Doing Hydrotherapy.

It was all more bad luck really. Hilary got the bad news from her doctor. Her painful left knee was cactus. Her GP prescribed her some anti-inflammatory tablets, and recommended that Hilary, aka Hilaria, take up hydrotherapy. She felt her sagging heart sink to her boots.

Reluctantly, Hilary went home and shared her news with Ben, her husband. She booked a session at the aquatic center in a neighboring suburb. All her couch potato husband said was, "You can't drive the car tomorrow. I'm taking it the panel beater's at Hometown Smash Repairs. You put another dint in it. There's a bus that goes along that way. Catch that."

Helpful, not. Then there was that moment of reckoning. After rummaging in her cupboard, Hilaria tried on her swimming bathers. How embarrassing! She gazed miserably at her dimpled cellulite on her thunder thighs. "Lucky I cannot see my rear view," she muttered to herself.

Still, old habits die hard. Hilaria refused to buy more clothes for swimming, trying on bathers under those fluorescent lights in the shopping mall. Those change room cubicles had a lot to answer for, in her opinion. Bikinis were definitely designed by males for lively young babes who only weighed about two stone .Hilaria would make do with what she had, she had more than enough to blubber about.

Persistence was this suburban chicks' middle name. After breakfast the next day, up with the larks, Hilaria found herself waiting for the bus to the aquatic center. Fun not, but this hydrotherapy would be therapeutic exercise, very healing drug-free remedies and strategies.

Hilaria arrived, and disclothed to reveal her semi-naked self. So this was a hydrotherapy class. A few like-minded older females clambered awkwardly into a deep pool. Music started blaring. A slender physiotherapist chick, young, vigorous, and way too energetic, started the class. Jemima was her name. She was wearing a therapist's uniform of culottes, designed only for the very slim.

Soon, Hilaria was bouncing around in the warm, deep pool. Unfortunately, while tightening her tushy, (for what, sarcasm wondered in her brain), she somehow twisted her knee. Ouch! Bad luck, now it hurt worse than when she started hydrotherapy. This was all her doctor's idea. Some doctor.

The pulsating music finally concluded. The beaming Jemima said, "Well done, ladies. Same time tomorrow! See you!" "In your meds!" Hilaria groaned. Jemima skipped off to have a cup of coffee in her office, taking her music box with her. Was she laughing as Hilaria had to be assisted onto the pool deck by another disability lady?Like beached whales, the hydrotherapy class emerged. Hot shower and a cup of coffee sounded good, very beneficial.

But this was still a pandemic world. The showers were closed, due to the risk of sharing respiratory infections, after all those potential knee recos had shared in the pool of life. Hilaria struggled to pull on her suburban fleecy lined tracksuit over her damp swimming costume. Horrors! The coffee shop was closed, due to lack of staff. There was not even a barista in the whole pool complex.

Even worse, Hilaria limped into a rainy morning, windswept at the bus stop. Oh, to be at home, where she had her own quite functional coffee machine. The howling gale blew cold rain into her face, her eyes were stinging from all that chlorine in the pool. Her sodden hair was in her eyes.

A bus appeared, heading in her direction. The number on it was blurred. Hilaria clambered aboard. She had only brought her bus ticket and not much cash, could not afford a taxi on that.

There was only one other passenger on the bus, which took off quite quickly. The bus driver planted the foot, and soon the bus veered off the familiar route, and headed along an unknown road. Hilaria asked the other passenger, a schoolboy, what suburb they were now exploring.

The young lad glared at her. "Dunno. Stop whinging, fat old cow!" "Well," said Hilaria, "What did they teach you in your classroom?' She sounded like an old female teacher, which she was. At that, the schoolboy swore at her. "Swearing can be quite cathartic," Hilaria told herself, "I know how to swear too. Where in hell is this bus going?"

She looked through the fogged up windows at grey, rainy streets, lined with abandoned houses, smashed windows, and graffiti on the doorways. There was a strip shopping center, maybe she could get off there. But the shops were boarded and bare, no retail therapy there. Still, she might be able to phone her husband. Hilaria pulled the bus cord, but that did not work.

Hilaria staggered on her bad knee to ask the bus driver to stop, and let her off. She had caught the wrong bus all right. At that moment in time, a bullet came through the bus windscreen, shattering the glass. What could be worse than this?

"Gangs!" yelled the schoolboy, saying another rude word, as he hid under his seat. Hilaria thought that hiding under the seat was a good ostrich response, but she had now joined the ranks of the disabled.

"No speak!" the bus driver shrieked, with a heavy accent. The bus swayed, as he pulled from his console what Hilaria thought might be an Uzi. Every bus driver should have one, here in a dullton suburb far away from the peace and tranquility of leafy, quiet Hometown. The bus driver fired off rounds of automatic gun fire, as Hilaria glimpsed a sight of hooded young teens disappearing into their grey future. They had not learnt much, if they ever went to a classroom. Undeterred, Hilaria too shot at them with her older lady's Glock, the perfect semiautomatic sidearm for her bad and aching hips and knees.

"You good girl." said the bus driver.

Eventually, even with no windscreen, Hilaria found the bus terminus. Finding someone who spoke something like English, her bus ticket was all good to catch the right bus back to Hometown.

She had never been so glad to have a hot shower, after taking off her clinging damp bathers. Ah, she sank on her bed, with her coffee at last. She was sure now that the divine energy of a benevolent universe meant her to be lying there, reading, not doing hydrotherapy. The minute it stopped raining, Hilaria planned to inter her swimming attire in the bottom of next door's recycling bin, never to see the light of chlorine again. Her knee ached more than ever. Yes, that was some pool session and bus trip. Some doctor.

Ben arrived home in their undented car. He had brought burgers and chips. Sounds good. But he too had a moan. "Do you know panel beaters make more in one day, than we ever did, teaching the future of our lucky land?"

"At least you weren't doing hydrotherapy!"