About three months ago while John was heading to work on his bike, a van decided that stopping for him was optional and launched him directly into a mailbox. One badly broken femur, a few hours of surgery, and some titanium plates later, he finds himself crutching his way over to the physical therapy department at the local hospital. He's not really looking forward to his first session of medical-grade torture. His eventual goal is to be walking regularly, and maybe biking again if no other minivans or mailboxes jump out in front of him again.
Due to the weird hours working evening shifts at a datacenter, the only schedule slot that they could find was one at 10PM, which wasn't even listed in their system.
When he pulls up to the outpatient building, it's silent and dark. The gate to the parking lot is down, so he ends up parking farther down the road on the street. The address matches up though and the front door is open, so he heads in. He figures if he's in the wrong place a security guard will probably find him pretty quickly and point him in the right direction - a confused guy on crutches holding a folder full of paperwork is pretty unlikely to steal a laptop or something.
He pulls out the map of the building in the folder of stuff and wanders down some very dark hallways until finding the only office that still has the lights on, and heads toward it. The receptionist desk has a window facing into the hallway, and she perks up as soon as she sees him.
"Good morning! I mean, Good evening!" The receptionist is startlingly cheery for 10 PM.
"Hi there, am I in the right place? All the lights are off in the rest of the building, and the parking gate didn't let me in..." John says.
"Oh I'm so sorry! You were supposed to get an access card for after hours! I'll get you one before you leave today!" She might be a bit over caffeinated. He replies "It's no problem - thanks for the help."
"Any time! Also your physical therapist will be here in a few minutes, you can take a seat in the waiting area!"
The waiting room, a place designed to be as comfortable and welcoming as is profitable, has a handful of pastel-green chairs and benches. The whole place smells of gym mats and exercise balls with a tinge of standard hospital antiseptic.
As soon as he walks in he notices one other person sitting in the far corner chair waiting for the session to start; a woman sitting silently wearing a hoodie with the hood up, gray yoga pants and white running shoes. The handle of a thin white cane is sitting next to her, along with a gym bag.
In an attempt to head off the awkwardness of sitting in the waiting room silently together, John says "Hey, how's it going?"
...
There's no response, so now it's awkward- maybe she has headphones in?
He glances over at the girl and something seems off. He's not sure what though - with the hood of her sweatshirt up, a surgical face mask, and dark glasses he can't see much of her face but there are some waves of uncanny valley vibes emanating from her.
After sitting there for 10 or 15 minutes, the door opens and the trainers step in. Both are women in their 20s who obviously keep in shape as part of their job. One heads right over to the sweatshirt girl (clearly not her first visit), the other looks at John and says "Hi, I'm Alice and I'll be your PT for the next few weeks. How are you this evening?"
"I'm pretty good. A bit of a mix up getting here, but I arrived early so it wasn't a problem."
The other therapist and the mysterious gym partner have their phones out furiously texting each other, though they are only a few feet from each other - which seems a bit odd. After a short text exchange they both head in to the door to the training room, the trainer holding the door for sweatshirt girl as she carefully gathers up her bag and grabs her cane, barely using it to navigate as if she has done this many times before.
Alice leads John over to the training room, which has a rubber gym floor and various strange looking exercise equipment along with the more conventional weights, medicine balls and yoga-adjacent stuff. She leads him over to a set of parallel bars, and explains the plan - pretty straightforward, walking back and forth using the bars for support, assisted squats, lunges, etc. On the other side of the gym area, sweatshirt girl is doing some kind of balance exercises, working around and over obstacles and using her cane to navigate the room.
After completing the series of tasks, John tries to pay attention to Alice giving a rundown on stretches and exercises to do at home.
"OK, I think you're all set for the first day - good job." Alice says, as John just starts hitting muscle failure on the assisted squats.
"Thanks, that wasn't as bad as I thought, although I definitely have lost a lot of strength from the accident." In the background John notices the other pair wrapping up as well, with the other trainer texting her silent gym partner.
"If you keep it up and do the homework we give you, you will probably be back to about where you were before the surgery in a couple months, luckily you are still young so you should bounce back pretty well. Let's head back to the waiting room and I'll grab your homework packet." Alice walks John out to the waiting room, and although he is tempted to ask her about the mysterious girl he also doesn't want to cause any patient confidentiality issues or seem like a weirdo on the first day.
After standing in the waiting room for only a minute or so, Alice returns with the packet of take-home workout info. Alice says "Here you go, try to do these every day, and if you start to feel sore make sure to ice your leg - our schedule is pretty aggressive so I want you to be able to keep up."
"Thanks, I will - see you in a couple days!"
As he is crutching his way out into the hallway, the receptionist practically jumps in front of John and holds out a keycard and says. "Here's your card for the gate for next time, how did your first day go?"
"It went pretty well, but I bet I am going to be pretty sore tomorrow. I haven't done nearly this much since the accident." John says
The receptionist heads back into her glass cube / front office desk thing and says "Yeah, make sure to get plenty of rest - everyone says that the day after the first session is pretty rough."
Two days later he pulls into the parking lot of the clinic for another round, rolls his window down and sticks the access card against the reader at the gate. It beeps and the gate opens up, thankfully letting him park much closer this time. He maneuvers his way out of the car, grabbing his crutches from the passenger's seat and maneuvering himself into a standing position. He's not really looking forward to this again, both because of anticipating the pain of PT and the awkwardness of the waiting room.
Again the sweatshirt girl is sitting silently in the corner of the waiting room. Shortly after John takes a seat she reaches into her bag and takes out a pen and small notepad. She slowly and carefully writes something down, stands up and turns toward his general direction. She takes a few deliberate steps closer and stops about 6 feet away, holding out the notepad and facing the writing toward him. The note says:
