Between Rooms

(a short story)
by Kerry Ann Wiley


She kept staring at the scars, like they belonged to a version of her she hadn’t chosen to be. One marked her calf, uneven and new. Another traced her wrist, faded but still there. Her fingers moved over it again and again, like it was a line in someone else’s story.

She shifted in the chair and pulled her sleeves down over her hands, then rose slowly.

“I’m very cold,” she said. “I’m going to try to warm up in the shower.”

She was already at the stairs when she added, “Can you get the heavy blanket?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’ll grab it.”


I waited until I heard the bathroom door close. Then I went upstairs and opened the linen closet. The blanket was in the third drawer down. As I reached in, something shifted beneath the pillowcases.

A slip of paper. Not carefully hidden, just resting there slightly out of place.

A plain envelope. My name on the front. Sharp, fast, familiar handwriting.

I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at it. The water was running. Too hot, like always. Pipes hissing behind the walls.

I opened the flap. Her handwriting rushed across the page, fast and raw, like she was trying to outrun the truth of it.


J—

Everything the doctors said is still stuck in my ears. “Idiopathic.” “Degenerative.” “Stable but progressing.” I nodded like I understood, but I didn’t. Not then.

Maybe not now. You looked at me like I had already gone somewhere you couldn’t follow. Remember the crack in the ceiling of that city apartment? It cut through the paint, like something shifted when no one was looking. That’s what my body feels like now. I don’t know if I can be who I was before this.

This isn’t who I meant to be with you. The one testing which hand shakes less. The one afraid to fall in her own hallway.

I keep wondering what it means for you. Not just the appointments. Or the mornings I can’t get the brace on.

Everything feels far away. My body, the way I moved through the world. I want to reach for you like I used to. But I don’t know what version of me you’ll get.

The ACL was the beginning—but it wasn’t the real story. That came after.


That was nine months ago.

The aftermath of the ACL tear lingered, stubborn and unfinished. Six months later, the first round of tests hinted at something deeper. Four months after that, the second round confirmed it.

The crisis never really ended. It just changed shape. It stopped screaming and settled into the background, like a low-grade hum. Easy to ignore until you really start listening.

She hadn’t gone back to the city apartment. I knew she didn’t want to. The thought of being back in that space, with the same view and the same routines, was more than she could stand.

I offered to go. To gather her things: her manuscripts, some tucked in folders, others half-edited with curling corners. She said she’d get them herself. Yet, when she finally returned, it was only for a few clothes and her laptop. The rest she left behind without a word.

She also left the ring by the coffee maker. Not thrown, but placed—carefully enough to look accidental. No note, just the symbol of everything we were supposed to be, waiting where she knew I’d see it.


She had been a full-time editor at one of the city presses. Long hours, in-house meetings, print schedules. Then, gradually, it all moved online. Her condition made that shift permanent. She never said it aloud, but I knew she missed the noise. The back and forth. The red ink. Her life had shrunk to laptops and couriers. She used to bring her work home. Now the home was the work.

Ten days passed before I heard from her again. I called once, tried twice. Then stopped.

On the seventh morning, my phone rang. It was her brother.

“Julian,” he said. “She’s running.” There was static in the background—wind, or traffic. “She’s not okay. She’s holding it together the only way she knows how.”

We met behind his office—neutral ground. The wind cut between the buildings, sharp and restless. We weren’t family, but we were supposed to be.

“How is she, Scott?” I asked.

He didn’t waste time. “She’s broken,” he said.

I didn’t answer.

“She’s lost. And scared.”

Still, I stayed quiet.

“She needs you, Julian. Not just the safety net.”


Later, I messaged her.

You can still go to the cabin, if it helps.

She didn’t reply. She just showed up.

I opened the door. “Hi,” I said.

She stepped inside slowly, her eyes moving across the space like it had shifted without her. She didn’t take off her coat.

“To make it easier,” I said, “Please sit down.”

We sat.

“Why did you message?” she asked finally.

She looked at me. “I didn’t come to start anything,” she said.

“I know.”

“I have Scott. My Dad.”

I nodded.

“If you want help with the appointments, whatever you need, I’m here.”

“Help with the appointments,” she repeated. That was the boundary.

“Whatever you need,” I said again.

“The next set of appointments starts Tuesday.” That was her answer.


She acted like a guest, stayed in the spare room. Lived out of the duffel she had brought months ago. Clothes, backup brace, laptop. She didn’t go back to the city.

She began leaving me notes—brief, practical:
Tuesday: Orthotic fitting.
Thursday: Labs.

She added appointments to the calendar without comment. Let me drive. Let me wait. Nothing more than that.

We had lived together for over five years, in more than one place, but now she moved through the house like it belonged to someone else. She folded blankets that didn’t need folding and wiped down counters that were already clean.

She tucked her things into corners instead of unpacking them. Her coat stayed slung over the same chair, her bag never fully opened. She didn’t say it out loud, but everything about the way she was here—how she moved, how she held herself—felt temporary. And I felt it too.


Later, when the house had gone quiet, she closed her laptop with a soft click and leaned back into the couch. Her sleeves slid down over her hands as she settled deeper into the cushions, the fabric brushing against her fingers like a reminder of how long she’d been sitting there.

The hum of the refrigerator was the only sound left, low and steady, as if the silence needed something to anchor it.

She looked at me—not quickly, not fleetingly—as if deciding whether to speak or let the moment remain unspoken.

“Julian.”

Her voice cut through the quiet, not tentative but weighted, like she’d been holding the word in her mouth for a while.

Then, after a beat, she asked, “What’s been the hardest part for you, through all of this?”

I didn’t answer right away. I watched her—really looked at her. She wasn’t guarded, just open in a way that felt rare lately. I let the silence settle a moment longer before saying, “When you tore your ACL.”

She didn’t move. Just waited.

“It felt like…” I paused, searching. “Like the start of something we didn’t know how to name yet. You were in pain. Frustrated. But it wasn’t just the knee. I could feel it, even then. Something had shifted.”

She gave a small nod, slow and almost imperceptible.

I took a breath. “It wasn’t just the injury. It was everything after. The way you started pulling away. Quietly, at first.”

Still, her eyes stayed on mine.

“And then you stopped letting me help,” I said. “You were there. But not really. You were in the same room, but you weren’t… with me.”

Her expression didn’t change, but I saw it land—somewhere deep.

I let the quiet stretch again. Then, softly, almost like I didn’t want to scare the words off: “And then one day… you were just gone.”

She looked down.

I swallowed, voice low. “Why?” The word came out thinner than I expected. “Why did you leave?”

She didn’t answer right away. Her breath came slow, deliberate, like she was building the answer as she said it.

“I thought it would be easier—for both of us,” she said. “I thought I was protecting you. Protecting us… by leaving.”

The words didn’t echo. They just fell—clean, final, heavy.


She had a way of moving through the rooms now that felt… edited. Like she was trying not to touch things too much. She stepped lightly. Closed doors quietly. Even the sound of her stirring coffee in the mornings was careful—soft clinks instead of the usual metal-on-ceramic rattle.

There were no fingerprints on the fridge. No shoes left by the door. She never asked where anything was—she just went without, or waited until I wasn’t in the room. Sometimes I heard her moving drawers in the bathroom late at night, slowly, like the sound might wake something between us.

We hadn’t talked about the letter. I knew it by heart now—the curve of her lowercase g, the way her pen had pressed harder in some places, like the truth had cost her something just to write it down.


She sat across from me, tucked into the corner of the couch. The brace was gone for now, but the skin around her knee still looked bruised, faintly inflamed. She hadn’t noticed me watching. Or maybe she had, and just didn’t care anymore.

I wanted to ask. Just ask. Something. Anything.

Instead I said, “You didn’t eat much.”

She shrugged. “I wasn’t really hungry.”

“You never are anymore.”

She didn’t answer.

The silence that followed was quiet, but not comfortable.

I let my voice drop. “We still haven’t talked about the letter.”

Her fingers tightened around the edge of the blanket in her lap. Just slightly. But I saw it.

She stared past me, toward the window. I waited. Then she turned, met my eyes.

“Julian,” she said softly, “I can’t do this now.”

And that was it.


I didn’t reach for her. I didn’t argue.

I just watched as she stood, slowly, like her bones had grown heavy all at once. She gripped the banister with her left hand—the steadier one—and climbed, step by step, until the house went still again.

When I opened the letter, it didn’t feel new anymore. Just familiar in the way grief becomes familiar when you’ve lived with it long enough.

It still said the same thing: she left because she didn’t want to be seen like this. That letting me watch her unravel felt more dangerous than disappearing altogether.


When she came back down, she moved slowly, her body heavy with fatigue. I was making eggs. Neither of us had eaten much earlier. She sat at the table, her hands trembling. We ate in silence. The space between us stretched.

I risked it, setting my fork down. “We never talked about the day you left.”

She met my statement with silence.

“I kept playing it back,” I went on. “The way you walked out. Like you were sure you weren’t coming back.”

After a while, she pushed back her chair. Tried to stand—winced. I rose too, instinctively. She took a breath and came to me, slow, deliberate.

“I never wanted you to be a caretaker,” she said—not sharp, just tired. “Still don’t.”


I cleared our plates and set everything in the sink. I was tired.

“Kerry, it’s late. We’re getting nowhere,” I said. “I’m going to bed.”

As I passed her, my hand brushed from her shoulder to the small of her back. She inhaled sharply, a tremor moving through her.

“Julian.”

Behind me, I heard her footsteps—close at first, then slowing. The hallway stretched ahead, a quiet divide between the spaces we once shared and the ones we retreated to.

She stood there, motionless for a moment. Behind her, the spare room waited. Ahead, the door to the room that had once held our shared life.

She lingered in the doorway of the room, her hand brushing the frame. Then she crossed the threshold and sat at the edge of the bed, slowly—as if she were unsure whether she was returning to something half-remembered, or drifting deeper into what was already lost.

I lay still beneath the covers. I didn’t turn. I didn’t speak. I just listened.

Without a word, she slipped beneath the sheets and settled beside me. Though her body was close, something in the space between us remained unchanged—sharp, cold, stretched thin like a thread pulled too tight.

Under the covers, she shifted. Just enough to let her hand drift to the hem of her t-shirt. The cotton clung to her in strange places—ribs, elbows, the back of her neck. She pulled it over her head in small, clumsy movements. It looked and felt like she was shedding more than fabric.

She lay there beside me in the dark.

“Julian.”

Her shoulder brushed mine. The contact landed deep. I didn’t move. Neither did she. But the air between us changed—dense and electric with whatever we weren’t saying.

She moved again, slower this time. Her thigh slid against mine beneath the covers. Her hand found my side, trembled once, then stilled. Her fingers pressed just under the hem of my shirt. It wasn’t bold. It wasn’t shy. It was searching.

I turned—just slightly.

And she met me.


She came down late. Her hair was still damp from the shower.

At the kitchen entrance, she paused—like she wasn’t sure she belonged there yet. I had left her sleeping. My side of the bed was a mess of twisted sheets and half-folded blankets, still holding the shape of where we’d been. Tangled. Close.

She wore one of my T-shirts and a pair of shorts. The shirt was a little too big, the sleeves rolled once. She hadn’t asked. She didn’t need to.

Her steps were careful, not hesitant exactly, but measured—like she was checking to see if the night before had carried over. Then she crossed the room and sat.

I met her. Kissed her. Soft, certain. My mouth found hers the way it always had. This wasn’t a beginning. It was the part that refused to leave.

As I turned to get the coffee, my hand drifted to the space between her shoulder blades and settled there. She didn’t move. Then, slowly, she leaned into the touch.


When I set the mug down in front of her, she curled her hands around it, holding it like something steadier than she felt.

“Some days it’s my hands,” she said. “Other days, balance. Stairs are harder now. It keeps changing.”

I nodded. “Yeah. I know.”

She looked at me again, held it longer this time. As if something had cleared, and she was finally allowing herself to see it. I didn’t move. She leaned in, not just toward me, but into whatever had started to form between us.


The days began to settle. Little things returned first. Sticky notes on the calendar in her handwriting. A grocery list on the counter. Her hoodie draped over the couch.

We didn’t talk about what had changed. Not directly. It showed up in the way she moved through the house again, unhurried. In the way I stopped checking if she was okay every time she went quiet.

One evening, as I passed the spare room, I noticed the door was half-open. Her duffel bag was gone. The closet in what was our room was partly filled now, and her charger was plugged in beside mine on the nightstand.

She had unpacked—not just her things, but herself.

I stood at the threshold with my hand resting on the frame, letting the moment settle around me. There was weight in it, and there was peace. She was here. And this time, she meant to stay.


Fracture Line

(a short story)
by Kerry Ann Wiley

The Diagnosis

We were driving toward the cabin. She tried to talk. The tests and diagnosis had landed hard. Outside the window, the trees blurred past us in streaks of green and shadow. “Stable” had meant something different when she was flat on the table. Now it felt like a sentence. Not dying. Not improving. Just stuck.

“Julian.”

I looked at her.

“What exactly is it?” she asked. “All of it. Not just what they said in the office. What did you hear?”

I turned down the heat, rubbed my hand across my jeans like wiping something off, then nodded. “It’s called length-dependent sensorimotor polyneuropathy.”

“Length-dependent means the longest nerves—legs, feet—are hit first. That’s why you feel it there. Numbness, weakness, muscle control issues. It can move up.”

“To my hands.”

“Yes.”

“And sensorimotor?”

“Both sensation and movement. Not just one. You lose feeling. Control.”

She flexed her fingers. “They said it’s idiopathic,” she murmured.

“No known cause. Not diabetes. Not genetic. They tested for autoimmune triggers. Nothing definite.”

“So, they don’t know why.”

“No.”

The word hit harder than expected. She pressed her thumb against the seatbelt seam. A habit. Automatic.

“Julian,” she said and I could see the question forming in her face before the words reached me.

“What’s the difference between peripheral neuropathy and what they’re calling length-dependent sensorimotor polyneuropathy?”

There was a quiet uncertainty in her voice, as if she was trying to make sense of something that didn’t quite fit. Had they gotten it wrong? I told her the two are closely related—peripheral neuropathy is a broad term for damage to the nerves outside the brain and spinal cord, while length-dependent sensorimotor polyneuropathy describes a more specific pattern.

It tends to affect the longest nerves first, often starting in the feet and moving upward, involving both sensation and movement. So no, they hadn’t necessarily made a mistake—the newer term just offers a little more detail. Still, I understood how that detail could feel like a new kind of uncertainty.

“What about impact? The last word she spoke hung there—long term—and I felt its weight settle in the space between us. I glanced over, unsure how much to say. “

You could lose more function,” I said quietly. “Fine motor control. Balance. Grip.” I hesitated, then added, “You might not run again. Or climb. Or…” The rest didn’t need to be said. It was already there, just beneath the surface, waiting.

“Or write,” she said.

“And short-term?”

“Falls. Atrophy from overcompensating. Chronic fatigue. More bracing. PT.”

She went quiet. Color crept up her neck, across her face.

“Stop,” she said. “Stop.”


The Break

We pulled off on a gravel shoulder. She fumbled for the door handle—missed twice. I caught her hand. A panic attack doesn’t scream at first. It starts with a breath she can’t finish.

Her shoulders twitched, a subtle shiver, like she was trying to shake off something invisible and suffocating. Her breath shifted—short, fast, barely reaching her chest before slipping out again. Each inhale stacked against the next, too tight, too quick. Her hands clenched, then opened, then clenched again, as if her body was cycling through the only motions it could still control.

She didn’t look at me. She was right there, inches away, but already somewhere else—eyes distant, unreachable.

“I’ve lost everything,” she said, her voice barely holding together. It wavered, then cracked open in the middle.

“You don’t even touch me anymore. You don’t touch me like I’m still me.” The last words drifted out, quieter than the rest, but heavier somehow—like she’d been carrying them for too long.

I didn’t answer. Her hands shook. Then her lungs seized—gasp. “Kerry—” I reached out. She folded forward. Elbows on knees. Palms to temples. Spiraling. Not crying. Not speaking. Just unraveling.

Her body jerked with each inhale. Exhales barely there. I could hear the panic rising—breath fighting logic. I moved beside her. Placed a hand on her back. Her spine flinched—but she didn’t move away.

I stayed like that. Still. Listening. Then—seconds or minutes—I couldn’t tell—her breath caught. And her body collapsed into mine. I held her. Not tightly.

Her breath stuttered through my shirt. Fingers twitched in mine. She felt heavier now. Months of appointments. Driving. Waiting. Pretending I didn’t see her disappearing in inches. I’d held it together. Because someone had to.

But on the side of the road, her sobs finally broke me. They didn’t stop. Just kept coming. Deep, full-body grief. She wasn’t holding back.


The Ask

It was dark now. No one said it, but we were staying. “It’s too late,” I said. “Too far to drive.” She didn’t reply. “It’s going to get cold. I need to get the sleeping bags.”

I opened the back hatch. My hands shook. I blamed the air. Everything smelled like fire and rubber. Gear from trips we’d started but never finished. The first sleeping bag snagged. My fingers fumbled the zipper. Not from cold.

I rubbed my hands on my jeans. I didn’t want her to see the tremble. She hadn’t moved. Still curled in the passenger seat. She looked spent.

“Touch me like I’m still me.” echoed in my ears. I didn’t know how long I had waited to hear that. Since before the ring. Since she stopped reaching back.

I laid the bags flat in the back. Foam pad. Emergency setup. Like the Catskills, two summers ago, after the ankle.

I returned to her side. Helped her swing out her legs. She let me support some of her weight. Not all. We got to the back. She sat. Knees up. Hands trembled.

Then—“Please help me take the brace off.” Her voice was slow.

I crouched and undid the first strap. The next strap fought back. I was careful. I didn’t look at her face. Just watched my hands. Her skin. The deep red impressions from pressure. I eased the last strap loose. Slid the brace down her calf. The cold was settling in.

She slipped inside the first sleeping bag. I opened the second, layered it over both of us. Sealed the edge. Sleep didn’t come. She drifted. Her breath kept shifting.

At 2:07 a.m., she moved. Her hand traced up my back.

My breath caught. Once. Sharp. Fast. My mouth opened—but nothing came. The tears did. My grief. My guilt. The version of me I thought she’d stopped needing.

I held her tighter.


The Morning After

At 5:04 a.m., I opened my eyes. We hadn’t moved. But something in her had.

She stirred. I slipped my arm away from her. We moved slowly. I reset the front seats. Cracked the window. The cold air helped. She handed me one sleeping bag, already rolled. The other stayed folded in her lap.

I started the car. The engine startled us both. We pulled onto the road. Gravel crunched. Headlights swept the trees. We were going to the cabin. It had its battle marks, but it was still safe, still ours. Familiar ground, even if we weren’t anymore.


The First Yes

The cabin came into view just after seven. Fog clung to the windows, and the porch boards were dark with moisture. We said nothing. We didn’t need to. It hadn’t changed.

I parked the car and sat for a moment before opening the door. “I’ll go light the fire.”

She nodded, fingers clenched around the blanket. “I need a shower,” she said.

I grabbed the bags while she stepped down on her own—brace still off, gait uneven but holding.

Inside, I turned to the fireplace, stacking kindling, then logs. The flame caught, but my eyes kept drifting. I could hear her moving—slow, deliberate—behind the closed bathroom door. Water ran, then stopped. Twenty minutes passed. Still nothing.

I tried to stay with the fire, but the quiet started pressing in. I crossed the floor barefoot, careful not to make a sound. Paused. Knocked once.

“Yeah.”

“Wanted to see if I could jump in next.”

The door eased open. She stood there in a gray robe, damp hair, skin flushed. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s still hot.”

Steam curled through the room. The mirror was fogged. I stepped into the shower. The water hit hard. My knees almost gave, not from pain, just the weight of it all.

Twenty minutes later, I came back down. Towel over my shoulders, shirt in hand.

She looked up. “We need sleep.”

Her movements up the stairs were slow.

She paused at the top of the stairs. Just for a second. We had gotten used to temporary places and separate beds—what had started as necessity had quietly become habit.

“I can sleep elsewhere,” I said.

She shook her head. “No.” Quieter the second time. “No.”

I moved closer. My hand found her waist. She didn’t move. I stayed there—skin under palm, steady. Then she leaned in and pressed a kiss to my jaw.


What Remains

I woke up after 7:30 a.m. The space beside me—empty. Her robe hung on the bed frame, still swaying slightly. I sat up and listened. I heard water running. Then, stillness.

She was in the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, pausing at the mirror. One hand lingered at her knee—at the scar. It stretched down in a pale, uneven line, a quiet reminder of the fall, the surgery, the months that followed. Not just what the body endured, but what it carried forward.

She stood there, tracing it with her fingertips—slow, familiar, unflinching. I didn’t speak. Her face held the kind of raw expression you don’t look away from. She caught my eyes in the mirror. I walked in, barefoot, the tile cool beneath me.

She turned, stepped into the embrace I offered. “I haven’t looked in a while,” she said. Not regret. Not shame. Just truth. I nodded. “I know.” She stayed there, against me, and something shifted—not erased, not fixed, just a space we hadn’t stood in before, and still, she stayed.

We stayed at the cabin a few days longer than planned. No talk of leaving, no real plan—just the quiet shape of a rhythm: coffee, firewood, her blanket folded in the same place each night. She moved slower, but steadier. I brought in wood before she asked. She folded things that didn’t need folding. When she rested, I stayed close—not hovering, just near.

The coffee was always too weak. She drank it anyway, leaning against the counter while I cooked, hands wrapped around the same chipped mug. Once, she hummed—barely. I didn’t say anything, but I heard it. By the third morning, the light had shifted—low and warm, brushing through the windows like it had remembered us. She was on the porch, knees drawn up, blanket around her shoulders. I joined her. Neither of us spoke.

After a while, I reached into my denim shirt. The chain slipped free. The ring settled in my palm—the sapphire between two emeralds, still catching light like it had never stopped. I’d carried it every day. Not as a hope. Not exactly. Just as something I couldn’t put down.

“I kept it close,” I said.

She looked, paused, and nodded. “I saw it after the tests.”

She looked at the jewelry like it was something she hadn’t let herself miss.

She didn’t reach for it right away.

“Jul,” she said, and her voice caught, hesitating. “It feels like a different life.”

When she finally reached for the ring, it was slow. Her fingers brushed against mine, then closed around it, as if trying to remember how it once felt to belong.

Her fingers moved across the stones.

“I didn’t think I could wear it again,” she said. “Not because I didn’t want to. I just didn’t feel like the person you gave it to.”

I waited.

She turned it in her hand. Once. Then again.

And then—quietly—she slid it on.

It caught for half a second, then settled into place.

She didn’t look at me. But she didn’t take it off.

She leaned into my side.

And I didn’t speak.

I stayed.

The morning stretched out in front of us—quiet, unfinished.

But something had begun.

Erosion


(a short story)

by Kerry Ann Wiley

The Drive

The crutches rested between her knees. She had folded her arms across her chest, bracing against a cold that never fully left her anymore. The heat was on, but her skin stayed pale. She hadn’t said much since we left the cabin.

Neither had I.

Outside the windows, New York passed in dull colors—salt-stained pavement, bare trees, the collapsed remains of old barns along the two-lane. The sky had held to gray for days.

I kept one hand on the wheel.

We didn’t play music. We never did on drives like this.

I kept seeing the fall. And hearing the sound her body made. The way her leg gave out before I could reach her. But it wasn’t just the fall. It was all the moments before it that I hadn’t understood. The subtle shifts I misread. The things I ignored.

She had stopped using her left leg on stairs. No limp, she moved too deliberately for that. Just a pause. A weight shift. One stair. One curb. One uneven sidewalk. I noticed. I said nothing.

I used to ask. Before the ring came back.

She had set it next to the coffee maker six months ago. Sapphire, two emeralds. There was no conversation. Just a choice, already made.

I remembered her before the brace. Before the poles and crutches she hated. Before surgeries. She moved like gravity didn’t apply. She climbed things without reason and ran ridge trails with reckless ease. Not to escape, but to feel resistance, to test the edge between control and surrender. There was a language in the way her body moved. Unscripted, but certain.

That version of her didn’t disappear. She eroded. Each injury, each diagnosis, peeled her away. She returned each time, but never quite the same. I kept waiting for her to come back, like the pain was just a phase.

My fingers tightened on the wheel.

She used to sit sideways in my lap around campfires, talking with her hands. I would trace her shoulder blade while she spoke. She glowed when she moved. Now, she was closed off.

Her foot shifted suddenly, the brace catching. I reached down and adjusted the padding. She didn’t stop me. Didn’t look at me either. I left my hand there longer than I needed to. Her leg twitched underneath it—the wrong muscle firing again. Compensation. I filed it away.

Touch had changed between us. It wasn’t sudden. Just fewer hands on her back. No more curling up together without thought.

Yet, on this drive, something shifted.

My hand moved, deliberately. Over the brace. Behind her knee. I wasn’t checking anything. I wanted her to feel it. She didn’t pull away.

She was holding something back. I saw it in how tightly she gripped the crutch. In the shape her mouth held around words she hadn’t said.

Then she spoke.

What if it spreads?”

Her voice was flat. Controlled.

What if it moves to my hands?”

I didn’t answer right away.

It had started in her foot: length-dependent sensorimotor polyneuropathy. The nerves die off from the ends first. Sensation fades, then control. It moves upward—feet, then calves, then hands.

She had told me once, not long after the diagnosis, “Sometimes I have to check if my foot’s touching the floor. I don’t always know.”

I thought she was being dramatic. I know better now.

It might, I said. And if it does, we’ll deal with it.”

She went still.

Then, after a long pause—I didn’t want to lose you that way.

I said nothing.

Half a mile passed. I took the car off cruise and eased into a rest stop. Picnic tables sat crooked beneath bare trees.

You made that decision for me,” I said. You decided I wouldn’t stay. Cut me out before I could even try.”

She didn’t speak.

You thought you were protecting me, but all you did was lock me out. You didn’t even give me the conversation.”

Her shoulders folded inward. Barely, but I saw it.

I loved you when you ran. I love you now, even if you can’t feel the ground.”

Her breath hitched. She tried to bury it.

I got out of the car and walked around to her side.

I wasn’t thinking about the day of the fall, but it came back anyway.

I heard the sound—sharp, hollow. I ran barefoot through the hallway. She was on the floor, one arm folded under her, the other braced against the wall like it might hold her back from falling farther. Her breath was shallow.

Instinct surged: airway, orientation, spine. But it died the moment our eyes met. She wasn’t in shock. She was tired, worn down from keeping herself upright in a body that had stopped responding.

I’ve lifted people from wreckage. From fire. From water. I’ve held necks still, found pulses in chaos. But this—watching her fall, knowing I wouldn’t get there in time—this was something else.

They don’t teach you that.

That sometimes love means staying still.
That it isn’t about fixing.
That not reaching can hurt more than stepping in.

There was no blood. No visible wound. Just the slow collapse. I had nothing to offer but stillness.

That day I wasn’t the EMT. I wasn’t the one tracking symptoms or answering doctors. I was hers. Whatever that still meant.

When I opened the car door, she looked startled.

I slipped one arm beneath her knees, the other behind her back. She didn’t fight me, but she didn’t lean in either.

Her sweater was worn thin. The fabric rough where it brushed my wrist. I sat down with her in my lap. Her weight was unfamiliar. Less pushback. More pause.

Julian,” she said, what are you doing?

I didn’t have a good answer. Just memory. She used to curl into this seat, into me, during long drives. Back when silence meant ease. Now it felt deliberate.

Still, I held her.

She whispered, I don’t know what it all means.”

She didn’t mean the moment. She meant tomorrow. And after that.

I didn’t speak at first. I saw the wet at the corners of her eyes. The way her jaw was set to hold it all in.

I traced her spine with my hand. Slow. Familiar.

They’ll start with nerve conduction testing,” I said. Pads on your skin. Small pulses. They’ll time how fast the signals move.

She said nothing.

“Then the EMG. Tiny needles pressed into muscle.”

I did not say this—Listening, hoping for a signal. Any sign the nerves were still trying.

Her shoulders twitched. Her breath shifted.

I felt her slipping again—into worry, into silence, into all the spaces between appointments and explanations.

“Jul,” she said. “I didn’t want this.”

I didn’t respond. Not out of helplessness—but because for once, I knew that silence was enough.

This wasn’t the moment to explain or reassure. Just stay.

I knew how she twisted the hem of her shirt when she was holding something in. How she stared into side mirrors when she didn’t want to be seen. The long blink before she lied.

I didn’t move. I kept my hand on her back. Steady. Light. Let her know I was still there.


The Night Before

I looked at the cheap clock that glowed red on the dark wall: 2:38 a.m.
She had been restless. She shifted beneath the blankets; the brace caught, snagging the cotton.

We were in the hotel, a thin-walled room just off the highway. The appointment was at 10:30 a.m. She had asked if I’d set the alarm, then turned toward the window, pretending to sleep.

I didn’t answer. Not because I forgot—but because saying anything might’ve broken whatever was holding us both together.

“Damn it,she muttered.

She never cursed.

She sat up, frustrated, and dragged herself to the bathroom. The door closed hard.

I waited. Then followed.

The faucet was running. Too loud. She didn’t want me to hear her cry.

But I did.

She stood at the sink, shoulders drawn, eyes red.

“I hate this brace,” she said, not turning. “It’s too heavy. It got stuck. I almost fell.

I let her say it. The words were true, even if they weren’t all of it.

She was afraid.

I stepped in behind her. She was wearing a thin tank top and soft pajama pants wide enough to fit over the brace. I let my hand slide beneath the fabric of her shirt, found her lower back, moved upward. Slow.

She let out a breath. Not a sigh. Something deeper.

I didn’t speak. I just let my hand rest there, open. Steady.

“Come to bed.” I said.

By four, her body gave in, though her mind held on, afraid to sleep. Her breathing turned shallow. One leg still caught in the brace. I didn’t touch her—just watched her chest rise, fast and light.


At the Clinic

Everything echoed. The technician’s voice was too soft. The lights were too bright. She sat on the paper-covered table, legs bare and trembling from the cold. Or from fatigue.

The nerve conduction began. Electrodes taped down her leg. Sharp pulses snapped through her foot. It jerked each time. Her face stayed still, but her hands were white-knuckled hanging on to the table.

Then the EMG. Fine needles into the muscle. Each twitch made the machine click. She stared at the ceiling tiles. Then she looked at me. Just for a second.

Her eyes dropped to my neck, to the chain, to the ring—hers. Sapphire and emeralds flickered under the fluorescent light, and something shifted in her expression. She bit her lip, hard, until a thin bloom of red rose to the surface.

She wasn’t one to cry often, but the diagnosis had worn her thin. She was exposed. Still, she saw something—maybe in me, maybe just in the fact that I hadn’t looked away. And I saw her like lightning in the dark, not just the flash but everything it revealed.

The doctor said her function was stable.

Stable. Not worse. Not better.

Just unchanged.


Afterward

She sat on the edge of the table, staring at the floor like she didn’t trust it anymore. I offered my hand. She took it.

Outside, I opened the car door, helped her in, slow and careful.

Just as I was about to close it, she said my name. Her voice was hoarse. Her eyes were full. But not unreadable. Not to me.


Braced

(a short story)
by Kerry Ann Wiley


I sat at the rented table. It was scratched and scarred like my legs. I pressed my fingers into one of the grooves and didn’t pull away.

Julian came down, voice soft, questioning. “Come to bed.”

I didn’t move.

“Hey,” he said again, “come to bed.”

I looked at him. “Jul…?”

“What?”

The tension hung between us. I wanted to tell him.

“I—I hurt.”

That wasn’t a lie, exactly.

He waited.

I rose, and my balance slipped. The table caught me in time.

He took a step toward me, but I waved him off.


We hadn’t been home in a while. Most weekends vanished into temporary places—motels with someone else’s linens, short-term rentals with rules taped to the fridge, coffee shops that closed too early. Cups went cold between us. The closest thing to lasting was Julian’s car. Motion was easier.

The cabin was the latest try.

The fire burned low. He read. I didn’t ask what. I sat with my back to the wall and watched everything resist change—even the fire. He added a log. It hissed and smoked, then caught.

The first night in the cabin I crossed the room and placed a hand on his shoulder. He didn’t turn but his breath hitched, barely. Just enough to know he registered it.

Later his hand moved to the back of my knee, just above the scar. The bad leg. His touch was uncertain, like he was listening for something I wasn’t saying. My leg seized and he felt it, waited, then his fingers fell into a pattern again. I didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

The fire had dropped to embers. Wind scraped at the windows. I shifted.

Neither of us said anything. It felt safer that way.

The next morning, we left without a plan. The walk stretched longer than we intended, direction mattering less than distance. The cold felt cleaner than the silence had. The path led, unintentionally, to a beach. Gray water stilled beneath a low, heavy sky. The sand sank too easily beneath our feet. Julian walked ahead—close enough to hear, not enough to speak.

I carried the poles. Carbon, newer than they looked. I didn’t need them for the distance. Neither of us were talking much by then. I knelt and set the poles behind me. The tide hadn’t turned yet. Rain held off. The beach felt in-between. I stepped back, scanned for footing, and started to rise. That’s when it happened.

The left pole had slipped behind a dip. I reached too fast. My hip twisted. The pole buckled. I went down hard. Pain broke clean through me. My knee gave out with a snap. Shoulder hit next. My breath left before I could brace.

Julian called out—sharp, panicked—then sprinted. He dropped to the sand beside me, hands reaching, gentle now, but far too late.

“I need to look,” he said.

I nodded.

“I need to touch you.”

Another nod. Shallow.

His hands moved over the joint, slow, skilled. Familiar. Like someone who knew my leg before it betrayed me. His fingers found the swelling. Lateral laxity.

“It’s an ACL tear,” he said finally. “Could be partial, but with this instability—more likely full.”


By the time he got me up, the rain had started. The walk to the car was longer than I remembered. He helped me in the back, then climbed in beside me.

I shook. He gripped me, sensing the cold—but it was more than that. He reached for the emergency blanket tucked in the corner and draped it over me. It smelled like the back of his trunk.

After he treated the tear, he moved to hold me. He couldn’t drive. Not yet. The rain was too heavy. He knew I needed to get medical treatment. His mind raced. He did a mental rewind and the signs lined up like pins—each one knocking the next.

Missed a curb.
Paused on stairs.
Braced near walls.
Offloaded weight.
Hesitated before rising.
Dropped a glass I didn’t mean to.

Somewhere in the list, he stopped being the EMT. He saw me—Kerry—fighting my body. I hated tears. I was trying hard to keep together.

He had already done what he could. He stabilized the joint with a compression wrap from the kit under the seat. He elevated my leg across the backseat, using a folded jacket beneath the knee. On either side, he braced it with two foam wedges cut from an old support pad.

He checked for distal pulse, monitored for shock, and kept the pressure firm but not too tight. It was rudimentary, temporary, but it would hold long enough. He moved without disturbing the leg, somehow adjusting to hold me.

When his arms came around me again, something gave. Not in him—in me. I stopped holding everything in place. Let it tilt. He didn’t say anything. Just held me while the ache threaded its way through. My breath caught once, then settled. The tears came—hot, deliberate, and silent.

“Okay,” he said—voice low, steady. “Enough. Talk to me.”

His tone didn’t rise.

“It’s not just the tear.”

Julian waited.

“Peripheral neuropathy. That was the diagnosis. A side effect of years spent moving wrong—joints pushed too far, muscles too tight, nerves trapped in the middle.”

It explained the heat crawling down my shin, the sudden jolt in my calf when I turned too fast. The numb spots I couldn’t feel anymore. The burning that came without warning.

“It’s been building,” I said. “It came on slow, sharp in places, easy to ignore until it wasn’t.”

“I’ve seen the signs.”

I didn’t respond.

He didn’t pull away. Just let the silence settle. Then his arm came around me again—unhurried, certain. He held me like someone who wasn’t afraid to know the whole thing. Not just the brace, or the scans. But this—what it did beneath the surface.

“You were compensating.”

“I didn’t see it,” he said, quietly. Then, uncharacteristically too sharp, “How could I not see it?”

He caught himself, looked away.

“I didn’t want to be looked at like that,” I said.

There was no reply for that.


When it felt safe, he drove.

The clinic lights were too bright. Everything after that moved quickly: intake, exam gown, questions I didn’t have words for. He was still with me, too still. Like he was afraid to move. And that’s when I felt it: the past circling back.

I sat on the edge of the table in a paper gown. Skin cold. Legs drawn close. Julian leaned against the counter. Silent. His mind already building the list.

Vein testing.
Pinched nerve.
Gait instability.
Cold feet.
Hand tremor.
Sensory ataxia. Confirmed.

He hadn’t known. I hadn’t let him.

The door clicked shut behind the doctor.

“You didn’t tell me about the tests,” he said.

“When?”

“Last month.”

He looked down. Tired, angry, maybe scared.

Julian moved toward me and pulled the rolling stool beneath him. He sat close—near but not touching.

“They’ll want to immobilize for now,” he said. “No stairs. Assisted mobility. Brace. You know this.”

I nodded.

“The long term—”

“Don’t.”

He paused.

“I tried to work through it,” I said. “Until I couldn’t.”

He didn’t respond. Just sat there.

“Jul.”

He reached for my hand and held it.


It took three weeks for the swelling to ease. The bruises shifted slowly, dark purple giving way to a dull yellow. They blurred, lost their shape, but never fully disappeared. Even as the surface healed, something beneath it stayed tender.

The cabin came three weeks after discharge. The bruises had yellowed. Memory hadn’t. The cabin smelled like smoke and fabric and silence. I moved slowly. The brace pulled with every step. He opened the door and stepped aside.

I sat on the couch—awkward, stiff, tired. He adjusted the pillow behind me. When he turned to leave, I caught his wrist. He paused. He sat beside me—close this time. Not careful. Not guarded.

The fire held.

Julian sat with me for a while, then rose without a word. He crossed the room, returned with my winter crutches—cleaned, adjusted, straps re-tied.

“These will hold better than the poles,” he said.

I looked at him. “Where are we going?”

“Rochester. Neuromuscular clinic. They’re running diagnostics we couldn’t get scheduled locally.”

“You planned that?”

He nodded once. Focused on the grips. I watched him—how thorough he was. How much he had already done before asking me.

“This place always feels like a pause button,” I said.

Julian looked up. “Then let’s stop pausing.”

He helped me up. The crutches held. I moved—one step, then another.

We didn’t pack that night.

He already had.

In the morning, we would go.