“Goodnight, Benji.”
“Goodnight, Mickey. Go to sleep. You’ve got parallel bars in the morning.”
“Twelve seconds tomorrow.”
“And then thirteen. And then twenty. And then one day you’re going to stand up, walk across a room to me, and I’m going to come completely undone.”
His mouth does the half-curve. “That’s the plan.”
The screen goes dark. I text Dante.
Benji:I need you to talk me out of driving to Jacksonville right now.
Dante instantly texts back.
Dante:Get in the car. Go now! Drive fast.
Benji:You’re supposed to talk me OUT of it.
Dante:If I tell you not to go, you’ll be on I-95 in twelve minutes. This is reverse psychology. I’m telling you to go so you’ll stay. Go to bed, Benji.
Dante knows me too well.
I go to bed and think about Mickey. I told him I’d be back as soon as the wedding season quieted down. But the season hasn’t quieted down.
A client called with a last-minute anniversary party in Coral Gables and one week became two. Then three. Then four.
Every Sunday night I’d text Mickey and say next week, and every Monday morning something would land in my inbox that made next week impossible. He never complained. He never guilted me.
He just sent me his daily PT numbers and a photo of George by the window and said, “George misses you and I do, too.”
Chapter 28: Mickey
Five weeks of rehab and the days have developed a rhythm that would bore anyone who isn’t living inside it.
The mornings begin with Jason. Push-ups climbing from twenty to thirty, the screaming in my triceps becoming familiar. Transfer drills until my shoulders burn and my body knows the choreography well enough that Jason stops spotting and starts watching with his arms crossed. The tilt table climbing degree by degree toward vertical. Afternoons with Leah, learning the thousand small negotiations between my body and the world it used to move through without thinking.
Then the parallel bars. The first time Jason walks me to the bars and locks the gait belt around my waist, my arms are steady but my chest is tight. I grip the bars and he says “when you’re ready” and I push. For a second, I’m hanging, all arms, my weight suspended between two pieces of wood. Then my feet are on the mat, my legs are underneath me and I’m standing for the first time since the hallway.
Eleven seconds. That’s how long I held the first time with my arms shaking, my blood pressure dropping, the room going gray at the edges. Eleven seconds of vertical and then Jason lowered me back into the chair.
The next day, fourteen seconds. Then twenty. Then thirty. My arms carry the weight and my legs participate, not holding me up or supporting, but present. The left more than the right. The left has always been ahead.
At every session break, Jason tests. The fingertip down my shin. The press on the sole of my foot. Try to move your toes. The signal goes out. Nothing answers.
Until one day it does.
Jason runs the pinwheel across my outer thigh, the left side, a patch of skin above my knee that has been silent since the bullet. The metal points trace a line across the skin and I feel it.
Not sharp. Not clear. More of a distant pressure. Like someone pressing a thumb through a heavy blanket. But it’s there. The signal traveled from my thigh through the damaged cord to my brain and my brain registered contact.
“There,” I say. “I felt that. I thought maybe I did before. Today I definitely felt it.”
Jason doesn’t smile. He doesn’t do celebration. Instead, his pen moves faster across the notepad.
“Is it consistent?” he asks.
“Past couple of days. Getting a little stronger.”
