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Only with Tami had she ever been truly honest.

She lay back down and closed her eyes, thinking,
Tami
.

How are you, flygirl? Do you need me as much as I need you? You thought I was screwed up before—you should see me now. I can’t even trust my own mind and I can’t sleep without nightmares … God, I miss you … wake up …

Jolene sighed. As she lay there, feeling scared and (admit it, Jo) sorry for herself, she heard the sounds of the rehab center waking up. In no time at all, an aide had come with her breakfast, and another had helped her into the bathroom and in and out of the shower.

At nine o’clock, Michael showed up. He walked into her room without knocking.

She was almost afraid to look at him; she felt so vulnerable right now. “I thought you had a deposition today.”

“I didn’t want you to be alone for this.”

The easy way he said it was an arrow to the heart, as if they were Michael-and-Jolene again.
Don’t believe it.
“Thanks,” was all she could say.

Conny rapped sharply on the door and walked into the room. If he noticed the silence between them, he made no sign of it. “Good. You’re here, Michael. Let’s go.”

Jolene felt uncomfortable getting into her chair in front of Michael—it was all so pathetically difficult for her—but it quickly became apparent that Conny had no intention of helping her. So she grabbed the bar and hauled herself upright with her left hand, then scooted over to the side of the bed and swung her legs over.

It was still a shock to land on one foot, but she concentrated on keeping her balance. Michael started to roll the wheelchair into range; she shook her head and hopped one step, then grabbed the rubberized handles and sat down with a sigh. She could feel how red her cheeks were from the exertion, and she was breathing hard—again—but she had done it herself, and there was some small satisfaction in that.

Conny smiled at her, then took his place behind the chair. The three of them set off down the hallway. For the first time, she saw how big this place was. Finally, they rolled up at a door marked
Prosthetics
.

Inside, it looked like Frankenstein’s laboratory. There were plastic hands and feet and arms and legs hanging from the ceilings and the walls, in every size and color and composition.

A small Asian woman with huge glasses came out from the back room. “You must be Mrs. Zarkades,” she said.

“Call me Jolene. This is my husband, Michael.”

The woman nodded crisply. “Let’s get started.”

For the next hour, the woman worked in concentrated silence. She measured Jolene’s residual leg and made a plaster cast of it.

While the plaster was drying, Michael asked questions. “Why can’t she get fitted for her permanent leg now? Why a temporary?”

The Asian woman blinked through the saucer-sized glasses. “Her stump will continue to shrink, which means that the socket will have to be changed often. It saves time and money this way, and it has the added benefit of letting her learn to be mobile while her leg shrinks. Bearing weight on it actually helps speed recovery. It will also help with desensitization.” She carefully removed the plaster mold, which Jolene had trouble looking at, and took it into the back room.

Afterward, they headed back to Jolene’s room.

“You’ll be walking in no time,” Conny said as he wheeled her up to the bed.

She maneuvered herself onto the mattress and remained sitting up, covering her legs with the blanket.

“I’ll be back at noon for PT,” Conny said.

“Lucky me.”

Conny’s laughter boomed and then faded as he walked away. Then she and Michael were alone.

“Well,” Jolene said. “I need to sleep before Genghis Khan throws me to the mat again and tells me to give him two hundred sit-ups.”

“You can do it, you know,” he said. “Whatever he asks.”

Jolene looked up at him, remembering how much his support had once meant to her. She wanted to tell him how scared she was to come home, how uncertain she felt about everything, how terrible her nightmares were. “Thanks for coming today, Michael. You didn’t have to.”

“I’ve let you down a lot in the past.”

“Yeah,” she said quietly.

“Let me make it up to you,” he said.

She thought about that, about opening herself back up to him, expecting something, and the idea was terrifying. He’d already broken her heart. How could she trust him again? Especially now.

She didn’t answer.

He waited a long time, staring down at her. Then, with a quiet sigh, he left the room and closed the door behind him.

*   *   *

Jolene counted the days until her temporary prosthesis was ready. When it was, Conny strode into her room with a bright smile on his face. “You ready to get a move on, soldier girl?”

“I’m ready,” she said.

He rolled the chair up to the bed, and she got into it with less effort than before.

All the way down the hallway toward the physical therapy room, she tried to prepare herself, both for triumph and failure. She didn’t want failure to suck her under again.

In the PT room, Conny wheeled her over to a set of parallel bars.

She’d never noticed how intimidating this piece of equipment could be. As she stared at the shiny bars, an aide came up and stood beside her, holding the prosthetic leg.

It looked like a tree trunk with a foot.

“Okay, Jolene,” Conny said, squatting down so that he was eye level with her in the chair. “Today isn’t about walking. Your right hand isn’t ready to really support your weight yet.”

“It may never be.”

“Let’s take one problem at a time.” He reached for a thing that looked like a big sock and put it on her residual leg. Then he looked up at her. “Today, you’re going to stand.”

“Easy for you to say.”

He grinned and helped her to her feet. She hopped, holding on to him, and positioned herself inside the parallel bars.

The woman with the prosthetic leg kneeled in front of Jolene and fit the residual leg into the plastic cuplike top of the prosthesis. It felt snug, maybe even tight.

The woman said, “It’s on,” and backed away.

Conny tightened his hold on Jolene. “You okay? I’m going to put you down now. Just try to stand.”

Jolene clutched the left bar in her good hand. With her right, she couldn’t really grab hold, but she put her fingers on the metal for balance.

She took a deep breath, trying to calm her runaway nerves. This meant everything. If she could stand, she could walk, and if she could walk, she could run. Maybe she could even learn to fly again.
Just do it, Jo. Stand.

“Jolene?”

Her heart was beating so hard it took her a moment to hear his voice.

He was standing at the end of the bars, smiling at her.

He’d let her go. When?

Slowly, she looked down.

She was standing.
Standing
.

She could hardly believe it. She looked up at Conny through a blur of tears.

“I know, soldier girl.”

She stood there for a long time, working on her balance. She practiced lifting her hands from the bars. It hurt, putting all her weight on the prosthesis, but she didn’t care.

She gripped the bar again in her good hand and moved her right leg one step forward.

“You’re going too fast, Jo, don’t—”

She ignored him. It felt good, making her own choice, pushing on. She had to drag her bad foot. It felt so heavy, unwieldy, but she did it. She
walked
.

She took another step forward. It felt like there were teeth in the socket, chewing her flesh, shredding it. She winced every time she put her weight on it, and by the time she reached the middle of the bar, she was sweating so hard her hands slipped. “I need gloves,” she said between breaths.

“That’s enough for today, Jo.”

Ignoring him, she gripped the bar in her good hand, stood on her good leg, and forced another awkward step.

Pain pushed back.

Focus, Jo
.

She loosened her grip on the bar until she had let go completely. She put all her weight on the prosthesis, ignored the pain that shot up her thigh and lodged in her hip like a hot knife blade, and took another step. It took forever but she walked all by herself to the end of the bars. When she finally looked up, sweating and red-faced and breathing hard, she saw Conny smiling at her.

“You know what this means, soldier girl?”

She wiped the sweat from her eyes, still breathing hard. “What?”

“It means she’s going home soon,” Michael answered.

Jolene glanced to the left and saw her husband standing by the wall, smiling. That was all it took, a look, a tiny adjustment to her balance, and she stumbled. Pain exploded up her right side.

Conny was beside her instantly, catching her before she hit the ground. She bit her tongue so hard she tasted blood.

“I’m tired. Can I go back to my room?”

“Sure.” Connie started to reach for the wheelchair.

“I’ll walk,” she said.

“I don’t know, Jolene, that’s—”

“She’ll walk,” Michael said, coming up beside her. His gaze was steady on her face. “She can lean on me.”

He gave her one of his old smiles, and she was surprised by how deeply it affected her. She realized all at once how much she’d missed it, missed
him
.

He moved in beside her, slipped an arm around her waist. His hand pressed against her hip bone, holding her steady. She felt his breath against her lips, her cheeks.

“Don’t let me fall,” she said.

“I won’t.”

She nodded and took a deep breath. Staring at the open door, she gritted her teeth and began to move like Quasimodo: step, limp, drag; step, limp, drag.

She made it one step at a time, to the door, through the door, down the hall. By the time she reached her room, the pain in her leg was unbearable.

She was so tired, she let Michael help her into bed. Neither one of them knew how to remove the prosthesis, so they just covered it with the blanket. She was pretty sure blisters were forming down there, bubbling up and oozing, and she felt no rush to look.

“You’re back,” Michael said.

She’d been thinking about the pain of her forming blisters so deeply she’d almost forgotten he was there. “What?”

“Back there, I saw the woman who could run a marathon on a high-tech leg.”

“That woman is gone, Michael,” she said.

The look in his eyes was sad. It spoke volumes about who they’d been and who’d they’d become. “I should have told her I loved her, before she went off to war.”

“Yeah,” she said hoarsely. “That would have been nice.”

Twenty-Two

Jolene woke up screaming, drenched in sweat, shaking hard.

Falling back into the pillows, she worked to slow her breathing. They were killing her, these nightmares. She tried not to fall asleep anymore, but sooner or later, it crept up on her, and the nightmares were always there, waiting for her in the dark. Every morning she woke up feeling drained, already exhausted. Her first thought was always
Tami.

She stared out her one small window; that was her view now. Her world had shrunk to a single room and a three-by-three-foot sheet of glass that looked out on a tree that was losing its leaves.

From her cockpit, she had seen forever … and now she needed help to go to the bathroom.

It was demoralizing. As hard as she tried to be positive, she was irritated and shrewish when the aide finally came in to help her.

“I hear it’s a big day for you today,” the woman—Gloria—said, pushing a wheelchair into the room.

“Yeah,” Jolene said, unsmiling. “I’m getting my cast off.”

“I thought you were going home.”

Jolene thought again:
What’s wrong with me?
“Oh. That, too.”

Gloria helped Jolene out of bed and into the wheelchair. Talking all the while about something—Jolene couldn’t concentrate on the words—the woman wheeled her into the bathroom, helped her pull her pants down and sit on the toilet seat.

“Do you need help wiping?” Gloria asked in the same voice you’d say,
Would you like fries with that
? Perky. Cheerful.

“No. I’m left-handed. Thanks. Maybe a few minutes of privacy?”

“Of course.” Gloria left the bathroom and closed the door behind her, but not all the way. A slice of air showed through.

It took Jolene a long time to empty her bladder—nothing seemed to work as well these days. When she was finished, she was actually winded. And she still had dressing and hair combing and teeth brushing to accomplish. It tired her out just thinking about it.

“Are we done?” Gloria asked.

“
I’m
done,” Jolene said, striving not to sound irritated.

She was getting upset. It didn’t take Sigmund Freud to guess why.

She was scared to have her cast removed.

With the cast on her arm, there was hope. She could look down at it and think that within that plaster casing, the nerves in her hand were mending, growing strong. But today she would know for sure. Was she a woman with two good hands or just one?

She let Gloria help her back into the wheelchair, as humiliating as it was.

“Conny will be here in a few minutes to take you to get that cast off. Do you want to get back in bed to wait?”

“Could you roll me to the window? I’d like to look out.”

“Sure.” Gloria rolled Jolene to the window. “It’s going to be a beautiful fall day.” She patted Jolene’s shoulder and left. At the door, she paused and turned back. “Oh, I almost forgot. Maudeen Wachsmith in accounting wanted to ask you what you wanted us to do with your mail.”

“I have mail?”

“Guess so.”

“Oh. Well. Bring it to me.” She turned back to the window.

Outside, the autumn sky was a pale sage green with wispy clouds. Beyond the parking lot, giant cedar trees screened whatever lay beyond. Up close, an aged cherry tree clung stubbornly to a handful of blackened leaves. As she watched, one lost its grip and tumbled downward.