Chapter 4 - Alternative Medicine

Putting one foot in front of the other was difficult. The parallel bars were there if he needed them, but the point of the exercise was to walk without assistance and allow the bad knee to support his full weight. These days, Levi's strength could only be compared to an average man's, but it held true that his arms were as strong as ever. It would have been so easy to just put all his weight onto his hands. No, he needed to do this.

"You're doing good, keep going."

"Eat me."

With a perturbed eye-roll, the man who'd supplied the encouraging words crossed his arms and shook his head. John Gheller was the only medical-type practitioner in town who offered the sort of treatment for which Levi and other relief-seekers came to him. He wasn't a doctor and had no official certifications or qualifications to boast. However, John's life experience had taught him that healing took many forms and came in myriad approaches; it didn't always require poisoning and cutting. When John first accepted Levi's case, he quickly realized he didn't know what he was getting into. But over time, John grew all too familiar with Levi's surliness and had learned not to take it personally. Instead, he sympathized, having noted that his patient's irritability was directly correlated to the level of pain experienced. And that pain, from his observation, seemed to be intense and unrelenting.

Though he didn't act it, Levi was grateful to John for being so patient and understanding of his situation. He was one of the rare people in Marley with whom Levi had the privilege of being acquainted, and who didn't let Levi's last name influence his opinion or frighten him. John had simply seen a middle-aged man struggling to find relief from his body's ailments.

"Can you stand with your weight on both legs?"

Levi grunted something at John but placed his heels together regardless.

"Let go of the bars. I want to see how long you can stand like that."

With a deep inhale in preparation for what was coming, Levi took his hands away from the bars. Immediately, ripping heat stabbed through his leg like a hot dagger. He faltered only slightly at first but ultimately kept himself upright.

"Scale of one to ten?" John asked.

Levi shot him a sharp, indignant look but said, "Eight."

The pain ebbed only a little after a few seconds but did not ease up any further afterward. Levi stood there for close to thirty seconds before it felt like his knee might give out, and he grabbed the bars for support, shifting his weight onto his arms and swinging his legs slightly.

Several years prior, Levi had been lucky enough to find a doctor willing (albeit begrudgingly) to see him. The diagnosis had been simple: Levi's knee was utterly irreparable. According to the details of the x-ray, the joint of his tibia had been crushed and, when it healed, had fused with the joint of the fibula. So if Levi turned any part of his leg even slightly the wrong way, it felt like a hot spike shoving through his knee down to his ankle. Besides that, most of the cartilage was shredded, and three years on, was mostly nonexistent, meaning his situation was bone-on-bone. The muscles still worked; the tendons hadn't been severed, shockingly enough. He had been told that if he kept using his leg normally despite the discomfort, he might walk again with less pain, but it would never completely go away. At least the doctor—having taken a small amount of pity on him—had referred Levi to John's practice, citing the practitioners' unorthodox methods as having worked for some of his previous patients.

As it turned out, the whole thing about continuing to use his leg through the pain had been a lie. Levi realized, at some point, that the doctor likely only told him that to get rid of him. But he usually felt negligibly better after his sessions with John, which was probably the only reason he still bothered to go.

"Okay, I think that's enough for today," said John, extending an arm. Levi reluctantly took it, and John helped him into his chair.

"Are you sleeping enough?" John asked then as they headed toward the waiting room door. "How is the pain at night?"

Levi looked up at him. "I sleep fine."

"Is there anything keeping you awake?"

"I said, I sleep fine." The look Levi gave John warned that pressing the issue would be unwise.

When they reached the door, John sighed, frustrated. "Your business is your own, and I respect that. But I know for a fact that I'm one of only a few people in town who don't hold a bad opinion of you. So I feel a sense of obligation to check on you and make sure you're doing okay. If you ever need to talk to someone…"

"I don't."

Giving up on that particular line of dialogue, John tried another. "Over the last couple of years, the medical field has been developing a procedure for knee replacement using a prosthetic joint. Perhaps it's something you might be interested in looking into."

Most people who came to John only spent a few weeks with him, and if his methods didn't help relieve the pain, nothing but drastic measures would. John's main goal for anyone he helped was to subvert surgery. Unfortunately, he could only do so much in some instances. Unfortunately for Levi, he was one of those cases. Levi had heard about knee replacement surgery and knew it was neither a guaranteed nor permanent fix. And he wasn't about to go under the knife to potentially end up more crippled than he was already.

"I'm not. And even if I were, no doctor wants to see me. Or they'd botch it on purpose to get rid of me."

John sucked his teeth, choosing to ignore the self-deprecating comment.

"I could help you find someone," John offered. "I'm not trying to get rid of you as a patient, but you've been coming to me for almost two and a half years now, and the improvement you've made has been marginal. I'm being generous to say that, of course."

A silence fell between them as John waited for Levi's reply, and Levi refused to look up and meet John's stare. Instead, he studied the healer's hand on the doorknob.

When John didn't move, Levi finally said, "I'll see you in a few days."

John rolled his eyes again and opened the door. In the waiting room, a tired-looking blonde woman sat against the far wall, waiting for her appointment to start. She appeared to be a little younger than Levi and seemed to have a problem with her shoulder, the way her right one slumped lower than her left. Levi had seen her here a few times but had never spoken to her.

"Give me a few minutes to prepare the gym," John said, focusing on her. Then to Levi, "See you Thursday."

Levi nodded and wheeled himself toward the door.

"There are better ways of dealing with your pain than this," said the woman in a low, almost ominous, voice. She did not look up.

Levi wanted to ignore her. He hadn't even really heard what she'd said. But curiosity got the better of him.

"Excuse me?" Levi wheeled his head around and glared at her just as he reached the main entrance.

"Movement therapy might make you stronger, but it's always going to hurt, no matter what."

Finally, she looked up, and their eyes met. Levi tried to intimidate her, but she seemed too mentally detached to care. That was a first. After a moment, he decided not to indulge her.

"Mind your own business." He reached for the handle again.

"Alcohol only numbs the mental pain. Not the physical."

He turned the handle and pulled the door toward him.

"If you want something stronger, I know who you can talk to."

Again, Levi wanted so much to ignore her, but again, his curiosity won.

"What are you talking about?"

"There are drugs that help with pain. Not just the physical, but the mental too."

As attractive of an offer as it sounded, Levi didn't know this woman. As a rule, he never trusted strangers, especially ones that promised simple solutions or miracles. In his experience, things that sounded too good to be true usually were.

He scoffed, pushed the door open the rest of the way, and wheeled himself outside onto the pavement.

Gabi often walked with Levi to his appointments on her way to school, which meant he usually went home on his own. In the street, people were going about their business, the town bustling with foot traffic like any typical day. It wasn't so much that Levi couldn't navigate. Even so, most people tended to get out of his way fairly quickly when they saw him coming. That was typical, and he was used to it at this point.

The ironic part was that as many people as there were that wanted nothing to do with him, there was always at least one following him, like a mole on his ass. Today, it looked like the young, dark-haired woman. She looked to be in her early twenties, around the age of Mikasa and the other kids he'd led back on 'd seen her a couple times over the last year or so. Not often enough to care.

As Levi made his way down the street, he discretely kept tabs on her. The woman stayed on the opposite side of the street, following him for several blocks before eventually disappearing into a coffee shop.