(a short story)
by Kerry Ann Wiley
The Drive
The crutches rested between her knees. She folded her arms, 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, New York passed in dull colors—salt-stained pavement, bare trees, collapsed barns along the two-lane. The sky had been gray for days.
I kept one hand on the wheel. We didn’t play music. We never did on drives like this.
I couldn’t stop replaying the fall—the sound her body made as it hit the ground, the way her leg gave out before I could reach her. It wasn’t just the fall. It was everything leading up to it—the subtle shifts I hadn’t understood, the signs I ignored.
She had stopped using her left leg on stairs. There was no limp, just movements too deliberate—a pause, a weight shift, one stair, one curb, one uneven sidewalk. I noticed, but I said nothing.
I used to ask, but that was before the ring came back. She had placed the ring next to the coffee maker six months ago: a sapphire with two emeralds and no conversation—just a choice made.
I remembered her before the brace, before the crutches and surgeries she hated. She moved like gravity didn’t apply. She climbed and ran, not to escape, but to feel resistance. To test the line between control and surrender. There was a language in the way her body moved—unscripted, yet certain.
That version of her didn’t disappear. She eroded, bit by bit. Each injury, each diagnosis peeled her away. She came back, but never quite the same. I kept waiting for her to return, thinking 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’d trace her shoulder blade while she spoke. She glowed when she moved. Now, she was closed off.
Her foot shifted, the brace catching. I reached down to adjust the padding. She didn’t stop me or look at me. I left my hand there longer than needed. Her leg twitched—the wrong muscle firing again. Compensation. I filed it away.
Touch had changed. Not suddenly—just fewer hands on her back, no more curling up together without thought. Something shifted on this drive. 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 way her mouth shaped 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, calves, 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. After a long pause, she said, “I didn’t want to lose you that way.”
I didn’t respond.
Half a mile passed. I eased off the cruise control and turned into a rest stop. Picnic tables sat crooked beneath bare trees.
“You made that decision for me,” I said, my voice steady. “You decided I wouldn’t stay and 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 as if it might hold her back from falling farther. Her breath was shallow.
Instinct surged: check the airway, stabilize the spine. But it faded the moment our eyes met. She wasn’t in shock. She was just tired—worn down from holding herself upright in a body that no longer responded.
I’ve lifted people from wreckage, carried them from fire, pulled them from water. I’ve held necks still and found pulses in chaos. But this—watching her fall, knowing I wouldn’t get there in time—was something else entirely.
They don’t teach you that. They don’t teach you that sometimes love means staying still. It isn’t always about fixing. Holding back 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 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 felt unfamiliar. Less pushback, more pause.
“Julian,” she said, “what are you doing?”
I didn’t have a good answer, only memory. She used to curl into this seat, into me, during long drives, back when silence felt natural. 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 gathering at the corners of her eyes, the way her jaw set to keep it all in. I traced her spine with my hand—slow, familiar, steady.
“They’ll start with nerve conduction testing,” I said. “They’ll place pads on your skin and send small pulses through. They’ll time how fast the signals move.”
She said nothing.
“Then the EMG—tiny needles pressed into muscle.”
He didn’t say it, but the thought lingered: the specialists would be listening, waiting for a signal—any hint that the nerves were still attempting to respond.
Her shoulders twitched. Her breath shifted.
I could feel 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. It wasn’t because I felt helpless, but because, for once, I understood that silence was enough. This wasn’t the moment to explain or reassure. It was a moment to simply stay.
I knew the way she twisted the hem of her shirt when she was holding something in. I knew how she would fixate on side mirrors when she didn’t want to be seen. And I knew the long blink that always came right before she lied.
I didn’t move. I kept my hand on her back, steady and light. I wanted her to know I was still there.
The Night Before
I looked at the cheap clock glowing red on the dark wall: 2:38 a.m.
She had been restless. The brace caught as she shifted beneath the blankets.
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. It wasn’t that I had forgotten, but that saying anything might have torn apart whatever was holding us together.
“Damn it,” she muttered.
She never cursed.
She sat up, frustrated, and dragged herself to the bathroom. The door slammed.
I waited for a moment, then followed. The faucet ran, too loud in the silence. She didn’t want me to hear her cry, but I did. She stood at the sink, her shoulders drawn and her 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 wore a thin tank top and soft pajama pants wide enough to fit over the brace. I slid my hand beneath the fabric of her shirt, found her lower back, and moved upward. Slowly.
She let out a breath. It wasn’t a sigh, but something deeper. I didn’t speak. I just let my hand rest there, steady.
“Come to bed,” I said.
By 4 a.m., her body gave in, though her mind still held on, afraid to sleep. Her breathing grew 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, trembling from the cold—or from fatigue.
The nerve conduction test began. Electrodes were taped down her leg, and sharp pulses snapped through her foot. It jerked each time, but her face stayed still. Her hands, however, were white-knuckled, gripping the table.
Then came the EMG. Fine needles were pressed into her muscle, and each twitch made the machine click. She stared at the ceiling tiles for a moment, then glanced 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 harsh fluorescent light, and something shifted in her expression. She bit her lip hard, a thin bloom of red rising.
She wasn’t one to cry often, but the diagnosis had worn her thin. She was exposed. Yet, in that fleeting look, she saw something—maybe in me, or 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—not worse, not better, just unchanged.
Afterward
She sat on the edge of the table, staring at the floor as if she didn’t trust it anymore. I offered my hand, and she took it.
Outside, I opened the car door and helped her in—slow, deliberate.
Just as I was about to close it, she said my name. Her voice was hoarse, and her eyes were full—but not unreadable. Not to me.
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
