Page 108 of How to Walk Away

I did everything I could think of—took my vitamins, got plenty of sleep, drank extra water—and I tried to wiggle my toes about a thousand times a day. The hullaballoo over that toe had set up a strong expectation that a breakthrough was inevitable. But the longer that breakthrough refused to happen, the more I accepted the cognitive dissonance: I might get better any minute, or I might never get better at all.

That said, I was improving in lots of other ways. My shoulder was healing “beautifully,” the dermatologist had said, and the scabs on my face had left no scars. The stitches on my neck were starting to dissolve, and, if I didn’t look in the mirror, parts of my body felt almost normal.

Just not normal enough.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t made any progress. I could rattle off every muscle in the lower extremities like some kind of med student. My core strength, Rob said, was “phenomenal,” and I could do sit-ups all day long. My arms and shoulders were “beasts.” I had the gluteus muscles “of a champion,” and my adductors, hip flexors, gluteus medius, rectus femoris, sartiorius, and deep gluteal muscles were all in excellent working order. I could even stand pretty well—twelve minutes was my record—but only if I held on to something, or someone.

The problems were all with the muscles responsible for extending the foot forward when taking a step. They were falling down on the job. Aside from that one delightful big toe (thanks to one feisty flexor hallucis longus), everything below my knee, to use the technical term, was “flaccid.”

I preferred “floppy,” personally.

Either way, it wasn’t good. The tibialis anterior, tibialis posterior, popliteus fibularis longus, fibularis brevis, plantaris soleus, and gastrocnemius were all, um, pretty limp. Particularly frustrating were the semimembranosus, semitendinosus, and biceps femoris, which are the muscles that work to extend the leg. I could bring my thigh forward (thanks to a “boss” iliopsoas), but I couldn’t straighten it.

Still.

That’s why I wasn’t going to the Valentine’s party. That whole final week was a slow realization that, where walking was concerned, at least, despite the trying, and the determination, and all those hours of tutoring, and the many impressive gains I could claim—I was still going to fail.

I never failed. I’d never failed anything. Not even a spelling quiz.

It kept me from sleeping. Over and over that final week, I’d doze off for a few minutes at bedtime and then startle awake, restlessly shifting under my covers. Several nights I just couldn’t take the anxiety, and I wound up transferring to my chair, careful not to wake Kit, and then sneaking to the gym. There, I’d hoist myself up onto the walking bars, brace with both hands, and pace back and forth until I was on the verge of collapse.

It was probably a bad idea, going to the gym at night. I would no doubt have done better to let my body rest. But I couldn’t seem to stop myself. I kept thinking if I just pushed a little harder, I could break through. The prospect of failing this challenge—possibly the only one that ever really mattered—left me too panicked to think straight.

The night before Kit’s party, I went to the gym again. My arms were sore from all the laps on the bars, and I could hear Ian’s Scottish voice saying “arms are not legs,” but I didn’t care. It wasn’t my arms I cared about. I went back and forth, back and forth—ten times, then twenty, willing my lower legs to swing forward, willing the balls of my feet to push off, willing for something, anything, to spark to life.

Then, just short of thirty, my arm just gave out.

It happened fast. I crumpled, smacking down on the mat hard, and lay there, panting. And there, with my face against the mat, smarting like I’d been slapped, it truly hit me: I wasn’t going to walk again.

I really wasn’t.

I wasn’t going to overcome this. I wasn’t going to be good as new. I wasn’t going to show them all. I wasn’t going to be the exception to the rule. I wasn’t going to give an inspirational talk that would go viral on the Internet.

Every single thing I’d experienced, or thought about, or hoped for up until this moment seemed cartoonish. This whole experience had been so frantic and dreamlike it was almost like nothing at all had been real. Until now. Alone, on the floor, I finally, really got it. The only thing that was real anymore:

I was going to spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair.

***

I’D BARELY FINISHEDthe thought when I heard a voice—a Scottish voice. “What the hell is going on?”

I didn’t move. Just lay there and calculated the odds of another Scottish person happening to pass through the rehab gym in the middle of the night.

Unlikely.

Then I heard Ian’s sneakers squeak the floor—fast, like he was running—and then he was saying my name, urgently, like I might be in danger:

“Maggie, what happened?”

I couldn’t lift my face from the mat. “You don’t call me Maggie anymore.”

Then he was down on his hands and knees beside me. “What happened? Tell me.”

“Why are you even here?”

“Working late. What happened?”

He was perched to call for help. But I didn’t need help. I put my hand out to keep him right there, and then I explained everything the only way I could.

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