I didn’t mean to. I was just going to bob into the water, like always.

But this wasn’t always. My burns felt extra-naked, and I didn’t trust my legs to work any better in the water than out. I didn’t entirely trust Ian, either. And so: the chicken version of a leap of faith—one that involved clutching his neck with my face buried into the crook of his wet, post-cannonball shoulder.

“Too fast?” he said.

I nodded into his neck, liking the way the skin felt.

“Push back a little. Otherwise, it’s not therapy. It’s just hugging.”

“Hugging could be a type of therapy.”

“Not the type your father’s going to pay me for.”

“He might if I asked him to.”

“You can do this. Take a breath.”

So I did. Then I pushed myself back until there was half a foot between us, and worked my legs into position as if they were foreign objects. He kept his hands at my rib cage, and I braced mine on his shoulders. Then there we were, waist deep in the water, standing. Right then, I felt it for the first time—almost like an electrical pulse: a tiny flicker of joy.

He saw it. He saw me feel it. There was nowhere to look but straight into his face, and he read me in less than a second.

I couldn’t help but smile.

He smiled back. A real smile. The first one of his I’d ever seen. And I felt another electrical pulse.

“You’re standing,” he said.

“You’re smiling,” I said.

“I’m not,” he said. But that just made him smile more. He threw his head back and said, “Focus! Focus!” To himself, as far as I could tell.

For a flash, as I noticed all those muscles and tendons crisscrossing under the stubble on his throat, I forgot all about myself, and why we were here, and the impossible thing we were trying to do. For a second, he was just a guy in a pool in wet cargo shorts—and I was just a girl, being held.

But just for a second.

Then he brought his face down and got serious. “Okay,” he said. “When I take a step backward, you take a step forward.”

But it had been too long. I shook my head. “I can’t remember how.”

“Don’t overthink it. Your body remembers. You know how to bring the knee up. Then let the water help the foot follow.”

When he took a step back, I brought my knee forward. Then my foot followed behind, carried by the current. Then I set it down.

“I did it!” I whispered.

“Good. Do the other one.”

So I did.

It was slow, but it felt so good to work that old, familiar pattern. One foot, then the other, side to side, in that ancient human motion. It was bliss, and heartbreak—both. It was just enough of what I wanted to remind me of what I wanted—who I’d been, what I’d lost. That must have been the aspect that made me cry, because by the time we made it to the far side, my face was cold with tears.

But I was smiling. Crying and smiling both. As sad and happy as I’d been in a while. Not numb, that was certain.

“We made it all the way!” I said. Then, because nothing else seemed like it could possibly be more interesting, I said it again. “We made it all the way!”

“Aye. We did.”

“I want to high-five you, but I don’t want to let go.”

“Don’t high-five. We’re going back across.”

I felt like I could go all night, but he said that was just the excitement. He promised I was working much harder than I realized.

“The thing is,” I said, as we moved back across. “I don’t think my muscles are bringing my foot forward. I think it might just be drifting in the current behind the knee.”

“That’s okay. The theory is, the more your body does it, the more it will remember what to do. Going through those motions helps spark memories in your body. That’s the hope, at least.”

“Thank you for not letting me fall.”

“We’re not out yet.”

“Thank you for being so nice to me today.”

But Ian didn’t have a reply to that, and once again, he got quiet.

Nineteen

ONE NIGHT, A hospital volunteer showed up just after Kitty arrived with Moroccan lamb tagine. She was perky and big-eyed, and she carried a little clipboard. She was recruiting volunteers for a crafts fair that week in the children’s wing, and I was just drawing breath to shoo her out when Kitty said, “What kind of crafts?”

“Oh, everything,” the volunteer said. “Rock painting, finger knitting, friendship bracelets, balloon rockets, beeswax sculpting, sand candles. Also: anything with googly eyes.”

Kitty looked at me. “They are having a lot more fun in the children’s wing than we are.”

“Would you like to sign up?” the volunteer asked.

“Yes,” Kitty said loudly, just as I said, “No.”

The volunteer looked at Kitty. “Great.”

“Can we sign up for knitting?” Kitty asked. “My sister is knitting a slug.”

“Ooo, bring it!” the volunteer said. “The kids will love it.”

Kitty wiggled her eyebrows at me. “Maybe we can steal some googly eyes.”

After the volunteer left, I said, “I’m not going.”

“Yes you are. You just signed up.”

“You just signed up.”

“What else do you have to do?”

“Stop trying to cheer me up. You know it makes me feel worse.”

“You feel worse, anyway.”

“Yeah. But you make me feel guilty about it.”

“Look, I just saw a very inspiring quote on Instagram that said, ‘Our struggles lead us to our strengths.’”

“Say the word ‘Instagram’ one more time and I will burn this building down.”

“Fine, but every single article in the entire world says you need to learn to appreciate what you have and not dwell on what you don’t.”

“Are you kidding me right now?”

She hesitated. “Okay, that sounded a little flip.”

I rolled my eyes to the ceiling. “It’s been four weeks!! Four weeks since I lost everything I cared about. Can I get five minutes to adjust?”

“Yes! Of course! And in the meantime, let’s go teach a bunch of hospitalized children how to knit a slug.”

“Dammit, stop trying to fix me!”

Ian showed up in the doorway then, but that didn’t slow us down. Kitty flung her arm in his direction. “Ian gets to try to fix you!”

I glanced over at him. “It’s his job to fix me.”

“So?”

“So! A job is different.”

“That’s better?”

He was right there, listening, but I was hell-bent on making my point. “Yes! Because in less than three weeks, I will never see him again. He won’t think about me, he won’t worry about me, and he sure as hell won’t spend the rest of my life telling me to cheer up. He will feel a wash of relief as I roll out the door to go live my tragic life, and then he’ll be done.”

I was about to go on, but Ian stepped in closer. “That’s not true.”

Kitty and I both turned toward him. “What’s not true?” I asked.

“I will think about you after you’re gone. I expect I’ll think about you often.”

Was there more? Nope. A man of few words.

But just enough, as we stared at him, to stop the fight in its tracks.

“Want some Moroccan tagine?” Kitty asked after a bit, peeling the lid off a container and holding it out.

Ian said no.

“Maggie’s knitting a slug,” Kit said then. “Want to see?”

She got him to smile. I loved when he did that. “I’d love to see,” he said.

“Hey,” I said to Kit, “don’t—”

“Shh.” Kit held her finger out. “For a scarf, it’s terrible. For a knitted slug, it’s divine. Just go with ‘slug’ and be proud.” She thrust it at Ian.

He held it for a second, looked back and forth between us, and then said, “That’s a fine knitted slug.”

Kit turned to me. “Does everything sound sexy in Scottish?” Then, back to Ian, “If you were a kid at the craft fair, wouldn’t you love to see that?”

He looked up. “The craft fair?”

“Yeah, they’re holding one for the kids, but Cranky McCrankypants doesn’t want to volunteer.”

I gave Kitty a look.

But I did have to give her credit. He seemed to like it when she teased me. His eyes crinkled up at the edges in an expression that was almost warm. And then, like just a normal, friendly, healthcare professional, he shook his head all wryly and said, “Now you make me think of my mother.”

Kit and I both frowned. “Your mother?”

“She always said, ‘When you don’t know what to do for yourself, do something for someone else.’”

*

WE WENT TO the fair. What choice did we have? Neither of us had the guts to disobey Ian’s mother.

The fair turned out to be the most fun I’d had since my incarceration.

There, surrounded by kids of every variety, I felt more relaxed than I had been in all these weeks. In the rehab gym, the focus was on how we could fix what was broken about me. In my room, I was, well, in a hospital room. But in this rec room in the children’s wing, it was just bright colors and helium balloons and yarn animals and sing-alongs and face painting. Noisy? Yes. Chaotic? Totally. As I sat at my finger-knitting station with Kit, teaching kids what to do when they came up, and chatting with Kit in between, I felt noticeably peaceful.

“These are your people,” Kitty said.

“They do seem to get me,” I said.