Page 22 of How to Walk Away

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THAT FOG LASTEDfor a good while.

Never walk again. What did that even mean? How did they know? How could they be certain? Who were they to make predictions about the rest of my life? Wasn’t the human body full of mysteries and miracles? Could they just announce something like that about me and then leave me to live with it?

Of course they could. I’d broken my back, apparently. That was what happened to people who broke their backs. They spent the rest of their lives in wheelchairs. I’d watched a documentary about it last year—a team of invincible teenage boys who’d crashed their cars or their motorcycles or dived into shallow water only to spend the rest of their lives in wheelchairs. But now they’d formed a championship wheelchair basketball team. Which might have been inspiring to think about, except that I’d always sucked at basketball.

Paralyzed. Trying to work that idea into my brain was like trying to suck a bowling ball up through a drinking straw.

Impossible.

Notpossible.

And yet Chip accepted it. My dad hadn’t argued with him. It was apparently already an established fact about my life—one everybody knew but me. On some level, of course, I wasn’t surprised. I’d been contending with my dead, pendulous legs for more than a week now. But things heal. Thingsalwaysheal. I’d never had any injury—and I’d had plenty—that didn’t mend itself eventually.Paralyzed.I couldn’t fathom it. How would I drive a car? How would I cook dinner? How would I take a shower? Go to the bathroom? Buy groceries? Go out with friends? Have a job? Be the boss of whatever I was supposed to be the boss of? My brain was short-circuiting. I could feel it throwing sparks and smoking.

I tried for calming breaths, but I accidentally hyperventilated instead.

That’s when the physical therapist arrived—while I was basically doing self-Lamaze.

He wore pale blue scrubs and sneakers, and he had short, clean-cut hair that spiked up some in the front. He walked in and said, “I’m Ian Moffat. Your physical therapist.”

Except it didn’t sound like words to me. Just a bunch of syllables.

He swiped his badge in the computer and looked at my chart a second, before he said, “So. You’re Margaret.”

But again. Just syllables.

When I didn’t answer, he waved a little and said, “Hello?”

That I understood.

“It’s time for your physical therapy,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“What what?”

“I can’t understand you,” I said, shaking my head a little, as if to shake water out of my ears.

“Nobody can understand me. I’m Scottish.”

Wow. That explained it. Yes, he certainly was. I thought my brain had shut down—but it wasn’t me, it was him. He was super Scottish. So Scottish he sounded like he was talking through a mouth full of pretzels.

“You’ll get used to it,” he said. “Ready to go?”

I wasn’t. I wasn’t ready to go. I shook my head.

“Not ready to go?” He held that lastowith his lips, and I was forced to notice his lower teeth were a little crooked, but in a good way.

I shook my head.

“Why not?” he asked, with noton the end.

My drunk fiancéjust told me I’ll never walk again. “It’s been a tough morning.”

“Lots of mornings are tough. We still have to do this.”

“No.”

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