Act of God

upgrades?”
    “Not so far.”
    “Good. Let’s try the shoulder now.”
    She started on it. “I see the scar.” A look at my back. “Went clean through?”
    “Yes.”
    “Loss of function?”
    “Not after a few months.”
    “Any physical therapy?”
    “Nothing professional. Just exercise, Nautilus equipment for a while now.”
    “You were very lucky on that, Mr. Cuddy. Most people don’t realize how complicated, and easily destroyed, the workings of the shoulder are. Now, let’s see about the current problem.”
    She began manipulating, this time massaging as much as moving the joint, then doing the equivalent of isometric exercises with it. More frowning.
    I said, “What do you think?”
    “I’ll know better after X-rays. Can you stay for them today?”
    “Yes.”
    “We’ll send you down now, then. Take this out to our counter here, and Natalie will tell you the rest. Just be sure the technician in Radiology knows I’m waiting for the plates.”
    “I take it I get dressed first.”
    A small smile. “We generally insist on it.”

    Hector said, “First, we do the knee.”
    He had me stretch out, face up, on a table. Unlike the one in the examining room, this one was rigid instead of padded and had what looked like a glass window in it. He slid something under the table, then laid a heavy, thick apron over me from ribs to mid-thigh. “Protect the future generations, you know it?”
    “Thanks.”
    “Hey, we got to think of these things.”
    He then adjusted an almond-colored cone on a flexible arm over my knee. The cone was about the diameter of a volleyball, and the arm was attached to a track system on the ceiling. The tracks allowed the arm and cone to move in roughly the same patterns as a rook in chess.
    “Okay, man. We gonna shoot maybe five pictures of your knee, so just relax and breathe in and out when I tell you from behind the wall there. I’m gonna come out in between, bend your knee this way and that some. You gonna hear a buzz sound, like when you step in the dentist’s office.”
    “Great.”
    Hector went through the sequence, then moved the cone out of the way and had me step down off the table. “Now we gonna do the shoulder, man. Just stand up in front of this screen here. Little to the left. Good. Now we put the lead skirt on, velcro like... so. Good. First one’s gonna be head-on, then we play around a little.”
    After shifting this way and that through five or six of the short bursts from the cone, Hector pronounced me finished with him.
    “The doctor said I should tell you she’s waiting for your... plates, is it?”
    “Yeah, plates.” He looked down at the paperback. “You enjoying the book?”
    “Yes.”
    Hector seemed glad for me.

    “How many chapters now?”
    “Fifteen.”
    “We shouldn’t be too much longer today.”
    “Better to get it done.”
    The doctor nodded at me without conviction, then went back to studying the X-rays against a lighted screen in the examining room. “Well, I’ve got good news and inconclusive news.’
    “Let’s start with the good.”
    “You want it in Latin or English?”
    “English would be nice.”
    “Plain and simple, your kneecap’s just lifting a little from the kind of sponge it rests on in there. We tend not to see this so much from a sudden trauma like you had with the bureau on the stairs, more typically it’s from people who are marathoners.”
    “We didn’t talk about this, but I ran the marathon a few months ago.”
    “You did?”
    Her inflection said she was less upset that I hadn’t mentioned it and more surprised that I’d actually done it.
    The doctor added a note to my form. “Well, that’s more consistent, but anyway not much to worry about. I’m going to write you a prescription for an anti-inflammatory.”
    “I’m not much for pills, Doctor.”
    “These will just reduce the aggravation in the joint. They have a very slight tendency to make you nauseous, so be sure to take one with meals.”
    “And that’s it?”
    “No. No, I’m also going to give you a prescription for a neoprene sleeve.”
    “A what?”
    “A neoprene sleeve. It’s a kind of leg brace, made from the same stuff as a scuba wet suit. You’ve probably seen basketball players with them all the time. Football and baseball players wear them, too, but they don’t show as much under the uniforms.”
    “Why do I need a prescription?”
    “You don’t, but a prescription will make it easier for the medical supply