“Unless,” I said, “it’s you applying it to me. Then ‘better’ means ‘fixed.’ As you’ve promised all the neighbors.”
She held her position. “Don’t you want to be fixed?”
“That’s not a relevant question.”
But she lifted one eyebrow the way she always did when she was about to win. “It’s the only relevant question there is.”
Sure, she had a point. There were some real, physical issues here that I needed to address in a timely way, and now might not be the best moment to give up. But I realized then—possibly for the first time ever—that my parents telling me what to do was making it harder, not easier, to figure out what to do. It was just a glimpse of a feeling, but I now grasped that it was my job—and only mine—to try.
“I don’t want to talk about this anymore,” I heard myself say.
“Fine,” my mother said. “We’ll take a break.”
I shook my head. “At all. Period. I’m not going to discuss any of this with you.” My voice, I noticed, sounded just like my mother’s when she was declaring the case closed. “If you want to come have lunch every day and see me, great. But the topic of my recovery is off-limits.”
My mother looked at my dad.
“If you try to bring it up,” I went on, “I will scream until you leave the room.” In my old life, I might have left the room myself—but now that wasn’t an option. “And if that doesn’t work,” I said, adding the thing my mother hated the most, “I will burst into show tunes.”
I could almost see her shiver. “Fine,” she said.
“I have to figure this out,” I said, my voice a little softer as I looked over at my dad. “You can’t do it for me. I have to do it myself.”
I could see a hundred protests forming in my mother’s head. Most notably: What if I did it myself—and did it wrong? She had a point. Even I wondered if this was really the best moment to thrust myself out of her nest. Weren’t the stakes a little high? Shouldn’t we start with what to eat for dinner and work our way up? But I let the questions go unanswered. For the first time ever, I didn’t care. This was bigger than me.
This was my mangled body and my hopeless soul, stepping up at last.
Eighteen
STANDING UP TO my mother was surprisingly elating. In a life as out of control as mine was at that moment, little things can be big.
When Ian showed up for PT, I went with him willingly. He didn’t talk, and neither did I, but as we worked our way through stretches, and the stationary bike, and a machine I called the “Thighmaster,” I did everything he asked with a new kind of determination.
Neither one of us talked this time, and the vibe was decidedly different than it had been. Instead of babbling incessantly to fill the silence, I concentrated on my task at hand. Instead of staring out the window, he watched my form and—of all things—helped me.
“Good,” he’d say, as the weights on the machine went up. “That’s it.”
“Are you encouraging me?” I said, not looking over.
I felt, rather than saw, him give a little smile. “Nope.”
Even Myles couldn’t slow us down. He passed by several times to correct my form and then demand to know why Ian wasn’t paying better attention. He also pointed out that Ian’s scrubs weren’t regulation blue—even though they were barely a shade lighter than the ones Myles himself was wearing. At one point, Myles came by for no other reason than to let Ian know he had been “missed at the staff meeting this morning.”
Ian didn’t look at him. “I was not told about that meeting.”
Myles gave him a look, like, Please. “Pretty sure you were. There was a staff-wide email.”
“I didn’t get it.”
“You’re saying every single member of our team got that message but you?”
“Looks that way.”
“I think maybe you just don’t like meetings.”
“I detest meetings,” Ian said, standing up to full height and looking down at Myles. “Especially bullshit meetings that waste everyone’s time. But I never miss them—unless someone deletes my address from the recipients list.”
I caught a flash of busted cross Myles’s face. Then he regrouped. “I’ve started taking roll,” he said then. “So you’ll want to be sure to make it to the next one. On time.”
“With pleasure,” Ian said, turning away.
“Did he delete your name from the email list?” I whispered, after Myles was gone.
“No comment.”
“How are you going to make it to the next one if he doesn’t tell you about it?”
Ian met my eyes. “I’ve alerted my network of spies.”
* * *
AFTER PT, I was so tired I could barely transfer back to the bed.
I took a coma-like nap, and when I woke, around the time Kitty usually arrived for supper, I was ravenously hungry. I was also ready to report on how I’d both stood up to our mom and rocked it out in PT—and then psychoanalyze how those two things might be related.
But when the door opened, it wasn’t Kitty.
It was Ian.
My first thought: He was quitting. He couldn’t take me—or Myles—anymore.
He walked close to the bed and stood there, a bit uncomfortable.
I decided to jump the gun. “I’m sorry I’ve been so difficult lately,” I said.
“Your situation is difficult,” he said then. “Not you.”
That was nice of him.
“I think you’re coping remarkably well, actually,” he said.
“You do?”
He nodded. “You worked hard today.”
“I did?”
“Could you feel the difference?”
The question sparked a realization. This might have been the first time in my life that I did something difficult not for how it would matter to somebody else, but for how it would matter to me.
It was a strange, new feeling, but it felt like a little nudge in the right direction.
“It was different,” I agreed. “But I’m not sure why.”
“You’ve got a lot of strength, Maggie,” Ian said then. Such a serious face. Practically mournful. “Much more than you realize.”
“I hope so. I’m going to need it.”
“And I think we could be doing more.”
Where was he going with this? “Okay.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“Here now, you mean?”
“Your father hired me for extra sessions in the evenings.”
My dad hired Ian as the tutor? Hadn’t I just put my foot down about that? “Well, I told him I didn’t need a tutor.”
“He told me that.”
I shook my head. “The thing is, I just had this really triumphant moment with my parents where I told them to stop running my life, and then I made a grand step toward—you know—being my own person and making my own choices from the inside out, and that extra gumption you saw in the gym today was me claiming my own long-lost power, so if I just give in now and let them take back over, I’m kind of surrendering after I’ve already won the battle.”
There was no way he’d followed that.
But he nodded. “I understand.”
“You do?”
“I absolutely think you should”—here, he slowed down to get the words right—“‘claim your own power.’”
He wasn’t going to fight me. “Thank you,” I said.
“Except,” he said then.
“Except what?”
“As good as it feels to win a battle, I want you to win the war.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means your parents are right.”
I gave him a look, like, Really? “That’s not exactly helpful.”
“You could benefit from extra help. There are all sorts of things we could do that are outside the range of typical PT.”
“Like?”
“Like anything. Swimming. Yoga. Horseback riding. Massage. Reflexology. Cold and
heat. Acupuncture. Anything we can think of. In the gym, we’re limited to a specific insurance-approved list. It’s not a bad list, but it’s certainly not everything.”
Why was he here right now? Why had he said yes to my dad? Why on earth would he stay in this hospital one second longer every day than he had to? “Are you saying we’re desperate?”
He shook his head. “Not desperate,” he said. “Creative.”
I stared at him. I was tired and hungry, and ready for the day to be over, and pissed at my dad for siding with my mom. “Why would you do this?” I asked. “I know my dad. The money couldn’t be that good.”
“This is what we did at my gym,” he said. “This is the part I loved—the creativity, the challenge, the thinking outside the box.”
Did I want to give Ian a chance to do what he loved? Of course. But, after finally tasting the sweetness of what it felt like to do something for me, I did not want to backslide and agree to extra PT just so Ian could have better job satisfaction.
Until he said these words: “Plus, I could get you out of here.”
“What do you mean, out of here?”
He shrugged. “If you’re doing therapeutic horseback, we can’t exactly do it in this building.”
“You mean, you could check me out?”
“For therapy, yes.”
“Often?”
“If you had the energy for it.”
“You wouldn’t get in trouble with Myles?”
“I’m in trouble with Myles either way.”
And voilà! An internal motivation! Doing something that would make my parents happy or give Ian job fulfillment might blur my newly drawn lines, but there was nothing blurry about getting the fuck out of here.
“Sold,” I said. “I’m in.”
Ian stifled a smile. “Great,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“I can’t go now,” I said. “My sister’s bringing dinner.”
“Oh,” he said. “That’s all right. I’ll wait.”
“Are you hungry? Do you want to eat?”
“That depends on what you’re having.”
“Italian, I think.” Then, as if to confirm, Kitty walked through the door with a bag from Napoli’s.
“Who is this?” she asked, breezing past him.
It was so weird to think she’d never met him. But his shifts were during the day—and she was all about the night.
“Kitty, this is Ian, my physical therapist. Ian, this is Kitty, my sister.”
“Your black-sheep sister,” Kitty corrected, and then she looked Ian over. “You didn’t tell me he was gorgeous.” She reached out to shake hands. “You can call me Kitty Kat.”
“Do not flirt with my physical therapist,” I said.
“He looks like he can resist me,” Kitty said. Then, to Ian, “Want a soda?” She pulled a can of full-sugar Coke out of her purse. I looked at her, like, I can’t believe you drink that stuff, and she shrugged at me, like, You’ve gotta have some vices.
“No, but thanks,” Ian said.
Kitty turned to me like a kid who’d just spotted a candy bar. Then she whispered, “He really is Scottish.”
I nodded.
“Yum.”
“Do not flirt with my physical therapist!”
“Hello? He’s Scottish. All rules are off.”
“Dad hired him to be my walking tutor. Against my wishes.” At the memory, I tried to wiggle my toes. Nothing.
Ian said, “I really do think I can help you.”
“Well,” I said, “you’d better. My mother wants me to be perfect again, and she won’t accept anything less.”
“Amen to that,” Kitty said.
But Ian was looking at me. “Were you perfect before?”
I shrugged. “I tried like hell,” I said, just as Kitty said, “Yes.”
“That sounds like a lot of work,” Ian said.
“You have no idea,” Kitty said.
“What did you do for fun?” Ian said, looking at me.
I looked at him back. “I worked really hard all the time.”
“That doesn’t sound like fun to me.”
“I’m not sure you’re qualified to judge, triathlon guy.”
“I’m fun,” Ian protested.
“You are the opposite of fun,” I said.
“You might not say that after tonight.” He raised his eyebrows a little, as if to say, Listen up.
I squinted with suspicion. “What happens tonight?”
“I’m taking you swimming.”
I stared for a second. “There’s a pool?”
“A therapy pool.” He nodded. “In the basement.”
I looked around the room. “I don’t have a swimsuit.”
“Yes, you do,” Kitty sang out. “Mom packed you one.”
Ian nodded at me. “Sounds like you do.”
“But you could also just skinny-dip,” Kitty suggested.
Suddenly I remembered my donor sites. And the third-degree burns on my neck. “Wait! Can I swim?” I gestured at my whole collarbone-neck-jaw area. “With these?”
Ian just gave me a little shrug. “Let’s go find out.”
* * *
AN HOUR LATER, I was wearing my least favorite swimsuit—a retro polka-dot two-piece that I hadn’t worn in years—and sitting on the edge of the pool with my spaghetti legs dangling in. It was something I’d done thousands of times before, but it was different now. For one thing, my sensation was spotty below the knees, so I could feel the cold water in some places, but not in others. For another, I could not kick my legs, so they just draped like wet towels over the edge.
The therapy pool was deserted at nine-thirty at night, and it reeked of so much chlorine it was like sniffing a straight bottle of bleach. The fluorescent lighting gave it a slight public-bathroom vibe. I had a distinct feeling we were not supposed to be here.
I was waiting for Ian while he changed, wondering if he kept a swimsuit at work for last-minute swims just like these.
No, it turned out. He appeared in just a pair of regular cotton cargo shorts. No shirt. The sight of his naked shoulders and his torso was so shocking, I could only stare.
“You’re going to swim like that?” I asked.
“I could skinny-dip, if you prefer.”
“Did you just make a joke?”
“I never joke,” he said. Then he cannonballed into the far end of the pool. When he surfaced, he shook out his hair like a dog and then freestyled over to me.
I put my hands out as he approached. “Don’t get me wet.”
“No,” he agreed. “It’ll be weeks before your donor sites heal up. Check with the doc, but I think it might be up to a year before you can swim after a graft like that.”
“A year?” I had not gotten that memo.
“But that doesn’t mean you can’t use the water, if you’re careful.”
“I’ll be careful, Cannonball Run. You just be careful.”
He frowned like he didn’t get my obscure American reference to my dad’s favorite Burt Reynolds movie, and then he went on. “The great thing about water is it makes everything easier.”
“What are we going to do?”
“We’re going to walk,” he said, like it was the easiest thing in the world.
I suddenly got the feeling he was about to pull me into the pool. “Be careful!”
He read the nervousness on my face. “Listen. This is the shallow end. It only comes to your waist.”
“But I can’t stand up.”
“You might be able to in the water.”
“What if I fall in?”
“I’ll catch you.”
“But what if you don’t?”
Ian lifted an eyebrow. “If I suddenly have a heart attack and die while we’re in the middle of the pool, I might not catch you. If that happens, float on your back to the edge, and then scream your lungs out until someone comes to help you. Because you are in a hospital, you will get medical care quickly, and because you are on massive antib
iotics already, it’s unlikely you’ll get an infection, but if you do, again, you’re already at the hospital.”
“What about you?”
“I’m dead already. Just leave me in the pool.”
I stifled a smile. “That would traumatize the other patients.”
“Toss me in the bin, then. Whatever.”
I took a deep breath and geared up for going in. Ian went to put his palms on either side of my ribs, right on the skin, just under my two-piece top—and watching it happen gave me the giddy anticipation you get when someone’s coming to tickle you.
I sucked in a breath.
He stopped short of touching me. “What?”
No way was I explaining to him how visceral the anticipation of his hands on my body was. That was need-to-know information. “I’m ticklish,” I said.
He nodded, like, Noted, and then continued.
“I’ve got you,” he said—and all of a sudden, out of context, he was different. He was the Ian from the roof. He was not the guy in the PT gym with the cartoon scribble of angst above his head. He was not the guy who answered my questions with one-word nonanswers, and grunts, and total silence. He was a guy who had just cracked a joke—possibly two! He was looking into my eyes, and paying attention, and promising me I could trust him.
“Are you ticklish?” I asked.
He gave me a look. “Do I look ticklish?”
I felt a strong temptation to find out, but I was scared I might fall into the water. “Who are you?” I said then, peering at him.
He frowned, as if the question made no sense. “I’m the guy who’s going to walk you across the pool.”
With that, he pulled me toward him in a little nudge, and I popped off the edge—and instead of floating down gracefully, I squealed and grabbed him tight around the neck in what could only be described as a very clingy hug.
I didn’t mean to. I was just going to bob into the water, like always.
But this wasn’t always. My burns felt extra-naked, and I didn’t trust my legs to work any better in the water than out. I didn’t entirely trust Ian, either. And so: the chicken version of a leap of faith—one that involved clutching his neck with my face buried into the crook of his wet, post-cannonball shoulder.
“Too fast?” he said.
I nodded into his neck, liking the way the skin felt.
How to Walk Away Page 17