Page 12 of Second Chance to Score

“Hi Robbie, I see you’ve met my intern, Janice. She’s going to be working on you today while I supervise. We’re going to try a few different things to see if we can draw out some of the inflammation in your hip and loosen things up in there.”

Oh, so that was her plan. Use the intern as a buffer.

“How’s your hip been feeling?” she asked, staring at the computer instead of me.

“Do you always have interns do your work for you?” I asked, my voice conveying that I thought it was all an excuse.

“That’s how they learn,” she snapped. “What do you think they do? Just work on mannequins?”

Janice looked between us curiously, and Violet took a deep breath. “Can you please tell me how your pain has been?”

After reminding myself that this was, in fact, a medical appointment, I sent a casual smile in Janice’s direction. The girl blushed.

“As I was telling Janice here, the pain has been about the same. It comes and goes. I received the email with the exercises and have done them as instructed. I’ve also increased the number of anti-inflammatory foods in my diet.”

“Great. Okay we are going to start by doing some scraping to bring circulation to the area and relieve some of those adhesions I felt last time you were here. Please lay on your left side.”

When I complied, Violet handed the tool to Janice.

“Do you remember how to do this?”

“Yes.”

Janice began lightly scraping the tool over the skin of my thigh.

“You’ll need to add more pressure,” Violet instructed. “Especially when you’re working with someone who regularly has a lot of bodywork done or has a high pain tolerance, you can go much deeper. You want the skin to turn red and trigger a healing response. Let me show you.”

Violet took the tool from Janice and began moving it across my skin in long, deep strokes. The intern watched her carefully.

“We’re going to have to get a little higher onto the hip and glute to work around the joint,” Violet told me. “To do that we’ll need to have you remove your clothing from the waist down. Janice will give you a towel to cover your, um, private areas.”

Mindful of the intern in the room, I resisted making a joke about how she’d seen my private areas many times before.

“We’ll just step out.”

“No need,” I reassured her, reaching for the waistband of my shorts. “I’m a professional athlete. I’m used to people seeing me naked.”

“Janice, grab a small pillow, we’ll wrap the towel around it to protect Mr. Mason’s privacy.”

When I was situated, Violet placed a hand on my waist, demonstrating to Janice how to use the scraping tool around the hip joint and around the side of my ass cheek. I’d had this technique done before, but never so deeply, and after a while it became a bit painful.

Violet let Janice work on me for a while, her pressure significantly less than Violet’s, and when the entire area was fire engine red Violet declared me done with that part of the treatment.

“Let’s do fifteen minutes of ice and then I’ll be back to do some manipulation work.”

The duo hustled out, Janice returning a few minutes later to wrap the impacted area in ice packs.

“We’ll be back in fifteen minutes,” she said, setting the timer on her phone.

I settled in to wait. When Violet returned, she was alone.

“Where’s your minion?” I teased.

“My intern is helping finish up with another client,” she told me as she removed the ice packs. Her eyes studied my reddened flesh carefully.

“How does that feel?”

“Cold,” I joked. “A little sore.”