Rescued By Marriage. Dianne Drake

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      CHAPTER THREE

      “WITHOUT tests I can’t tell for sure, but I don’t feel anything out of place—no tumors, no significant swelling,” Della said as Mayor Vargas sat shirtless in the opened back of her SUV while she prodded and twisted his arm. Besides being tall, he had an extraordinary muscle mass, the evidence of a rigid, disciplined workout routine. “You’ve got full range of motion, which is good, and I’m not even feeling any popping, which is good, too. If you had an injury like a torn rotator cuff, you’d be experiencing some limited range.”

      “It comes and goes,” he conceded. “Has been for months now, and just when I think it’s bad enough to have it looked at, it gets better and it seems like a waste of time.”

      “Both shoulders?” she asked, switching her exam to his left shoulder. Manipulating her fingers along the shoulder line from his neck out to the furthest part of his shoulder, Della kneaded hard enough to assess the muscle, then she worked his entire arm up and down, back and forth, and at last in a wide circle.

      “Not usually, but sometimes I get a twinge.”

      Next she went in for the final diagnosis and did a deep, pinpointed probe to the joint, one so hard that the mayor flinched. “Hurt a lot?” she asked.

      “Like you knew exactly where the worst spot was and dug right in.”

      “I did.” Della smiled. “Takes practice, and years of poking and prodding,” she said as she returned to his right shoulder for the same pinpointed probe, which elicited both a flinch and a gasp from him. The mayor actually pulled away from her. “But along with the pain comes a diagnosis and a treatment plan.”

      “One that’s good, I hope,” he said, rubbing his sorest shoulder.

      Della glanced over at Sam, who was sitting casually on a tree stump. This had been a simple exam, yet he was watching it very intently. Did he want to be back in practice again? On impulse, she asked, “Would you take a look, Sam?” She really didn’t need his opinion. With or without tests, the mayor had bursitis. The symptoms fit, the pain response fit, and to be sure she’d send the mayor over to Connaught for a blood test and X-rays. But something was compelling her to include Sam in this, and she wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe only a hunch that he wanted to be in practice, or a little wistfulness in his eyes.

      “Um, sure,” Sam responded quickly, then hurried through the knee-deep grass to the car. “I used to be an internist, so I think I can handle a second opinion.”

      He did much the same exam as she had, poking and prodding, and amazingly she caught herself almost transfixed, watching him work. Sam was so intense about it, so serious and methodical. And the wistfulness she’d seen in his eyes earlier turned to…was it passion? He might be a doctor she would trust Meghan’s care to, and that was the highest praise she could give.

      “Well, the bad news is…” he started.

      Both Mayor Vargas and Della blinked in surprise.

      “The bad news is that I’ll never have your build, no matter how hard I work out. How many hours a day do you train?”

      “Two, sometimes three. Weights, mostly. Some boxing, a little basketball, swimming.”

      “Like I said, that’s the bad news…for me. The good news for you is that I’m going to concur with Dr Riordan’s diagnosis.”

      “Which I haven’t made,” she reminded him.

      “But you were going to say bursitis, weren’t you?”

      “Bursitis?” the mayor asked.

      “Bursitis,” she confirmed. “An inflammation of the bursa.” Which he didn’t know about, judging by the puzzled look on his face. “We all have hundreds of bursae throughout our bodies. They decrease the friction between two surfaces that move together, most commonly in areas such as where muscles and tendons glide over your bones. Think about a small plastic bag filled with a little oil. You can rub it between your hands and there’s a smooth glide to it, but if you remove the oil it’s a rather rough rub. Constricted. That’s basically the function of the bursa, to provide that smooth rub, and if it becomes inflamed, it loses its glide. Hence, bursitis.”

      “And how did I cause that?”

      “Repetitive motion over a long period of time is one way. Or an injury. I’m guessing it’s from your workouts, though.”

      “Is it curable?”

      “Not curable as much as it’s manageable, but it does have a tendency to flare up from time to time, which means you may have to, at some point, adjust your workout routines to favor your condition. But we’ll deal with that after I see the X-ray report. For now, I want you to massage your shoulder for about fifteen minutes with an ice pack, three or four times a day, and make sure you don’t leave the ice on any spot for more than a few seconds or you can actually get frostbite in your muscle.”

      “Instead of an ice pack with regular ice cubes, freeze some water in a paper cup then roll that over your shoulder in a massage,” Sam added. “Feels a lot better than ice cubes.”

      Della gave him an appreciative stare. “Voice of experience?”

      “I fancied myself as a writer once. Sadly, I was one inflamed bursa away from writing a best-selling novel.” He rubbed his elbow, then grinned. “Struck down in the middle of my prologue.”

      “You couldn’t be a writer so you became a doctor? Aren’t you quite the multi-faceted man?” Like the doctor who’d gone off to Paris to be an artist. So where was Sam’s real heart? she wondered briefly. “Anyway,” she said, turning back to the mayor, “take ibuprofen for a week. Go by the recommended dosage on the label, then come back and see me in a couple of days and we’ll take a look at how you’re getting along and figure out what to do from there. Also, by then I’ll have found my prescription pad, and I’ll write you a script for lab work and X-rays.”

      Her second appointment for the day now over with, Della received her pay with almost as much glee as she’d received her first. Glancing up at the gray clouds rolling in as she tucked it away in her pocket, she was hoping against hope her roof wasn’t going to leak, because a patch was not the place she wanted her first earnings to go. Most of it would go for the clinic, but a little would buy Meghan a gift.

      “Are you sure you’re going to stay here with the storm coming in?” Sam asked. “I’m not sure about the condition of your house. It might leak.”

      “It looks like I’ll be finding out in another few minutes,” she said, heading up to the porch.

      “Like I said before, I think that agent who sold you this practice should have been more honest about it. There may still be room to get out of the contract.”

      She СКАЧАТЬ