Page 136 of Learning Curve

I shrug, an unavoidable embarrassment making my cheeks heat when I can’t make myself stop shaking. Finn reaches up to wipe the tears away from my face with his hand again and places a soft kiss to the apple of my cheek.

My dad stands at the foot of my bed, holding both of my bare feet in his hands, and I can’t feel a damn thing.

I yank my hands away from Finn and Wren, scrubbing them over my face as I try not to panic. Surely this is just temporary. I’ll start to get feeling back soon, and then it’ll be a lot of rehab and other hard things, but I’ll get better. Everything will get better.

Finn’s phone pings with a text notification and I nod for him to check it when he looks at me in question. He reads it quickly, a sad smile curling the corner of his mouth. “It’s Julia,” he says. “They made it back to New York.”

“Good.” Julia, Ace, and Blake were all at the hospital Friday evening and all day Saturday, but they had to fly back home today. Julia was going to try to delay it, but I told her they needed to get back and not miss any classes.

I’m dealing with a setback, but I’ll be back soon enough. And I don’t want to be in college by myself because everyone else was too worried about me and flunked out.

“She says she’ll try to call you later.”

I nod. “Okay.”

“Do you want anything from downstairs, honey?” my dad asks, digging in his pocket for his visitor’s badge to put it back on. He’s worked a lot of hard hours in his life, been a knight in blue-collar armor dealing with our mom, but I’ve never seen him looking like this. His hair is disheveled and sticking out everywhere, and the rims of his eyes are red with tears and fatigue. I know getting the phone call that I’d been injured while hundreds of miles away was probably the hardest thing he’s ever had to hear.

So, I don’t blame him when he offers up excuses to take breaks like this one.

“Good morning, Scottie,” Dr. Stewart, the lead doctor on my case, greets with a friendly smile, surprising us as he steps through the door. I wasn’t expecting that we’d hear from him until later today. “How are you feeling this morning?”

“Hopeful,” I say with a smile as Finn takes my hand. “I can’t feel anything yet, but I’m trying to trust the process, you know?” I mean it as a joke, having used humor with Dr. Stewart as a coping mechanism since my arrival. But his mouth doesn’t curve upward like I’d expect, and the line of his jaw is rigid. It’s an immediate hit to my swagger, and Finn’s thumb stops moving on the back of my hand.

“Scottie, we need to discuss what lies ahead,” he says, and the vibe of the room turns ominous.

I glance at my dad and back to the doctor, and Wren wraps an arm around my shoulders in support.

“Is everything okay? Have you gotten results back?”

All day Saturday, I was in and out of my hospital room for testing. X-rays and MRIs and CT scans and a whole bunch of other random exams were performed to give my medical team a more thorough view of my injury. I don’t know what gave me the notion that everything would check out fine eventually, but right now, Dr. Stewart is scaring me that I might have been way off base.

“I have good news and bad news,” he answers, turning on the light board and putting one of my images on it to show me. “This is an MRI of your spine, Scottie. And if you look right here at your lumbar vertebrae, you can see where your spinal injury is located between L2 to L4.”

“So, she definitely has a spinal cord injury?” my dad questions, and Dr. Stewart nods.

“Sometimes swelling at the trauma site can give a false sense of damage. The inflammation causes pressure, and the pressure causes the paralysis.”

“So, that’s what it was? Just inflammation?” Wren hedges.

An angry impatience inside me wants to snap at my family to shut up and let the doctor talk, but deep down, I know they’re just as upset and worried as me.

“I’m afraid not. Unfortunately, Scottie’s injury is more severe.” Dr. Stewart meets my eyes directly, speaking to me with a quiet kindness I know he’s been practicing for years. “Your injury is what we call an incomplete paraplegia, Scottie. What that means in layman’s terms is that your spinal cord severed but not completely, meaning some of the neural circuits between your brain and your lower body still exist.”

“So, that means it’s going to heal, right?” I ask, looking around the room at Finn and my dad and sister. “I mean, I’m eventually going to get feeling back in my legs, right?”

Dr. Stewart’s eyes turn sympathetic. “While you may regain some sensation or movement in the affected areas, the likelihood of anything more than that is low. Spinal cords don’t heal.”

My vision clouds and my hearing tunnels as he keeps talking, my chest seizing up in panic. “But the good news is the location of her injury is not considered life-threatening. Since it is located in the lumbar region of her spine, only her lower extremities are affected. If it were higher, say in the thoracic or cervical areas, we would be dealing with a lot more areas of risk and concern.”

My mind races with another option of something that’ll change what he’s saying and make it all go away. “But what about surgery? Can’t you fix it with surgery?”

He shakes his head. “The spinal cord is an extremely complicated part of the body. Injuries like these affect too many individual cells that are unable to be repaired or regenerate. But since your injury has only affected part of your lumbar spine, and because you’re so young and physically fit, I am extremely hopeful that rehabilitation and physical therapy will be an amazing tool for you if you take it seriously. I can’t make any promises—it’s a horrible reality of my job that there are many uncertainties—but I believe you will be able to regain some control over things like your bladder and bowels.”

“And I’ll be able to walk again, right? I mean, of course, right? I’ll be able to walk again,” I ramble desperately, ignoring Finn as he tries to hold my hand and soothe me.

“As a rule of thumb, I never say never, Scottie.” I hate the sympathetic frown on his face. “I’ve seen a number of medical miracles over the years that, for the most part, I cannot explain. But the likelihood that you’ll regain the use of your legs is limited by the extent of your spinal trauma.”

He keeps talking, saying something about keeping a positive attitude and working hard in rehab, but beyond that, I hear nothing but white noise. My brain is spiraling.

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