I met his eyes. “Okay.”

But I couldn’t leave it alone. I have never, ever, been comfortable with silence. I can’t get a massage, or a manicure, or even a pelvic without making constant chitchat the entire time. I cannot be in the presence of another human being, especially one I don’t know very well, and not talk—whether they want to or not. I surveyed the other PTs, chatting away so solicitously with their patients. If I’d had one of them, I might’ve stayed more passive and let the conversation come and go—but being stuck with the king of quiet stirred up all the compulsive-need-to-talk chemicals in my body, and I just started yammering on like a nut-job.

Anything, I had apparently decided, was better than nothing.

Hence this monologue, delivered on my back, to the ceiling, as Ian made me push against various objects with my legs: “Did you know I got engaged on the same day this injury happened? You probably do. Everybody seems to. The nurses keep talking about it. I hear them in the hallway. They feel very sorry for me. They can’t imagine what it must be like to be me. Which is funny, because I can’t either. The best day of your life and the worst day are the same day. How does that bode for a marriage? If it even happens. If your once-charming prince doesn’t turn into a seedy alcoholic and die in some gutter somewhere. And now I’m wearing this ring—and I don’t even want to. Or maybe I do. I don’t know who I am. I used to be a runner. I ran three different marathons. I didn’t place or anything, but I knew how to push myself, and I knew how to be dedicated. When things got tough, I went for a run. I ran in the rain. I ran at night sometimes—or at four in the morning. What am I going to do now? Go for a roll? I can’t move. I can barely breathe. But then I think, who am I to complain? There are girls who’ve been sold into slavery. There are children being beaten. Half the world is worse off than me—probably more. Half the time I feel petulant and whiny, and the other half, I think I’ve suffered something beyond human imagining. And I can’t find an in-between. All I know is that my life as I knew it is gone. Nothing is the same. Food doesn’t even taste the same. Voices don’t sound the same. Things I used to love, I hate. Things I used to hate, I hate. I don’t want to see anyone, I don’t want to talk to anyone. My cell phone has like fifty messages. I hate myself, and I hate everybody else. I think about dying. It seems like it would be easier. But then I don’t want to die. I just don’t want to live either. My mom says the only way I can get better is to believe I will get better—to be such a determined maniac that even the laws of nature can’t stop me—but then I look at these noodles I have for legs and I can’t believe it. It’s like asking me to believe the sky is green. The sky is just not green—you know?—and I can’t pretend that it is. All I know is, I don’t feel anything at all—not even hope.”

Somewhere in my soliloquy, I’d closed my eyes. By the time I ran out of words and fell quiet, I noticed Ian had set my legs down and was no longer touching me. Had he walked away? Gone for a coffee? Left for the day? I knew he wasn’t listening, but something about the idea that he wasn’t even there stung a little bit.

I opened my eyes, and that’s when I saw that he’d stood up and was leaning in to take my hands. “Sit up,” he said, not looking at me, in a way that gave the distinct impression I was just another annoying obligation in his day.

I took his hands, but he did not pull me up. He just held them while I worked my way to a sitting position.

Once I was steady, he let go.

Then he bent down in front of me and met my eyes for the first time all day. He looked straight into my pupils until he had my full attention. Then he said, “Whether you walk again or not, I’m going to tell you the one thing I know for certain.”

I blinked. “What’s that?”

He took a deep breath. “It’s the trying that heals you. That’s all you have to do. Just try.”

And he did not say another word for the rest of the day.

Fourteen

LATER, I FELT embarrassed about it.

I had assaulted him with my talking. He clearly didn’t like to talk, and he certainly hadn’t asked to be subjected to my whole pathetic story. He was utterly robotic that whole time, and afterward, he was even more determined to stay poker-faced.

That said, “It’s the trying that heals you” really stuck in my head.

The next morning, for whatever reason, I woke up ready to try.

That day, after all the morning routines, I spent the “rest hour”—that I’d been using to stare into space—researching spinal cord injuries. My mother wasn’t the only person in the world who could read articles. I started at Christopher Reeve’s foundation and worked my way down, reading about expectations, therapies, strategies, equipment, clothing, and experimental theories. I learned terms like “axonal sprouting” and “neurogenesis,” and I memorized the names and numbers of all the vertebrae. I studied anatomic charts of the spine and the body. I did Google searches for the phrases “spinal cord injury” and “miraculous recovery,” and then I read every article my mother had found and then some. I made a choice to get inspired. I made lists of reasons to feel hopeful. I forced myself to look at the sky and see green.

During those moments, whether they were in the late afternoon when my muscles were twitching from everything Ian had forced me to do, or in the wee hours of the night when I’d woken and couldn’t get back to sleep, I felt the tiniest bit like myself again. Because this was how I had conquered every challenge in my life—with impeccable organization and driven focus. I got Kit to buy me index cards and file folders and a new pack of ballpoint pens. I had my dad set up a printer, and I started printing out articles, organizing them into different folders, and color-coding them with highlighters.

My mother had made a good point: There wasn’t time to grieve. Everything I read confirmed what she’d said. There was a window of opportunity for recovery, and after that, it would be foolish to hope for more. I’d wasted two of my weeks in a stupor, and insurance would sponsor exactly four and a half more. So I had a month. A month to try every single possible thing I could think of to get my life back.

I read an article that said to talk to your body and tell it what you wanted, so I did. Another said to massage your limbs to wake up the nerve responses, so I did. One article said to make a list of tangible goals, and to check them off as you met them, so I did that, too.

? wiggle toes

? point toes

? flex toes

? rotate feet 360 degrees at ankles

? strengthen calves and arches

? strengthen core

? extend legs from knee out

? take a step

? stand for 5 minutes alone

? walk again—like a boss!

Of all the things on that list, I could sort of do exactly one: I could stand with my knees locked for two minutes—but only if I had a bar, or a person, to hold on to. Still, being able to lock my knees was huge. Lots of people couldn’t do that.

But of all the advice I found, and all the mental tricks I tried, my favorite was the article that told me to visualize my ultimate goal over and over. Want to know my ultimate goal? To wheel myself out of the hospital to go home for good on a breezy spring day and run into Chip.

In the visualization, I’m wearing my favorite jeans and a gray-blue collared shirt that covers all my scars, and he’s headed in to pick me up—but he stops still when he sees me because I look so much better than he’d expected. Out of the sickening hospital lights and away from the mauve décor, with the sunlight on my skin for the first time in far too long, I have a new radiance. He sees me now, suddenly, not as an invalid that we all feel so sorry for, but as the real me. In that second, as he’s struck by the sight, I push myself up and stand—then I take one step toward him, and then another, and he’s so astonished, he can barely breathe.

That’s it. That’s the grand finale. I’m the old me again, but so much better. Because now I’ve astonished us all. Now I’ve done the impossible. Now I’ve returned from hell—wiser and stronger and grateful as shit for all my ordinary blessings.