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.