I Discharged Two Shrimper Brothers, Then Took Them Both Home novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Discharged
On the last day of their twelve weeks Rhett tells Octavia he is hard and asks her to dinner Saturday, Boone asks the same thing forty minutes later, and she signs both discharges and writes her address on the back of each.
Rhett Mikell told me he was hard while my thumb was an inch from his groin.
He said it to the ceiling tiles, flat and dry.
"I'm not going to pretend I'm not, Doc."
It was a Monday in February, the rain was loud on my clinic roof, and this was the last appointment of twelve weeks.
I had my right thumb in the crease of his hip and my left hand on his thigh.
I had touched that hip three times a week since November.
I knew every scar on that leg, and I had never once seen it do this.
I did not take my hand away.
"That's your hip flexor," I said. "It's cleared. It's also not what you're reacting to."
"No, ma'am."
"Don't ma'am me. That's your brother's job."
He laughed, low in his chest, and the whole table shook.
Rhett was six foot four, thirty-six years old, and the captain of a shrimp trawler on Shem Creek.
His right knee had been crushed under a winch drum in October.
I picked up the goniometer and measured it, because the form had a box for it.
"Hundred and thirty-eight degrees," I said. "That's full."
"Doc."
"Single-leg squat. Right leg. Go."
He stood and did it, slow and clean, a big man folding down over a leg that worked.
He came up with his jaw tight, and the front of his shorts had not softened.
"You passed," I said.
"Then you're not my therapist after tonight."
"The paperwork says I'm not."
He sat on the edge of the table, so his eyes were almost level with mine.
They were brown, with sun lines at the corners, and steady.
"Dinner Saturday," he said. "Anywhere you pick."
I kept my face still.
I had a rule about patients, and I had never needed a rule about former patients.
"Boone doesn't need to hear about it," Rhett said. "He's got enough on him."
Boone was his younger brother, and he was sitting in my waiting room with his hat on his knee.
They had ridden to every appointment in one truck.
They had sat three chairs apart for twelve weeks and never said a word to each other that I heard.
"Let me finish your form," I said.
I pulled the sheet toward me and read the line the boat's insurer cared about.
Full duty, no restrictions.
It was the signature that let them put a crew back on Miss Lorraine.
"Anything you want to tell me before I sign?" I said.
"It was my own boot in the bight," Rhett said. "My own mistake. I'd like to quit paying for it."
"Nobody's billing you."
"I am."
I signed.
Then I turned the form over, wrote my address on the back, and under it wrote: Saturday, 8.
I did not say a word.
I held it out, and Rhett read the back before he took it.
The tips of his ears went red above the beard.
He stood and did not touch me, and that was somehow worse.
He stopped in the doorway with his hand on the frame.
"Yes, ma'am," he said, very quietly.
"Don't ma'am me."
He went out, and Boone came in.
Boone Mikell was thirty-two, six foot three, and built narrower than his brother.
He had black hair, gray eyes, and a plate in his left collarbone that I had watched heal on a scan.
He did not sit on the table until I told him to.
"Dr. Brailsford," he said. "Ma'am."
"Arm overhead, Boone. All the way."
He lifted the left arm and it went up straight.
I stood behind him with my palm flat between his shoulder blades, feeling the plate move under the muscle.
I could hear him breathing, slow and careful.
"Full range," I said. "Strength is a five out of five. You're done."
He turned around on the table.
He was close enough that I could smell salt and diesel under the soap.
"Ma'am. Saturday night. Would you let me take you to supper?"
I did not move.
His voice dropped, and his gray eyes went to the door his brother had just used.
"Rhett doesn't need to know. He's got enough on him."
It was nearly the same speech, forty minutes apart.
I looked through the little window in the door.
The parking lot was empty except for one white crew cab truck, with its wipers going.
A big man sat behind the wheel with the lights on.
He had a folded form in his lap with my address on the back.
His brother was about to walk out and climb in beside him.
Neither one would say a word to the other about what he had just asked me.
I thought about Gran, who would have said that two men with one truck and no sense were a gift or a flood.
I thought about how I had wanted them both since the third week, and told nobody.
I signed Boone's form.
I wrote my name, the date, and the line the insurer wanted.
Then I turned it over, and my pen was steady.
On the back I wrote the same address on Cypress Road, in James Island.
Under it I wrote: Saturday, 8.
I folded it once and put it in his hand.
"You're discharged," I said.
"Yes, ma'am."
"Go on. Your brother's waiting."
He opened it before he reached the door.
He read the back, and he stopped walking.
I turned off the light and watched him cross the wet lot to the truck.
He got in without a word, and the dome light showed me two men reading the same address.
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