Aubrey dug in her purse for her keys. She was leaving and he felt a sudden need to stop her.
“We pray for you every Sunday,” she said. “Let me know if you need anything.”
“You could bring me a donut,” he said.
—
THE NEXT DAY, Aubrey brought him a red velvet donut moist and sweet enough, he could forgive the stupid name. Other things she later brought him: a new deck of playing cards, chewing gum, a book called Why Do Christians Suffer? that he didn’t read but kept on the nightstand so she’d see it when she visited, a daily planner where he could keep track of his progress, a bundle of get well cards from Upper Room, and a tank top that said Beast Mode that he wore during his exercises. She was pretty in a quiet way he grew to like. Nadia’s beauty bulldozed him but Aubrey’s prettiness was like a tea candle, a warm flicker. When she visited him after work, she looked cute in her uniform, a black polo shirt with a pink donut on the front. She fiddled with the matching visor as she stepped off the elevator, her curly ponytail bobbing. She smelled sweet, like frosting.
“I used to have one of those joints,” he said once, pointing at her purity ring.
“Really?”
“I was like thirteen. But my hand outgrew it, so my dad had to saw it off me.”
“You’re joking.”
He held up his hand. On his right ring finger, a light brown scar.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I ended up fucking a girl later that year. I would’ve done it anyway, the ring just would’ve made me feel bad.”
“It’s not about feeling bad,” she said. “At least not for me.”
“Then what is it? Like a married-to-Jesus thing?”
“It just reminds me.”
“Of what?”
“That I can be clean,” she said.
She was a good woman. The more time he spent around her, the more he realized how rarely he thought anybody else was actually good. Nice, maybe, but niceness was something anyone could be, whether they meant it or not. But goodness was another thing altogether. He was wary, at first, disarmed by Aubrey’s kindness. What could she want from him? Everyone wanted something, but what could she possibly hope to gain from a man whose whole world had constricted to four hallways? Sometimes they played cards in his room, dipping their hands into a paper bag filled with donut holes. Other times, she wheeled him outside and they sat, watching cars come and go in the parking lot. He never asked her about Nadia although he wanted to—he would feel exposed even mentioning her again. Besides, like Cherry said, why would he want to keep hearing how happy Nadia was? How big and exciting and fulfilling a life she led. He wasn’t a big man anymore. He wouldn’t be famous, like he’d dreamed as a kid, teaching himself to sign his name in all curved letters so he would be prepared to autograph a football. He would live a small life, and instead of depressing him, the thought became comforting. For the first time, he no longer felt trapped. Instead, he felt safe.
He taught Aubrey to play poker, then blackjack. She picked up both games surprisingly quickly, and he told her that they should go to Vegas someday and play in a real casino. She laughed. She’d never been before.
“Why would I go to Vegas?” she said. “I don’t party. Or gamble.”
“Because it’s fun,” he said. “There’s food. And shows. You like plays, don’t you? We could go. When I get out.”
She smiled a little, plucking a card from the middle of her hand.
“Sure,” she said. “That sounds good.”
She was just being nice, but he still clung to her words, marking them in his planner that night.
—
“WHAT YOU GONNA DO when you get out of here?” Bill asked.
Luke had just graduated to crutches and he was hobbling around the hallway, giddy and awkward. He’d progressed faster than anyone had expected, Carlos told him. He’d given Luke a tiny pedometer to wear when he walked down the hall, and within a month, he had already logged 50,000 steps. Carlos printed him a certificate that said MVP: Most Valuable Pacer. Aubrey helped him hang it on his wall.
“I don’t know,” he said. Fat Charlie’s didn’t offer sick leave—they’d replaced him weeks ago. He needed to find a job or he would have to move back home with his parents, who had already spent their own money paying for his last month at the rehab center. He hobbled down the hallway, calculating how much it must have cost, and felt overwhelmed by the thought of it. Just another thing he owed them. He would have to find work soon, maybe another restaurant on the pier. What else did he know how to do?
“Nah, nah,” Bill said. “You got to want more than that.”
Luke laughed. “Like what? I’m supposed to wanna be president or some shit?”
“That’s the problem with you brothas,” Bill said. “You got lazy. You know why? Because you know these young sistas will pick up the slack. Grown men living with their mamas, whole mess of kids running around, ain’t got a job. Somewhere along the way we became a race of men happy to let women take care of us.”
Luke had grown up listening to old folks at Upper Room make similar speeches, about how they’d fought so hard just to watch his generation throw any progress away. As if he owed them somehow for being young and ought to personally repay them for their humiliations. Still, he liked hanging out with the old men in the hallway, listening to their stories and imagining their lives. Bill never listened to the trainers when they tried to guide him through his exercises. He was too stubborn, too softened, over the years, to pain. Who could blame him? He was old with no one waiting for him on the outside. He just wanted to talk shit with his buddies and look at pretty nurses. Luke was the only one who could get Bill out of his wheelchair.
“You’re pretty good at this,” Carlos told him.
Luke had convinced Bill to finish his quad stretches, cheering him on until the old man plopped back in his wheelchair with a huff. In the doorway, Carlos looked impressed.
“You should look into physical training,” Carlos said. “Shit, you been here long enough.”
Luke told Aubrey, and the next day, she printed out a list of qualifications he needed to become a physical therapy assistant. Two years of school, which discouraged him, but Aubrey said the time would pass anyway—why not spend it chasing after something he wanted? She’d squeezed his shoulder and he felt himself relaxing. She was right, and besides, if he had learned nothing else in rehab, he’d learned how to be patient. He’d spent the past few months relearning how to walk. He felt that he could wait for anything.
When he was finally released from the rehab center, strong enough to lean on a cane alone, time seemed to rush at him. He missed the soft seconds in the center, days that blurred into one another, time marked only by mealtimes and exercise routines and Aubrey’s visits. Out in the world, he felt time racing past him and he could never catch up. In the center, he’d been a fast learner, nimble compared to the others, but at his parents’ house, he felt like he was moving in slow motion, like every effort to get out of bed and shower, to dress himself and cook breakfast, took three times as long. During the day, he worked on his applications to physical therapy programs and tried to find a job. But he didn’t have any real skills and most unskilled jobs required that you at least be able to lift fifty pounds. Finally, he asked his father if there was any work he could do at Upper Room.