pushing the back of your knee down into the floor, holding it for ten seconds. I will tell you when to go, then when to relax.”

I hear him mumble something, but he doesn’t say it out loud.

I hold the stop watch and say, “Go.”

I watch the grimace on his face, but he does it.

“Relax.”

He blows out a breath.

“Again, go.”

We continued on for fifteen reps.

When we finish the last one, I can see a sheen of sweat on his face and chest, but I move to the next exercise.

“Next we are going to try straight leg raises. I need you to keep your injured knee straight, but bend your other one. I need you to tighten your quadriceps and slowly lift your injured leg about twelve inches off the floor for three seconds, then you are going to slowly lower it back to the floor. We are going to do this fifteen times. Got it?”

“Yeah,” he gruffs out, but says nothing else as he starts the exercise.

Once he gets to the last set, I allow him a few minutes to catch his breath before we move on to the next exercise.

“This next one is a heel slide exercise. I want you to keep both your legs on the floor and slowly slide the heel of your injured leg toward your butt as far as you can without pain then slide it back to the starting position. Understand?” I ask him.

He nods, but doesn’t say anything.

“We are going to do this fifteen times as well,” I tell him before saying, “go.”

I watch as he slides his heel toward his butt and can see the strain this is causing him, but I say nothing, allowing him to decide where he should stop. He gets to the point where the heel is only halfway to his butt before he slides it back to the starting position. He continues for fifteen and by the time he is done he is panting.

“We have one more exercise for the day and then you can rest. This one is easy enough. I want you to point your toes away from you, then pull them back towards you. I want you to do this twenty times.”

He does with minimal issues and I can’t help the smile that spreads across my face once he’s done.

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