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I could feel her hands on my legs. I could feel pain from the knife buried in my thigh. I could feel my feet and toes and how my sock had becoming annoyingly bunched up down in my boot. I could feel my legs . . .
“Joze . . .” I breathed, no other words seeming appropriate.
“I know, baby. I know.” Tears flowed down her face, and she threw herself at me.
Her arms wound around my neck, and mine slipped around her waist, our foreheads together as I let what had just happened, what was happening, sink in. We sat like that for a few minutes, me in a stunned silence while Josie kept smiling and crying. Just when it seemed like I was getting close to grasping what had happened, it would get away from me, and I’d have to start all over again.
I forgot all about the knife sticking out of my leg. I forgot about the man lying passed out a few feet away. I even forgot about the phone call to 911 and the wheelchair beside us, where my phone was still buried. All I could think about was the miracle that had, for some reason, fallen into my lap.
The miracle wasn’t the sensation surging into my legs again—it was her. Josie was the miracle. There she was, sitting in my lap and wrapped around me, whispering I love you over and over as she continued to cry happy tears, hanging on to me in the way she always had no matter what I’d been going through—like there was nothing I could do or we could go through that could ever get her to let go.
Like her love was forever.
She’d proven that to me countless times—that wasn’t the reason I hadn’t picked up on it sooner. I hadn’t seen it, because I hadn’t been ready to see it. I had to lose my legs, face the reality of losing her, and look the devil in the face with both eyes open before I could accept that she’d love me forever, the same way I’d love her. That fact wouldn’t change whether we were together or apart, so why make life harder than it already was by living apart? Neither space, time, nor situation would change that there was only one person in this godforsaken world for me. I could push her away and shove her away in my best attempts to save her from me, but nothing could change that Josie and I were bound to each other in such a way that nothing could sever the bond.
“Josie . . .” I swallowed and tightened my arms around her. “I’m sorry.”
Her head resting on my shoulder nodded. “I know.”
“I only did what I did because I thought it was best for you. All I want is the best for you.”
Another nod. “I know.”
She’d been sitting on my lap with her legs wrapped around my back for so long, I could feel my legs starting to go numb. The pricks and stabs of my lower half going numb had never felt so damn good.
“I love you,” I whispered.
Her head bobbed against my shoulder as she repeated, “I know.”
“I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and I swear to God, Joze, I’ll swear to every God you want me to, I’m done trying to do what’s noble and pushing you away to keep you safe from me. I’m done thinking you’ll be happier with someone else. I’m done thinking we could one day move on from each other if we tried. I’m done being an idiot.” I stopped. “Well, I’m done being an idiot in those ways at least.”
Josie’s small laugh rolled across my neck. Her arms tightened around my neck. “I know.”
“Oh, and Joze? The next time you hear me talking to someone in a dark room late at night when neither of us were exactly expecting company, please don’t come charging in dressed in nothing but your underwear, okay? For Christ’s sake.” I let out a long sigh as I shook my head at her.
Another laugh came from her, but just as she was about to repeat her two-word mantra, my mouth found hers and silenced it.
EVERYONE WANTED TO give a name to what had happened to me. The pastor at the community church in town preached to the congregation about it being a miracle. Dr. Murphy gave it a really long, drawn-out name that I couldn’t have repeated if someone had offered to pay me a thousand bucks. The hippie lady who owned a candle-and-hemp store in town said it was something having to do with transcendentalism . . . or something like that. Everyone had a name for it.
I did too. But it wasn’t miracle or some lengthy medical term. It was her name. Josie. She was the answer and explanation as to why I was walking again. Some physiological phenomenon might have played a part in healing the nerve damage, but I was walking again because Josie had never given up hope in me. That hope didn’t come with the condition of if I ever walked again, nor did it only
stem from her keeping her fingers crossed that my spine would one day heal. That hope came from her just believing in me and never giving up on me, despite all of the reasons I’d given her to.
If that kind of thing couldn’t make a man walk again, then nothing else could.
The last three months had passed in a blur of physical therapy, doctor appointments, and re-mapping my future. My legs had been weak after being immobile for over a month, but spending a few hours a week in PT and a few more hours in the gym strengthening them on my own got them back to feeling like normal after a month. Doctor Murphy finally twisted my arm into getting that damn MRI. Seemed kind of backward that I wouldn’t pay for it when I was injured and needed to get better but would after I was healed. It might have been because after paying that ungodly hospital bill that still haunted my dreams, five grand seemed like chump change.
Dr. Murphy had another drawn-out explanation as to what the MRI revealed, but what it all boiled down to was that my back looked good, my spine looked good, and I was good. That might have been the first time that designation had been assigned to me, but I’d take it after spending a month feeling the very opposite.
Lots more had happened since the night I’d beaten the shit out of that bum and recovered my legs, but the highlight of it had been accepting that if everything life had thrown at us couldn’t manage to break Josie and me apart, what we had was something a person didn’t just let go of. I couldn’t say good-bye even if that was what I thought was the right thing to do for Josie, because unless I was in her life, nothing could be right in her world.
I’d known that for myself for a long time, but I had refused to believe Josie was prisoner to the same sentiment. I knew better now though. She’d said it best when she’d said loving someone was like giving them permission to destroy you yet trusting that they wouldn’t. I wouldn’t betray her trust by destroying her.
After hitting the low point of trying to set up my girlfriend with her old flame, I’d made a vow to myself that I was done doubting what I’d done to deserve her or what I could ever do to be deserving of her devotion and opted to accept it for what it was and do everything I could to honor that kind of love by paying it back twofold.
I didn’t need to understand the why and how of Josie’s love to accept and return it.
Four months ago, I’d been in a wheelchair. My career in bull riding had been over. A third of a year later, there I was, wheelchair-free and about to compete in my first ride since the one that had shaken up my whole existence. I’d missed nationals, which was an unfortunate side effect of having been paralyzed, but even though I’d missed that ride, it didn’t mean I had to miss all future rides. Just because I’d been one ride away from a national championship didn’t mean I couldn’t start all over and work my way back up again.
