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.
“Mind if I get nosy?” she asks, reaching out to scoop it up.
I shrug, waving her on.
She flips through the camera roll, looking at the pictures I scoured last night and this morning.
“Looking through old memories?” she asks.
I shake my head. “Looking for Marley.”
I zoomed in on every background. Every person in the stands. Every passerby. But I didn’t find her.
“You said my brain was making sense of things I saw, so I thought maybe I’d seen her somewhere.”
Dr. Benefield presses a button and the screen goes dark. She reaches out, putting it on my nightstand. “Did you find anything?”
“I didn’t make her up.” I blow past her question, trying to figure out a way to make her see. To get her to help me. “I swear.”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Dr. Benefield says, taking a step toward me. “I’ve asked someone—”
She’s cut off by a knock on the door, and a doctor I’ve never seen before sticks his head in. She motions for him to come in, continuing what she was saying. “Kyle, this is Dr. Ronson. He’s a psychiatrist.”
My hopes plummet.
“So you do think I’m crazy.”
She leans down, looking me directly in the eye. “I think you’re sad,” she says. “You’ve been through a lot.”
Well, yeah. Of course I’m sad. I’ve lost an entire year. An entire year and a whole new life I was just starting to live, and more than all that, the girl I love more than I’ve ever loved anyone.
And no one will believe it.
“Just tell him what you told me. Okay? He can help you work through what you’ve experienced.”
She gives my arm a sympathetic pat and leaves as Dr. Ronson slides a chair over to sit next to me by the window.
“Kyle,” he says with an annoying amount of pep. He offers his hand to me, and I shake it. Either his grip is super firm or I’m just that weak.
“So,” he says, pushing his glasses up farther on his nose, his eyes narrowing as he studies me. “How’ve you been?”
I fight the urge to roll my eyes and glance out the window as the two of us begin to talk. I’m annoyed but so desperate for answers it doesn’t take much to open the floodgates.
Just like I did with Sam and Dr. Benefield, I tell him the story. Our story. Every moment leading up to now.
And just like them, he slowly starts trying to poke holes in it.
“Did she ever say anything that didn’t make sense? Did anyone?”
“I don’t know,” I say, frustrated. I push back at him, determined. “Everything made sense, I—”
“Or did you make it make sense?” he asks, talking over me. “That’s what we’re talking about here, Kyle. Did your mind take what you were hearing out here and turn it into a dream in there?”
He points at my head, like he knows everything.