I frowned. “You’re my physical therapist.”

He shook his head. “Not that kind of therapist.”

“Then what kind . . .” My voice trailed off. I narrowed my eyes at him. “You think I’m mental.”

He looked at me with one eyebrow raised. “I know you’re mental.” When I was about to tear into him, he added with a shrug, “We all are.”

“You think my fatigue, fuzzy brain, and the weakness in my leg isn’t real,” I said. My voice sounded hurt and accusatory. That just pissed me off because I didn’t want him to think I cared about what he thought of me, because I didn’t.

“No.” He shook his head. “It’s real. I just think there’s something else keeping you from a full recovery.”

“That’s stupid,” I said. I picked up my glass of water, resenting that he was having a beer, and took a long sip. “I have done everything, absolutely everything, to recover. Why would I sabotage myself like that?”

“PTSD,” he said. “Emotionally, you’re just not ready. I saw a lot of it when I came back from Afghanistan.”

“I didn’t go to war,” I reminded him. I took a breath, forcing myself to say the hated words that I usually tried to avoid. “I had a stroke.”

When a thirty-five-year-old man says this, it usually stops people cold. Not Jackson.

“You think it’s much different?” he asked. “In one case, you have unexpected IEDs blowing up in your face, possibly killing you or your squad. In your situation your entire body shit the bed on you without warning. Seems like both instances are pretty fucking traumatic.”

I didn’t know if he was trying to schmooze me into listening to him by comparing my medical misadventure to his time in the military. Right, make me having a fat blood clot in my head comparable to a guy putting his life on the line for everything our country holds dear. Sure. I’d have to be a complete asshole to buy that fantasy. Besides, the amount of self-loathing I would feel if this were just some neurotic response to the horrible event of nine months ago would be unparalleled.

“I don’t have PTSD,” I said. It had been suggested that I might have some complications like that before by my regular doctor, but I felt like a tool even considering that the weakness in my leg or my constant feeling of impending doom came from a flaw in my character.

“There’s nothing wrong with being traumatized by what you went through,” Jackson insisted. He took a chunk of meat off the cutting board and chewed with gusto.