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.