(a short story)
by Kerry Ann Wiley
She kept staring at the scars, like they belonged to a version of herself 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 for the bathroom door to close, then went upstairs and opened the linen closet. The blanket was in the third drawer. As I reached in, something shifted under the pillowcases. I froze, hand hovering, unsure what I had just disturbed.
A slip of paper—not carefully hidden, just resting there slightly out of place. A plain envelope, with my name on the front in sharp, fast, familiar handwriting. I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at it while the water ran—too hot, like always. The pipes hissed 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. I want to reach for you like I used to. But I don’t know what version of me you’ll get.
The ACL tear 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: manuscripts tucked in folders, pages half-edited with curling corners. She said she’d get them herself. But 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 a city press—long hours, in-house meetings, print schedules. Then everything moved online. Her condition made it permanent. She never said it, but I knew she missed the noise, the back and forth, the red ink. Her world had shrunk to laptops and couriers. She used to bring work home. Now, 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. When I opened the door, I said, “Hi,” and 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. After a pause, she asked, “Why did you message?” then looked at me and added, “I didn’t come to start anything.”
“I know,” I said.
“I have Scott. My Dad.” She said. I nodded.
“If you want help with the appointments—whatever you need—I’m here.”
She repeated it—“Help with the appointments”—like that was the line she wouldn’t cross. “Whatever you need,” I said again.
“The next set starts Tuesday.” She said, that was her answer.
She acted like a guest and stayed in the spare room. She lived out of the duffel bag she had brought months ago, the same one that held her clothes, a backup brace, and her laptop. She kept her things packed, as if she might leave at any moment. Still, she never went back to the city.
She began leaving me notes—brief, practical:
Tuesday: Orthotic fitting.
Thursday: Labs.
She added appointments to the calendar without a word. She allowed me to drive, but offered nothing beyond that. She let me wait, never inviting more than my presence. Her silence set clear boundaries: there would be no engagement, no further participation, nothing beyond what was necessary.
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. Her coat stayed draped over the same chair, her bag never fully opened. She never said it, but the way she moved, the way she held herself—everything about her presence felt temporary. 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 broke the silence, not with hesitation but with gravity, as if the word had lingered on her tongue for a long time before she let it go. 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, reaching for the right words. “Like the beginning of something we couldn’t name yet. You were in pain, frustrated—but it wasn’t just your knee. Even then, I could sense it. Something had changed.”
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. In the room, but not 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, and I swallowed hard, my voice barely above a whisper. “Why?” The word slipped out thinner than I expected. “Why did you leave?” She didn’t answer right away. Her breath came slow, deliberate, as if she were constructing the truth one piece at a time.
“I thought it would be easier—for both of us,” she said. “I thought I was protecting you. Protecting us… by leaving.” Her words didn’t echo; they just fell—clean, final, and heavy.
Lately, she moved through the house like a guest, careful not to disturb anything. Her steps were quiet and measured. She closed doors with the softest click, as if afraid of being heard. Even in the mornings, the sound of her spoon against her coffee cup had changed. It was no longer the sharp clatter of metal on ceramic,instead it became a tentative swirl.
The fridge stayed spotless, her shoes never appeared by the door. She didn’t ask where things were anymore; she simply went without or waited until I wasn’t around.
Sometimes, late at night, I heard her in the bathroom, opening drawers slowly, as if the sound might disturb something fragile that lay dormant between us. We still hadn’t spoken about the letter, but I’d memorized it—the slant of her handwriting, the weight in the strokes where the pen dug in deeper, as if putting the truth on paper had cost her something.
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—anything, just to break the distance. Instead I said, “You didn’t eat much.”
She shrugged. “I wasn’t really hungry.”
“You never are anymore.” She didn’t respond. The silence that followed was still, but far from comfortable. I let my voice drop.
“We still haven’t talked about the letter.” Her fingers tightened slightly around the blanket in her lap. Subtle, but I noticed. She stared past me, out the window. I waited. Then she turned and met my eyes. “Julian,” she said quietly, “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. Behind me, I heard her footsteps—quiet, then slower, as if she were thinking with each step.
The hallway stretched ahead, dim and narrow, a quiet space dividing the rooms we used to share from the ones we now claimed alone. She paused in the doorway. The spare room sat behind her, impersonal and empty. Ahead was the room that had once been ours—full of plans, of what we thought the future might look like.
She stood there for a moment, her hand grazing the frame. Then she stepped inside and sat on the edge of the bed, slowly, like she wasn’t sure whether she was returning or simply passing through.
I stayed still beneath the covers. I didn’t move. I didn’t speak.
She slid beside me, careful, quiet. Her presence unsettled something, but the space between us held—cool, stretched thin, untouched. She shifted slightly, her fingers moving to the hem of her t-shirt. The fabric clung as she lifted it over her head, catching at her arms, her shoulders. The motion was quiet but uneasy, as if she were shedding more than just clothes—something heavier, something that didn’t come off easily.
She lay beside me in the dark.
“Julian.”
Her shoulder brushed mine. A faint contact, but I felt it. I didn’t move. Neither did she. Still, something in the room felt different.
She shifted again, softer this time. Her leg found mine beneath the covers. Her hand rested lightly at my side, fingers barely touching skin. Not bold. Not unsure. Just there.
I turned, just enough and And she didn’t pull away.
She came down late. Her hair was still damp from the shower. She paused at the kitchen entrance—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 hung a little loose on her frame, the sleeves rolled once. She hadn’t asked. She didn’t need to. Her steps were careful. Not hesitant, exactly—just measured, as if she were testing whether the night before had carried over into morning. Then she crossed the room and sat down.
I kissed her—soft, certain. My mouth found hers the way it always had. This wasn’t a beginning; it was what never left. As I turned for the coffee, my hand drifted to the space between her shoulder blades and rested there. She didn’t move. Then, slowly, she leaned into the touch.
When I set the mug in front of her, she wrapped 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. 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 again.
The days gradually began to find their rhythm again.
The first signs were small but unmistakable. Her handwriting returned on calendar notes stuck to the wall. A grocery list appeared on the kitchen counter. Her hoodie was once again draped over the back of the couch.
We never spoke directly about what had changed. The shift revealed itself in quieter ways—in the unhurried way she moved through the house, and in the way I stopped watching her so closely during her silences, no longer worried about what they might mean.
One evening, as I walked past the spare room, I noticed the door was slightly open. Her duffel bag was no longer there. The closet in what had become our shared room now held more than just my clothes, and her charger was plugged in next to mine on the nightstand.
She had unpacked—not only her belongings but something more personal and profound: herself.
I stood in the doorway, resting my hand on the frame, allowing the moment to settle around me. There was a weight to it, but also a deep, quiet peace. She was here now—fully, finally—and she wasn’t going anywhere.
Author’s Note:
This story grew from conversations around invisible disability, recalibration, and the quiet negotiations that happen in the space between diagnosis and identity. While the characters are fictional, their experiences are shaped by lived realities—mine and others. If you’ve ever felt your body shift beneath you, or questioned how to stay present through that change, this piece is for you.
Note:The medical condition portrayed—length-dependent sensorimotor polyneuropathy—is based on real diagnostic criteria, and while I’ve taken care to reflect both the physical and emotional impact with accuracy, this remains a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real individuals is purely coincidental.
If you would like to hear more about Kerry and Julian, feel free to leave a comment. Thank you for following www.wileyswalk.com! K.A. Wiley
Discover more from Wiley's Walk
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.