Ainslee moved through her days like a robot, scarcely feeling or noticing anything around her. She should feel some relief from her usual jumble of anger and fear and sadness, but instead the emptiness of apathy threatened to overwhelm her. She had numbly forced herself to eat a protein bar in the morning and get on the MAX to go to her therapy session. She would have canceled, but she had put off calling Dr. Campbell until it was too late to avoid going.
She looked at the directions he had given her over the phone a few days earlier when he had called to change the meeting place for today. She stared at the paper, unseeing, and nearly missed the stop. She made it off the train seconds before the doors closed and headed toward the gym.
She thought she had felt hopeless after her injury, but nothing compared to the sense of loss she experienced after walking out of the bagel shop and leaving Myra behind. She wanted to feel something. She should cry or scream or throw grooming equipment. Instead, she seemed to fold in on herself.
The problem was, she didn’t blame Myra at all. She had been indignant and hurt at first, of course, but those feelings had turned into resignation. How could she expect Myra to be strong enough to take on this situation when Ainslee wasn’t sure she was strong enough to bear this herself?
Ainslee pushed through the door into the gym and looked around. What did Dr. Campbell have in mind for today? Weight lifting? Ainslee didn’t need to lift dumbbells. She was getting enough of a workout carrying around a load of what might have been.
Ainslee gave her name at the front desk and was sent through a door at the back of the large room. She caught a glimpse of herself in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors as she walked past. She barely noticed her limp, but what she did see were slumped shoulders, a lowered head, and a vacant expression on her face. She stopped and stared at herself. So this was what self-pity actually looked like.
She straightened her posture and glared at the mirror. A smile might have been preferable, but any emotion seemed to be an improvement.
“Shape up,” she whispered. She was a survivor, if nothing else. She had lived, and she was getting stronger. One day she might thrive. She’d felt elated when Myra told her she liked her, and deflated when Myra changed her mind and said she couldn’t handle Ainslee’s baggage. Ainslee wouldn’t let herself be broken. She would mourn the loss of a short-lived and barely believed-in dream, but she wouldn’t allow this to destroy her.
She had been getting stronger than she’d realized, in more ways than she’d anticipated, but when she went through the back door and saw the rock climbing wall with its brightly colored holds, she felt panic squeeze her lungs until they were empty. She inhaled with effort and waved when Dr. Campbell spotted her and called her over.
“After you told me about climbing the hay bales, I thought this might be a sport you’d like to try. It’s a great workout for your upper body, and a good way to practice more precise manipulation of your prosthesis.”
“Sounds like clinically approved fun,” Ainslee said. She frowned as she looked up at a climber who dangled above her.
“We’ll take one of the easier routes today,” he said as he stepped into a nylon harness one of the gym employees was holding for him. “Trust me, you’ll love it.”
“I’m not sure I—”
“I’m Sandy and I’ll be supporting your climb today.” A woman with shoulder-length black hair and a bright yellow polo shirt with the gym logo on it interrupted her. “Put your leg right through here.” She buckled Ainslee into her harness and handed her a plastic helmet.
Ainslee put it on and tightened the strap with trembling fingers. No one was giving her any time to back out of the exercise. Before she could come up with a plausible excuse to run away, she was standing next to one of the easier walls and Sandy was behind her holding her rope.
Dr. Campbell grinned at her and grabbed a handhold. “Race you to the top.”
He had a head start, but the words brought something to life inside of Ainslee. She reached for a green hold and began to climb. She found the rhythm of movement faster this time, and her sharp exhales matched the tempo set by her hands and legs. She’d been spurred on by Dr. Campbell’s dare, but once she was moving, she only saw the next hold and the next pull upward. She heard Myra’s voice in her head, cheering her on, and for a brief moment Ainslee felt what Myra and her doctors had been wanting her to feel. A connection to the moment. A reason to be present and a desire to move forward. The tears she hadn’t yet shed for Myra threatened to come now, but she blinked them back. Later she’d allow herself to feel the pain of loss, but right now she had to climb.
She reached up and smacked the bell at the top of the wall, earning her some claps and shouts from the people who weren’t doing their own climbs. Dr. Campbell got to her side moments after.
“Thanks for letting me win, Doc,” she said, clinging to the wall.
“Yeah…you’re…welcome. Thought I’d…take it easy on you.”
She grinned at his wheezed words and his flushed face. Maybe she’d been faster than she thought. “Can we go again? I’d like to try one of the higher walls.”
“Sure,” he said with a weak wave before he started his descent. “But no more racing.”
Ainslee carefully picked her way down the wall. She’d always had goals in life. Winning races, advancing in her career. Specific and visual. She’d lost sight of her old way of planning her life when she got hurt. Suddenly the vague notion of survival had been her only ambition. She balanced on her prosthesis and felt for the next foothold with her left toes. She needed to make some changes. Set some new goals for herself—some new walls to climb. She could create new visions and dreams.
Would Myra be part of them? Ainslee wasn’t ready to take a chance on such a slim hope. She was getting stronger, though. Maybe someday she’d be strong enough for love.
*
Myra squeezed the nozzle and directed a spray of water over the back of the pony. The mare shook vigorously and managed to get Myra wetter than she was. Myra sighed and pushed damp strands of hair out of her eyes. She was a sweaty mess anyway. A cold shower would do her more good than harm.
She’d been pushing herself like a fiend in the two weeks since her fight with Ainslee, but the long hours of riding, teaching, and mucking stalls hadn’t put a dent in the blend of desire and sadness that had settled over her like a thick woolen blanket. Her mind felt fuzzy and sluggish, and her body seemed determined to recall every detail of Ainslee’s touch and kiss. She went through her days on autopilot, hoping merely to get herself tired enough to be able to sleep at night.
She put down the hose and brought a bucket of sudsy water closer to the pony. She handed one sponge to Jamie’s niece, Anna, and she took the other. Anna started on Calliope’s legs and belly—the parts she could easily reach from her wheelchair—and Myra slathered the diluted shampoo in the palomino’s creamy white mane and on her deep gold, nearly bronze neck.
“We’ll need to thin her mane to make it easier to braid,” she said, working lather through the thick hair. Anna was going to her first big show with her new pony this weekend, and Myra had taken charge of helping her get ready. Kate and Jamie were even more nervous than Anna seemed to be, so Myra had shooed them away, giving them a rare afternoon together while she and Anna did last-minute bathing and tack cleaning.
Calliope stood quietly as Anna wheeled closer and scrubbed her shoulder. The mare was worth the gold she resembled, taking perfect care of her young owner. Myra could barely recognize this Anna as the same girl who had shyly come to Kate’s barn for her first lesson nearly two years ago. Now she handled her pony with confidence and growing skill. She’d never walk again, but she got to fly when she was on Calliope.
Myra soaped the mare’s back and hindquarters, her eyes hot with tears. She got emotional thinking about Anna’s journey at the barn, and she couldn’t help but compare her with Ainslee. She had hoped Ainslee would experience the same transformation Anna had.
Myra paused while the sponge dripped soapy water down her arm. Was she being fair? Anna had always been horse crazy, and she’d had the advantage of living here with Kate and riding every day. Ainslee had only had a handful of lessons, but she’d improved nonetheless. Better balance, an easier smile, more laughter and teasing. Why couldn’t Myra accept the small changes she’d experienced instead of expecting Ainslee to miraculously become whole overnight?
Because Myra needed someone whole and unshaken by life. She dunked Calliope’s tail in the bucket of suds until it was saturated and reminded herself that no one stayed that way forever. Any human being would eventually face challenges that shook them to the core. Ainslee had met hers while still young. She was handling it in her own way, at her own pace—not Myra’s.
“Won’t she just get dirty again by Saturday?” Anna asked as she bent over to reach her pony’s lower legs.
“We’ll keep a light blanket on her until then,” Myra said. “If we wash her the day before, her mane will be too slick to braid. Ready to rinse?”
“Yes.”
Anna wheeled herself back several yards, and Myra got the hose again. She thoroughly rinsed the pony, getting every last drop of shampoo out of her coat, before flicking the water in Anna’s direction.
Anna squealed with laughter and threw her sudsy sponge at Myra. “You’re supposed to be washing Calliope, not me.”
“You got as much soap in your hair as you got on the pony,” Myra said. She shut off the hose and scraped the excess water off Calliope. “Can you put this conditioner on her hooves?”
“Sure,” Anna said. She came closer and stretched nearly out of her chair without a hint of fear.
Myra could vividly picture Anna’s first time at the barn. Jamie had hovered near the arena door—like a shark, Myra had suggested to Kate, but a scared one. She’d been used to protecting her niece by keeping her away from new activities.
“I can’t believe I’m really here sometimes,” Anna confided, as if her thoughts had been following the same path as Myra’s. “If you’d come to me before I met Kate and told me I’d have my very own pony and be getting ready for a show, I’d have said you were crazy. I’d never have believed it in a million years.”
“You’ve worked hard for this, Anna. You listen to me in our lessons, you practice every day, and you take very good care of Calliope. You made this happen as much as Kate and Jamie did, and no matter what happens at the show this weekend, I hope you feel proud of how far you’ve come.”
“Thanks, Aunt Myra.”
Myra, always touched when Anna treated her like family, smiled at her glowing expression. She thought of Ainslee’s disparaging remarks about her missing leg. Would she look back one day with surprise and pleasure over how far she’d come? Would she be as surprised by happiness as Anna was? Ainslee had so much ahead of her, if she only tried to—
Myra stopped in midthought. What about her own happiness? She had put effort and love and her very soul into healing Jeffrey, but she hadn’t been able to fix him. Now, she was expecting a relationship, a partner, to arrive fully realized and without flaw, when she herself was damaged. The cheerful, fun-loving woman she had been had nearly disappeared. When she looked back from the future to this moment, would she be able to say—like Anna had—that she couldn’t believe how far she’d gotten because she took a risk and gave happiness a try? Or would she be the same Myra she was right now, alone and afraid to love and possibly lose?
“Are you okay?” Anna asked. “You look sad.”
“I am, a little,” Myra said. She went over to Anna and kissed the top of her head. “But I might know a way to make it better.”