I shrugged. I didn’t know and didn’t really care, but I needed a towel quickly. “He’s been in my room for five minutes and I haven’t started yet.”

At that she moved faster, disappearing into the room across the hall and popping back up with a few hot towels. I grabbed them from her, shifting the steaming bundles from palm to palm to cool them off.

When I got back into the room, I waved the towel through the air one last time and rubbed it across the bottom of his bare feet. His skin was so hot to the touch that I pulled the towel away and touched the back of my hand to the top of his foot to make sure I felt correctly. I hope he isn’t sick? I couldn’t afford to get sick; that’s the last thing my mortgage payment and electricity bill needed.

Literally. The days on my dad’s Tricare were coming to an end and I couldn’t afford health insurance on my own.

His skin felt so warm. I lifted the blanket a little and realized he was still wearing his pants. That was just . . . strange. I didn’t know how I was going to rub his other leg, the one I was supposed to massage.

“Did you want me to avoid your legs altogether?” I quietly asked him.

He nodded in the cradle. I continued to run the warm towel across the bottoms of his feet, something I did to clean off any oil and dirt. The hygiene of clients varied. Some people came in wearing sandals after walking around all day. Not this guy, though. He must have showered before he came in. I appreciated that. These were the things you thought about as a massage therapist. I started on the balls of his feet, applying pressure there and moving to the arch of his left foot. There was a soft, bubbly line across the bottom of his left foot, but I couldn’t see the scar in the dark. I slid my thumb slowly along the arch and he jerked a little. I was used to timing my hour sessions perfectly, about five minutes per leg, so I took the extra time to work on his shoulders. A lot of people carried tension in their shoulders, but this guy was off the charts—his were absolutely the tightest shoulders and back I had ever worked on. I had to stop myself from making up a story about his life and why he was so stressed.