Page 95 of How to Walk Away

“Dobber,” he corrected, while bent over at the waist, panting. Then he banged his head against the foot of the bed. Then he realized he was drooling, and took the wad of Kleenex I was waving at him.

In all, it took half an hour for him to recover, and that’s when he threw us a bone and gave us a little Scottish. “Iama dobber,” he said. “What was I thinking?”

“You were thinking,” I said, not even bothering to hide the affection in my voice, “that you’d entertain us.”

It was like we had all made an unspoken pact to choose to have fun.

“That’s backed up by science,” Kitty, Queen of Googling, said, when I noticed how much just the idea of dinner with her and Ian was impacting the rest of my sad days. “Anticipating a reward lights up the same region of the brain as actually getting a reward,” she said. “That’s what a dum-dum the brain is. It doesn’t even know the difference.”

There was nothing, truly nothing, fun about any other part of my day. But I anticipated the hell out of dinner.

Twenty-one

THE MORNING OFmy furlough was a usual morning—bathing, cleaning, failed attempts to wiggle my toes—and my parents came for their usual lunch. But then, instead of heading off to the rehab gym, I transferred to the chair, and my parents wheeled me down with a little overnight bag to where Kit was waiting in my father’s sedan.

I felt surprisingly anxious about leaving the hospital.

I would have said I’d be thrilled, elated, ecstatic to leave. Instead, I just felt shaky. I didn’t trust Kit to drive my dad’s big car. I didn’t trust all the idiot drivers texting their way through intersections. I didn’t trust the big, bad, chaotic world outside my controlled little hospital biosphere.

Even in the car, I couldn’t relax. If I’d been a cat with claws, they would have been impaled in the dashboard. Every turn, every red light, every touch of the brakes made me wince with anxiety.

“You have got to chill,” Kit said.

I nodded. “Yes. Good advice. Chill.”

But I had no idea how to do that. How do youmake yourselfchill?

By the time we made it to the cabin, the tension in my neck wasmigrating to my head. I felt woozy and headachy, and Kit declared I had to take a nap.

Of course, the house was not wheelchair accessible. Why would it be? We got me into the chair and across the gravel drive, but then we had to pause for a while to puzzle out how to get me into the house.

“I knew this was a bad idea,” I said.

“Hush,” Kit said. “If nothing else, your Scotsman can carry you in when he gets here.” She tromped off to examine the back porch to see if it might make a better point of entry, calling back, “Would that be so awful?”

“Just go,” I said, closing my eyes.

Being back here was exactly as bad as I’d feared. Everything was the same as it had been since my grandparents had bought the place in the sixties. The screen porch door still squeaked and slapped. The gopher hole by the back steps hadn’t moved. The pear trees my grandmother had planted still rustled in the breeze.

The only thing different was me.

It created such a visceral wash of grief through my body, I had to lean over and put my head between my knees. “We never should have come here,” I heard myself whisper.

I was going to throw up. I felt that salty feeling under my tongue you get just before it happens.

But then I heard tires on the gravel of the driveway.

I looked up to see a brown vintage Bronco. With Ian in it. And then the door was slamming. And he was walking across the grass toward me with a duffel bag on his shoulder. In jeans, of all things, instead of scrubs. And brown leather shoes instead of sneakers. And a plaid flannel shirt.

I forgot to throw up.

“This place suits you,” Ian said, as he got close.

“Really? Because I was just about to throw up.”

“Carsick?”

“Heartsick, I think.”

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