Where We Left Off

Someone had crammed a hundred cotton balls into my mouth, beaten me within an inch of my life with a sledgehammer, and then vomited flowers all over the room.

I was about 99 percent sure that’s what happened, at least.

My tongue scraped my throat with a gritty swallow. My dry lips tightened. My eyelids had weights attached to them, which made opening them a herculean effort. I groaned.

“Heath!” Hattie shuffled to my side. Her hand found my arm, right where a needle jabbed into my flesh like I was a human pincushion. I groaned once more. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” Then she whipped her head away from me and shouted, “Mom! Dad! Anthony!”

Her voice grew fingers that wrapped around my brain and squeezed it like a vise. I groaned again.

“Sorry,” she whispered this time. “Sorry.”

“Why does this room look like a wedding aisle?” I turned my head as best I could to observe the table to my left, overflowing with petals and greenery.

“Because your girlfriend is a florist. That, and all of the Whitney kids get a discount there.”

“Got it.” I was incapable of doing anything but groan; even my words were pained. “What happened?”

“I think I should wait for a doctor—” Hattie started to say, but it was too late.

I wiggled my toes. On the right side of the bed, underneath the starchy blue drape, my foot twitched. On the left, nothing. Bile crept into my throat, burning my nose and eyes.

“Hattie …” The volume of my voice rose at the end. Panic lifted it an octave higher when I said it again. “Hattie!”

“Shhhh, Heath.” Her hand flew to my forehead and raked through my greasy hair. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

“Oh, God.”

There, in a hospital room with only my older sister to witness, I lost it. Sobbed like a baby. At one point a doctor halted in the doorway, but I think Hattie shook him off because he nodded and turned away. My lips were slick and drool pooled in the corner of my mouth. Hattie held my face to her chest and dragged her hands against my scalp, rocking me against the thin mattress. Each movement of my jumping shoulders stabbed me with agony.

And then, as quickly as I fell apart, I pulled myself together. “Can you get the doctor?” I sniffed against my hand as I wiped my face. “I have a few questions.”

“Of course.” Hattie raced out the door like she was sprinting at a track meet. When she returned, she had the sleeve of someone who I assumed was on the medical staff in her hand.

“You didn’t have to physically drag him in here.” I laughed, but it hurt my ribs and my brain to do so.

“Heath.” The doctor lowered a hand to the bedrail. “I’m Dr. Callahan.”

“Good to meet you.” I winced when I tried to stretch out my palm for a shake.

He denied my offer and trapped my hand to lower it to the bed. “Just rest, Heath. You’ve sustained some pretty significant injuries last night. Do you remember what happened at all?”

I remembered being pulled over, then finding an old student of mine stranded on the side of the road. I recalled hauling the old tire to the trunk, skirting around the side of the car with the spare in hand, and then crouching down to fit it on the wheel hub. But that was it.

“I don’t remember a lot. Just changing a tire and then nothing. Just blank.”

“You were struck by a passing vehicle that swerved out of its lane going about forty miles an hour. We’re guessing the driver was distracted by something. Their vehicle dragged you forward five feet and wedged you under the car you were attempting to fix.” The doctor’s light blue eyes squinted behind his thin, round spectacles. “Heath, you lost part of your left leg in the incident. Just below the knee. The bone was so badly crushed and muscle mangled that all efforts to reattach it were lost. I’m so sorry.”

My head wobbled unsteadily. “Okay.” I hissed the painful words. “Okay.”

“You are lucky to be alive.”

It seemed trite for him to say, but I understood his intentions. “Don’t I know it.” And I honestly did. I was lucky. Maybe a little unlucky, too, but I could see the good and how it possibly outweighed the bad in this scenario. “How long before I can walk again?”

“First things first, Heath. Your body has a significant amount of healing to do.”

“I understand that, but timeline-wise, what are we talking?”

Dr. Callahan grimaced. “I hate to give any projected amount of time for this kind of recovery.”

That did not satisfy me. “If everything goes smoothly, what the best-case scenario?”

The doctor rubbed at his jaw. “You’re not going to let me out of this room without an answer, are you?”

“Not a chance.” I smiled, but my lip cracked at the side, opening up some cut I must’ve had. I brought my thumb to my mouth to swipe at the blood but the doctor retrieved some gauze from a nearby cupboard and handed it to me. “Six months? A year? Two years?”

“Definitely not two years. Best case—and I mean best case—is that you can leave the hospital in a week or so. And that’s just leaving the hospital. The real work begins after that.”

I nodded to keep him talking.

“If the site of the amputation heals without problem, you could be fitted for a prosthetic as soon as two to three weeks. But the average fitting time is usually two to six months post-surgery.”

“Well, I’m not really satisfied with being just an average guy, so I’m shooting for weeks rather than months.”

“All of that will depend on how things mend, Heath. Attitude is often more than half of the battle, but your body physically needs time to recover.”

“Understood.” I did, at least mentally. My heart had more hope in it than my brain, though. “So walking. When will that happen?”

“With hours and hours of physical therapy and the help of a rehabilitation team—and if all things happen as quickly as you hope—I would say anywhere from four months to a year.”

“So by November.”

“Possibly.” Dr. Callahan leaned forward. “I don’t want to set any false expectations here, Heath. This is going to be a long road to recovery. Prosthetics are expensive. Rehab takes time. There are more variables than I can even list at the moment.”

“But there’s a chance that by Thanksgiving, I’ll be walking again.”

The doctor relinquished a sigh. “There’s always a chance.”

Life had a strange way of giving me second chances. This was one I was banking on getting.