Page 15 of Slashed Bonds

I remember smiling at her — being proud of that smile, of how gracious I made it — and telling her not to worry about it.

Then she crossed the room and sat down beside me.

“Your legs will work again. There was a specialized procedure done while you were under. It’ll take rehab, and we can’t promise you won’t get spasms and flare-ups down the line. But you’ll walk.” A pause. “The nerve injuries were repairable.”

I have never cried like that.

Before or since.

Not for my family. Not for the men. Not even for the six-week thing that didn’t survive the fall, which is a sentence I can now think in full without needing to sit down, and that took four years and a therapist with the patience of a glacier.

I cried because somewhere out there was a person who’d looked at what was left of me on a gurney and decided it was worth paying to keep.

Five years and I still don’t know who.

Only that a pack signed off, because an unbonded Omega with no next of kin can’t be transferred to a private facility without one.

The first thing I did once I could hold a pen was rule out Hellsing Ross.

They didn’t. I checked twice.

Which leaves a stranger.

I make it back to my bed, which is a double and takes up a third of the floor space, and pick up my phone.

One missed call.

Unknown number. No voicemail. 2:13 in the morning, which is the hour reserved for drunks, wrong numbers and people who want you to know they can reach you.

Not today, Satan.

I swipe it away and open the text underneath it.

SULLY: Wanna play?

My mouth pulls sideways before I can stop it.

Look at that. A smile.

To think I’m capable of that again counts as progress.

My therapist would call it emotional regulation, and she’d write it down, and she’d do the small nod she does when she thinks I haven’t noticed her doing it.

I only kept therapy because it came bundled into the hospital plan as non-negotiable, which means someone anticipated I’d cancel and made sure I couldn’t.

Rude.

Also correct.

So I go once a week and I sit in a chair the color of oatmeal and I talk, and I’m grateful for it in a way I’d deny in front of witnesses.

Because this new life is lonely as hell.

The thought pushes tears up into my eyes, and I let them come, because fighting them costs more than they’re worth. They run. They stop.

The sadness underneath is hollow rather than sharp.

I don’t pity myself anymore.