A Month of Summer Read Online Free PDF

and the PT came into the room in the squeaky nurse’s shoes that always announced the beginning of our daily torture sessions. As far as I could tell, Gretchen was never happy about anything.
    “Good afternoon, Mrs. Parker.” In Gretchen’s deep, gruff voice, even the greeting sounded like a command. Have a good afternoon, or else. “Any changes?” she asked, looming at the foot of the bed and taking in Mary from head to toe, then frowning.
    “Nothing,” Mary replied, and squeezed my hand as Gretchen cracked her knuckles and lowered the window blind, shrouding the room in the necessary dungeon-like darkness. Mary gave my arm a last reassuring pat, then skittered out the door like a kitten ducking under the fence to escape a scrappy, pug-nosed mutt.
    Gretchen pulled her cart around to the bed and pushed up her sleeves, then reached for the blanket. As usual, I cringed when she drew it back. Even after weeks in the nursing center, being helped with the most basic of functions, these small losses of dignity were still hard to accept. I understood now why Edward sometimes became angry and resentful about his disease. It was humiliating, incredibly frustrating, being unable to do things you once took for granted.
    I reminded myself, as always, that pride would not make me well. Turning toward the window, I tried to focus on something else, something far from here, as Gretchen went to work, bending and stretching, lifting and turning parts of my body I couldn’t feel anymore.
    Through the broken slats in the middle of the blind, I could see Mary arguing with her husband on the curb. He pulled out his wallet, showed her it was empty, then threw up his hands. Perhaps he had a short fuse today because she’d been late coming out to get the boys. I hoped that was not the case, being as she’d stayed to comfort me. Her husband was young, like an overgrown teenager in his unkempt, overly long hair, sloppy jeans, and loose-fitting T-shirts. He made a strange picture next to little Mary, with her modest skirts and her chestnut hair pinned in a bun. I wondered how the two of them had come to be together.
    Then I reminded myself that love sometimes has a mind of its own. I should know that, if I knew anything. . . .
    Something wrenched in my leg, and I heard myself moan. The sound surprised me.
    “Starting to feel that,” Gretchen observed matter-of-factly; then I watched her lower my left leg to the bed and take up my right. I focused outside the window again. Mary’s husband was gone. Mary had scooped up the littler boy, and they were waving good-bye to him. I guessed the argument was over.
    Mary paused by the row of neatly trimmed forsythia bushes, and together she and the boys studied something on one of the branches. A caterpillar, perhaps, or birds building a nest. I closed my eyes and thought of all the times I’d done those things with Teddy. The most perfect moments of my life were those simple, quiet ones spent watching butterflies comb the flowers, or observing ants parading in a line across the driveway, or capturing fireflies and laughing as the cage of Teddy’s tiny fingers lit up.
    I tried to picture Teddy’s hands, tried to draw closer to him, to Edward and home—away from this place, away from Gretchen’s grunts and heavy breaths, away from the scents of antiseptic and perspiration, away from my own body.
    I’d almost achieved it, almost left the nursing center behind by the time Gretchen finished poking and prodding, moving and stretching. As she gathered her things and finally walked out the door, every part of me ached—the parts I could feel, and the parts I couldn’t, which made no sense. How could there be pain in useless limbs I couldn’t control? Was it only a figment of my imagination? Was my mind making me feel the way it seemed I should, after being twisted like a pretzel? Then I wondered if I was getting better. I needed to heal, to miraculously recover before Rebecca arrived. Perhaps this