Unsuspecting Blessing.

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xv

Over the next week Julia watched Brian face the same endeavors as she during the learning process of the various techniques needed for physical recovery. After each session, he would sigh, and tell her, "No sweat," but his face constantly said otherwise. He had to go through all of the eccentric motions just the same as Julia in order to really grasp the concept of the movements. Three days of physical therapy each week, and three had already been finished, but the physician estimated ninety-six more sessions until a complete range of motion and normalcy would return to her life.

Julia, however, after missing just under two and a half weeks of college was back taking classes like an everyday student. Thankfully for Brian, she had barely missed any assignments but the lectures felt more confusing to her than before. Tuesdays and Thursdays they had class together—early American history—but every day he walked with her to school about forty-five minutes prior to the usual time due to, well, her excusable slowness. She still thought about the small quarrel after her first session, and the heartwarming resolution still pulsated in her heart for days after. Mr. Myers, her physician, did not seem to bother Brian on the outside anymore and no longer did he become tight-lipped either.

Something felt different since Julia returned to her classes, and she knew exactly what it was. The lack of invisibility to her fellow students. She used to feel like a microscopic plankton in an ocean of a billion other fish that, if she did not learn how to hide correctly, would eat her alive. Julia did not believe it was the inclusion of a temporarily life-altering injury in her life, even though her crutches did click and clack on the floor with their plastic bottoms, but instead because she walked with Brian each day. Like the ceaseless, and haunting, abyss that swallowed up her school social career suddenly did the before seen impossible and evaporated completely. The feeling started when Brian introduced her to two of his friends from high school—a couple of guys she never would have thought herself aligned with previously—and they dressed like they had not left. Then her professors spoke to her in class, out loud, in front of all of the other people in the room, and she would have no choice but to give some sort of reply; after enough call-outs the replies came quicker and more naturally.

A pleasantness filled the air on the walk to class, and the time spent there. Not simply a dreadful experience that only benefited her mind's intelligence, but rather a comforting environment where fear did not take place at every nervous and calculated glance.

If Julia wore some sort of health watch, or smart watch, or anything capable of tracking her vitals it might have congratulated her on the decrease in her heart rate—before it most likely would have assumed she was over three hundred pounds with the constant raging heart rate. But the organs inside her eased now, instead of tensing up like a baby's grip on a bottle; childish and immature, but most importantly unknowing whether the bottle would be taken away or left for further consumption. All the baby knows is food now, not when food comes again—just like Julia, she knew that anxiety came now and did not know when relief would wash over her. But with Brian in her life, aiding her in more ways than he knew, the relief came on a more than half-assed schedule.

After her psychology 101 class, which came before her American history class, she had about fifteen minutes in between the two—which would be enough time to go downstairs and back if she were lucky—so Julia decided to take a stroll by herself to the vending machine in the cafeteria which one contained food and the other drinks. All of the hoisting herself up and down with crutches made her hungry, and the slight throb in her leg could use a little nurturing via shoving her mouth with something processed. Using crutches to go down stairs was impractical and Julia had been advised against it, however she felt less and less progression each day with walking and more plateauing. A challenge, a change of pace, would force growth upon her whether her body accepted the fact or not. Walking with crutches for a week, almost two by this time, had developed a new form of walking as well; instead of going linearly and not bending her broken leg to avoid the—at the time—excruciating pain, she eased into bending the muscles and joints slowly in order to, again, coerce her body into accepting trial. Her walking stance had changed from being level as she hovered the broken leg over the floor with only her toe grounding her, into being a slant as she hobbled on the broken leg. Celebration flourished inside her as she made her way down the stairs, thankful to herself for pushing past what was capable into the inconceivable so she could now advance down the stairs of the college.

She took each step steadily, in order to avoid fault, because though challenging situations did make for excellent growth overbearing ones reverted gained ground. She had passed down an entire flight in about three minutes, sweat formed and sat on her forehead and under her arms. She wondered if the trek would be worth it in the end, but she had reached the point of no return—she needed to prove to herself that independence relied on the power of the beholder and not within the hands of supporters. Brian, she thought, would probably walk with her slowly down the stairs even if it meant risking chastisement for being late to class.

Another flight had been cleared, and she needed to clear one more after in order to arrive at the base level of the building—to achieve the treasure buried beneath the layers of the college. She whispered to herself simple encouragement as she traversed the steps, because any inspiration relieved the tension between quitting and the end goal even if the motivation was not outsourced. Each flight had a ninety-degree turn that formed a spiral that wound up the entire interior, and at each turn there was a platform of marble that allowed a pause between the two halves of each flight; Julia welcomed the breaks glady.

Once her time for catching her breath ended via her declaration, Julia spun to face the final six steps that looked upon her with gritted teeth and proneness to fault. One deep breath in through the nose and out through the mouth. Julia placed her first crutch on the stair, and then followed with her able foot.

Pride filled her at the bottom of the stairs. Her armpits ached with a numbing soreness, and her broken bone seemed to have nerves within the calcium with how much it burned, but the feeling of pride vaunted inside her enough to balance out the pain with pleasure. Though the pain physically outweighed the mental victory ten to one even still. She stood still and solemn at the bottom of the stairs, hoping not to have to move from anyone's way if someone were to descend because her muscles took on a temporary pulsing paralysis. Another revolution of breaths circumnavigated in and out of her lungs, and she started onward down the right side of the hall to the cafeteria. More than ten minutes had passed in total by the time she arrived at the entrance, and she decided time was not a smart enemy to make so she slowed her hurried pace.

At the vending machine, someone familiar stood in the blue glow of featured products. Brian stood at the machine, fiddling with a dollar bill that went in and out of the payment slot like a tongue on a snake.

Julia got closer, and he did not seem to notice the sound of the crutches clashing with the tiled ground. "Howdy stranger!" she finally said.

Brian turned his head, and a brilliant grin beamed from his face, then it contorted as the dollar bill was spat back out into his hand. "Goddamnit!" he said, grudged. He sighed and gave a longing glance to the machine, "I hope you didn't come down here in hopes of using this evil piece of machinery that likes to toy with our hearts over beef jerky."

Julia laughed at his melodrama. "Actually I did," she said. "Why don't you grab my wallet from my pocket and give one of those greens a try?" She stuck her hip out towards him, and an imprint of her wallet showed on her pants.

He slid it out, and took out two dollars. "And you don't mind?"

"The least I could do is spot you some crisp cash. Get me some too, please."

Brian took one of the dollars and slid it back and forth along his jeans as if to flatten out the creases that did not yet exist on the bill. He gave it to the vending machine, and it accepted the cash with ease. He shook his head, "I would have stood here until class ended if you had not come to save the day."

"We should get going to class soon," she said, "I think we're already late."

Brian tried his bill once more and it failed. He fed the machine three more of Julia's dollars and bought two small bags of beef jerky; they fell to the bottom of the machine with an airy and plastic thump. He stuffed the ineffective bill in Julia's wallet before putting it back in her pocket. "Thanks," he said, as they walked towards the stairs, "I have some sort of addiction to this stuff. Like it just feels so agreeable and tangible in my mouth."

You probably have an oral fixation, she thought. "Let's take the elevator," Julia said, as they passed the stairs.

"Were you expecting me to make you go up the stairs on crutches?" His question sounded offended in a harmless way, like an inside joke.

"No," she said, and pressed the button to call the elevator...

After class Brian retrieved the wheelchair which he had stored in the nurse's office, and brought Julia out on that due to her leg still throbbing from her independent descent.