Chapter 9: What Came After
Ava took her first assisted steps on a Tuesday, thirty-one days after surgery.
I was there.
Sandra was there.
The physical therapist, a woman named Carla who had become something like a fixture in our lives over the previous month, stood two feet away with her arms ready and her expression professionally calm in a way that didn't quite hide that she was holding her breath.
Ava gripped the parallel bars.
Her knuckles went white.
"You don't have to do it today," Carla said.
"I know," Ava said.
"I want to."
She lifted her right foot.
It moved forward.
Approximately eight inches.
She set it down.
Her whole body shook with the effort.
Then she lifted her left.
She made it four steps before Carla caught her.
Four steps and then her legs gave out and Carla had her and they both went down slowly and carefully to the mat, and Ava was laughing and crying at the same time in a way I had never heard from her before — a sound that had no category, that was entirely its own thing.
Mia, watching from her wheelchair near the wall, put both hands over her mouth.
I didn't try to hold anything back.
I didn't see the point.
Sandra was standing beside me.
She was crying too, quietly, without trying to hide it.
"Four steps," Ava said from the mat, still laughing.
"Four whole steps."
"Four steps today," Carla said, helping her sit up.
"Eight next week.
We're not stopping."
Mia's progress was slower, as Dr.
Marsh had prepared us for.
Her sensation improved significantly in the first three weeks — she could feel the floor under her feet for the first time in her life, a fact she described to me one evening in the apartment in a voice so quiet I had to lean in to hear her.
"It's cold," she said.
"The tile.
I never knew it was cold."
Her first assisted steps came six weeks after surgery.
Two steps, not four.
But they were hers.
Sandra had stayed in Baltimore.
Not in the apartment with us — she kept her own place nearby — but present.
She came to physical therapy sessions when the girls wanted her there, which was most of them.
She and I had dinner together twice, alone, and talked in the careful way we had started in the waiting room, slowly expanding the territory of what we were willing to say.
On one of those evenings she told me the full story of the Parkinson's diagnosis — the neurologist's office, the drive home alone, the two weeks she had spent trying to figure out what to do before she made the decision she made.
I listened without interrupting.
When she finished I sat with it for a while.
"I'm not asking you to forgive me," she said.
"I don't think that's a reasonable thing to ask."
"I know," I said.
"But I think I'm going to anyway."
She looked at me across the table.
"Not because it was the right choice," I said.
"I still don't know if it was.
But because you made it trying to protect us.
And because my daughters are walking.
And because I've been carrying the wrong version of this story for twelve years and I'm tired."
She didn't say anything for a long moment.
"I missed them," she said finally.
"Every day.
Every single one."
"I know," I said.
"They know too."
The apartment in Baltimore had a small balcony that faced east.
On the morning before we drove home — the girls discharged, the inpatient phase complete, the long outpatient road ahead of us but the worst of the fear behind us — I stood on that balcony with a cup of coffee and watched the sun come up over the city.
Ava came up beside me.
She was using a forearm crutch now, one on each side, moving slowly and carefully and with a steadiness that still surprised me every time I saw it.
She stood next to me at the railing.
"Ready to go home?" I asked.
"Yes," she said.
"But Dad—"
"I know," I said.
"She should come.
Not to live with us.
Just — to be part of things.
If she wants to."
"I already asked her," I said.
Ava looked at me.
"When?"
"Last night.
She said yes."
Ava turned back to the sunrise.
After a moment she leaned her head against my shoulder, the way she used to when she was small and the world was simpler and I was the only person she needed.
"Good," she said.
The sun came up fully over the buildings.
The city started its day below us, unhurried and indifferent and alive.
I put my arm around my daughter and held on.
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Some people sacrifice everything in silence, trusting that love — even from a distance — is still love.
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