“May I ask you what made you change your mind?” he asks. “Why did you agree to the operation?”

Risa looks away. “I’m tired,” she tells him, even though she’s not, and shifts to face away from him. Even this action of rolling sideways in her bed was something she could not easily accomplish before the operation.

When it becomes clear that she’s not going to answer him, he asks, “May I come see you again?”

She keeps her back to him. “No matter what I say, you’ll come anyway, so why bother asking?”

“Well,” he says as he leaves, “it would be nice to have permission.”

She lies there in that position for a long time, trying not to give a foothold to any of the thoughts swimming through her mind. Finally she dozes off. This is the first night she dreams of the avalanche.

- - -

Roberta is off somewhere taking care of business on the day Risa first walks—and only a week after waking up, instead of two. It’s a day that brings to a head all her conflicted emotions. She wants this to be a personal moment, not something shared, but as usual, Cam comes uninvited.

“Milestone! This is a momentous occasion,” he tells her cheerily. “It should be witnessed by a friend.”

She throws him an icy gaze, and he does a verbal backpedal.

“Aaaand since no friends are present, I’ll have to do.”

A male nurse who looks more like a steroid-pumped boeuf grabs Risa’s upper arm and helps her swing her legs off the bed. It’s an unearthly sensation to actually feel them cantilevered out over the floor. She bends her knees shakily until she feels the tips of her toes touch the wooden floor.

“They should have a rug on the floor,” Cam tells Nurse Beefcake. “To make it softer for her.”

“Rugs slip,” Nurse Beefcake replies.

With the nurse holding her on one side, and Cam on the other, she rises to her feet. The first step is the hardest. It’s like dragging her foot through mud, but the second step comes with remarkable ease.

“Atta girl!” says the nurse, like he’s talking to a baby taking her first step—and in a sense she is. She has no balance whatsoever, and her knees feel like they’ll give out at any moment, but they don’t.

“Keep going,” Cam says. “You’re doing great!” By the fifth step, she can’t hold back the visceral joy she’s been suppressing. A smile fills her face. She becomes short of breath and giggles giddily at the simple joy of walking.

“That’s it,” says Cam. “You’re doing it! You’re whole again, Risa! You have a right to enjoy it!”

And although she doesn’t believe that’s true, she can’t fight the moment. “The window!” she says. “I want to look out the window.”

As they turn slightly to angle toward the window, Nurse Beefcake tentatively lets go, and now it’s just Risa with her arm around Cam’s shoulder and his arm around her waist—and she wants to be furious that she wound up stuck in this position with him, but that feeling is overridden by giddy sensory overload from her feet, her ankles, her shins, her thighs; parts of her body that just a few short days ago felt nothing at all.

45 - Cam

For Cam this is nothing short of heaven. She’s holding him. Relying on him. He convinces himself that this is the moment that all the barriers will fall. He’s convinced she will turn to him and kiss him even before they reach the window.

She grips his neck tightly for support. Her hold on him pinches the seam there, but it’s a good feeling. He imagines her putting pressure on all his seams, making them ache. No pain could ever feel so good.

They reach the window. No kiss, but she hasn’t let go of him either. She can’t or she’ll fall, but Cam wants to believe she’d hold him anyway.

The sea is rough this morning. Spray launches high into the air with the pounding of eight-foot rollers. An island can be seen in the distance.

“No one ever told me where we are.”

“Molokai,” Cam tells her. “In Hawaii. The island used to be a leper colony.”

“And Roberta owns this place?”

Cam detects unveiled bitterness in the way Risa says her name. “It’s owned by Proactive Citizenry. Actually, I think about half the island is. This place was some rich guy’s summer home once, but now it’s their medical research center—and Roberta is the head of medical research.”

“Are you her only project?”

Tags: Neal Shusterman Unwind Dystology
Source: readsnovelonline.net