Page 49 of How to Walk Away

If I could have walked out, I would have.

Instead, with no other option, I banged my head back against the pillow. “Is that the inspiring message you came with today?”

She did have enough self-awareness to be a tiny bit cowed. She folded her napkin and smoothed it on her leg. “I just read the article, and it seemed like information you should have.”

“Why?” I asked. “What am I supposed to do with that? Root even harder for a miracle? Defy the laws of human physiology?”

“I’m trying to help,” she insisted.

“By freaking me the hell out?”

“The point is,” my mother said, “we have to be proactive. We have to face this thing head-on. All the healing and recovery you’re going to do takes place in the first six to eight weeks after the accident—and you’re already two weeks in.”

“Are you saying I’m a slacker?”

“I’m saying you need to get your head in the game.”

There was always a kind of backward logic to my mom’s crazy. I got it now. She hadn’taccidentallyrevealed to me that I was facing a possible lifetime of being unfuckable. She was doing it on purpose. She was attempting to motivate me. To get me focused. To rouse some unsinkablepart of my soul that would stand up in outrage and simply refuse to give in.

The worst part was, it was working.

This was how she’d motivated me my whole life: fear of the worst-case scenario. She was trying to scare me into action. She was trying to generate aRockymoment, trying to cue the music and shift me into a training montage.

Did I think that I could beat my spinal cord into submission? Of course not. Could sheer willpower overcome anything? Of course not. Was there a hazy line between determination and denial? Absolutely.

But what choice did I have? Sure, she was playing dirty. Sure, she was acting like a terrorist. But her heart was in the right place—and she wasn’t wrong. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair. I didn’t want to give up everything I’d hoped for. I didn’t want to lose Chip.

Wait—was that right? The old me didn’t want to lose the old Chip. But now, thinking about it, I wasn’t totally clear on how the current me felt about the current Chip. Of course, in the face of my mom’s hyperbole, how I specifically felt about Chip was not exactly relevant. According to her, if I didn’t pull it together I would lose all guys, period.

This was one of her signature moves. If a little teaspoonful of ice-cold terror could burn off the fog and inspire me to try, was that so bad?

My mother sensed me cratering from across the room. For a lady so tone-deaf to others’ emotions, she could be remarkably astute. She put her half-eaten lunch back in its sack and came to stand by the bed and take my hand. “Sweetheart, I know you’ve had a shock.”

I waited.

“We all have.”

I waited again.

“Even Chip.”

There it was.

“I’m worried about him. He seems to be—” She glanced up to find the word. “Faltering.”

“Faltering how?” I asked.

“I think he’s lost his way. His mother says he’s been out drinking, coming in at all hours, not showering.”

Chip always showered. He took three showers a day.

My mom squeezed my hand. “What the two of you had was special.”

“I agree.”

“Don’t you want it back?”

“Have I lost it?”

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