How to Walk Away by Katherine Center

Author:Katherine Center
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Seventeen

I WENT THROUGH a period of—shall we say—disillusionment after Chip’s confession. Once I returned from the roof to my inpatient cell, I had nothing to distract me from the realities of my life—every awful one of them—and I kind of lost sight of the meaning of everything.

To sum up: My motivation for physical therapy, and everything else, was rather low.

There was no way to deny, at this point, that everything I cared about was destroyed, or broken, or had self-destructed. Even my own personal goals. Because that one inspiring fantasy of walking to Chip that I’d used to push back the fog had disintegrated the minute I found out about Tara and her soup.

I would never walk to Chip again.

I would never walk again, period.

In some ways, if I’m honest, giving up felt good. It certainly took the pressure off. Staying hopeful was exhausting.

In life, I’d always had tangible goals. I made good grades so I could get into a good college. I worked hard in college so I could get into a good business school. I worked hard in B-school so that I could get a great job, make great money, be a leader in the business world, break a few glass ceilings, and make my parents proud. Those weren’t the only things I wanted, of course. I wasn’t totally shallow. I wanted love and friends and babies and laughter. I wanted to be a good person and help take care of the world. But I’d spent my life working toward specific goals.

What was I suffering for now? What was I working toward now? To get a little more movement in my legs? To not get an infection in my skin graft? To approach some vague approximation of the person I used to be? To make it through the day without freaking the hell out? I couldn’t motivate for goals like that.

Somehow, the presence of Chip in that recovery fantasy had been the lynchpin holding it all together. Without him, the whole thing fell apart.

My mother had fed me false hope, and I’d swallowed it whole like a baby bird with an open beak. I hadn’t questioned it enough because I hadn’t wanted to—but there was a fine line between determination and delusion.

Some things really were impossible.

My grandfather had been shot in the eye with a BB gun as a kid. He lost the eye and spent the rest of his life with a glass one, taking it out every night and—I swear this is true—putting it in a glass of water on the bedside table. Kitty and I used to sneak in before he was awake sometimes and steal it out of the cup—and then, totally game, he’d stumble down in his robe and PJs at breakfast time, a hand clapped over his face, saying, “Somebody stole my eye!” We’d cackle until he found it—and he never complained. But no amount of wishing or determination or denial could have grown that eye back.

I hadn’t let myself think about that until now.

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