A/N: Chapters 12-16 took place on the same day—Monday, 6 weeks after Danny broke his ankle.
Chapter 17 and 18 took place the following day, on Tuesday.
This chapter takes place on Wednesday.
The doorbell rings, and Danny is picking up his crutches when a voice calls: "It's Doc, I'm coming in!" and then the lockbox clicks, and then Doc walks in, looking so calm and relaxed and pleasant, Danny could almost hug him.
"Thanks for coming, Doc."
"Of course. I'm glad you called. Now, tell me again—"
Doc stops talking as Linda storms past him and out the door. "Woah, you were right. What happened?"
Danny sighs. "Two days in to physical therapy, and I got myself kicked out of the practice—they won't see me again. Linda's pissed—traffic was bad both ways—so she said she was going grocery-shopping. She said she hoped I had enough brain cells left to call you, because she was done watching me self-sabotage—whatever the hell that means. You saw her leave just now."
Doc nods. "What happened at your appointment?" he asks again.
"Come on, Doc, you're not gonna ask me if I punched anyone or yelled or forgot all my anger management lessons?"
"I'm trying not to lay blame until I hear your side of the story. Now, what happened, Danny?"
He sighs. "Melissa was showing me how to do some stupid *** exercises. I told her they hurt; she told me I was not listening and was doing them wrong, and I…snapped. Said I'd walked two miles on it when I didn't know it was broken, in Fallujah, and I didn't need her telling me what to do. I may have thrown some cuss words in there, like…a lot. They kicked me out."
Doc lets out a long, low whistle. For a second, Danny's afraid Doc is going to leave, too—he did once, after Danny threw hot cocoa on him, so he could conceivably do it again.
"Did you have a flashback to the incident in Fallujah?" is all Doc says, though.
He shrugs. It hadn't been one of those flashbacks where he lost all touch with reality. But he had felt the pain and the fear and the humiliation of falling in a ditch, and twisting (so he thought) his ankle and walking two miles back to the base. "Sorta."
"Did you tell Melissa that you had had a flashback?"
"No, because I didn't want the pitying looks and the Thank you for your service and all that crap."
"Why not?"
"You know why, Doc," he sighs, already exhausted and ready for a nap. They beat that horse to death after Corporal Russell's suicide…
"What are you going to do for physical therapy now?"
He can't tell Doc that what he wants to do is ditch the crutches and put 50% of his weigh on his leg like he normally would, and just get back to normal life…so he just shrugs.
"You need physical therapy, Danny. You can't expect your ankle to be 100% back to normal after six weeks in a cast and one PT session. Can you even move it without pain?"
"Didn't know you were a mind-reader, Doc. Can you…stop being my ankle doctor and my mind-reader, and just…go back to being my shrink?" he snaps.
"In a minute."
Doc stands, goes into the kitchen—he's been here a few times, so he knows where everything is now—and comes back with two glasses of water. He hands one to Danny, who gulps it down.
"You got the cast off and the stitches out on Monday, correct?" Doc asks.
He glares at his therapist. "I told you that on Monday."
"How's it feeling physically?"
He shrugs. "Hurts like a ****. I can only put 25% of my weight on it. It's gonna be another six weeks before I'm fully-weight-bearing."
"How are you feeling about that—and I don't mean physically?"
He wants to throw something at Doc. "It feels like it's been a year since I got the cast off, not just two days."
"How come?"
He shrugs. "Just been…a lot going on."
"I know a physical therapist who's a Marine—not active-duty anymore, but he did two tours in Afghanistan," Doc says carefully. "He does a lot of work with veterans. If your insurance will take him, you might wanna consider him."
"You're joking, Doc. A physical therapist who's a Marine?"
"I'm not joking. Look him up on your phone—Nate Powers; he's just a few blocks from my office."
Danny grudgingly does so, and then lets Doc ask all those probing questions he hates even while he knows they're helping.