“Fine. Let’s talk in hypothetical terms then.” Her voice was back to its typical pissed-off volume. That was a tone I was familiar with. “Let’s say fictional Mr. Smith got into a fictional accident and damaged his spine. He’s been hypothetically paralyzed from the waist down for close to a month now, after having regained movement in his arms and chest a few days after the initial trauma.” So much condescension oozed from her tone that I was impressed the doctor hadn’t hung up yet. Or maybe he had and she just hadn’t realized it yet. “What is the likelihood, if there is any, of ‘Mr. Smith’ regaining the rest of his mobility?”
After that, she was quiet for a minute. Or maybe it was more like two. When I heard Josie again, it was a long sigh I heard first.
“So there really isn’t much likelihood at all is what you’re saying.” Another sigh followed that, followed by what sounded like a whimper she’d choked back before it could escape. “Mr. Smith won’t walk again is what you’re telling me.”
My chest pulsed with pain again, curling me over in my chair. What she’d just been told by Dr. Murphy was something I’d accepted days ago for the most part, but having to witness her accepting it while having it confirmed for myself in a very tangible way accelerated my journey toward that breaking point that had, even a few weeks ago, seemed a ways out on the horizon. Now, though? It seemed like if I extended my arm, my fingers could have just scraped its sharp surfac
e.
“No, I understand,” she said. Her voice seemed to move around the barn, but I guessed that was because she was pacing. “If science fiction becomes reality or a medical breakthrough kicks some serious ass or if miracles suddenly start cropping up to be plucked for the taking, Mr. Smith might walk again. Am I understanding this correctly?” She paused for a few seconds. “That’s what I thought. Thanks for playing the hypothetical game with me. I hate not knowing what’s going on. I hate not being able to prepare myself for what’s to come.”
The mail truck puttered up the driveway, making enough noise I couldn’t hear whatever was or wasn’t said next. The Gibsons’ mailbox, like the rest of the their neighbors’, was down at the end of their driveway, right off the main road, but the mailman had been hand-delivering the Gibsons’ mail for years. I thought it had something to do with Mrs. Gibson always having something to offer him when he showed up—like a glass of fresh-squeezed lemonade or sweet tea or a warm cup of coffee or tea in the winter. Today it looked as though she’d just brewed some sun tea and was carrying a glass of it down the steps to him. He turned off the mail truck and thanked her with a smile, draining the glass in two drinks.
With the truck off, I could hear Josie’s voice again.
“What can we do now then? For Mr. Smith?” she asked, her voice returning to its normal tone and volume. The shock had passed, and she was rolling up her sleeves. “Do you think an MRI would still be helpful? What about physical therapy?” Josie was quiet another minute. “Yeah, okay. That makes sense. I’ll talk to him. No promises he’ll listen, but I’ll pass it on.”
After that, they had a minute of conventional back and forth before the call ended. Josie must have left through the barn’s back doors because I never saw her slip out the front, which I was closest to, still stuck in the mud and feeling like my chest had become the trampoline for a family of elephants.
I wasn’t going to walk again. That was it. I knew I should have been thankful for the mobility in my arms, but conjuring up thankfulness was hard when I’d just had it pretty much confirmed by my physician that I wouldn’t walk. I’d heard it in Josie’s voice too. The finality. The acceptance. She’d been holding on to hope for so long that I must have extended my pinkie and curled it around that string of hope without even realizing it. Now that her hope was gone, whatever trace amounts I’d let trickle into me from her had been killed.
It might have been that overwhelmingly surge of anger that seemed to rise from my feet and erupt through the rest of my body that got me out of that muck. Or maybe the mud had, like everyone else, given up on me.
As I rolled back to the Gibsons’ house, not really knowing where to go now, I stopped in the driveway and looked around. My truck was growing weeds in the driveway—I’d never drive it again. My horse was getting fat and lazy in the barn—I’d never ride him again. My girlfriend was out working her parents’ ranch when we’d one day dreamed of working our own—I’d never ranch again.
My whole life, everything I’d been and everything I’d wanted to become, was spiraling away from me. Fragments of the man I’d been and the man I’d wanted to become were gusting out of reach. My life as I’d known it was over. My life as I’d hoped it would be would never come to fruition.
The man I was right now, crippled in more ways that just physically, was both my present and my future. I could have tried to deny that, but I couldn’t have kept the façade going for long. As out of control as everything around me felt, I had control of one thing still. One aspect of my life that was vitally important. Josie.
My life might have just smacked into a dead end, but that didn’t mean hers had to. My life might have been over for all intents and purposes, but hers was only getting started. As simply as closing this chapter of her life and starting a new one, she could go forward instead of stagnating in this hell, caught in the middle of the living and the dead.
I didn’t know how long I’d been siting there, basically saying good-bye to the life I’d known, when Mrs. Gibson came out onto the porch, the screen door whispering shut behind her.
“Garth?” she called, wiping her hands on her apron. From the look of the flour dusting her face and hands, she’d been making biscuits for dinner. “You’ve got mail. Do you want me to leave it in your room for you, or would you like it now?” She pulled an envelope out of her apron pocket and held it in the air.
I couldn’t see who it was from, but I didn’t need to. I’d been expecting that letter for weeks. “I’ll take it now, Mrs. Gibson.” I lifted my shoulders and braced myself. I supposed this was the best time to get the letter. All of my hope was gone, so there was nothing left to take.
When she’d made her way down the stairs and over to me, she placed the letter in my hands. “Do you need something, hun?”
I almost laughed at the irony of her question. I needed so many somethings I could have kept listing them off until the final harvest had come in for the season. However, even Mrs. Gibson, with all her good intentions and well-meaning, couldn’t have put a dent in all of the somethings I needed.
I shook my head. “Thank you, Mrs. Gibson. For everything.”
She smiled at me. “Thank you for always making my daughter happy.”
It was difficult to do, but I managed to return her smile. It was almost like she could read what I was feeling—almost like she knew, as I did, that I couldn’t make her daughter happy anymore. She held my gaze for another moment before climbing the stairs and disappearing back inside the house, leaving me alone with my letter and my bleak future.
I didn’t wait to tear open the letter. I slid the letter out and unfolded it. It was the bill from the hospital, and it was as catastrophic as I’d anticipated. The number literally took my breath away and would finish draining most of my savings. The same savings I’d been building in order the purchase a large chunk of land and a large herd of cattle. Instead, it would go to a hospital I’d spent a whole two days in. How could one accident and the forty-eight hours that followed be responsible for completing re-mapping my entire future?
How could one moment, one flash in time, be responsible for changing my whole existence?
LIKE MOST BAD plans, mine had started out seeming like a good idea. At least it had until I’d hit the second mile. One mile in a truck flashed by in a blink. One mile on a horse passed by having a conversation with another ranch hand. One mile on foot might not have passed as quickly as the other options, but even that was better than the one I was stuck with: pushing myself in a wheelchair that had been a price-conscious purchase instead of a comfort-conscious one when Rose Walker had picked it up.
I’d made it down the Gibsons’ long driveway which, thank God, was a slight downhill, and the first mile after that had been along a paved road. The second one had been the same. The third, fourth, and fifth miles? They had been nothing but gravel, pitted roads that made my teeth chatter and my bones shake to the point of breaking.
Thankfully I’d been on the paved roads during the later morning, so most people were already at work or school. Even though it was past dinnertime by the time I started my last mile down yet another bumpy dirt road, I was far enough out that I hadn’t been passed by a single truck for over an hour. That was good since one out of every other driver that had gone by broke to a stop, stuck a head out of the window, and asked if I needed a lift. I’d declined—I was too damn prideful to ask for a lift—but if another truck had come along during the last mile, I might have thrown my arms up in surrender and begged a ride to my destination.
My phone hadn’t started ringing yet, which meant Josie was still out busting her ass doing work I should have been helping her with. When she did start blowing up my phone when she realized I’d disappeared with no indication of where I’d gone, I already had a plan for how to handle it. I’d had five miles and nine long hours to put together that plan, and it was as close to airtight as any plan conceived in my depraved mind could have been.