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“Malik.”

This time, Eternity’s voice came from behind me. I turned my head enough to look at her.

She was sitting in a chair a few feet away with one hand resting on top of her stomach. Three weeks had somehow made her look even more pregnant, something I hadn’t thought was possible. My son was due soon enough that every time she shifted wrong or made a face, I found myself wondering if I needed to call somebody. Right now, she wasn’t in pain.

She was looking at me like I was getting on her nerves. And I probably was. This road to recovery had made me mean, and I tried to check myself every time an attitude arose, but the shit was hard.

“What?” I asked.

“You know what.”

Eternity didn’t have to go into detail on how I had been being an ass lately. Instead of going back and forth with her, I turned my attention back toward the bars. The therapist tried to hide her smile, but I caught it.

“Don’t encourage her,” I said to her with a smirk.

“I’m staying out of it,” she said as she threw both of her hands up.

Having a female physical therapist was cool because, unknowingly, she doubled as a regular therapist for my wife. Besides her sister, Eternity didn’t have many females that she could turn to.

“Malik,” my physical therapist said, bringing my attention back to what we were doing, “I want you to try again. This time don’t think about taking a step. Just shift your weight toward your left side and hold it there.”

I drew in a breath and adjusted my hands against the bars. This was the part nobody could’ve prepared me for. Getting shot hurt. Surgery hurt. Waking up and realizing my body didn’t work the way it had before hurt in an entirely different way. But none of that compared to how frustrating it was to stand here and have to think through movements I had been making without effort for years.

Walking wasn’t supposed to require concentration. Standing wasn’t supposed to feel like work. I shifted my weight carefully and felt my left leg respond beneath me. The muscles tightened. The movement was shaky but there, and I forced myself not to immediately dump all my weight back into my arms.

“Good,” the therapist encouraged. “Hold it.”

My jaw tightened.

“Five seconds.”

It felt more like fifty.

“Four.”

My leg started shaking harder.

“Three.”

My hands tightened around the bars.

“Two.”

I felt my balance begin to go and caught myself before she had to.

“One. Good. Now relax.”

I let out the breath I’d been holding and leaned forward against the bars.

“That’s progress,” she said with pride.

I closed my eyes. There was that fucking word again. Progress. Everybody loved telling me about progress because they weren’t the ones who had gone from walking into a building without thinking about it to needing instructions on how to stand. The physical therapist gave me a moment before asking, “You ready to go again?”

I looked at her like she was crazy.

“No,” I answered honestly.

“Okay.”