All This Time(56)

Not this time. This time we have to deal with it.

“Look at us. Fighting again. Just like we always did,” I say, trying to keep my voice level. “We don’t have to anymore, Kim. I mean, we almost broke up seven times. Eight, if you count the night of the accident. We were terrible at communicating. About dealing with our problems. And that’s probably why you didn’t say anything about Berkeley. Because it would have started a fight, just like it always did, right? It’s ridiculous.”

“So I’m ridiculous now?” she challenges.

“Yes!” I say, throwing up my hands. “We both are. But let’s pretend for a second that we’re not. Let’s pretend that we can say anything, as long as it’s honest, and the other person will listen and understand. Without judgment.”

She looks stony, but she stays silent.

“Why didn’t you tell me about Berkeley? For some reason, you were able to tell Sam but not me. Why?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“I think you do,” I say. “I can take it. Tell me why. ‘I want to know what it’s like to turn around and not see you there.’ You were right. Why are you acting like you never said it?”

“If you’re trying to get back at me,” Kimberly says, looking hurt, “it’s working.”

She storms out, slamming the door behind her. I stare at the spot she was in, letting out a long, frustrated sigh.

“Brilliant.”



* * *




In the hours after she leaves, I feel restless, the four corners of the hospital room closing in around me the longer I sit here.

Should I have said something different? I spent so much time thinking about what I would say to Kim if I saw her again, and I screwed it up because I’m so hung up on the fact that Marley isn’t anywhere to be found.

I feel like I don’t have space in my brain for anything else. Every corner of my mind is dedicated to possibilities. Places she could be. Explanations. Memories.

I reach into the bag my mom brought from home to take out the dented blue jewelry box, salvaged from the accident. Flicking it open, I stare at the charm bracelet inside. It looks so different to me now. I remember staring at it for hours, thinking I could make her see what we had.

I don’t even know how to explain to her what I see now. Especially when I’ve had a whole year to figure it out and she’s only had a minute.

A whole year. I’ve had a whole year to let it go, to heal. I’ve lived what feels like an entirely new life, and I don’t know how to get back to it. To find Marley. To find our life together.

They keep telling me this is real, but how can it be without her?

I’m relieved when a nurse rolls a wheelchair into my room to take me to my first physical therapy session seconds after my mom texts she’ll be back tomorrow morning for another five-star breakfast at the cafeteria. I stare down at my phone as the nurse helps me into the chair, her long brown hair moving in my peripheral vision, reminding me so much of Marley I have to squeeze my eyes shut.

Frustrated, I leave my mom on read and pocket my phone. I can’t talk to anyone right now.

Although, maybe being relieved about going to physical therapy is the wrong way to feel, especially when it turns out to be a grueling half hour of me discovering how weak a fractured femur and eight weeks in a coma can make a guy. Even the exercises we do sitting in a chair are rough. Basic leg extensions. Stretching.

Stuff senior citizens in an aerobics class at a nursing home could apparently now lap me in.

If I thought recovery was hard the first time around, this is a whole other animal.

“You’re doing great,” Henry, the physical therapist, says to me, his hands hovering just a few inches from me, waiting.

I look up to see his blindingly hopeful grin pouring positive energy out at me. I snort and white-knuckle the support bar, struggling to put just my body weight on both of my legs, my good leg even giving out a few times, so that I fall against him over and over again.

With a fractured femur, I should’ve been up weeks ago trying to regain my strength and range of motion, but I was a little too comatose for that.

My leg completely crumples just as Dr. Benefield walks in with an empty wheelchair.

“Just in time for the show, Doc,” I call to her, pushing the hair out of my eyes.

“That’s enough for today,” she says as Henry helps her get me safely from the support bars into the wheelchair. I’m drenched in sweat.

She pushes me out of the PT room and down the hall, my entire body completely drained. I can’t wait to get back in bed, and that terrifies me. I don’t want to be that guy again, the one who couldn’t drag himself out into the world. It feels like I’m starting all over.

I have to distract myself.

“When’s the last time you pushed a wheelchair?” I tease her, craning my neck to look at Dr. Benefield. “Don’t you have, like, people to do this?”

“Ha ha,” she says, shaking her head at me. “I wanted to talk to you.”

She wheels me into my room, parking the wheelchair by the window. I see her glance over at the iPad on my bed, the screen still on, lit up with a photo of me, Kimberly, and Sam at one of our home games. The three of us are smiling at the camera, arms wrapped around one another.