Through the open maw of the barn, I could see the skeleton of the staircase—bare treads, open risers, no rail, angling up into the half-built second floor. Fresh snow clung to the work boots lined up by the entrance, melted into a sheen along the plywood where guys had tromped in and out.
“I’m going to take a look up top.” I nodded toward the staircase.
Austin hesitated, eyes flicking from my face to my leg and back. “You sure?” he said. “It’s slick as shit up there from the melt. I can bring the plans down if you just want?—”
“What, you think I forgot how stairs work?” I hooked a brow, forcing my mouth into something like a smirk.
He huffed out a reluctant laugh, still not fully sold. “Sounds good, boss.”
“Let’s go.” I motioned forward. “You can show me your ugly-ass stringers.”
The truth was, I needed this more than I needed the oxygen in my lungs. Clara’s voice from the morning ran on a loop in my head—Look at you, boss man—and made me smile.
Austin thumped up the stairs first, boots leaving damp prints. I followed.
The first step was solid. My good foot landed neatly on the tread. The prosthetic came down with a hollow thunk on the next, the socket biting around my stump in a way I’d learned to ignore as we climbed.
Each tread had just the slightest film of moisture where snow had melted and refrozen. Not enough to see, just enough to feel in the faint slip of rubber.
An air compressor kicked on somewhere downstairs with a low, grinding roar. Nail guns popped in short bursts, sharp and staccato. It wasn’t the same sound as mortar fire, not exactly, but my nervous system had never mastered nuance.
A warning zap of phantom pain shot through the end of my thigh, nerves misfiring in the empty space. I gritted my teeth and kept going.
Not here. Not now. You’re fine. One step at a time.
Austin glanced back over his shoulder. “We’re reinforcing this corner,” he said, pointing, oblivious to the way my hands had tightened into fists. “Once the joists are?—”
A two-by-four slipped from someone’s grip below and hit the concrete with a crack like a gunshot.
My body reacted before my brain could remind it we were inside a barn in Michigan and not halfway around the world.
My shoulders flinched. My good foot jerked. The prosthetic, mid-step, came down a few inches off where I’d aimed it—right onto a slick patch where the melting snow had turned the plywood dark.
The rubber sole slid.
For one hideous half second, I was suspended between steps, weight pitched wrong, good leg scrambling for something solid that wasn’t there.
Then gravity won.
My knee slammed into the tread, pain detonating up my thigh. My hip met the sharp corner of wood a heartbeat later with a jolt that rattled my teeth. My palm skidded out on the damp plywood when I tried to catch myself, skin scraping. The socket dug into raw nerves as the prosthetic twisted at an angle it had no business being in.
Breath punched out of me. The world narrowed to the burn in my stump and the humiliating fact that I was suddenly on my ass on a half-built staircase, staring at my own boots.
“Shit,” Austin snapped. I heard the scramble of his boots coming back down. “Wes. Hold up, stay still?—”
“I’m fine,” I tried to say, but it came out thin and wrecked.
I planted my good foot, grabbed a stair, and tried to haul myself up.
The prosthetic foot skidded again, shooting out on the slick plywood. The angle was all wrong. With no rail and nothing to brace against, there was nowhere solid for it to push. Every time I shifted, pain knifed through the stump, sharp and electric.
My good thigh started to shake from the effort of trying to do it all.
“Boss, don’t,” one of the guys called from below. Boots clattered as more of them hustled over. “Just hold on a second.”
Voices crowded the space, too close, echoing off unfinished walls.
“Careful, man?—”
