Something Sacred by S. Massery

Author:S. Massery [Massery, S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: S. Massery

18

I went through a brief phase of, I can do anything! But that vanished the moment I could barely get myself into my parents’ house on crutches. They had converted the downstairs study into a bedroom for me, and the bathroom around the corner had thick steel handrails in the shower and along the edge of the room. I met with my new prosthetist. He evaluated the residual limb and scheduled a follow up appointment four weeks from now. I’m not allowed a prosthetic yet—it takes time for the limb to heal—and I already have bruises on the inside of my arms from the crutches.

Every time I close my eyes, I see Boulder Mountain and the hotshot crew named after it. I won’t be able to get out there like this.

With the sudden overabundance of time on my hands, I’ve started reading. I’ve devoured memoir after memoir, trying to rally myself into action: leave the house, do something, find a new passion. I wait, anxious for that new passion to land on my lap. Nothing materializes. The world seems empty. Where can I go? What can I do? For now, I am dependent on my family, and it feels like I’ve cut off more than just a limb. I’ve cut off my independence, too.

It doesn’t help that my courage has fled, too. I’m struck with bouts of self-doubt. The thought of people staring at me—at my leg—makes me break out in a cold sweat. What if I fall in public? What if I make a fool of myself? The what ifs stack up, higher and higher until I surround myself with them like a fortress to keep me inside.

My room is a small rectangle with just the necessities: bed, dresser, chair, nightstand. There’s a thin rug that extends out from under the bed, which is supposed to prevent slipping. The walls are dark blue on three sides, and dark wood paneling on the fourth. On that wall, there’s a built in bookshelf that goes halfway up to the ceiling. Back when it was an office, my dad had a big oak desk and two plush, leather chairs. The bookshelf was full of historical books, architecture, law. Most of those books are gone, shuffled somewhere else after my demise.

Sometimes I can still hear the echo of him answering his cell phone in here. As a teenager, I would lounge on the leather chairs, fiddling on my phone or balancing homework on my knees. We’d work in companionable silence until Mom called us for dinner. Life was easy with my dad. He was calm and quiet and reinforced my mother’s parenting with gentle chiding.

And then… he chose to send me away, and our relationship fractured. I haven’t had a true conversation with him since then. We avoid each other. We each talk to Mom. We pretend there isn’t a whole desert between us.

Now, I turn and stare at Charlie’s parents’ house. It sits diagonal from ours. When we lived there, it was

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