Winners Don't Have Bad Days (Watty 2020 Winner, Romance)

11. #ToWalkAgain, December 2017

Hospitals were made for brooding. Their institutional uniformity precipitated it, the sameness of the yellow-lit halls, sterile stainless steel and plastic curtains. The life-erasing smell of disinfectant that hang over every surface and clung to skin and fabric. Pain, death, germs, birth and those attached to the patients lingered in every corner, watching the proceedings with scared eyes. Yes, perfect for brooding.

"And... take two?" His sense of humor didn't come to the rescue, and neither did Daya's cheerful spirit. Her smile was tense—and he didn't know why. A black elastic band replaced the red one, barely visible in her beautiful hair. He missed the old one like he missed the challenging tilt of her chin. He was brooding over his impending trial by walking, but what ailed her? 

"How's things, Daya?" She had a lovely name. The autocorrect replaced it with day  whenever he didn't watch it like the hawk.

"Okay." Her eyes darted away from his face as if she too was hiding a secret.

His chest hollowed out: the time was pulling its disappearing trick on him. Soon he'd board a plane, and Daya would board hers... even if he was still in the cast, he'd have to board that stupid plane. Only he'd do it in a wheelchair, on the mercy of a flight attendant. 

"I want to walk," he murmured.

"You will," she said immediately, easing his heart.

He pointed at the hairband. "The red one suited you better."

The chin tilted, the lips parted, then snapped. "I did it for Cesare Borgia. I've looked him up on wiki, and now I'm a huge fan of his. He's dreamy."

"Too bad he's not on Tinder."

"Yup, an ultimate bad boy, a gift to the womankind." 

So, he still held the power to summon her back from whatever inner place she was retreating to. She pulled the band off her braid and stuffed it into his hand, her chest rising and falling with more vigor than normally. "Keep it." 

If only her hair wasn't so thick that it held together without the band!

He was still stretching the band between his fingers while she glowered at him when the doctor joined them with a picture of Mike's bones and shadows. Must be my soul.

The doctor wasn't a talkative one, unfortunately. After all that waiting in the reception, then in the curtained-off corner, the moment of truth came too soon. 

It will hurt... The band slipped off his finger, and he squeezed it tightly in his fist. 

"Now?" he asked uselessly.

Daya did that thing with her face, when her eyes warmed up to soften his brain into fondue.  "Go on. You can do it."

"I can do it," he repeated and transferred his weight on the right foot. The tears should spray with the vigor of water released from a hydrant knocked out by a drunk driver. 

Nothing happened. The foot held. It didn't hurt.

He took a step, his heart flip-flopping in his chest.

Daya slipped out of the chair to assume a position a few meters away from him, smiling encouragingly. He made a step toward her, panicking. He could walk, he could walk... why couldn't he last time? Was it because he wanted her to stay longer, and his hysteric mind told his body to supply him with a convenient pain? Or did the broken bones just... mend?

I'm an idiot. It doesn't have to be over once I can walk. We work at the same place, we could go out.  

His leg was there, but it might as well have been an unyielding mass of a straw bale. 

"Daya?" he croaked, hating himself for acting like a lost puppy. 

The doctor gave him a professional nod, and handed over another bundle of papers, along with a heartfelt recommendation to sign up for physiotherapy sessions.

"This is weird." Mike dragged his foot along the mile-long hall, dragging his hand on its stain-hiding teal wall.

Daya stopped every minute to let him catch up. 

"I'll never be able to suspend disbelief in action movies and games again. Heroes get beaten up within an inch of their lives and run like the wind a few minutes later. And I can't go ten steps without a breather after two months in the cast."

She made encouraging noises.

"Am I pathetic, Daya?"

"You're doing fine," she said, "but balance and range of motion will take work. Be patient, okay?"

We could be friends for eternity. That unpleasant sound? That's your teeth grinding.

"Daya." Mike stepped forward again. He had no desire to freak her out, but he could not go further without saying something more tangible than the worn out thank you, no matter how heartfelt, how friendly.

"I had never considered myself particularly lucky, but now I do. You going for a jog at exactly the right time to pick me up after I fell — if I don't see another happy coincidence in my life, it's fine by me."

She grabbed him by the elbow. "That's very sweet, Mike. But anyone would have called you an ambulance, or would have given you a ride. What you did for me was out of the ordinary."

Mike's feet stopped. No, there was nothing wrong with them this time. It was his heart hastily typing the memo to his brain. Dear brain, screw you. This woman is it.

***

"Well, Michael..." Carol propped her cheek on her hand, as she watched his painstaking advance towards the front desk. "I think I'll keep you off the shelf restocking duty for another week."

He covered another two meters.

She tapped her fingers on her cheek and added: "Minimum."

Again, he wished he was on crutches. His own two feet did not measure up.

"But, you are on your own as far as buying your secret lunches. I've run into Daya another day, and we've chatted. I don't want to be a party to your eventual downfall. The lady means business."

"I..." He dislodged whatever was clogging his throat with desperate coughing. "I stopped cheating."

Carol arched a brow. "You did? When?"

"Today. Daya is..." there was that cursed obstruction in his throat again. "She did so much for me."

"Uh-huh." Carol's expression ended up neither pitying, nor intrigued, but a strange mix of the two.

"Besides, I need to shrink my stomach before Christmas. My mother favors the high-end places that serve you three goji berries wrapped in a kale leaf."

Even thinking about it made his skin crawl. "Daya's smoothies are a feast in comparison." Hell, looking at Daya would fill him up better than all the food he'd share with his mother.

"Uh-huh," Carol repeated. "Welcome to healthy living, Michael. You're going to love it."

Mike whimpered. Stoic just was not his ice-cream flavor. Not that he'd be seeing ice-cream any time soon. He pulled the black hairband on his wrist and let it snap back. No ice-cream. No lies. No whining.