“Okay,” she said, sounding a little more sure of her “healer.”
I started pressing in the area, but ran into a problem—her bra. The offending area was right under the wide bra strap across her back.
“Your bra is in the way, Mrs. Branch. I can’t do anything like this.”
“Well—you’ll have to try.”
I tried, and failed. I couldn’t maneuver past it.
“Can you just unsnap it?” I asked.
“Certainly not!” she said with certainty.
I tried some more, then said, “This isn’t working. I’ll help you get back in your chair.”
“And you’d let me sit there and suffer, I suppose!”
“Suffer or unhook your bra,” I said. “You decide.”
She waited a few seconds and then she untucked her blouse from her jeans and tried to reach around behind her. “Uuuhhgg!” she groaned. The effort had caused an obvious stab of pain.
“I can’t. It’s too painful.”
“Then, I’ll do it.”
“NO!”
“Mrs. Branch, it’s all right with me either way, but, here you are suffering, and you’ve got your recital to think of—all those kids, and their parents. Now, are you going to let your bra stand in the way of getting better and taking care of that?”
She let out a deep breath. “Very well.” She sat up very straight.
I never thought I’d ever be doing this: I snaked my hands up under Mrs. Branch’s shirt and felt for the clasps. One, two, three of them came apart under my fingers. I had unhooked my girlfriend’s mother’s bra. I pulled the straps wide, away from my “Operating area.”
I started poking again.
“You can take your hand out of my top,” she said.
“It’ll be a lot more effective if I don’t have to work through the cloth.” I waited for her to protest, but she didn’t.
I worked and felt and found a knot where I figured the injury was, judging from her reactions. “Feel that?” I circled the knot with my fingers and put a little pressure on it. “That’s the problem.”
“Okay. Fix it.”
“I have to pull your shirt up so I can press down straight on it. I can’t work like this at an angle.”
“Definitely NOT!”
So I tried to do it over her shirt for a few minutes but couldn’t find the spot like that.
“This isn’t going to work like this. I have to have some direct contact.”
Another deep breath. “Pull it up, then. Just be careful.”
I raised her shirt and revealed a muscular, well-toned back. There were light red marks in the general area of my poking abuse. There were also lines showing where her tight bra had lay.
My raising the shirt to her shoulders in the back had created a tension because she kept the front pulled down. Every time I let go of it and tried to work, it slipped down.
“You’ll have to pull up the front so the whole thing stays up.”
To my surprise, Mrs. Branch pulled the front up over her boobs and held it with one hand. With the other hand, she secured her loosened bra so it wouldn’t go flying off.
I then did my thing—as much of a thing as I knew how to do. I isolated the spot and pressed on it and massaged around it, then I said the words that had been said to me many times: “Okay, take a deep breath and hold it. When I tell you, let it out slowly. While you do, I’m going to press hard on this. This is going to hurt a little but should help a lot.”