Undertow by Callie Kingston

disapproval.
    The aide departed before Marissa could ask what she should get ready for.
    Enough time passed that she decided she might try to nap again. Before Marissa succumbed to the lure, Nurse Mendova appeared with a skinny young man standing in her considerable shadow. His hair was like an orange mop.
    “Well, well.” The nurse tilted her head and clucked her tongue. Solid as a boulder, she stood with her hands on her hips and grinned like she was genuinely glad to see her. “Decided to join the rest of us living folk for a while, did you?”
    Gesturing to the man beside her, she said, “Andrew here is a physical therapist. He’ll be working with you this afternoon, giving those lazy limbs of yours a workout.” The nurse winked. Putting her hand aside her cheek, she pretended to whisper, “And you be nice to him, you hear? He’s new at this.”
    Andrew glared at her, his mouth open, ready to protest.
    Nurse Mendova laughed, a guttural noise, and shook her head. “Now, now, young man, don’t get all in a stew about it. Everybody’s got to start somewhere.”
    Great, she thought, I’m a guinea pig.
    The nurse helped her to her feet. “Here you go, honey. You’ll be good as new before you know it.”
    “Miss Johansen, let me have you sit in the wheelchair. I’ll wheel you down to the therapy room,” Andrew said, wrapping his long fingers around her bicep.
    Marissa allowed him to settle her into the wheelchair and remembered it had been this way for her grandmother at the end. She was the last person she saw pushed about in a wheelchair, in that horrible dying place they called the convalescent center. Is that what she was doing here? Convalescing?
    Over the forty-five minute session, Marissa’s fears of her incapacity faded away as the physical therapist put her through the drill. Raggedy Andy, as she nicknamed him, tested the strength of her muscles and their responsiveness to stimuli until he pronounced her “free of any lingering damage in regards to gross motor functioning.” Which sounded like a good thing.
    “You are a tad atrophied, though.”
    “Huh? Is there a cure for that?”
    The lanky man displayed a set of wide teeth. “You bet—exercise!”
    Marissa groaned. “I was afraid of that.”
    “No more for today, though. You worked hard enough already. We’ll pick it up again Monday—same time, same place.”
    She slumped back in the wheelchair.
    “Miss Johansen?” Andrew’s forehead wrinkled. “You’re lucky, you know. It could be way worse. You’re a really lucky girl.”

    Whatever you say , she thought. She sure didn’t feel all that lucky.

 
     
     
     
    Twenty-One
     
    “I know what you did.” Kelly lounged in the nearest of the two visitor’s chairs and leaned toward Marissa. Her voice was low. “I know what you did, and I know why you did it.”
    A few minutes after Kelly had arrived, her mother left, claiming she wanted dinner and needed to make a couple of calls. It was obviously just an escape from Marissa’s anger, though. So far, nobody but her mother had come to visit. Marissa was pretty sure her mom was responsible for that fact, and confronted her.
    “You can’t tell the hospital not to let my friends come see me.”
    She’d snipped back at her, “I guess I just question the value of your friends, Mari, if they encourage you to do crazy things like you did.”
    Neither of them said a word after that, and it had been a long afternoon.
    Now Marissa lay immobile in the bed and Kelly glared at her accusingly. “Have you lost your mind?” she said. “Don’t bother answering that. I’m sorry. Really, I’m sorry I said that. But damn it, girl, you almost died. Died !”
    Marissa looked away and stared at the ceiling, wishing she had. That would be better than this hell.
    “That mermaid dude’s not real. You do know that, right?” she plunged on, but Marissa kept quiet, eyes fixed on some imaginary speck above her bed. Kelly reached out and took her hand.