Chip feels a surge of awe for me, followed quickly by desperate love—and here’s the best part: In the fantasy, identifying with Chip, I get to experience those things, too. Which is such a profound relief, because all I can feel for this mangled, malfunctioning body of mine these days is contempt. Wait—no: “Contempt” is too simple. It’s more than that. It’s disappointment. It’s disgust. It’s revulsion.

But in the visualization? All that’s gone. All viciousness is replaced with admiration. I can see it on his face so clearly that I can feel it, too, and it’s bliss. It hooks me and makes it irresistibly fun to return to the moment again and again. Chip is amazed at my strength and determination and power. And then I arrive at his arms, and he kisses me, and I’ve aced another challenge. Even my hair is restored to just the way it was before—only better—because why not.

This wasn’t self-indulgence, the article assured me. This was therapy.

I had to see what I wanted. I had to want what I wanted. I had to create a vision to move toward. The more time I could spend making that vision real in my head, the stronger its pull would be. So I let myself long for my old life to the point of aching, on the theory that the more I longed for it, the more strength I would conjure to go after it.

Was centering my image around Chip a little bit antifeminist?

Maybe.

You could argue it either way. You could read it as a rescued-by-the-prince fantasy, I suppose—though, in truth, Chip didn’t rescue me. He didn’t do anything but behold my awesomeness. I did it all myself. Would my women’s studies professor from college point out, though, that my accomplishment wasn’t significant or meaningful or emotionally resonant until it was appreciated by a man? Sure. Okay. That’s fair. Maybe that was something to work on someday in therapy. But I had four and a half weeks left, and that visualization was addictively powerful. I’d take any power I could get.

Getting focused made me feel in control. It cleared my head. It’s possible the worst thing about those first two weeks in the hospital was being so directionless, so passive, so lost.

*

THEN, ONE NIGHT, Kit came in with a stack of articles on the health benefits of singing and slapped them down on the rolling tray.

“I spent the day online,” she said, “researching why you should sing.”

I eyed her stack. “I’m not going to sing, Kit.”

She lifted up the top third of them. “These detail the emotional benefits of singing.”

“Not interested.”

She lifted up the second third of them. “These are the social benefits.”

I shook my head. “Don’t care.”

“And these”—she held the final third up like the Statue of Liberty—“are the physical benefits.”

I sighed.

Kit started counting off on her fingers. “Singing helps release oxytocin and dopamine and endorphins. It decreases anxiety and depression. It reduces stress and helps regulate the endocrine system. It creates better oxygenation in the blood and leads to better sleep. It increases antibodies and strengthens the immune system. And—” She stepped closer for her grand finale.

“Do not say it makes you happy—”

“It makes you happy.”

I dropped my head back against the pillow. “I don’t want to be happy.”

“Fine. Don’t be happy. But sing anyway. Because it’s good for your health in just about every possible way.”

“Does it reduce inflammation in the spinal cord?”

“There’s no study showing it doesn’t.”

I had to hand it to her. She was ready for me. That girl was going to get me singing or die trying. She described study after study. She told inspirational stories. She barraged me with statistics and inspiration. A study in Denmark—or was it Holland?—had tracked three hundred cancer patients, half of whom joined choirs and sang at least three times a week, and half of whom, the control group, did not. The singers were more likely to go into remission, and stay there—and the singers increased their life expectancy by six months over the nonsingers.

When I started to protest, she said, “I know, I know. You don’t feel like singing. Well guess what? You seem to believe that you can only sing if you’re already happy. But I believe that singing makes you happy, and science appears to be backing me up. Plus, an endorphin or two wouldn’t kill you.”

“Look, I just don’t think I can be happy anymore.”

“Well, I think you can.”

“Why do you keep pushing this?”

“Because you love to sing.”

I used to love to sing. “I love to sing exactly as much as everybody else.”

“False. That’s Mom talking.”

I squinted at her like she was nuts. “Mom doesn’t talk about singing.”

“That’s right. Or encourage it or value it. Or recognize your talent.”

“I am not a talented singer. I’m just a normal person.”

Kit nodded, and added, “With perfect pitch.”

“I don’t have perfect pitch.”

“You can harmonize to anything. Anything at all! Do you think everybody can do that?”

I shrugged.

“No. Nobody can do that.”

“Big deal.”

“It is a big deal. You never should have left it behind. Now, are you going to start singing, or should I?”

But she didn’t even wait for an answer. She just moved fast, so I couldn’t shut her down, and then when she finally ran out of ammunition, without even pausing, she tapped her phone, where she had “Let It Be” already cued up, and hit PLAY.

She knew I couldn’t resist that song.

She started singing along while I watched her, with my mouth clamped closed and my arms crossed over my chest. Then she started deliberately getting the words wrong, singing things like “And when the broke and hardened people…”

“Broken-hearted people!” I couldn’t help but correct.

She went on, “For though they may be partying—”

“Parted!” I shouted. “They’re not partying. This is not a song about partying.”

But she was having fun now. She mutilated the whole rest of the song, changing “whisper” to “whistle,” “cloudy” to “crowded,” and “light” to “blight,” while I shouted out protest after protest. Finally, we neared the end.

“You know I’ve got it on repeat, right?”

And so, when it started up again, those deep and soulful piano chords we remembered from my dad’s old records, I leaned my head back against the pillow, fixed my gaze on the ceiling, and let myself give in. I did love that song. It was the comfort food of Beatles tunes. Would it really kill me, I decided, to take a little bite?

“Fine,” I said, “but sing it right this time.”

“You’re the boss.”

So we did.

And, yes, I harmonized a little bit.

Did it make me happy? It didn’t make me miserable, I’ll give it that.

When the song ended, we sang it again.

Fifteen

AFTER THAT, WE fell into a schedule.

My official first order of business every morning was to try to wiggle my toes—which I never could. After that, it was: sponge bath, bandage changing, Silvadene application, and OT with Priya, who was very pleased with my progress in the areas of chair transfer, tooth-brushing, toileting, putting on sneakers and tying them, putting on and taking off socks, and wriggling into yoga pants. I was progressing well in the wheelchair obstacle course next door to the therapy gym. I could navigate both tight turns and cobblestones without tipping, and Priya was starting to eyeball the final frontier—curbs and steps. Next, she wanted to take me to the OT kitchen so we could bake a batch of cookies for practice.

Also, she insisted that I take up knitting.

“Knitting?” I asked.

“It’s good to have a hobby,” she said.

“Can I pick my own hobby?”

She shook her head. “Nope.”

Midday was always lunch with my parents, who nodded with bright, optimistic faces as I recounted inspirational stories I’d found online about people like me.

And then followed PT with Ian, who continued to bring his not-talking-at-all A-game. We worked our way through the therapy gym, using the bike and mat almost every day, and rotating through other things like the parallel bars and the monkey rings. He even put me on the standing frame a couple of times, which meant getting buckled into a body harness and hanging from a metal frame above a treadmill. I would bring my thighs forward, and Ian would help position my feet and move them through the motions of walking.

The idea was that the spinal cord, and even the muscles themselves, had their own sense of memory. Walking, in theory, was such a fundamental human activity that it might not need the brain to direct it. So, like a reflex, the neurological signals for walking could reroute themselves and leave out the brain altogether, if they just had enough inspiration.

There was improvement, for sure. My knee joint was significantly stronger, and I could lock it now. My whole upper body was stronger now, in fact, and muscle mass I’d lost was coming back.

But the truth is, though everything above the knee was making progress, everything below was not.

Even with all my reading, and charts, and highlighting, and goals. Even with dreams almost every night of walking through the woods, or along the beach, or even just across an empty parking lot—dreams so convincing that I sometimes wondered if my dreaming life was actually my real one and vice versa—improvements were slim.