I say this with my head down, looking at the carpet. The carpet is very similar to the one we have in the theater.
“Right,” Mark says.
I look up to find Mark staring at my swinging leg.
“And I mean things still hurt, of course,” I add quickly. “My back. My ribs. My hip.”
Mark nods at my leg. We’re on more familiar territory for him now. He appears to exhale for the first time. Of course things hurt.
“But it all feels more, I don’t know. Bearable?” I laugh nervously. I realize I’m shaking, I’m afraid. I haven’t dared to say the word better in a long time. I used to utter it so carelessly—declare it to my therapists so freely, hoping to get a reward, a dog begging for a biscuit—and whenever I uttered it, a fresh pain would seize me soon after. Almost as if God were mocking me and my hope. Better. You think you’re better, do you? Ha. Too funny. Well, let’s see how you do with this. Still better?
Mark’s smiling at me now, his hands in his pockets. “Well, wow, Miranda. Look at you.”
“And my leg. My leg, look.” And I straighten and bend it for Mark. “I can sit down and stand up now without it seizing up, see?” To demonstrate, I stand up. And then I sit back down. And I stand up. Sit down. Stand up. Sit down. Stand—
“Okay, that’s enough,” Mark says. “Got it. Got the gist.”
Beside me, on the next medical table, an elderly woman lies on her back, a TheraBand wrapped around her knees, looking at me with something like fear. She’s in the middle of doing a bridge exercise. Her legs are shaking wildly. All the patients in the gym are looking at me, I realize. They’ve stopped their band-walks, their sad clamshell and bridge exercises. Stopped their slow pedaling on taped-up bikes. The PTs are all looking too. Every blue polo shirt branded with the SpineWorks logo turned toward me and Mark.
Stupidly, I think they’re going to applaud us. At the very least, Mark will applaud me.
But Mark’s hands stay in his pockets. He’s just looking at me.
“Why don’t we go into a treatment room? Little too crowded in the gym today, am I right? I think one just opened up.”
A treatment room? Why? I thought surely Mark would want me to exercise today.
“Um, okay.”
“Just go to the one at the end of the hall there. You go on ahead. I’ll be right there. I’ll catch up with you.” He hands me a blue medical gown to change into.
* * *
Alone in the treatment room, I put on the gown. It hurts my hip of course, my back too, but not like before, that’s another thing I should remember to tell Mark. That it hurts less to dress. That it still hurts, but less. Less, better, these actual words on my actual lips, not so dry anymore, and Mark looking at me as if I’ve spoken gibberish. I sit down on the medical table. I stand back up, just to be sure. Leg straightens and I sigh with relief, yes, I can still do it. I smile. It still feels like a miracle, a fluke, a trick every time. Tears spring to my eyes. I sit back down. Stand up. I laugh at how easy.
Better. Maybe I really am. Not all the way better. Not even close. But who knows? Maybe I’ll even be able to stop coming in a few months. Maybe I’ll be able to tell Mark it’s over, John too. Maybe I’ll quit the pills altogether. Maybe I’ll be able to quit this hideous job, go back to the stage. No, too old now. Well, maybe some community theater. Just being back on the stage again would be so nice. I’d do it for free. I cry when I think how I’d do it for free. In a run-down, drafty church, Grace alone in the pews clapping. Thank you, I’d say. Thank you so much. Maybe soon I’ll be able to walk by my old house. I’ll pick a spring day when it’s sunny, when Paul might happen to be out in the garden. He’ll see me walking along, how I’m smiling at the world around me—the grass, the sky, the street, the houses—not crying, not bracing myself as if the very air is something to be endured, not dead inside anymore. He’ll see me walking and he’ll gasp. Princess, is that really you?
I sit, with my leg swinging, it won’t stop swinging wildly. Time passes. I hear it ticking somewhere, though there’s no clock on the wall. Where is Mark anyway? I’ll catch up with you, he said, didn’t he say that? I feel it getting dark outside, even though I’m in the basement. No windows here. I stare at three-year-old magazines, magazines I’ve flipped through a hundred times already. But I can’t read again about the anti-inflammatory properties of coffee or how the goji berry is a super fruit. Six ab exercises you can do at home that I could never do at all.