Winter Moon

consideration. Peace.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
        
        Because he had suffered some nerve damage in addition to the spinal fracture, Jack required a longer course of therapy at Phoenix Rehabilitation Hospital than he had anticipated. As promised, Moshe Bloom taught him to make a friend of pain, to see it as evidence of rebuilding and recovery. By early July, four months from the day he had been shot down, gradually diminishing pain had been a constant companion for so long that it was not just a friend but a brother. On July seventeenth, when he was discharged from Phoenix, he was able to walk again, although he still required the assurance of not one but two canes. He seldom actually used both, sometimes neither, but was fearful of falling without them, especially on a staircase. Although slow, he was for the most part steady on his feet, however, influenced by an occasional vagrant nerve impulse, either leg could go entirely limp without warning, causing his knee to buckle. Those unpleasant surprises became less frequent by the week. He hoped to be rid of one cane by August and the other by September. Moshe Bloom, as solid as sculpted rock but still pearing to drift along as if propelled on a thin cushion of air, accompanied Jack to the front entrance, while Heather brought the car from the parking lot. The therapist was dressed all in white, as usual, but his skullcap was crocheted and colorful. "Listen, you be sure to keep up those daily exercises."
        "All right."
        "Even after you're able to give up the canes."
        "I will."
        "The tendency is to slack off. Sometimes when the patient gets most of the function back, regains his confidence, he decides he doesn't have to work at it any more. But the healing is still going on even if he doesn't realize it."
        "I hear you." Holding open the front door for Jack, Moshe said, "Next thing you know, he has problems, has to come back here on an outpatient basis to gain back the ground he's lost."
        "Not me," Jack assured him, glancing outside into the gloriously hot summer day. "Take your medication when you need it."
        "I will."
        "Don't try to tough it out."
        "I won't."
        "Hot baths with Epsom salts when you're sore." Jack nodded solemnly.."And I swear to God, every day I'll eat my chicken soup." Laughing, Moshe said, "I don't mean to mother you."
        "Yes you do."
        "No, not really."
        "You've been mothering me for weeks."
        "Have I? Yes, all right, I do mean to do it." Jack hooked one cane over his wrist so he could shake hands.
        "Thank you, Moshe." The therapist shook hands, then hugged him.
        "You've made a hell of a comeback. I'm proud of you."
        "You're damned good at this job, my friend." As Heather and Toby pulled up in the car, Moshe grinned. "Of course I'm good at it. We Jews know all about suffering." For a few days, just being in his own home and sleeping in his own bed was such a delight that Jack needed to make no effort to sustain optimism. Sitting in his favorite armchair, eating meals whenever he wanted rather than when a rigid institutional schedule said he must, helping Heather to cook dinner, reading to Toby before bedtime, watching television after ten o'clock in the evening without having to wear headphones-these things were more satisfying to him than all the luxuries and pleasures to which a Saudi Arabian prince might be entitled. He remained concerned about family finances, but he had hope on that front too. He expected to be back at work in some capacity by August, at last earning a paycheck again.
        Before he could return to duty on the street, however, he would be required to pass a rigorous department physical and a psychological evaluation to determine if he had been traumatized in any way that would affect his performance, consequently, for a number of weeks, he would have to serve at a desk. As the recession dragged on with few signs of a recovery, as every initiative by the government seemed devised solely to destroy more jobs, Heather stopped waiting for her widely seeded applications to bear fruit. While Jack had been in the rehab hospital, Heather had become an entrepreneur-"Howard Hughes without the insanity," she joked-doing business as Mcgarvey Associates. Ten years with IBM as a software designer gave her credibility. By the time Jack came home, Heather had signed a contract to design custom