The fact that I don’t know means one thing: I’ve got to walk today. I’ve been careful to walk at least every other day, so as not to lose that ability. Even though I almost entirely rely on my wheelchair now, I don’t want to think of myself as someone who can’t walk. I’m someone who has some difficulty walking, but I can do it.
I glance at my watch. I’ve got time to do one loop around the block.
I get into my wheelchair, which has become easier and easier with all the practice I’ve gotten. It barely seems like any effort at all to make the transfer. I wheel to the closet, where I’ve got my KAFOs stored. It’s gotten fairly difficult to put them on—my legs have almost no strength anymore. And putting on the right one kicks off a spasm that takes some time to calm down.
Walking has turned into an almost superhuman effort. I don’t feel like doing it, if I’m being honest. But I have to.
I find my walker in the living room, and position myself behind it. I remove my legs from the footplate, and entirely use the strength in my arms to pull myself into a standing position. Good thing I’m strong.
Immediately, I feel dizzy. I don’t know if it’s the fact that I’m not used to standing anymore or my blood pressure dropping or what. A wave of vertigo washes over me, and the truth is, I want nothing more than to sit back down again in my wheelchair.
Christ, even standing has become hard for me.
I wait it out, taking deep breaths. A cold sweat breaks out on my face, but I refuse to sit down. I’m going to walk today. And from now on, I’m going to do it every day. It’s obvious that letting two days go was a mistake. I can’t be lazy anymore.
Gradually, I start to feel better. At least, I don’t feel like I’m going to pass out anymore.
Let’s get this walking thing over with.
I start with my left foot like I always do. That’s my stronger side. Except when my brain tells my left leg to move forward, it doesn’t budge.
I adjust the walker, moving it forward to give me more leverage. I grunt, concentrating all my effort on getting my left leg to move forward.
Move, you fucking leg. Move.
Shit.
Standing in the middle of the living room, I realize the hard truth: I can’t walk anymore. Sometime in the last two days, I lost that ability. I’m not a guy in a wheelchair because he has difficulty walking. I’m in a wheelchair because I can’t walk. Not at all. Not even one tiny, fucking step.
And somehow, I feel worse about the fact that I can’t even remember the last time I walked. Which it turns out is the last time I’ll ever walk.
I drop back down into my wheelchair. Well, I can get rid of these stupid KAFOs, at least. It will be nice to never have to put those things on ever again.
I sit in my living room for a minute. I can’t believe I’ll never walk again. I can’t believe it. I can’t fucking believe it.
I’m glad I’ve got some time before Anna expects me. Because I’d hate for her to see that I’ve been crying.
_____
“So we’ve got only two sessions left,” Kelly tells me. “I think you’ve gotten really good at transfers and wheelchair mobility. So tell me, Matt. What would you like to work on today?”
Kelly stands before me, her hands planted on her athletic hips. For some reason, I think of the first time I met her. I was standing like her, just a guy with a weak ankle. Now I can only look up at her.
“I want to walk,” I tell her.
Kelly frowns at me. “Walking? Do you really think that’s the best use of your time? I thought we weren’t going to focus on that?”
“Right,” I say. “But…”
I hesitate. I don’t know how to say this. But then again, Kelly has been with me since the beginning. She’ll understand.
“I tried to walk two days ago.” My voice is shaking. “And I couldn’t. At all.”
“Oh, Matt,” she murmurs. She puts a hand on my shoulder. “I know that was important to you. But you know there are a lot of people who can’t walk. You can’t think of it as the end of the world.”
“I know,” I say. “But… the thing is…” I look up at her. “I can’t remember the last time I walked. And whenever it was, I didn’t know it was the last time. I just… I want to experience it one more time.”
Kelly’s brow furrows. She looks at me for what seems like a long time. Finally, she says, “Okay.”
We go to the parallel bars. I already have my KAFOs on in anticipation of this moment, so they’re able to support me as I pull myself to standing. Again, that dizzy sensation comes over me. I see black spots.
“Matt.” I hear Kelly’s voice, which sounds very far away. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re white as a sheet.”
“Give me a minute.”
“I think you should sit down.”
“No.”
It takes even longer than last time. At one point, I’m certain I’m going to either throw up or faint, but I don’t. To her credit, Kelly doesn’t keep bugging me to sit down, and she waits it out with me.
I still feel like shit, but I’m okay enough. I look down at my left leg, hoping it will obey my command to move forward. It doesn’t.
“I need help,” I tell Kelly.
Kelly moves my wheelchair out of the way and stands behind me, supporting my hips with her hands. “Swing your hip forward.”
I do as she says. I can tell she’s helping me take the step, but I’m able to do it. She supports me as I move my legs forward, one by one. It’s slow as all hell, but I’m walking. I’m walking again.
It takes me twenty minutes to go the length of the parallel bars. Twenty minutes and every ounce of strength in my body, even with Kelly helping me. By the time she fetches my wheelchair for me and I drop into it, I am literally drenched with sweat. I don’t feel any desire to ever do that again.
“Good job,” she says to me.
I smile thinly. “Thank you.”
I will never walk again.
Year Six: Matt
The handicapped spots are all taken in front of Dr. Dunne’s office. Not that I’m surprised.
“I’ll let you out in front,” Anna says to me. We’ve taken her car for this exact reason. I don’t have room to get out of the car if I’m in a regular parking spot, so that extra space next to the reserved spots is crucial. If I don’t have that, I’m not going anywhere. “I can meet you inside, okay?”
“You don’t have to come with me,” I say. “It’s just a boring doctor’s appointment. Go shopping or something. Then we’ll grab dinner after.”
“I hate shopping.”
I smile at Anna. That’s definitely something that hasn’t changed about her.
As for the things that have changed, there are many. First and foremost, Anna is my girlfriend. It’s not open to interpretation anymore. We have kissed many times. We’ve been to second base too. And we’ve had sex.
There was definitely a point in my relationship with Anna where I seriously wondered if we would ever have sex. Obviously, she’d never had sex before and she was terrified. I ended up accompanying her to several appointments with her psychiatrist so we could all talk about it. There were half a dozen times where we tried to have sex without actually managing to do it. But now we have regular sex. And Anna likes it—or at least, the noises she makes indicate that she likes it.
She does still have to shower immediately after. But we’re working on that.
One month ago, we did something really crazy, which is I moved in with her. I was spending so much time at her place anyway—it just made sense. It was another time when we needed a bunch of sessions with Dr. Schultz to help push it through, but now that I’m living with her, it’s going well. Better than I could have expected.
“You’ll be so bored in the waiting room,” I tell her. “I’d feel bad.”
Anna looks thoughtful. She is quiet for much longer than I would have expected before she says, “I will go shopping.”
&nb
sp; Okay then.
After I get out of the car, I wheel up the ramp to the front door of the building. I push my fist into the handicapped button and the doors open automatically for me. It’s amazing how automatic it’s become for me to look for those buttons in a relatively short time.
Dr. Dunne’s waiting area seems more crowded than usual today. I text Anna that I might be late so she won’t rush back. This isn’t an important appointment in many ways, but it’s also representative in my head. Five years ago, I walked into this office, and Dr. Dunne told me that I wouldn’t be on my feet in five years. At the time, I’d been absolutely determined to march into this office and prove him wrong.
I’m not sure how to feel about the whole thing. I’d be lying if I said I was thrilled. I’m not going to say I don’t wish I could still walk. But at the same time, my life is good. My life is better now than it was five years ago. Five years ago, I was bored at work and had an empty, meaningless social life. Now I’ve got Anna, and I got a promotion last year that put me in charge of a team working on a really interesting project. So it’s hard to feel that depressed.
“Matthew Harper?” a pretty nurse calls out into the waiting room after I’ve been playing with my phone for about fifteen minutes.
I push my hands against the rims of my chair and follow her to the back. The nurses here are all so pretty. I’m beginning to wonder if it’s a coincidence. Dr. Dunne—that old dog.
I arrive in the examining room, where she nods at the examining table. “I guess I won’t ask you to hop on,” she says.
“Yeah, thanks,” I say. I could probably get up there, but it would be a pain.
“Anything bothering you today?” the nurse asks me.
“Just here to review my most recent MRI,” I tell her.
My symptoms have been stable over the last year. Dr. Dunne says that primary progressive multiple sclerosis usually works mainly on the legs, and now that I essentially can’t move them at all, not much more has happened. Of course, there’s always the chance that the disease could move northward, but fortunately, I’ve been spared that so far.
I wait for Dr. Dunne to come into the examining room. It takes ten more minutes of waiting, but he finally shows up. I’ve known Dr. Dunne a long time now, and I can tell just by the look on his face that my MRI results are good.
“Nothing has really changed,” he tells me. “The lesions are all just in your lower spinal cord.”
My shoulders sag. “That’s good.”
He raises his eyebrows at me. “Everything going all right otherwise?”
I nod. “Good, actually.”
He smiles. “Well, I’m sorry you had to come in for nothing. I hope the parking wasn’t too awful.”
“It’s all right,” I tell him. “My girlfriend dropped me off at the door.”
“Girlfriend, huh?” Dr. Dunne rewards me with one of his rare smiles. “Is that the same one from last year?”
I nod.
He raises just one eyebrow now. “Thinking about getting hitched soon?”
I almost laugh at Dr. Dunne, who always speaks in such technical terms, talking about “getting hitched.” The truth is, I’d love it if Anna and I got hitched. I’d be over the moon. Now that we’re living together and things are going so well, I have no doubt in my mind that she’s the one I want to spend the rest of my life with. But she’s got a phobia about weddings, so I’m sure that a proposal will result in a bunch more group sessions with Dr. Schultz. I figure we can wait a while for that.
Also, I need to come up with the perfect proposal.
“Not right away,” I say. “But… maybe someday.”
Dr. Dunne nods his approval. I notice his own wedding band on the fourth digit of his left hand. I wonder what the wife of a man like Dr. Dunne is like.
I hear my phone buzz. That’s probably Anna, telling me she’s back in the parking garage.
“I’ll see you in a year, Matt,” he says. “As long as nothing else comes up.”
I hope to God it won’t.
I leave the examining room and wheel outside to the parking lot to find Anna. I see her car in one of the spots, and I wave to her to let her know that I’m here. She brings the car around, but instead of letting me get in the passenger side, she opens the driver’s side door. She steps out of the car and that’s when I get the shock of my life.
Anna is wearing a long, white dress.
What the hell?
“What…?” I manage.
“Do you like it?” she asks me. She twirls and the skirt lifts into the air. “I bought it while you were at your appointment.”
“I…do like it,” I say. “But… why would you buy something like that? Where do you think you’re going to wear it?”
She smiles sheepishly. “I don’t know. Our wedding?”
I am speechless. I am literally speechless.
“I know you haven’t asked me yet,” she says. “But I assume you will shortly. So I thought I’d be prepared.”
“You…” I manage to say. “You want to get married? To me?”
“Of course I do!” she exclaims as if I’ve said something ridiculous. Granted, we’ve never discussed marriage, but considering everything makes her freak out, it was only logical to think a wedding would freak her out. She certainly panics enough when we’ve been invited to weddings. “We’re living together, after all. I certainly have no desire to have a relationship with any other man. Why?” She cocks her head at me. “Are you interested in exploring relationships with other women?”
“No!” I say quickly, before her imagination runs away with her. “Absolutely not. You know I only want you, Anna. And I definitely want to marry you. Soon.” I smile up at her. “You just… you surprised me, that’s all.”
She smiles at me as she settles into my lap in her pristine white dress with the tag still on. “I did, did I?”
Anna and her palindromes. When we have kids, our daughter will certainly be named Eve and our son will be Otto.
“Sex at noon taxes,” I say.
“Sit on a potato pan, Otis,” Anna says.
“Nosegay ages on,” I say.
“Never odd or even,” she says.
“Don’t nod,” I retort.
Anna looks deep into my eyes and I can feel her hot breath: “A man, a plan, a canal…”
Panama.
A Letter to the Readers From Anna Flint
To the readers:
Annabelle Costa, the author of this novel, would like to thank you for downloading and reading Crazy in Love. Ms. Costa worked hard on this book—she spent approximately fifteen months, two weeks, three days, five hours, three minutes, and fifteen seconds writing and researching. This work includes three hours and twenty-five minutes spent looking a multitude of pages of palindromes. Although I’m not sure why she would consider that part work.
During the time Ms. Costa was writing this novel, on exactly fifteen occasions, she snapped at the co-inhabitants of her home to, “Leave me alone! I’m trying to write!” On thirty-seven different occasions, she stayed up far too late writing and was groggy and all around unpleasant to be around the following day. One six occasions, she sneezed on her keyboard and subsequently failed to properly clean and decontaminate it. If you visit the home of Ms. Costa and use her computer, I would strongly recommend that you thoroughly wash and sterilize your hands afterwards.
While Ms. Costa recognizes that you most certainly have a busy life, she would be very appreciative if you would take 60 seconds or perhaps up to 120 seconds to go on Amazon to write a review of this book. Or send her an email at [email protected] to tell her how much you loved or hated the book. She also invites you to visit her website at http://annabellecosta.blogspot.com/.
Finally, Ms. Costa would like to suggest that you read one of her many other novels, all available in Amazon’s Kindle Store. But none of them have palindromes in them so I’m not sure why you’d want to read those.
Sincerely,
&nbs
p; Anna Flint
P.S. Ms. Costa has tacked on an excerpt from her book The Ugly Duckling at the end of this document. I presume it is a book featuring unfortunate looking poultry.
Acknowledgements
I’ve always wondered if people read acknowledgements, aside from the people actually being acknowledged. I only read them if I think I might get mentioned, and if I didn’t, it’s of course very traumatic. (Reading the acknowledgements can be quite the emotional roller coaster.) Sometimes I accidentally read them because the book ended abruptly and I thought I was still reading the book. And I’m like, “Why is Holden Caulfield thanking his agent? Why does he even have an agent? This book is confusing.”
And if you do read the acknowledgements (on purpose), what are you looking for? Do you want to know if I’m thanking my mother? Is that it? Are you going to report back to my mom and tell her that I didn’t thank her in the acknowledgements of my book? Please don’t do that. She’s got enough to nag me about already—really, you’ll just be adding to her grief.
Oh my God, I’m three paragraphs in to this acknowledgement already and I haven’t even managed to thank anybody yet!
I’d mostly like to thank everyone who sludged through this book in its early stages. That includes J. Giresi, J. Saman, Hailey, and Molly Mirren. Thank you so, so much. Also, thank you to Melanie for your input on the cover, and the roughly twenty billion versions of it that I went through.
And… thank you to my mother? For giving birth to me, feeding me, housing me, and clothing me until the age of eighteen. And also, for not reading any books I’ve written that have sex in them. Thank you so much for that.
Please enjoy an excerpt from my other novel…
The Ugly Duckling
Let me tell you a little bedtime story:
Once upon a time, on a lovely summer day on the farm, a mother duck was sitting on her eggs. Eventually, all the eggs started to crack and several cute little ducklings were born. All except the biggest, fattest of the eggs—that one just didn’t want to crack open for anything.
Crazy in Love (Matt & Anna Book 1) Page 22
