Part 6
“Okay, Hank,” the coordinator said, and he came across the floor at a walk, which Jenna knew cost him. Micah kept tipping as his eyes followed the dog. Nikki hooked one finger in his waistband, only that, and let him haul himself back upright. When Hank reached the bench, Micah was still sitting.
His palm came down on top of Hank’s head, heavy and a little off target. Hank lowered himself under it. Micah’s fingers worked into the soft fur behind an ear, and the yes-sound broke into a laugh.
By Christmas he could hold the sit for eight seconds, and by February for twenty. Nothing arrived in the order the charts said it should. He rolled before he could push up. He was steadier on the floor than on the bench. Some days a therapy handle fell straight out of his hand, and ten minutes later he’d be gripping Hank’s rubber curry brush like it owed him money.
“Don’t average those,” Solis told the therapist entering scores. “Rolling gets its own row. Sitting gets its own row. Otherwise we lose what each one takes out of him.”
Micah’s strongest day came on a sleety Tuesday in March, with nobody filming and Cole at the dining table doing service tickets. The home therapist fitted Micah’s ankle braces and stood him at a padded rail they’d mounted along the living room wall. Hank stayed behind a baby gate, because standing work needed room.
Micah hauled on the rail with both fists. One knee locked before the other while the therapist’s hands on his pelvis steered his weight down into his heels. Three seconds, and he sat down hard on the mat.
Cole had drifted into the doorway, phone left on the table. “Want to go again, bud?”
Puff.
The second time he stood six seconds. The third time he turned his face away from the rail and stretched toward the gate where Hank was. Jenna unlatched the gate herself.
In early April, the camera on the bookshelf caught twenty-nine seconds of Micah standing with one hand on the rail and nobody at his hips. For the next three weeks he couldn’t come close. By the end of April he could shuffle sideways along the rail with someone’s hands at his hips, his feet barely lifting, and half the time Cole had to scoot the right one along for him. Hank worked out that his place was on the far side of the rail, not underfoot, or the trainer worked it out for him.
One evening Micah slid his hand along the rail and moved his right foot before Cole got a hand on it. His head snapped toward the dog, the way it did every time he did something new, as if Hank were the judge. Hank got up. His tail swept once. Micah brought the left foot over.
Cole dropped to a crouch at the end of the rail, a yard off. “Come on, bud. Right here.”
Micah took four steps with Cole’s hand at his back, steadying but not pushing, and toppled the last few inches into his dad’s shirt. Cole sat down right there on the floor. He didn’t say anything for a while, and his shoulders did something Jenna pretended not to see. She had grabbed her phone after the first step. She stopped recording and didn’t post it.
There was a folder on the laptop called MICAH – OURS, and nothing in it was meant to convince anybody. It had him shrieking with laughter because his brace made a rude noise, and him red-faced and outraged at a shoe. It had Hank snoring through a whole session, and Cole on his hands and knees along the rail, trying to show a toddler how a hip works.
Somewhere around month three Jenna had quit liking milestones. Every date on the calendar turned into a test of whether he was where he should be. So the birthday was a picnic under a shelter at Holliday Park, ten minutes from the apartment. It was family, plus Nikki, Solis, and Dr. Okafor, who liked to tell people Hank was the only patient who’d ever sent her a birthday invitation. There was no press. If Micah wanted to spend the afternoon eating frosting off his fingers, that was the program.
Cole had the standing frame halfway into the van before Jenna asked whether he was planning a party or a field trip for the rehab department. He put it back. The little walker went in instead, the kind that sits behind a kid so he pushes and it follows, and only because Nikki had said to bring it. If Micah wanted to show people, let him; if he didn’t, it made a decent bench.
At the park Micah sat on a blanket tearing wrapping paper in long, deliberate strips, like he was being paid by the strip. Hank wore a blue bandanna and lay under the picnic table, where Cole’s sister Dana was accidentally dropping pieces of hot dog at a rate of about one a minute. Nobody gave a speech. Solis and Cole argued about heat pumps. Okafor checked Hank’s gums while pretending to scratch his chin. Jenna’s mother brought the lemon sheet cake she’d made for every birthday since Jenna was small, including the summer of Micah’s diagnosis, and this time Jenna could eat a piece without her throat closing.
After lunch Micah started pointing. It wasn’t at the cake. It was at the path that looped around the lawn, where bigger kids were going by on bikes.
“You want a ride in the wagon?” Cole asked.
Micah shook his head and smacked his own brace, twice, hard enough to hurt.
Everybody at the table found something to look at that wasn’t Micah, which was worse. Jenna wished somebody would drop a plate.
Nikki came over and kept her hands to herself. “Your call, mister. You turn your head away, or I don’t like how you’re breathing, we’re done. Deal?”
Puff.
Cole did the braces and shoes. Jenna did the gait belt, snugging it around Micah’s middle and hooking two fingers through the handle at the back. Hank came out from under the table on his own, and when Nikki pointed, he went and stood off Micah’s right side, where he’d stood at the rail all spring.
Micah’s first step scraped. His second came down pigeon-toed, and he hung on the walker until his arms stopped shaking. His eyes went to Hank, then out along the path, measuring.
Nobody at the table made a sound.
He shoved the walker forward. Jenna shuffled after him, bent double, and every tilt of his body came straight up the belt into her knuckles. Cole backed along the path ahead of them, calling out the terrain like he was talking a new hire through an attic crawl.
“Seam in the blacktop. Pick it up. There you go. Breather.”
Micah took a breather. A boy on a green balance bike swerved around them and yelled, “Doggy!” Hank flicked an ear at him and stayed beside the path.
The first bench was about forty feet from the blanket. Nobody said it was a record. Everybody knew. Micah’s hair was stuck to his forehead, and his breathing had picked up.
“Want the wagon now?” Jenna asked.
He thought about it seriously. He sat on the bench, took three long pulls on his straw cup, and watched Hank try to lie down on Cole’s feet. Then he pointed at the blanket.
“With the walker?” Nikki asked.
He shook his head. Cole looked at Jenna, Jenna looked at Nikki, and Nikki shrugged: his call.
Cole rolled the walker onto the grass and took the belt handle. Jenna crouched in front of Micah and held out her hands. He grabbed her fingers and dragged himself upright. The braces kept his ankles honest; everything above them was his own, and none of it was steady. Hank got up when he did.
On the first step she was carrying most of him, and by the fourth, less. Every time a knee shimmied, his grip clamped down on her fingers.
About halfway back, he stopped. He was staring at their hands.
His grip changed, and it took her a second to read it. “Just one?” she said.
He dropped her right hand like it was hot.
Cole closed in behind with the belt. Nikki drifted to the side, hands loose. Hank stayed a little ahead, turned sideways to Micah, leaving the path open.
Micah took a step holding only Jenna’s left hand, his free arm floating up like a tightrope walker’s. The next one hurried, and his knee dipped before he locked it back.
“Okay, baby, that’s enough,” Jenna whispered, and heard that it was mostly for her.
Micah looked up at her. Then, one finger at a time, he let go. Hank planted himself a foot from Micah’s side and didn’t move…
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