Page 38 of Kylie

“I’ll be back again tomorrow,” Allison said once I was settled in the bed again. “We’ll keep trying until you can walk.”

“And if I can’t?”

She didn’t look at me when she said, “It’s really not an option.”

I nodded, not sure what I was supposed to say to that. Hopefully I would get a chance to ask her questions. Not that she would answer them, but I would take anything I could get at this point.

Chapter Fifteen

Four months later

Thursday, May 19, 2022

Kylie

For the first month of what I’d started referring to as physical torture, Allison stopped by to work with me every single day. Progress was slow, but I made the effort, figuring it was in my best interest to be able to walk on my own two feet. A minor setback—how the woman handling my care referred to the case of pneumonia I had contracted—kept me from making any real progress for a while. After two rounds of IV antibiotics, over the course of a month, I finally kicked it.

It hadn’t been fun, let me tell you.

By the end of the second month, I was gaining some strength. At Allison’s request, the other woman began focusing on my diet. I ate mostly bland chicken breast and some sort of vegetable—broccoli, cauliflower, carrots—three times a day. Whoever made it was definitely not a gourmet chef, but it was something. At that point, I was able to make it to the bathroom on my own, but it was still slow going. My body didn’t cooperate well—rebelling or outright rejecting whatever I tried to eat at first—so I had to deal with that alongside my ambulatory attempts.

I started making considerable progress once Allison brought me a walker. I remembered the strange look on her face when she put it in front of me.

“This is a walker,” she said succinctly.

“Okay.” I reached for it.

“A walker,” she repeated, drawing the word out slowly.

I glanced her way, frowning.

At the time, I had wondered whether she thought I had a mental deficiency. Or perhaps she was having a stroke.

She hadn’t been.

Evidently, that was her thing because she’d done the same thing several more times during our interactions, slowly drawing out various words.

“I need to gauge your progress.”

“I nearly ran over a coyote on my way to work.”

“Can you bring in Kylie’s walker?”

Each time she dragged out a word, her eyes would implore me as though she was waiting for a specific response. If she was expecting a certain result, she never told me what it was.

I began to see quite a bit of progress during the third month she was around. We started venturing out into the dimly lit hallway, heading down to one end and then back. I noticed that all the other doors were closed, and there was never anyone else around. There also weren’t any windows, so I had no clue where I was, nor did I know whether it was day or night. I assumed Allison was visiting during the day, and I figured it was night when the nurse turned off the lights in my room, but it was possible Allison was a night owl, and the nurse preferred not to waste electricity during the day. All I had to go on were my assumptions.

The only people I ever saw were Allison, the woman tasked with taking care of me, and two others who randomly checked things. I figured they were filling in so the main woman could sleep or whatever. I still didn’t know her name, and I got the feeling that was intentional. Despite being in her presence for so long, I had only been able to ascertain a few things—she had a son named Matt, whom she talked to at least once a day, and her mother lived with them, helping to take care of Matt while she was at work. Based on her actions, I figured she would shit baby goats if she realized I’d figured that much out.

I wasn’t allowed to watch television or listen to the radio. Time passed very slowly in the beginning. I started pacing to keep from going insane. It helped both physically and mentally. Plus, it kept the woman from strapping me down. Over time, she stopped stressing so much about making sure I was secured to the bed. But her comfort level was only so high because she still restrained one ankle, but only at night.

It wasn’t until Allison brought me a book to read that I managed to pass the time without staring at the walls. The books came frequently after I finished the first one. Most of them were romance books. Every now and then, she would toss in a mystery. I found I enjoyed reading immensely, and I was looking forward to what she would bring me today.

I heard footsteps in the hallway, so I looked up, anticipating her arrival. Allison appeared in the doorway, looking as young and as innocent as always. I didn’t know how old she was because I hadn’t had the guts to ask personal questions. She opened up more when I didn’t ask, so the getting-to-know-you phase was slow-going.

One thing I did figure out was the passing of time. The first clue was the way Allison’s wardrobe changed, morphing from jeans and sweaters to jeans and T-shirts. I’d been tracking the days as best I could, and if I was right and hadn’t lost a week or a month somewhere along the way, it was late April or early May.

“It’s May nineteenth,” Allison said when she walked into the room.