| |
Mila had grown overly tired of the silly ghost-like hospital gown. After thirty-plus years of fashion obsession, it was borderline humiliating to live out nearly a week of her life in a large cloth bag, greeting guest after guest and trying her darnedest to feel like the Mila they knew and loved.
Well, most of them loved her. After so many whispered words of the like over the previous months, Liam had seemingly backed up on his original idea of them as a couple. She hadn’t seen him in three days. She knew because each morning, as she took in the reflection of her gash-filled face in the small hand mirror Jennifer had brought her, she slipped makeup over her lips and smeared eye cream beneath her eyes and counted out the days to herself. “Two days since he was here.” “Now, three.” It seemed she marked time till their relationship’s untimely death.
How funny to lose so much at once— including your ability to walk.
Including your general optimism when it came to the world.
No. She couldn’t lean too heavily into that outlook. She knew it would eat up everything else going on in her head.
It was now Thursday. Six days since the accident had happened, and the pain had receded bit by bit. She had grown accustomed to the medication, at least partially, and had now found the strength to sit upright in her hospital bed for the majority of the day, minus the hour or two she sat in her wheelchair as “practice” for the weekend ahead. There was no way in hell she would miss Andrea’s big day. She would move mountains to be there— to eat the yummy food and laugh with her sisters and watch Andrea dance her first dance with her beloved man. She so wanted, for just a moment, to pretend that everything was all right.
The in-hospital psychologist arrived at ten sharp that morning. It had already been explained to Mila the necessity of a consultation with the psychologist, as she’d been through such a traumatic event. Mila had always resisted the idea of therapy, as she’d always been of the opinion that a good attitude and enough humor could get you through anything.
As the days passed since the accident, however, her sense of humor and her ability to laugh had almost nearly dried up. This discouraged her even more. It was like she didn’t even have herself to lean on any longer.
Mila tried her best to describe this sensation to the psychologist, who was a fifty-something broad-shouldered woman with a remarkably pronounced set of eyebrows— the likes of which Mila might have tweezed a bit if she’d had her in her salon chair.
“You’re saying that you feel a sense of loss,” the psychologist said now.
“That’s right, and it’s not even just my legs. It’s something else— my optimism, maybe. It’s like if everything culminated to this moment of the accident... will anything good even happen after this? I don’t know. I feel a bit of jealousy, also, for my best friends, my sisters, who are allowed to keep living the lives they planned to live...” Mila pressed her lips together, frightened of her own dark emotions.
The psychologist nodded firmly. “These are natural things to feel. Your life has been sidelined for the foreseeable future. It will take a mountain of energy to move past this stage and keep going.”
Mila’s eyes welled with tears, which she refused to let fall. “I feel like those people who used to wait out on the Bridge of Sighs as their whaler husbands and boyfriends left the island for up to five years at a time. I feel that everyone’s moving on without me. And I’ll just be wheeling along behind them...”
“It’s been suggested to me by your doctor that you have a rather good chance to walk again,” the psychologist countered. “It’s not one hundred percent, as you know. But statistics show that if you focus on the positives of something, you have a higher chance of achieving a positive outcome. If you dwell in these very real, very honest feelings, you could create a darkness within you— one that could disallow you from overcoming your challenges and learning to walk again.”
Mila had to wince at this expression, “learn to walk.” It reminded her of her twins as they had hobbled across the carpet, with both Peter and Mila staggering behind them, careful to catch them before they fell. When they did, their howling was proof of their fear rather than of their pain. Peter and Mila had known this. Even still, it had made their hearts ache to hear it.
“I’ve spoken with a number of other patients in similar situations,” the psychologist continued.
“Did any of them use their legs again?” Mila breathed.
“Many of them did. Yes.”
Mila’s heart fluttered like a butterfly.
“And they told me, as they went through the process, that it was better not to put pressure on themselves to return to their old life. They told me they found more beauty in the day-to-day experiences.”
“And what about their personal relationships? Did they return to what they’d been before?” Mila didn’t want to speak overtly about her police officer boyfriend, as it seemed almost too pathetic.
“Yes and no,” the psychologist offered. “But ask yourself this. Do any of your relationships stay the same, ultimately? Or do they find new ways to shift and grow and change as time goes by?”
“Of course, things change,” Mila protested, looking at the doc with wide eyes. “But it’s not usually so abrupt.”
“I believe that things always fall the way they’re meant to fall,” the psychologist returned. “If someone leaves you as a result of your injuries, you’re better off without them. I truly believe that. They’re showing you something about themselves— something you’re bound never to forget.”
**
IT WAS THE FOURTH DAY since Mila last saw Liam in the flesh, and it was also the day Jennifer, Amelia, Camilla, and Olivia gathered around her wheelchair and fought over who had the privilege of pushing her out into the gleaming December sun. It was finally time for Mila to take on her life at home— finally, time for her to remove the silly hospital gown and find something a bit more tasteful to wear as her legs healed. It was finally time for her to push beyond the limitations of the previous week and discover where her true boundaries lay.
She certainly wouldn’t miss the hospital food, either.
Ultimately, Jennifer wrapped her hands around the wheelchair handles and pushed Mila down the hallway of the hospital. Mila’s eyes ate up every scene they passed by: small glances into other hospital rooms, other patients in wheelchairs, nurses shuffling about, children scrambling away from their parents. What on earth did they think of her? There in the hospital, it was much more common to see a woman like Mila in a wheelchair. Even still, eyes caught onto hers with curiosity. What had happened to her? Would she ever walk again? These questions seemed to burn from the back of their eyes.
Once in the foyer of the hospital, Jennifer wrapped Mila up in a brand-new Chanel scarf, which she and the girls had purchased for Mila as a going home present. Mila adjusted a winter hat on her head and shifted forward just the slightest bit to allow Camilla to strain her winter coat over her arms.
“Let’s take a picture!” Olivia cried now.
“To commemorate what exactly? The day I couldn’t get my coat on by myself?” Mila tried the joke.
Olivia’s face fell. Mila finally mumbled, “All right, Liv. We can do it. Just don’t post it anywhere, okay?”
“It’s just for us,” Olivia murmured. “It’s always just for us.”
Camilla nabbed a passing nurse to take a photo. As the four others arranged themselves around Mila’s wheelchair, flipped their hair, and eased their heads toward Mila’s, Mila burned with embarrassment. She wanted no record of herself in a wheelchair.
“Oh, it’s perfect,” Olivia breathed as she glanced at her phone screen immediately after. “Mila, as usual, you’re still our beauty queen.”
Still? Mila’s cheeks flushed with heat. Back in high school, the fact that Mila had turned heads with such success had been something of a joke. Now, it haunted her. She would certainly turn heads from the wheelchair, but they weren’t the sort of heads she wanted.
And Liam had clearly disappeared from her life.
Jennifer and Camilla lifted Mila from the wheelchair and splayed her in the backseat of Jennifer’s car. As Mila stared at the car ceiling above her, Olivia and Amelia squabbled over how to disassemble the wheelchair so that it could be placed easily in the back trunk. Finally, Camilla jumped forward and performed the task in two seconds flat.
“Guess we should have asked the nurse in the first place,” Amelia breathed.
All the girls had come from separate locations for Mila’s departure, which meant that Mila was alone in the car with Jennifer as they drove back to her place. Mila wanted to protest at the silliness of all four of them coming to get her from the hospital when, really, it was no big deal. When she mumbled something about it, however, Jennifer cut all noise from the radio and scoffed.
“You can’t understand how we feel about you getting out of there, Mila. I know this feels like a Herculean task for you, getting better and learning to walk again. But the four of us have hardly slept a wink. We’ll sleep a little better knowing you’re right there on Witchwood Lane, the way you always were before.”
Jennifer parked in the familiar driveway of the house Peter had purchased for Mila, Isabelle, and Zane. Mila closed and opened her hands nervously as Jennifer leaped out and immediately broke into conversation with what sounded like Amelia and Camilla, who discussed the “bad traffic” on their way into Edgartown. Mila hadn’t noticed the stops and starts. She supposed now it was a testament to Jennifer’s driving and that she’d been conscious of the uncomfortable Mila in the backseat.
Tenderly, Jennifer and Camilla assisted Mila back into the wheelchair. Once seated, Mila took in full view of her house on Witchwood. If she closed her eyes just so, she could almost hear the call of her husband’s voice coming from the backyard. “What? What did you say, Peter? I can’t hear you. I’ll come around.”
Mila had been in frequent correspondence with her children since their return to school. Now that she had returned to Witchwood, however, Mila’s heart felt bruised with the realization that she’d turned them away. How she longed to splay herself on the couch with her two silly wannabe adults, flip through television stations, and eat junk.
Camilla tapped the code into the garage door. The garage door erupted from the ground to reveal the dark shadows within. Slowly, Jennifer wheeled Mila through that garage, which seemed haunted with old basketballs and other people’s memories.
“All right. Are you ready?” Jennifer breathed in expectation as Olivia positioned a wheelchair ramp between the garage floor and the doorway that led into the main house, which was technically two steps up.
Camilla opened the door that led between the kitchen and living areas as Jennifer eased the wheelchair up the ramp. How ridiculous that it took such effort to get from the garage to the living room. Mila had never thought twice about those steps before. Now, they were like mountains.
Once inside, however, Mila breathed a sigh as she took in the full splendor of what her girls had done for her.
In the corner, a Christmas tree had been set up and decorated with all of Mila’s favorite Christmas decorations, including the ones that reminded her most of Peter, Zane, and Isabelle. Her Christmas family portrait had been hung in the living room, a beautiful reminder of better times, and Christmas cookies had just come out of the oven and sat cooling on the countertop in all shapes of Christmas trees and reindeers and snowmen. Stockings hung from the fireplace, proof that this was a home that had once focused solely on the love within it.
Mila was terribly quiet as she took in every detail. Her eyes filled with tears, which she again refused to let fall.
“What do you think?” Jennifer stepped forward to peer into Mila’s eyes. Fear permeated in her own.
“It’s perfect,” Mila breathed. “Really.”
“I hope it’s not too much,” Jennifer murmured.
“It is. It always is too much,” Mila replied with a laugh.
“Come on. Let’s get her situated on the couch. We thought we’d frost the Christmas cookies when they cool down, sip some wine, and watch a Christmas movie together over the next few hours,” Camilla suggested brightly.
“And then I guess you’re off for the rehearsal dinner?” Mila asked.
“That’s right. It’s the beginning of the end,” Camilla affirmed. “And in a funny way, I already feel sad that it’s almost over.”
“After all that complaining?” Amelia gave Camilla a crooked smile.
“I’m sorry, Amelia. Is this the first time you’ve met Camilla?” Jennifer teased. “I should have introduced you before...”
Amelia swatted her as she headed belly-first toward the kitchen, where she selected a still-cooling Christmas cookie and tore into it. “You’ve outdone yourself again, Olivia.”
Olivia’s eyes brightened. “I was dreaming about next Christmas at the Hesson House. Can you imagine the interior decorated with Christmas trees and holly and bright red ribbon? All those people coming and going as the snow falls around the mansion...”
“It sounds like a fantasy world,” Mila tried. “And one I’ve very much excited to walk into with my own two legs.”