Finding Liberty

by B. E. Baker

  Paisley’s laugh is high and clear. “If you did, you could not have hiked with Trig and Geo this morning. You’d be watching him every time he touched her. Every time they shared a glance, you’d be boiling inside.”

  “That guy does bug me.”

  “Because he’s displaced you as her best friend, but there’s no passion in it. You enjoy the exchanges with him, which you admitted earlier yourself. If you truly loved Geo, you’d have moved, changed your name and not forwarded your mail.”

  I stare at her.

  “Okay fine, maybe you wouldn’t have gone that far, but you’d be a far sadder sack than you’ve been. You were more like a little league player denied his token trophy. You wanted to fix her and another guy came along and did what you’d failed to do for four years. But now a new bird has fluttered into your orbit, and if you object to the word broken, how about a lonely bird, and you see your chance to redeem yourself. You want to befriend this one like you couldn’t befriend Geo.”

  I start back down the hill.

  “Trig is not going to like this at all, you and his baby sister.”

  “Oh shut up, Paisley.”

  To my surprise, she does. Then in another surprise turn, Trig and Geo agree to skip out on the rest of our plans and head home. After all, now that they know the whole date was a farce, there doesn’t seem to be much point.

  Even without her talking in my ear, Paisley’s words ring in my ears. I do like to fix things. I run my hands over the beautiful ash in front of me. It’s an absolutely enormous slab of ash, two trees fused together. It’s a piece of inosculated ash, which is why I knew the term when I talked to Brekka yesterday. I’d looked it up a week or so before, when my dealer offered me this piece. I jumped at the chance, even though it cost me half my savings for the month.

  It’s going to make a perfect wedding gift for Trig and Geo, and there will be plenty left for a few more tables afterward. Well worth it. I lose myself in work as long as I can.

  “Rob, son. Turn the saw off and come talk to your Dad!”

  I can barely make out the words over the headphones I’m wearing. I shut my saw off and yank them away. “Oh, Dad, sorry.”

  “What are you doing in here?” He gestures around to my shop. It’s twice the square footage of my house, which is exactly what I wanted.

  “Why do you care?”

  Dad shakes his head. “We barely see you anymore. Your mother misses you.”

  He can’t just say he misses me, because that’s not manly enough. I smile. “I’ve missed you too, Dad.”

  I pull him in for a hug. “I’ll come for dinner tomorrow, okay?”

  “What about tonight?”

  I sigh. “I need some time for doing this as well. It matters to me.”

  My dad lifts his eyebrows. “It’s a hobby, son, which is fine, but you’re letting it take over.” He gestures around the enormous shop, and I look at it as he must see it. I’ve got a thousand square feet of pieces, stacked and stored… for no one. It has taken over all my free time, and even though I have no reason to keep after it, I do. I hide in here when I’m sad, lonely, scared, or angry. I make and make things, like a bee storing honey. I do it for no reason other than it calms me, and I feel compelled to make something.

  Dad may actually be right, but I don’t have to tell him that. “It’s my life and it’s my decision how much time and money I spend on anything. I’m not gambling or paying for strippers, or drugs, so you shouldn’t criticize.”

  “Don’t get me wrong. It’s cute stuff,” Dad says. “I’ve never seen anyone else fire glass on top of furniture. It covers all the cracks really pretty.”

  I don’t groan or correct him. But I can’t help explaining my goal one more time. “It’s not covering the cracks Dad. It’s about highlighting the fact that flaws are what make us beautiful and unique. It’s a statement to the world. We shouldn’t be ashamed of what makes us who we are, even if we’re fragile or different or strange.”

  “Uh huh. And that’s really nice, too. Your mom has her coffee table on display in the formal living room for everybody to see it. Every person who comes over oohs and aahs, but that sort of oohing won’t pay the bills. You should spend less time on blowing glass and cutting wood and more time with friends and family.” Dad grunts. “At the end of the day son, this wood is never going to love you back.”

  He’s right again. I know it won’t love me, but Paisley’s wrong. I don’t just like Brekka because she’s broken. I don’t think she’s broken at all. She’s a work of art. I meet countless broken people every week, people who have given up, people who need major repairs. They ask for special financing, knowing I can’t approve it. Or they ask me to forgive inexcusable behavior in the workplace. None of those people, the shattered people I deal with and manage, none of them have appealed to me, not like Brekka did.

  I like Brekka because she’s unique, not because she needs my help. She doesn’t. But if one of the things that helped shape her into the unique beauty I met was her accident, well it’s an important part of her story.

  I grab my dad’s arm and squeeze. “I know I said I was coming to dinner tomorrow, but I think I might not make it. And I’m going to need you to go to auction for me on Monday if things go well enough.”

  My dad’s eyes widen. “Why?”

  “You were right. Your advice helped me realize that I need to do something I’ve been ignoring. We sent a big shipment of cars to Colorado and I never followed up to make sure Nometry was happy with them. Vertical sales are much easier than horizontal, right?”

  My dad nods dumbly. “Wait, you’re going to Colorado?”

  I nod. “Tomorrow night. That way I can go see Trig’s sister first thing Monday morning.”

  “Okay, well, it’s refreshing to see you taking an active interest in big orders. It seems like you’ve sort of been running things on autopilot lately.”

  I nod. “You’re exactly right, and it’s time for that to change in a major way.”

  7

  Brekka

  An hour after my plane lands, I’m shocked when Dr. Anthony’s name shows up on my caller ID. I didn’t think he’d return my call until Monday at the earliest.

  “Hello?”

  “Is this Brekka Thornton?” a quiet voice asks.

  “It is,” I say. “Is this Dr. Anthony?”

  “I was delighted to get your message,” he says. “Your brother has been funding my program for years now.”

  That explains the speedy call back. He’s probably heard that Trig passed his share of the trust to me, and now he’s worried I’m cutting off his meal ticket.

  “What can I help you with?” he asks. “Are you interested in hearing about any of our recent developments? Many of them have been quite successful.”

  I swallow the giant lump in my throat and force out the words. “Actually, I am.”

  He spends the next half hour talking to me about two of their front runner programs. One centers on an exoskeleton of sorts that bypasses the dead portion of the spine, which sounds a little too science fiction to me. In fact, just thinking about an exoskeleton circumventing my spine gives me the willies. The other option he mentions combines scar tissue removal with application of stem cells to stimulate new spinal cord growth and repair. Nerve cells in the spine don’t regrow, but it sounds like they’ve developed a method that tries to do the impossible.

  Of course in my experience, things that sound too good to be true generally are.

  “How risky is the stem cell procedure?” I ask. “On a scale of one to ten?”

  “It’s hard to quantify it like that,” Dr. Anthony says. “If you’re asking whether you might die, that’s always a possibility with any procedure, from something as simple as a dermal filler to open heart surgery.”

  “But obviously the risk of death is dramatically different, and that’s certainly quantifiable,” I say. I could pull the last ten thousand incidences of dermal filler, and I’d probably find that no
ne of them died. Whereas, I’m sure that’s not the case with open heart surgery.”

  “You’re absolutely correct. In this case, the mortality rate is quite low. If we put it into percentages, it’s less than a half percent risk of death when you undergo the procedure that combines the stem cell therapy with the scar removal. I know that sounds terrifying, but we have somewhat more complicated patients than your normal dermal filler patient. In spite of the added complexity of our patients’ various other medical issues, we are consistently bringing our rates down.”

  How stellar. Only a one in two hundred chance of never waking up again.

  “If you’re asking about loss of function, well, that’s higher.”

  “I’m sorry, you’re telling me that there’s a half a percent chance I’ll die if I undergo one of these procedures, but beyond that, instead of gaining function, I might lose it?”

  “Any time we test new treatments on patients, we need to make sure that they understand all the possibilities. The procedure may not work at all, as it does not on over half of our patients, and while more than twenty percent of our procedures result in improved sensation and mobility, another twenty percent or so complain of reduced sensation and usage. It can also exacerbate existing deficits in patients such as yourself with incomplete injuries.”

  Dr. Anthony has just articulated all the reasons I always run the other direction when Trig suggests I look into something like this. I might improve, or I might exacerbate existing deficits, reduce sensation and lower my usage. Translation. I might never feel my toes again, or I might lose the limited amount of function I’ve got.

  “Thanks for the information,” I say.

  “I’d love to send you more details,” he says. “I’ve got numbers, case information and other hard data. Can I email it to you? We’ve had some very promising cases lately, and in one case from a month ago, the patient has been restored nearly to full function.”

  Wait. “Really?”

  “Absolutely,” Dr. Anthony says. “He suffered an incomplete break to T8, and following three rounds of the stem cell and scar removal procedure, he’s walking with the use of a cane. We’re hopeful that he may be able to walk unassisted soon.”

  Talk about dangling a carrot. I close my eyes and imagine walking on my own. Running. Hiking next to a handsome Marine.

  “Send me what you have.” I hang up, but instead of feeling hopeful, I’m more depressed than before I reached out to him.

  I spend the afternoon binge reading the first book that snags my interest on my kindle. In retrospect, a love story might not have been my best call, but I’m desperate to experience a happily ever after, even if it’s only vicariously.

  None of that puts me in the best frame of mind for brunch with my mother on Sunday morning. And as always, Mom can tell I’m upset about something and zeroes in on it like a drug sniffing dog at the airport.

  “You’re anxious,” she says two seconds after I wheel up to her table. “You have stress lines over your eyes, and those puffy bags make you look twice your age.”

  Oh good grief. “Maybe I was stressed about seeing you. I knew you’d criticize the fluff level of the skin under my eyeballs or something equally unimportant.” I scowl, until I realize that’s probably deepening my stress lines. “I’m just tired. My head hurt last night and I didn’t sleep well. That’s all.”

  She frowns. “Did you text Dr.—”

  “Mom, I’m almost twenty-eight years old. Lay off the micromanagement.”

  She frowns again, and her forehead actually crinkles up.

  “You must be late on your Botox,” I can’t quite keep myself from saying. “You’re going to get wrinkles with all that unhampered frowning.”

  Her hand flies to her forehead. “I am late. You’re right.” She whips out her phone and starts tapping away. I imagine the blistering text she’s sending to her assistant. WHY HAVEN’T I GOTTEN INJECTED WITH MY FISH TOXIN RECENTLY? I NEED YOU TO FREEZE MY FACE, STAT.

  I giggle.

  “What’s so funny?” she asks.

  “Nothing, nothing,” I say. “Just thinking about something Trig said.”

  “I heard you went to Atlanta. Down one day and back the next sounds like a grueling trip. What was that about?”

  I shrug. “I went to see Trig’s new house. It’s nice.”

  Mom’s face channels a storm cloud this time, wrinkles popping out all over the place. “It’s a shack in hillbilly hell.”

  Her annoyance makes me smile, but I don’t dare laugh again or I’ll be facing bamboo shoots under my nails for sure. “It’s a five thousand square foot mansion in a beautiful suburb of Atlanta, Mom. Let’s dial down the melodrama please.”

  “I still can’t believe he dumped our family for that girl.”

  “Her name is Geode, not ‘that girl.’ You meant to say he dumped our family for Geo.” I can’t keep the smile off my face.

  Mom meets my gaze. “You would like her, in spite of her horrible influence, and Neutrogena commercial face.”

  I cross my arms.

  “I’m being irritating, aren’t I? I’m sorry. I can’t seem to help it. I’ve worked my entire life to expand the family legacy for the two of you and he spat all of my hard work back in my face like I’d created a pile of fecal matter.”

  Fecal matter? Really? She can’t say poop like the rest of the world? “It wasn’t like that, Mom. He didn’t want his kids to grow up with so much pressure and such high expectations.”

  “You can’t tell me your childhood was miserable.” Mom practically pouts.

  “It wasn’t bad, and Trig knows that too, but it was stressful. He and Geo want something different for their kids, something a little more low key. Can you really blame them for making their own decisions? That’s who you raised us to be. Brave, independent innovators.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Which reminds me. There’s sort of something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.”

  Mom’s face clouds. I’ve scared her. “Nothing dire, Mom, calm down.”

  “What then?” She pins me with her patented focused gaze.

  “I won’t ever have kids, but Trig and Geo almost certainly will.”

  “Unless she’s barren.”

  “Mom.”

  She folds her hands in her lap. “Sorry. Go on.”

  “If I refuse to formally accept Trig’s share, what happens to it?” I’ve read the documents three times, but they’re confusing. I want to be sure I’m understanding it correctly.

  “They’d go to the next heir…” Mom’s eyes light up. “They’d revert to any children he has.” She beams at me. “Are you considering refusing his half?”

  “You don’t have to act so delighted.”

  “Your brother will be furious with you.”

  I shake my head. “You can’t groom them for taking over, because Trig’s their guardian. You won’t be able to meet with them even once until they turn eighteen, unless Trig allows it.”

  Mom’s eyes flash, but I can tell that doesn’t deter her pleasure in hearing my plan. “You’d do that to your brother?”

  “You make it sound like I’m defying him in some way,” I say. “I don’t see it that way. I see it as taking part of the deep impact out of his rash decision. He was trying to impress Geo and show her he was sincere, and in doing that, he walked away from a lot. That’s fine, because it was his choice to make. But what if Nometry fails? What if his kids are more like you than we were? What if they want to manage family assets? I would hate to deprive them of that opportunity.”

  Mom’s an absolute peach the rest of the meal. Except she’s signing the receipt for the check when she casually asks, “Why did you say you won’t ever have kids?”

  I shrug. “How would I?”

  “Well, I’d hardly encourage you to visit a sperm bank or anything, but I’m sure you’re capable.”

  I shake my head. “You can’t possibly know that. I’ve never even asked myself.”<
br />
  Mom tilts her head. “You can feel your toes. It was an incomplete break. I’ve done quite a few internet searches. In almost all cases like yours, the woman can still bear a child, and even if you couldn’t feel your feet, even with complete breaks, it’s often still entirely possible.”

  Yes, it’s that simple.

  I can bear one, therefore I will. Never mind I’d have to sit, pregnant, in a chair for nine months with all the circulation problems that would create. Never mind that I’d need biweekly or more frequent visits and special physical therapy to avoid clots. Never mind how I might feel, being a mother who can’t chase her toddler around without fearing I’ll roll over him or her. And none of that even contemplates the added risk to the child or me.

  If I can even conceive at all.

  And in order to find out, I’d need to sleep with someone, which hardly seems likely. Although if I had to pick someone to be a father for my kids, a certain face comes to mind. A handsome face, an attentive face.

  I shake my head to chase away my mom’s nutty idea. I need to think about something else. Instead of heading back home, I drive in to work. On a Sunday, like a lunatic. I dive into the files I need to finish before tomorrow morning’s project meeting with the staff. We’ve got more cases to review than usual. I’ve been spending a little too much time picking up Trig’s slack lately.

  I’m early for the meeting Monday morning, and I’m wearing my favorite suit. It’s a chocolate brown wool blend, shot through with gold threads. Miuccia Prada custom made it for me herself as a gift after my accident. I’m halfway through the meeting when I notice my secretary’s head poking through the back door. I glance past her through the window and almost drop my notepad.

  Robert Graham smiles when I meet his eyes and my stomach spins like an overeager pinwheel on a mountaintop. He points at an empty chair in the back of the room and I realize he wants to know whether he can come inside and sit in the back.

  He wants to watch me conduct the meeting.

  I drag a breath into my boycotting lungs and nod. Brooklyn follows him in and watches until he sits down. Perfectly harmless, except my brain stopped working when he walked in, and I need to sound rational for the rest of the meeting.