(A Short Story)
by Kerry Ann Wiley
I. First Signs
The dispatch crackled through at 11:43 a.m.—a woman in Midtown, possibly a neurological emergency. Her name was Kerry. I was halfway through a sandwich when the call came. Jake looked up from his crossword. I was already on my feet.
The rig was hot, the engine humming, sirens cutting a path through the noise of the city. Jake tossed out possibilities—sugar crash, dehydration, vertigo—but I wasn’t really listening.
I kept seeing her hand. Hovering over a cup of coffee. Trembling. Not enough to spill, but enough to stay with me.
“Turn on 53rd,” Jake said.
The building came into view—glass and steel, gleaming, reflective. One of those places where people don’t fall. Until they do. Inside, a concierge waved us through. “Top floor.”
We took the elevator. Neither of us spoke. When the doors opened, the scene hit like a snapshot frozen mid-collapse.
A chair lay on its side, skewed as if knocked over mid-motion. Loose pages littered the floor . Her blouse—a vivid purple—was bunched at one shoulder, an off-kilter detail that didn’t belong.
She lay still, limbs folded in on themselves, the angles of her body just slightly wrong. Her fingers curled with a subtle, uneasy tension. Her eyes were open, fixed on something distant, something I couldn’t see.
I dropped to my knees beside her. “Kerry.”
Her leg twitched. It was a sharp, involuntary ripple from calf to thigh. A spasm, brief and unmistakable. These were fasciculations, small and rapid muscle contractions caused by misfiring nerves. It was not a seizure. It was not something benign. It was just a misfire. The nerves were sending instructions the body no longer understood. Something had been lost in translation.
This was not a person who simply fainted. It was a system failure. She had stood up, but her body had not kept pace. The connection between thought and motion had simply gone quiet.
“She stood to shake hands,” someone said. “Then she just… dropped.”
There was no blood. There was no visible trauma.
I leaned in closer and spoke gently. “It’s Julian. You’re safe now.”
Her pulse surged beneath my fingers. It was not fear. It was not panic. Her system was overcorrecting, struggling to catch up.
Orthostatic hypotension could explain the fall. It is a sudden drop in blood pressure that occurs after standing. But that would be a symptom, not the root cause. What we were seeing went deeper. This had been developing for a long time.
The condition was called length-dependent sensorimotor polyneuropathy. It is a degenerative nerve disorder that begins in the most distant parts of the body—first in the toes and fingertips. From there, it progresses along the nerves, moving steadily toward the spine and brain.
She had managed it in silence, with care, never allowing the strain to show. Now that was no longer possible. When I lifted her, she didn’t resist. That, more than anything, told me what I needed to know. Her body had already made the choice she could not.
II. In Transit
Jake was already at the elevator with the stretcher when we arrived. We lifted her onto it and secured the straps without a word.
“Vitals?” he asked.
“Blood pressure’s low. Pulse is elevated. Pupils reactive. No visible trauma.”
In the rig, the sirens came on. Jake drove, eyes forward. I kept two fingers on her wrist, monitoring her pulse.
“She’s not crashing,” he said.
I nodded. Her skin was cool. Her fingers twitched—subtle, irregular. Not a seizure. Not a spasm.
“It’s the neuropathy,” I said. “She stood too quickly. Her system lagged.”
“It’s catching up now.”
We backed into the hospital bay. The trauma team met us at the doors, moving quickly but without panic.
“She’s forty-one,” I said as they took over. “Diagnosed neuropathy. Ongoing fatigue, fasciculations, reduced proprioception.”
Proprioception: the body’s sense of position in space. Without it, balance is unreliable. Movements lose coordination.
“Meds?” someone asked.
“She’s on methylprednisolone, a corticosteroid to reduce inflammation around the nerves. Gabapentin, for nerve pain and misfiring signals. Pyridostigmine, which helps improve communication between nerves and muscles. And a full B-complex supplement for general nerve support.”
“Level of consciousness?”
“Partial. No trauma.”
A brief pause. “Is she your patient?”
“She’s my partner,” I said.
No one asked again.
III. Aftershock
The drive home was quiet, thick with everything we weren’t saying. Kerry hadn’t moved in nearly an hour. The discharge notes were folded neatly in her lap, their edges soft from handling. I kept my promise—no questions.
We turned onto the gravel drive. The tires crunched softly beneath us. The cabin waited behind a fringe of bare trees. I cut the engine.
“We’re here,” I said.
I got out and opened her door. Inside, I switched on the stove lamp; amber light pooled on the counter.
“I’ll get you settled on the couch, okay?” I knelt, slipped off her boots, and pulled the blanket over her legs.
“I’ll make something.”
In the kitchen, I filled a pot and set it on the stove to boil. I crushed a clove of garlic beneath the flat of the knife, then peeled and minced it. The motions steadied me—rinse, slice, stir. My hands moved on instinct, faster than the thoughts that kept circling: the monitors, the pale light of the hospital room, the way her body had gone still when they lifted her from the stretcher. I stirred the sauce without looking down.
The steam carried the salt, and I let it rise into my eyes. The oil hissed when I added the garlic. I listened to it. Let it fill the space.
She ate slowly. When she passed the bowl back, her fingers lingered just a second.
“Jul… I need help.”
She tried to stand. Her legs folded. “I can’t—”
I caught her and carried her. Her head rested lightly against me, her hand curled into my shirt. Neither of us said anything.
IV. Evidence
I stayed with her until she fell asleep, her interview clothes in a pile on the floor. Downstairs, I moved through the kitchen, cleaning, wiping the same spot twice. Her coat was draped over the chair. I reached into the pocket and felt something stiff—a printout:
Senior Acquisitions Editor – Final Interview Confirmation
Midtown. Narrative nonfiction. Disability-forward publishing.
10:00 a.m.
I folded the email and slid it back into her coat.
Then turned off the light.
V. The Offer
The next morning, I heard her call my name from upstairs. She was at her desk with her laptop open, shoulders squared as if she’d been waiting. Without looking up, she turned the screen toward me.
The message was brief: Offer Extended — Senior Acquisitions Editor. Below it, two lines: Narrative nonfiction. Disability-forward publishing.
“I got it,” she said. “I hoped I would. I wasn’t sure.”
She hadn’t stood. Her chair was already positioned, her posture deliberate, as if each movement had been weighed and measured in advance. When she finally looked up, her voice held steady. “You don’t think I shouldn’t have gone.”
Then her eyes dropped back to the screen. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard for a moment, then settled in her lap.
“I’m not trying to go backward,” she said.
VI. Recalibration
She accepted the new job and quickly transformed the dining room into a makeshift office. Papers accumulated in untidy stacks, creeping higher each day. Yet, with the chaos came structure: her days began to follow a rhythm—emails, scanned manuscripts, and meticulous edits.
She marked up proofs in red ink, her handwriting noticeably slower now, each stroke deliberate, as though every letter cost her something. The margins of her pages filled with notes—careful, exact, and purposeful. There was a clarity to her work that hadn’t been there before, like she was rebuilding something piece by piece.
She wore the brace without apology. A black wrap that hugged her thigh and crossed over her hip, stabilizing the sacroiliac joint—the same joint that had failed her so violently. She no longer tried to conceal it. On some days, it seemed almost like a part of her, a second skin.
Her voice returned too. She took calls from the kitchen, calm and assured. It wasn’t sharp, but it was clear—resolute. There was a steadiness in it I hadn’t heard in weeks, maybe longer.
Meanwhile, I returned to shift work—Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
Jake picked me up. We didn’t talk about her. Instead, we lifted, responded, patched people back together. The memory of her fall played on repeat in my mind. Her leg folding beneath her. The exact angle of her shoulder hitting the floor. I couldn’t unsee it, no matter how hard I tried. It looped in the background of every call, every siren, every patient we lifted.
VII. The Stairs
Three weeks later, she tried the stairs.
I was coming up the stairs with a mug of coffee in each hand when I saw her standing at the landing. Her right foot was forward, one hand resting lightly on the wall. That had always been our rule—right foot first. Then her foot shifted, just slightly, but the movement was off. Unsteady.
I dropped the mugs.
“Kerry—” I called out, already moving.
I caught her with my shoulder as she tipped, and we went down together. My back hit the stairs hard. She landed on top of me, her head against my chest.
She didn’t get up.
“Kerry?”
Her arm was slack, hanging, her wrist bent in a way that made my stomach turn. I tried to lift my head, but pain lit up my side—sudden and sharp. Breathing was hard.
I reached for my phone, my hands shaking more than I wanted them to. I scrolled through my call history and tapped Jake’s name.
“She’s not waking up,” I said, my voice low. “And I think I broke something.”
VIII. Stabilization
Jake arrived fast, taking the stairs three at a time. I heard his voice before I saw him. He dropped to his knees beside us.
“Vitals are steady,” he said quickly. “She’s unconscious. You’re guarding your ribs—don’t move.”
Austin came in with the second rig. They loaded her first.
In the trauma bay, I kept talking. “She has baseline muscle contractures—mainly along the ulnar nerve,” I told the resident. “That’s the nerve that runs along the inside of the arm, controls fine motor function. If her arm’s rigid, that’s not new. Don’t misread her posture.”
I gave them everything: her medications, the pattern of symptoms, how her proprioception—the body’s sense of its own position—dropped off when she was fatigued. I watched them secure her with wide straps across her chest and foam bracing around her neck to protect her spine.
They scanned us both. Her spine was clear—no fractures—but her sacroiliac joint, the one connecting the spine to the pelvis, was inflamed again. Her system had gone into overdrive, tried to compensate, and then collapsed under the strain.
I had two fractured ribs and a pulmonary contusion—a bruised lung that made each breath shallow and careful. They were monitoring for a pneumothorax, in case the lung collapsed, but it stayed intact.
I refused sedation until they cleared her cervical spine. They did.
She woke up before I did.
IX. Aftermath
She was upright when I saw her again. “I hate this,” she said. “What happened?”
“You fell,” I told her. “Your SI joint locked. Your body shut down.” She nodded, slow and steady. “
“I couldn’t feel my feet when I stood,” she said. “They were just… gone. Like the floor wasn’t there.”
Her voice stayed quiet, almost detached. “That doesn’t mean they’ll come back.”
X. The Move
Two months later, we left the cabin. The stairs had grown too steep. The space, too vertical. The memories, too exacting.
We found a bungalow with one story and no steps. It was the kind of place you choose when you stop pretending your body might recover, when hope starts to resemble adaptation more than restoration.
She unpacked her books first and lined them along the wall. Their spines were worn soft and split, like habits she wasn’t ready to abandon. Next came the pens, the notepads, the red markers, and the sticky tabs she never quite confessed to relying on. She arranged her desk by the window, where the light refused to change—even when everything else did.
The brace stayed on—black, sleek, functional, and impossible to ignore. Some days, silence did the talking, holding what neither of us could say.
XI. Waking
It started with the way she froze.
One moment, Kerry sat on the edge of the bed, her mug cooling on the nightstand, her cardigan pulled close as if bracing against more than cold. The next, her breathing shifted—sudden and sharp. It was too fast, too shallow, as if she were trying to outrun a feeling she didn’t fully understand but instinctively wanted to escape.
I recognized the look instantly.
“Kerry.” I sat down beside her, careful not to get too close. “You’re safe. Just breathe.”
Her eyes were wide, yet distant, as if the world had shifted around her and she hadn’t moved with it. Then her hands went to her throat, fingers scraping at bare skin, grasping for something that no longer existed. That’s when I knew—she was back in the hospital room.
Her breath caught. Her spine snapped rigid, as if the weight of the neck brace had returned. The memory of the breathing tube seized her, choking her all over again. Her hands flailed, disoriented, fighting a battle her body hadn’t yet stopped losing. Just like that, I was there with her—right back in that room.
Pale light slipped through the blinds. The machines droned, steady and unrelenting—impossible to tune out. I remembered how she had come to without warning. Her eyelids had fluttered. Her breath had snagged before it could fully begin. Her hands had lifted—halting, desperate.
The nurse had moved quickly. “Try not to fight it, Kerry. You’re safe. You fell.”
I sat in the corner of the room, ribs bandaged and aching, knowing I couldn’t reach her in any way that truly mattered. All I could do was whisper, “I’m here,” because it was the only thing I had to give.
Now, beside me, she let out a choked gasp and folded into herself.
She wasn’t speaking—at least, not yet—but I felt the exact moment it hit her. Not just the shock of being in the hospital, but the stark realization of the empty space where her legs should have been. The absence. The fear.
I moved closer. “It’s not happening again,” I said softly. “You’re not there. You’re with me.”
Her breath came in sharp bursts, each one a fragile attempt at control.
Then: “That morning—” Her voice broke. “I woke up and I didn’t even know if my legs were there. I thought they were gone.” She buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders trembled beneath the cardigan. Every part of her looked like it was bracing for impact.
I swallowed hard. “I remember.”
ChatGPT said:
She shook her head, as if denial alone could erase the memory.
“I couldn’t feel them, Julian. Not even a shadow of them. I thought I was paralyzed. I thought…” Her voice dropped. “I thought that was it.”
I closed the distance between us, slow and cautious.
She looked at me then. “My legs don’t feel like mine,” she said.
Her voice was barely holding together—thin, frayed with a fear I had heard only once before. It was back in that hospital bed, when she had been too drained to ask what had happened and too aware of what could have.
“They said it was soft tissue,” I said quietly. “Ligaments and muscle strain. Not a break. The nerves were already weak, and the fall overloaded everything.” She didn’t move. “It isn’t about strength or willpower. It’s signal noise. It’s static. Your body is re-calibrating.”
Her lips parted, but no sound came—only a long, shuddering breath that seemed to pass through her like a wave. I reached out then, slow and certain, and wrapped my hand around hers.
Her fingers were cold. She exhaled again, this time a little steadier, and I felt the smallest shift in her posture, a loosening in her shoulders. It wasn’t peace, not yet, but it was a quiet yielding—an unspoken decision to let the moment hold her instead of fighting it.
XII. Not Another Baseline
I had just explained it all again. Her body wasn’t betraying her—just misfiring. The fall had bruised more than muscle. Now, standing took the kind of energy most people used to run.
I thought I had spoken gently. Each word was chosen with care, my voice was low and deliberate, as if I were stepping barefoot across a floor scattered with broken glass. I meant to be careful. I meant not to hurt her. Still, something in her shifted. It was subtle, but I saw it—the way her shoulders tensed, the way her eyes fixed on something far away.
“How much more, Julian?”
Her voice was quiet, but it cut through the space between us. It wasn’t sharp or loud, just strained, as if she were holding something together that no longer wanted to hold.
She shoved the blanket off her legs and sat up, every movement stiff and stuttering, like a glitch in her nervous system. Pain flared in her ribs, making her flinch. Her hands trembled in her lap.
When she finally spoke, the words tumbled out fast and jagged, as if they had been building inside her for weeks—maybe even months—just waiting for the right moment to break free.
“How many times do we rebuild from zero?” she asked. Her voice wasn’t loud, but it shook with the weight of held-in grief. “How many more times do I have to start over as someone slightly less than I was before?”
She pressed the flat of her palm hard against her thigh, like she needed to be sure it was still there, still solid beneath her touch.
“I took that job interview,” she continued, her eyes bright—not with tears, but with something sharper, something that burned, “because I wanted to feel something that wasn’t clinical. I wanted a version of myself that didn’t start with a diagnosis.” She looked at me then—and there was so much heat in her gaze I could barely hold it.
“I wanted to get back to you.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but she was already past the point of interruption.
“I tried, Julian. I’ve been clawing my way back up. Every time I think I’m gaining ground, something gives out—a nerve, a joint, or some doctor with a brand new name for the same goddamn pain.”
Her voice caught then—just slightly, a fracture beneath the fury.
“I don’t want another new baseline. I don’t want another version of ‘functional.’ I want the one where I can walk into a room without doing the math. I want to stop holding my breath every time I stand up.”
Her chest rose in sharp, uneven bursts. Her voice—fractured, raw, stripped bare—cut straight through the silence like a blade.
“I want the job. The stairs. The feeling in my calves when I walk too far in bad shoes. I want to stop living like I’m made of glass. I want my body back.”
I didn’t speak right away.
I let the weight of her words settle between us—like dust after a collapse. I waited until her eyes found mine again. Not looking past me. Not through me. At me.
Then, quietly—like a confession: “I saw your fire again, Ker.”
The words left my mouth soft, deliberate, almost sacred.
“You haven’t lost that. We can work on the physical.”
She didn’t respond. She only stared down at her legs, as if trying to remember the last time they had felt like part of her. The silence dragged on, dense with everything she didn’t have the words to say.
Then, she said: “If this is just another thing I have to learn how to live with… then say it.”
I let the breath out slow, trying to find steady ground.
“You didn’t lose everything.”
Her eyes closed.
“It feels like I did.”
Grief settled into her body like a weight she didn’t know how to carry. Her shoulders curved inward, drawn tight by something deeper than pain. Her arms wrapped around her middle, as if bracing for a blow that had already landed. She leaned forward, not collapsing, but folding—as though trying to hold herself together before she unraveled completely. It moved through her like a storm—quiet, relentless, unstoppable.
I winced as I leaned in, my ribs still sore and bruised, but I didn’t care. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her close, holding her as she shook against me, while my own body trembled just to keep her safe.
We weren’t at zero, but we were at the bottom of something—something raw and heavy. I wasn’t going to let her stay there alone.
XIII. Something Like Steady
I can’t say when the change began.
I saw it in the way Kerry slept. Her breathing had deepened, grown steady. The tension in her jaw eased. When she moved, it was still with care, but no longer with fear.
The house helped. The house wasn’t big, but it didn’t need to be. It had two bedrooms and a single floor. The kitchen counters were built at just the right height. The hallway was wide enough to pause in without feeling confined. There were no stairs. That detail alone let us breathe a little easier.
One afternoon, I watched her make tea. It was a simple, everyday task, yet every movement was measured and intentional, dictated by the quiet demands of her body. One hand braced against the counter for balance while the other stirred the cup with slow, practiced care.
As a tremor started to rise through her body, she shifted her weight, bending her knee slightly to stay balanced. When the kettle turned off, she let out a quiet, strained breath, as if just standing had taken more out of her than she showed.
You don’t truly understand strength until you witness someone choose movement inside their pain. Not in defiance of it—inside it.
The cabin had been crowded with our past, filled with our routines, our history, and the ghosts we hadn’t yet laid to rest. The bungalow was different. It held something else entirely: space, safety, the quiet suggestion of a truce.
We chose not to hang any photos. Maybe because neither of us had decided which memories we could bear to see every day. Some were still too tender. Some still ached when you dared to give them names. We weren’t okay, not all the way. The bungalow, though, felt like a place that might carry us in that direction.
The bungalow wasn’t about a clean slate. Nothing about what we’d survived could be called fresh. It was weathered. Complicated. There’s nothing simple about watching someone you love fight to exist in a body that keeps shifting the rules.
Even so, the bungalow offered room for the mess, the in-between, the parts that didn’t fit anywhere else.
XIV. She Didn’t Turn
I knew the pain had gotten worse before she said a single word.
There were always signs. There always are. Yet with her, the signs didn’t surface in any obvious way; instead, they settled quietly beneath the surface. She he took in the pain like it was something she recognized, something that had always been hers. She buried it deep inside, hiding it so well that no one else could find it. Still, I knew where to look.
In the kitchen, her hand pressed firmly against the counter, fingers spread like she was trying to hold herself together from the inside out. The brace helped, sure, but not in that way. Her weight shifted without thinking, always to the right now, as if the left side had failed her too many times and she no longer trusted it.
I stood in the doorway, quietly watching. She hadn’t seen me yet, and a part of me wanted to keep it that way—just for a moment more. I wanted to see her without being seen, to catch a glimpse of the truth she never put into words.
“Don’t hover,” she said, not turning. Just knowing.
“I’m not.”
She sighed, a quick exhale like she didn’t have the lung capacity for more. She adjusted her stance. Then flinched.
“You’re watching me.”
“I am.” I hesitated. “Sit down.”
“I’m fine.”
She wasn’t. We both knew it. Still, denial has its own kind of gravity, and she stood at the center of it, as if staying there might keep everything from falling apart.
“You’re not.”
She pulled herself straighter, spine rigid and shoulders drawn tight, a silent performance meant to convince us both that she was still in control.
“Don’t do this, Julian.”
“I see it,” I said, softer now. “You’re in pain.”
She went still. Then, without turning around, she said, “It’s worse.” Her voice was flat.
I stepped into the room slowly, each movement careful, like anything too sudden might shatter whatever fragile thing was holding us in place.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.
Her fingers tightened around the counter, the skin over her knuckles stretched pale and taut. “Because I thought if I treated it like every other pain, it would fall in line,” she said. “It doesn’t. It’s different—deeper, longer, cruel in a way the others never were.”
I didn’t know what to do with my hands. I wanted to reach for her, to offer something, but there wasn’t a space soft enough to land. Everything about her felt edged, braced.
The way she spoke held that deep kind of tiredness pain leaves behind—the kind sleep can’t touch. It wasn’t just being worn out. It was like something inside her was slowly being ground down, a little more each day. She shifted again, her fingers brushing beneath the edge of her cardigan where the brace sat. There was a small flinch. She adjusted it, winced, tried again.
“I hate the brace,” she said, her voice sudden and sharp, as if the words had been waiting just beneath the surface. “It digs in when I sit, rubs when I walk, and makes me feel like I’m not even living in my body anymore—just stuck inside it.”
Her voice faltered. It was just a break, barely a tremor, but I caught it. The kind of crack you only notice if you’re listening closely. Her fingers uncurled from the counter, slow and stiff, and when she pulled her hand away, five pale marks remained—faint reminders of how tightly she’d been holding on.
She turned away and adjusted the strap on her shoulder, wincing as she did. Then she walked out, without a word and without looking back.
That, too, carried meaning. It was a line drawn.
If she had nothing else—not comfort, not control, not even the mercy of quiet—then she deserved, at the very least, the space to hurt without having to explain it.
One afternoon, I heard her in the kitchen, each movement quiet and deliberate. The kettle clicked off, and I expected her to return with one cup. Instead, she brought two. She placed mine in front of me without a word. When I looked up, her eyes were already on me.
“It’s worse in the mornings,” she said softly.
I nodded. “I know.”
She looked away first. Some truths don’t need to be spoken to be felt. And some silences leave bruises.
XV. The Return
Light pooled in the kitchen, soft and golden. Kerry stood at the counter, stirring with one hand, her movements slow and deliberate. She shifted her weight slightly. The brace rested on the chair beside her—unused now. That steadiness had taken time.
I stepped in behind her, close enough to feel the warmth radiating from her back. She didn’t move at first. Then she leaned back—just a little. Just enough to say she knew I was there. And that she didn’t mind. Her skin was warm beneath my hand. Not just from the room.
Last night lingered between us, silent but palpable. I felt it too.
“You’re early,” she said, voice low.
She turned slightly, met my eyes. “You caught me.”
I nodded. “You didn’t make it easy.”
She smiled.
“They green-lit the imprint,” she said. “It’s mine. Start to finish.”
I watched her, trying to gauge just how much it meant. “An imprint,” I repeated. “So… your own label. Under the main publisher. Your vision. Your calls.”
“Exactly.”
There was pride in her voice—quiet, but unmistakable.
I touched her side—not out of habit, but in recognition. “They saw what you’re building.”
She looked up. “You always did.”
“I’ve got something for you,” I said.
I reached into my jacket and pulled out the envelope I’d been carrying all day. She opened it carefully, unfolding the letter inside. Her eyes moved down the page, slow at first, then faster. A smile tugged at her mouth, growing as the words sank in. When she looked up, her eyes were bright—still surprised.
“You’re a Lieutenant?” she asked. “Division lead?”
I nodded. “National operations. Multi-state teams. Training, coordination—everything. It’s federal now. I start next month.”
She went quiet. “Julian… this is huge.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It is.”
She stepped in closer, her fingers brushing mine. “You stayed. When everything shifted.”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to.
For the first time in a long time, the future didn’t feel like something we were trying to outrun. It felt like something we might finally build.
XVI. No Longer Falling
Kerry stood at the stove, making dinner, the quiet rhythm of her movements filling the space. A faint mix of rosemary and something richer moved through the kitchen—warm in the background.
She reached for the dial and turned the heat down, her hand steady. She still moved with care, but it no longer looked like caution. Now, it looked like control—like she knew exactly what she was doing.
“I used to think healing meant going back,” she said. She moved the spoon in slow absent circles through the pot. “Like if I just tried hard enough, I could find my way to the version of me who never second-guessed anything.”
Something shifted—the tone of her voice, the way she stood, the ease in her movements. I stepped beside her, leaned my elbows on the counter, grounding myself in the stillness between us.
“And now?” I asked.
She turned. “Now I think it’s about becoming someone new. Not in spite of what happened. Because of it.”
The quiet between us felt settled. We had already made it through the hardest part. Even without speaking it aloud, we both knew—we could handle whatever came after this.
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
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