Breathless Read Online Free PDF Page B

stuff they give me includes anti-nausea meds. Sometimes they help. Sometimes they don’t. Today they don’t.
    “How’s the other going?”
    I’m working with a physiotherapist on parallel bars. I’ve been practicing just standing up and putting weight on what’s left of my leg. Pain shoots through me until I see stars. The stump of my thigh has to toughen up. My therapist tells me it sometimes takes months to master walking, but I’m determined to do it a whole lot quicker. The first time I held the leg, I couldn’t believe it would hold me up. It’s hinged to do the work of a leg, with a silicone liner that has to be turned inside out and washed every day. I wear a tubelike sock over my stump, and it has to be kept clean too or I’ll develop nasty sores. Care and maintenance is lifelong. I’m bionic boy now.
    “The skin’s sore. Walking’s harder than I thought it would be.” I answer Mom’s question.
    “When you were a baby, you didn’t crawl,” she says. “You just pulled yourself up on the coffee table and started to walk. Couldn’t be bothered with that intermediate process of crawling.”
    “Maybe I should crawl now.”
    “You’d hate it as much now as you did then.” She reaches over and squeezes my arm.
    “Things would go faster if it weren’t for the chemo.”
    “I know, but we’ve got to kill the cancer.”
    This protocol is worse than the first and is scheduled to be a whole lot longer. I’m anemic and I’ve had a kidney infection, which has set me back. I feel dizzy now, and nauseated. “Better pull over,” I say to Mom. “I’m not going to make it home.”
    She pulls off on the shoulder of the road and I open the car door and heave. Mom’s around the side of the car in a flash, holding my head and wiping me clean with towels she keeps in the backseat. When I’m finished, I fall against the seat. “Sorry.”
    “No problem.”
    “Did I get any on you?”
    “Occupational hazard.”
    I’m grateful Mom was with me. Cooper could handle it, but I don’t want him to have to. School starts soon, but I won’t be returning. “I can’t go back to school like this,” I tell Mom after she’s cleaned me up.
    “I have a tutor lined up. Return whenever you’re ready.”
    I wonder if I’ll ever be ready.
    I know what Emily, Darla, and Cooper are doing. They think I don’t notice how they’re always showing up, never letting me be alone, always making sure Travis is covered. When I get home from treatments, Darla’s usually there, and all I can do is stretch out on the sofa and fall asleep. When I wake, my head’s in her lap and she’s reading a magazine. “You don’t have to stay,” I tell her.
    “There’s no place else I’d rather be.”
    I want to believe her, so I do.
    After she leaves, Cooper usually shows up. When he does, Mom invites him for dinner and he wolfs it down. I’ll bet it’s the only good meal he has every day.
    The best days are when we all go out to the lake. Sometimes we take the boat out, but most of the time we stay on the shore, off by ourselves, just me and Darla, Cooper and Emily. Being around the water makes me feel good but sad too. I’ve been told I’ll swim again, and maybe I will. But I’ll never dive again, at least not for medals.
    Sometimes I dream about diving, about feeling the water on my skin as I knife through the surface. I’m happy in the dream, and I can breathe underwater. And then I wake up. When I wake, the den is lit only by a nightlight and someone’s covered me with an afghan. Mom’s handiwork. Make sure the one-legged boy can find his way to the bathroom in the dark. Make sure the one-legged boy doesn’t get cold at night. Make sure the one-legged boy has friends who look out for him, who stand ready to make sure he’s busy and not alone.
    They all mean well. But they can’t know how the dark space inside me is growing. I lie to them. I lie to the shrink. I can’t get out of the dark hole. “Peace is here,”