Fix by J. Mann (highly illogical behavior .TXT) 📕

not a telescope anymore, I repeat, knowing how ridiculous I sound, and trying not to think too hard about what he has become. Who he has become. And the feel of his fingers on my lips.

I drop my sweatpants down as low as I can, and manage to struggle in each foot, one at a time. After catching my breath, I grab my brace without turning around so he can’t see my sweaty face. Wrapping it around me, I secure it with the Velcro straps. Ahh, how good it feels to be back inside.

“Make it happen,” Mary Fay calls, scaring the shit out of me.

I pick up my hoodie and Roxy, grab a pair of socks, and head for the living room.

She’s standing at the end of the hall and I can tell she’s upset although she’s trying not to show it. When I hold out my socks and smile, she sighs.

“Come on. I’ll stick them on in the living room.”

I’m obviously not getting out of this. Strangely, I don’t know how it happened. How I let it happen. Or how I’m going to do it.

A Kiss

EXCEPT FOR A WALK OUT TO THE STREET AND BACK THAT Nancy made me take, I have not left my house since the EMTs rolled me, screaming, into it following the surgery. Mary Fay opens the front door and takes my arm, and I’m screaming as I leave it, although only in my head.

The drive takes less than ten minutes, but the traffic lights and car engines and Mary Fay’s foot on the gas and then her foot on the brake and the smell of the car and the smell of the gasoline at the gas station and especially the loudly nightmarish commercials running on the television at the pump have me exhausted by the time Mary Fay cuts the engine at the grocery store.

Really exhausted.

“Let’s do this,” she says, clapping. Her enthusiasm isn’t catching.

She climbs out and closes her door, and the small moment I have alone is enough for me to retreat into myself, curling up into a ball in the back of my head. The snap of the opening hatch door, along with the clang of Mary Fay removing my forearm crutches, actually stings as it brings me back. And when she slams the hatch shut, all I can think is how much I want my mother. Because I’d be home in my warm bed right now.

Forearm crutches in hand, Mary Fay opens my door. Groaning loudly, I swing my legs from the car one at a time. Attempting everyday-life things—like getting in and out of cars, walking up and down steps, being around things that slam—not only reminds me how absolutely unbendable my body is but how scarily necessary other people are for me to live through a day.

After I have both legs out of the car, Mary Fay hands me my crutches and grabs me securely under one armpit. I summon my body in an are-you-ready kind of way, and together Mary Fay and I stand me up and out in one motion. Once I’m stabilized and balanced, she lets go yet doesn’t move from my side.

“You good?”

I frown.

“Come on, Eve. You can do it.”

I cannot do this.

Mary Fay reads my thoughts. “Let’s get you inside and then I’ll come back out for a cart.”

The darkness of the parking lot envelops me. I concentrate on the black asphalt in front of my next step. Mary Fay puts her hand on my shoulder as we near the automatic doors, like she understands how jarring the jerking motion of them opening is going to be. And it is.

We enter.

The place is teeming with movement, made even more overwhelming by the brutal lighting and the onslaught of sound. Mary Fay leaves me clinging to the courtesy desk right inside the front doors while she heads back outside for a cart. In the second it takes her to vanish from view, I’m hyperventilating with panic, too scared to let go of the desk to reach for the plastic baggie filled with Roxy in my coat pocket.

A man hurries past. His paper bag scrapes my arm and the world dims. Before I can recover, a shopping scooter with its fat tires and wire mesh basket zooms by, sucking the breath straight from my lungs. Now I do let go, digging out a full Roxy and popping it into my mouth like the Lifesaver it is.

Metal shopping carts piled with groceries clatter past, dragging bouncy little kids who threaten to leap toward me at any moment. It’s as if I’m standing precariously close to the edge of a broiling river with nothing but the hard edge of a desk to keep me from being swept away. I can feel my spine, swollen with pain, and my wounded flesh punctured with staples cringes at the very real danger surrounding it.

I’m about to ask the courtesy desk to call 911, to get me the hell out of here, when Mary Fay rolls up. “Okay, just stay close,” she says, all cheery with that crooked smile of hers and I fucking hate every last tooth in her goddamn mouth right now. “Put your left crutch into the cart and hang on here.”

Clutching at the bar in the front of the grocery cart with my left hand, I use my forearm crutch with my right. In my mind’s eye I see my walker sitting by itself in the corner of my bedroom, a mistake. It would have been much better shelter against the chaotic motion happening in every single aisle. Just imagining one of these carts ramming into my newly solidifying spine makes tears pop into the corners of my eyes every time one rolls near.

Another missing-my-mother moment rises in me while we stand for endless minutes in front of the coffee—my mother and I both walk into a grocery store with one goal, to get what we need and get out. Mary Fay inspects every