Twenty steps.

I took a deep breath. Should be easy. One foot in front of the other. C’mon. It’s easy, just one foot in front of the other.

My leg trembled. I was glad I was wearing long pants, so she couldn’t see. She might suspect, but she couldn’t see for sure. Shorts were more practical to get on and off, but I couldn’t imagine coming home looking like… well, like I looked. So, long pants.

I tried to give her a quick confident grin, but a twinge that became a stab as it shot quickly up the back of the leg and seemed to explode in a small, bright ball at the base of my skull, turned that into a grimace. She put out a hand on my arm without thinking, then withdrew it just as rapidly.

One step. My foot was resting on the first step. Behind us, the door to the building opened, interrupting this moment of triumph. An irritated clearing of the throat. I didn’t turn around, but she went down into the landing to clear some space for whoever it was to squeeze by me. I suddenly felt so very, incredibly tired. I leaned my head on the arm that was laid against the railing as the person went by. A scent of stale sweat and strangely metallic dirt. That neighbor who worked landscaping. Getting caught in the explosion had been a downer, but it’d given the strange superpower of having an extraordinary sense of smell. Spiderman had nothing on me, I’d joke while recovering in the hospital bed. Ha. Ha.

Ha.

The doctors suspected some kind of brain damage.

I tried to think of it in positive terms instead.

Like the first time she’d come to visit when I was conscious. I’d been resting my eyes and I noticed that I was thinking of summer fields and roses. She’d tiptoed in. So quiet I’d heard nothing over the hum of the air conditioning and electrical gizmos pushing my knocked about body back to life or something like it. But it was her. I held out my hand without opening my eyes and felt her take it, and I had to rest an extra, long, difficult moment not crying before I could open my eyes.

Summer fields and roses.

We were a long way from there now. I raised my head back off my arm as the neighbor disappeared up the landing and around the corner to the hallway. I could feel her presence behind me, silent. I pulled my other leg up after the first one, so now I had both on one step. Then, gently, slowly, pulled that leg higher, and… success. On the second step. Pulled the other up after it, a twinge, but no stab. Repeat.

Halfway up I rested. Leaned back against the wall, away from the railing.

I could stand still okay. I could sit in a chair too, and lying in bed was nooo problem. Too bad about having to move around. Maybe if there were do-overs I’d be born again in the next life as a tree.

She was looking down the stairs, thoughtful.

“We’ll move,” she said. “Another apartment, on the ground floor. Or rent a small ranch house, one level.”

I looked at her, staring, until she turned to face me. She wasn’t the crying type, and she wasn’t overly given to emotions. She returned my stare. Eyes level.

“With what money?” I said, “The insurance isn’t covering everything, and you heard the docs. It’ll be months. At least.”

I held out my hand to her. She took it, stared down as if examining a strange artifact. I gave her hand a squeeze, then let go and pushed myself off the wall, grabbed the railing again and wrestled my uncooperative limbs upward. She gracefully moved aside.

A few centuries later I was standing on the landing and taking my now-normal halting little baby steps down the hall. I didn’t need to steady myself against the wall with every step, so that’s progress, I told myself. She kept pace next to me slowly. She was thoughtful, pensive. I put everything out of my mind. Just steps. One foot in front of the other. Almost there.

She glided in front of me and unlocked the door, opened it and stepped aside. I made my way into the strangeness of familiarity. The apartment was the same, but life was different.

She’d put flowers on the table.

I went to the sofa and hauled myself slowly down. She went into the kitchen, reappeared with a glass of water, put it on the coffee table in front of me.

“So…” she said and sat down next to me.

I nodded. “So…” I repeated back. I put a hand on her leg, her beautiful, healthy and not-at-all-looking-as-if-a-giant-mutant-rat-had-chewed-through-half-of-it leg. I bit my lip. There was not a single thing I could think of to say.

She sat still next to me and time stretched and collapsed, and I was so very, very tired again. I fought the feeling off, I didn’t want anything right then, not even blissful, painless sleep. I just wanted to sit here with my hand on my girl and her summer fields and roses filling my senses and the random small quiet sounds of an apartment building in the afternoon and the sun through the window and the nothing of thinking of nothing. Especially the nothing of not thinking about never being able to run. And if we actually had a kid, like we’d talked about before, of never tossing a ball to him, at least not easily. There were a lot of things to not think about. Of what would happen if I didn’t really, actually, get much better than this. Months, they’d said, but they hadn’t looked too confident as they’d said it. What would she do? After a decent amount of time had passed? I loved her enough to know her, and saints aren’t real. How long did I have?

I sat there and the tiredness washed over me and her breathing slowed too, and then she nodded to herself in that way she had and leaned over and kissed me on the cheek and got up, went to the kitchen. I heard her putting water in a kettle. I couldn’t fight it anymore and my eyes closed and I drifted off.

The future stretched out. One long path with no end that I could see.

But still, a path. Just take it one step at a time.