“Not so bad,” Ian said, but the words were barely out before tears started running down his cheeks, and his face turned red, and he started panting and hissing like a feral cat.

He grabbed his water and drank the whole bottle in one go. Then he grabbed my water and drank it all. Then Kit’s, too.

“Whooo!” he said, pacing around the room. “Fuck—that stings.”

“Curse in Scottish!” we called out.

But he was jogging in place now. “Not my best idea.”

“Say ‘bawjaws’!” Kit suggested.

“Call yourself a ‘numpty jobber’!” I jumped in.

“Dobber,” he corrected, while bent over at the waist, panting. Then he banged his head against the foot of the bed. Then he realized he was drooling, and took the wad of Kleenex I was waving at him.

In all, it took half an hour for him to recover, and that’s when he threw us a bone and gave us a little Scottish. “I am a dobber,” he said. “What was I thinking?”

“You were thinking,” I said, not even bothering to hide the affection in my voice, “that you’d entertain us.”

It was like we had all made an unspoken pact to choose to have fun.

“That’s backed up by science,” Kitty, Queen of Googling, said, when I noticed how much just the idea of dinner with her and Ian was impacting the rest of my sad days. “Anticipating a reward lights up the same region of the brain as actually getting a reward,” she said. “That’s what a dum-dum the brain is. It doesn’t even know the difference.”

There was nothing, truly nothing, fun about any other part of my day. But I anticipated the hell out of dinner.

Twenty-one

THE MORNING OF my furlough was a usual morning—bathing, cleaning, failed attempts to wiggle my toes—and my parents came for their usual lunch. But then, instead of heading off to the rehab gym, I transferred to the chair, and my parents wheeled me down with a little overnight bag to where Kit was waiting in my father’s sedan.

I felt surprisingly anxious about leaving the hospital.

I would have said I’d be thrilled, elated, ecstatic to leave. Instead, I just felt shaky. I didn’t trust Kit to drive my dad’s big car. I didn’t trust all the idiot drivers texting their way through intersections. I didn’t trust the big, bad, chaotic world outside my controlled little hospital biosphere.

Even in the car, I couldn’t relax. If I’d been a cat with claws, they would have been impaled in the dashboard. Every turn, every red light, every touch of the brakes made me wince with anxiety.

“You have got to chill,” Kit said.

I nodded. “Yes. Good advice. Chill.”

But I had no idea how to do that. How do you make yourself chill?

By the time we made it to the cabin, the tension in my neck was migrating to my head. I felt woozy and headachy, and Kit declared I had to take a nap.

Of course, the house was not wheelchair accessible. Why would it be? We got me into the chair and across the gravel drive, but then we had to pause for a while to puzzle out how to get me into the house.

“I knew this was a bad idea,” I said.

“Hush,” Kit said. “If nothing else, your Scotsman can carry you in when he gets here.” She tromped off to examine the back porch to see if it might make a better point of entry, calling back, “Would that be so awful?”

“Just go,” I said, closing my eyes.

Being back here was exactly as bad as I’d feared. Everything was the same as it had been since my grandparents had bought the place in the sixties. The screen porch door still squeaked and slapped. The gopher hole by the back steps hadn’t moved. The pear trees my grandmother had planted still rustled in the breeze.

The only thing different was me.

It created such a visceral wash of grief through my body, I had to lean over and put my head between my knees. “We never should have come here,” I heard myself whisper.

I was going to throw up. I felt that salty feeling under my tongue you get just before it happens.

But then I heard tires on the gravel of the driveway.

I looked up to see a brown vintage Bronco. With Ian in it. And then the door was slamming. And he was walking across the grass toward me with a duffel bag on his shoulder. In jeans, of all things, instead of scrubs. And brown leather shoes instead of sneakers. And a plaid flannel shirt.

I forgot to throw up.

“This place suits you,” Ian said, as he got close.

“Really? Because I was just about to throw up.”

“Carsick?”

“Heartsick, I think.”

“Does it make you sad to come here again?”

I nodded.

“But happy, too, I hope?”

I shook my head. “Not yet. But I’m glad to see you.”

“Why are you out here alone?”

“Kitty’s trying to figure out how to get me in.”

Ian nodded. “I can help with that,” and as he said it, he dropped his duffel without a thought, kneeled down, pivoted, and backed up to me all at once. “Let’s go,” he said, jerking his head for me to climb on.

So I did. He hooked his arms under my knees, and I gripped with my thighs, and held on to his shoulders. Just for a second, I got another intoxicating whiff of him, and then we were off, rounding the side of the house, looking for Kit.

Ian stopped for a second when he caught sight of the lake—blue and bright and bigger than I remembered. The lawn sloped down to it, and from where we stood, we had a perfect, clear view.

“This is your lake?” Ian asked.

“This is our lake,” I said, and when I spoke, my cheek brushed his neck.

“Will you take me out on it?” Ian asked.

“Of course.”

Just then, Kit rounded the corner. “We’re just going to have to wait for—” Then she saw us, and looked Ian over, in his flannel shirt and jeans. “The Brawny paper-towel guy.”

*

I DIDN’T WANT to go back after that. It’s not that Ian showing up made everything okay—it didn’t. It made everything a little better, though. My heart was still humming a mournful tune, but it was like Ian arriving had introduced a little countermelody. It hadn’t stopped the sad song, but it had altered it.

I needed to pee—we all did, after the drive—so after Kit opened the doors, Ian carried me to the bathroom and set me on the toilet with all my clothes still on.

“Do you need help?” he asked.

Even if I had needed it, no way in hell was I asking. “I’ve got it,” I said.

The wheelchair turned out to be fifty percent useless at the lake. The ground was too grassy and gravelly for it to roll well, and the doorways inside the house were too narrow. Upside: Ian carried me a lot.

It was almost my birthday, after all.

It was a crisp, sunny day, and my next order of business was to sit in an Adirondack chair in the sun near the water while Kit and Ian unpacked. I couldn’t expose my grafts to sunlight, so Kitty brought me out a pink dotted umbrella. I positioned it carefully to cover my burns but leave the rest of me—toes, legs, right arm—gloriously exposed. How long had it been since I’d felt the sun on my skin? I closed my eyes and drank in the feeling. The breeze was cool, but I felt warm.

Despite everything that had happened, and everything still to bear, this moment right here was pretty nice.

I don’t know how much time passed, but my headache had gone by the time I heard footsteps crunching down the gravel path toward me.

It was Ian. “Kit wants me to bring out the boats,” he said, not breaking stride.

I nodded, and went back to sunning, but I didn’t close my eyes again.

Ian unlocked the boathouse and dragged boat after boat to the shore: a rowboat, two kayaks, two wakeboards, a clunky old paddle boat for fishing, and a canoe that my grandpa had painted with Cherokee designs. Back and forth he went. Mesmerizing.

After a bit, Kitty joined me, and before she’d even sat down, she said, “Now that’s a gorgeous hunk of man, right there.”

“He’s not a man, he’s a physical therapist.”

Kit did not shift her gaze. “Pretty sure he’s both.”

“Where’s your man?” I asked.

“Which one?” she said, looking sly.

“The chubby-but-cute one,” I answered.

She looked a little offended on principle. A little protective even. “He’s on his way.”

We watched Ian line up the last boat and then turn toward us. I guess boat dragging must be hard work, because he took off his flannel shirt as he walked, wadding it up to wipe the back of his neck, and leaving only his white undershirt.

Kit let out a low whistle.

“Kit!” I said. “Don’t objectify him!”

“That’s not my fault,” she said, gesturing. “I can’t be held responsible for that.”

When Ian made it to us, he dropped the flannel shirt on the grass. His eyes were on me. “Want to show me the lake?”

“Yes,” I said, too quickly.

“Actually, she wants to take a nap,” Kit said.

I swatted Kit. “I do not!”

“I thought about the kayak,” Ian said, “but I’m worried about it tipping.”

I was worried about my neck, too. The water in this lake was certainly not as chlorinated as the therapy pool.

“The canoe’s fine,” I said.

“Can I come, too?” Kit asked.