RUSH (City Lights, #3)(49)

“You never give up,” Harlan said, joining me on the floor. “That’s going to get you through this, my man. More than anything.”

He had it wrong. I didn’t push myself to get through it. There was nothing to ‘get through.’ No light at the end of the tunnel, proverbial or otherwise. I pushed myself because the helplessness was f*cking intolerable. My eyes were broken—or the part of my brain that translated for them was broken—but I’d make my body go back to how it was if it killed me. I could control that, at least.

A short silence told me Harlan was watching me. “You want to talk for a change? Get something off your chest?” He gave my shoulder a friendly pat.

I shrugged him off. “No.”

“All right-y. Let’s stretch you before you seize up. Right here. Save you a ride in your favorite chair.”

What a comedian, this Harlan. But he was right. When I could walk normally again I had grand plans to roll the wheelchair out of a window or down a flight of stairs. They’d never let me, of course, but a guy could dream.

Harlan stretched my legs, bringing my knees up to my chest, one at a time. “Push back,” he said, one hand on the bottom of my foot, my knee bent.

I pushed back against Harlan’s pressure, knowing he was taking it easy, knowing that if he wanted he could drive my own kneecap into my nose and there was nothing I could do about it. Of course, it wouldn’t even cross his mind. Harlan was a good guy, but I hated him just the same.

As we went through the ‘easy’ motions of my PT, my mind wandered, and I searched the endless black in front of me for something. A lighter shade. Some gray. A mote drifting across the canopy. Anything.

“An’theng.”

“What’s that, chief?”

Fuck. I hadn’t meant to say that out loud. I was tired, I guess. Last night’s nightmare had wrung me out. Or the PT. Or the relentless rage at it all that was wearing me down, making me sloppy.

I clenched my jaw, mentally gearing my lips and tongue to do what they were supposed to. “Any…thing…would b’better…than nuh…nothing.” I brushed my hand over my eyes to show what I meant.

“Hey!” Harlan crowed. “Your speech is coming along fast, my man! But what are you telling me? You’d rather have a little something to look at? Yeah, I hear you. But it’s been what…two months? They tell you there’s a chance?”

“No…chance.”

“Yeah, that’s tough, chief. But if you had a little haze or a blur it’d be worse.”

It can’t get worse, I wanted to scream. Only my body failing to make a full recovery would be worse and I wouldn’t tolerate that anyway. I’d throw my wheelchair down the stairs with me in it.

“Worse?” I demanded.

Harlan bent and stretched my legs that perpetually felt like they’d fallen asleep and were slowly waking. Maddening. He spoke all while, his quiet, rich voice filling the dark spaces of my new universe.

“Let’s say that instead of nothing, you were left with a little blur or shadow. Nothing more, nothing better. Every morning you’d wake up and imagine improvement. Is it brighter today? Is the shadow lifting?”

I could imagine him shaking his head, his hair not quite gray but getting there.

“The endless black, that’s a tool. A tool you should use toward acceptance.”

“Bullshit.”

I said that word so many times it always came out perfectly.

“Hope is a wonderful thing,” Harlan said. “I’ll never tell someone to give up hope, and you got lots to be hopeful about, even if you don’t think it right now. Hope is maybe. It’s gradations of black instead of just black, and that’s not what you have right now, Noah. What you have is certainty. And sometimes that can be just as powerful. Better, even. It’s honest. No maybe. Just truth.”

He put his hand on my shoulder again. “You gotta decide when to let it go.”

*

Those words came to me in the small hours of the night, after the migraine.

Hope. Fucking hope. It just keeps going and living and growing, so that when the woman who shares your house turns out to be just as physically beautiful as she is in her heart and spirit; when you discover she tastes as sweet as her nature, you think, Maybe.

Maybe what I told her was a lie. Maybe I could be what she deserved. Maybe I could make the same teeth-clenching, sweat-pouring effort I’d put into my PT, and channel that into living blind, so that she wouldn’t have to constantly be cleaning up after me, or dragging my ass out of the house. My endless black was never going to go away. That was certainty. But kissing Charlotte had been a burst of light streaking across it, like a comet.

Maybe. Maybe is gradations of darkness. The sweetest torture.

Maybe is hope.

*

When I next woke, it was to floorboards creaking.

“Charlotte?” I mumbled sleepily.

“Uh, hi.” She sounded soft, and sweet, but nervous too. “Sorry to wake you. I just wanted to check on you. How are you feeling?”

I hauled myself to sitting against the headboard and ran a hand through my hair. “I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck.”

“You didn’t eat anything yesterday. Would you like something? Something light? I make a mean pineapple-coconut smoothie.”