Fix

them anymore,” I say, which is the truth, though I’d never thought to try.
She nods. And I can see she feels a bit sheepish for pointing it out. “Well, we can talk to your mom about them. Have you been practicing laps with your forearm crutches?” she asks, changing the subject.
“Yes.”
It’s another lie.
“Let’s try it together.” She hands me the crutches and we walk around the dining room table like it’s the track that circles the football field at school. The laps quickly take their toll and I struggle to disguise my ragged breath while hoping she doesn’t notice the sweat running down the sides of my forehead, both indicators of my extreme sedentary existence.
Nancy is quiet while we walk. Like she’s thinking. And that can’t be good for me. I need to get her off my back. Literally.
“Next week we start stairs, right?” I ask, breaking the quiet and giving myself a chance to gulp in some much-needed oxygen. “I suppose we’ll be taking it one step at a time,” I add, attempting to break her concentration.
It works. She cracks a rare smile.
“Just be thankful your apartment is on the first floor, and you’ve only got three steps to the front door,” she says, leading me to the couch.
I have no interest in the front door. Except to see Nancy use it as soon as possible.
After almost an hour of pulling on colorful exercise bands and trotting about the house, my energy level is below empty. The plate, bars, and screws bolting me together may all be made of titanium, a low-density metal, but right now it feels as if Sowah used a few of those U-shaped bike locks to fuse me.
My mother sweeps into the room. She tries to give me a warm pat on my arm, but it comes out more like she’s pressing a button for an elevator. At least she’s holding a glass of water.
It’s Roxy time.
“How’s the patient doing?” she asks.
“Well, Susan,” Nancy says. “The truth is, Eve hasn’t been progressing as fast as I think she should be, and I’m concerned about her personal hygiene.”
I roll my eyes at poor Nancy’s attempt to engage with my mother’s question. My physical therapist still doesn’t realize my mother is never looking for an answer—the question is the beginning and end of her effort.
While Nancy yaks away, my mother stares at her moving lips with raised eyebrows and wide-open eyes. This is how my mother impersonates “listening.” She can’t do the real thing, not that Nancy notices; no one ever does. My eyes lock on the forgotten orange bottle in my mother’s hand.
“So… I think we should increase my visits from two times a week to three times a week.”
My groan of despair is so loud it surprises even me, and I grab my rib cage as if it was the source of my grief. The sawed-off ribs do hurt like hell, so this one isn’t a complete lie.
My mother’s eyes light up. I can tell she sees my suffering as an escape from Nancy.
“Oh, sweetheart, give Nancy another minute and then you can settle into bed and rest for a while,” she says, lobbing the ball into Nancy’s court. Will my therapist allow me to wallow in anguish just to finish her report? I see now that it’s probably the whole reason my mother brought my Roxy out here in the first place—to dangle my pain in front of Nancy so she’d leave—because it’s Thursday, and that means my mother has her weekly dinner with Mary Fay.
“No, no,” Nancy says, tucking her tablet away and bending to collect her tools of torture—the bands from hell and her giant red ball. “It’s time I hit the road.”
My mother opens the orange bottle, and my heart warms.
“Soon you won’t be needing that,” Nancy says, nodding her chin toward my Roxy. “See you Tuesday.”
I choke down the pill as she closes the door.
Soon? How soon? Two months? One?
Not that soon.
I want my bed.
I think about washing my face or changing into clean sweatpants. But not really. Really, it just feels good to be angry at Nancy for making these suggestions, and the anger gives me the energy to clomp across the living room toward my bedroom.
“I’ll be home by ten,” my mother says. “I left the second bottle of Roxanol next to a glass of water on your nightstand. Call if you need anything.” She doesn’t say Call if you need me. Anyway, she knows I won’t call.
“You good, Eve?” she asks.
I stop at the door to my room. I know she isn’t looking for a real answer, but I can’t help myself.
“I don’t know? Nancy seems to believe I’m not progressing. Maybe we should talk about it.”
“Well, your physical therapist can show up two times, three times, or even ten times a week, but your personal effort is the key. And that’s your decision, isn’t it?” Speech over, she leaves.
My decision.
My mother decrees everything my decision. I can remember being four years old and hearing that how many cookies I ate was my decision. My decision was a lot of cookies. At six, quitting dance at Miss Elaine’s was my decision. The amount of screen time I engaged in? My decision. How late I stayed up? My decision. Sleepover on a school night? My decision. Grades, sex, drugs? Really just grades and drugs but, still, all… my decision.
Fuck her for always putting everything on me.
I fling my walker into my desk and it knocks shit everywhere. I roll onto my bed, defeated.
Those cookies were my last good decision.

Something I Already Knew
That night
half asleep,
Lidia told me
something I already knew.
“I want a hand,”
and my decision
was to say
nothing.
But I wasn’t
doing nothing,
I was doing
something.
I was hoping
that in the silent passing seconds
she’d actually fallen asleep.
“Sometimes,” Lidia
said, followed by a
swish of covers—she was
not asleep—
“I feel it.”
She stared up
at the ceiling. The moonlight
shining through the window,
casting a shadow—her eyelashes
dark and feathery
against her bedroom wall.
“You know?”
she whispered.