“Well, yeah. According to the docs, my own tendons ripped away a chunk of bone in my left arm. It hurts.”

“On a scale of one to ten, one being slight discomfort, ten being the worst agony you can imagine . . .”

The detective pursed her lips. “Six.”

“So slightly above average.”

“Sure. I want to build in some room. Tonight is shower night, which will bring me to a seven, followed by attempting to sleep, which I’d place at an eight, because I can’t seem to stop rolling onto my left side; then, of course, there’s getting out of bed tomorrow morning, which is an easy nine.”

“What would you consider a ten?”

“I don’t know yet,” she said tersely. “I’m still new at this walking-wounded business, but from what I can tell, that’s what physical therapists were put on earth to find out.”

I smiled. “Many of my patients would agree with you.”

“I know about the scale,” D.D. said. “Russ Ilg, my personal torturer, already walked me through it. Don’t think of pain as a single point, but as an entire spectrum. Where are you on the spectrum right now, this afternoon, for the whole day, for the week? Then, instead of just being in pain, you can experience the full rainbow of physical agony. Or something like that.”

“He has you rate your level of discomfort when he is working with you?”

“Yeah. He raises my left arm. I yelp. He tells me to breathe through my mouth. I yelp some more. He asks me if I’m at an eight yet. I say no, he raises my arm an inch higher.” D.D. wasn’t looking at me anymore. Her gaze had gone beyond my right shoulder, to a spot on the wall, while her right leg began to bounce restlessly.

I had scanned her medical reports. The avulsion fracture she’d suffered in her left shoulder was a particularly rare and painful injury that called for an even more agonizing remedy—physical therapy. Lots of extremely excruciating exercises designed to keep her left shoulder from locking up, while minimizing scar tissue during the healing process.

According to the detective’s charts, she worked with a physical therapist twice a week. Most likely, she ended those sessions with tears running down her cheeks.

I wondered, already, how that must feel to a woman accustomed to operating under complete control.

“So you take the time to consider and rate your pain?” I asked now.

She made a motion that may or may not have been a nod.

“How often?” I pressed.

“Well, you know, when Russ asks me.”

“So during physical therapy?”

“Yes.”

“What about at home? Say you wake up in the middle of the night and you’re uncomfortable. What do you do then?”

She didn’t answer right away.

I took my time, waiting quietly.

“I tell myself to go back to sleep,” she said at last.