“Vivian, you can come on back.”

 

Vivian slowly extricated herself from the squarish lobby chair, and stood.  “Hi, Dr. Jenny.”  She was still talking slower than she wanted to, but she’d gotten a lot of other things ironed out.

 

“Thanks for comin’ in early today,” the woman replied, in her vaguely-Texan accent. Then she looked up from her tablet, and said, “Oh hey! You’re off the crutches!”

 

Vivian hefted her new cane and nodded.  “Got one with a foam grip,” she said, “so I can squeeze.”  She held her left hand out, flexing and clenching in example, and just got her grip on the cane in time to support herself.

 

“That’s good!  I mean, it’s great that you’re feeling strong enough to be down to just the cane, but every little extra bit you can be doing will pay off.”

 

Vivian nodded and did her best to amble quickly.

Dr. Jenny frowned at her as she walked.  “You’re using it backwards.  Your right leg is fine, so you wanna have that in your other hand.”  She braced herself against Vivian, took the cane, and put it in her right hand.  “Then when you step, bad left leg and cane are on opposite sides of you.  Split it how you can, so you’re not relying on your leg  too much.  As your leg gets stronger, you’re leaning on the cane less and less.”

 

Vivian blinked and shook her head.  “I bought the foam grip one so I could work on my hand too.”

 

“That’s all right.  You can just get a stress ball to carry around then.  I’m sure I’ve got one around here somewhere you can keep.  That gets you the same thing.”

 

Dr. Jenny, a robust woman who appeared to be in her early-to-mid fifties, walked patiently alongside Vivian as they moved down the hall.  Vivian felt stupid, but she was sure she’d seen some medical show once where a limping character used their cane the way she had, on the weak side.  Once she’d taken a few steps, however, she could immediately tell how this was going to help her leg to get a lot more work in.

 

“We’re in the blue room today,” Dr. Jenny said, as she gestured with her tablet.  “I’ve got a new one for you, if you’re feeling up to it.”

 

Vivian nodded grimly.

 

There were several tables, but only one of them had anything on it so Vivian felt comfortable ambling that way while Dr. Jenny held the door for her.  The table had a couple pieces of plywood, one attached to the other in the shape of an upside-down T.  Vivian sat on the bench on one side, and Dr. Jenny sat down across from her.

 

“Here you are,” Dr. Jenny said, as she upended a baggie.  A double handful of nuts, bolts, and washers tumbled down onto the table.  She held up each piece demonstratively, and said, “Bolt, washer…. washer, nut.”

 

Then Vivian noticed that there were holes drilled through the upright board of plywood, and she set to work. Washer goes on the bolt, bolt goes through the hole, nut goes on the bolt.

 

“You forgot a washer,” Dr. Jenny said.  “Goes in front of the nut.”

 

Vivian’s forehead creased.  It was hard making her hands do minute, controlled efforts.  Such a small movement.  It was harder doing that than it had been hauling herself around on crutches.

 

“So,” Dr. Jenny said.  “Tell me about your band.”

 

Vivian licked her lips as she pulled one of each of the necessary pieces out from the mismatched pile, and proceeded with caution.  “I don’t know that we’re still together.  It’s kind of up in the air.”  She kept dropping pieces, and it irritated her to no end.

 

“How many members did you have?”

 

“We were a trio.  Me, Lucia, and… and Kevin.”

 

“You forgot a washer again,” she said, pointing down with the back of her stylus.  “One on each side.”

 

Vivian groaned as she took apart her work.  “I never used to be forgetful.  That wasn’t a big issue for me.”

 

“Sometimes it’s hard to tell what all’s been knocked loose.  This task is working a lot of parts of your brain, so try not to be too hard on yourself.”

 

Vivian nodded, and started again.

 

“Stay calm and work through it, you know?  Don’t let frustration make the task harder’n it already is.”  The older woman shifted on her bench seat and smiled down at her tablet.  “So, this Kevin.  This the same guy that was driving in the accident?  Kevin… Van Nuys?”

 

Vivian nodded, and double checked her work for the fourth time as she felt the nut catch on the threads of the bolt.  “I think I got it this time.”

 

Dr. Jenny nodded approvingly.

 

“I haven’t really heard from Lucia since I got back on my feet.  Just once, really.  I’m not sure what she thinks we should do, and that’s assuming I can get back to playing at all.”

 

“Do you want to?”

 

Vivian frowned at her work.  The nut wasn’t as tight as it looked like it could go, as she could still see underneath it, but she couldn’t grip the pieces tight enough to push any further so she started pulling more pieces out of the pile to assemble another one.  “I love writing songs,” she said, without looking up.  “I hear music in my head all the time.”

 

The older woman smirked.  “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you just avoided the question.”

 

“I…”  Vivian bit her lip and thought about it.  “I guess I did.  I hadn’t... meant to.”  The feel underneath her fingers was different somehow, and she stared at it.

 

Dr. Jenny looked up from her tablet and tilted her head.  “What are you missing?”

 

She blinked.  “I… I don’t know.”

 

“The nut.”

 

“Shit,” Vivian said, shaking her head.  She grabbed the missing piece and started assembling it through the plywood.  “I want to play again, but…”  She made a noise in her throat as she focused.

 

Nearly a minute passed before Dr. Jenny said, “But what?”

 

“They used to take what I wrote and change it.  I would… I don’t know, create songs, but because I can’t read or write music, I would just have it in my head with some words written on a page.  I’d take it to Kevin and Lucia, play the melody and explain it a little, and they would translate that, maybe add in some different instruments. I might have been the writer, but I was also just the bassist.  Little by little they always changed them.  The key.  The pace.  Not much, but just enough to make me feel some kind of way about it.”

 

“And which kind of way is that?”

 

Vivian pursed her lips, and inspected her work closely.  “Jealous.  Frustrated.”

 

“Frustrated I get,” Dr. Jenny said, “but why jealous?”

 

“Kevin and Lucia had good chemistry.”

 

“Ohh.”  She narrowed her eyes, and leaned forward over the table.  “And Lucia was getting in the way?”

 

Vivian looked up, making very direct eye contact for a beat, and then looked back down again to start pulling a set of parts from the pile.

“Ohhh.”

 

“We… we all kind of fooled around, especially when we were wasted, or after shows, but that…”  She shook her head.  “It wasn’t what I wanted.  I thought that doing that, getting some of her attention, would make it hurt less, but it just made it worse.”

 

“You mean because you fooled around with her too?”

 

Vivian nodded.  “Every time I sobered up it ached, so I’d get high again to stop thinking about her.  Before I knew it, I’d wasted three years.”

 

Dr. Jenny nodded solemnly, and pushed no further.  Vivian used the quiet to focus on her task.  Putting the bolt-washer-washer-nut assemblies together was surprisingly difficult for her.  Not harder than employing her fine motor skills to hand-tighten them, but in the same neighborhood.

 

Another therapist and her patient came in about halfway through, but Vivian paid them no mind.  She had to focus on every assembly, from start to finish.  At no point did she feel like she got any kind of rhythm going, nor did the task become easier with practice.  The floor around her was littered with pieces she’d clumsily dropped.  All the pieces were so small, and the hexagonal shape of the nut, and the head of the bolt, did not suit her stiff fingers no matter which way she tried to orient the assembly.  Dr. Jenny made a lot of notes as she went, rarely doing more than pointing out when Vivian was making a mistake and letting her figure it out for herself.  

 

By the end of the hour, her fingers hurt, and her hands, wrists and arms were sore.  She looked at the clock and thought maybe she’d have enough time to try another one from scratch, but the choice was taken out of her hands.

 

“Jen,” came a voice from behind her.

 

Dr. Jenny stood up from the bench, smiling broadly, just as someone stepped around the table to hug her.

 

“You almost ready?”

 

“Just about done,” Dr. Jenny said, gesturing with her hand.  “Vivian here has been making some really good progress today.”  Then, turning back to Vivian, she added, “You should be real proud.”

 

“Oh my god!  Vivian!”

 

Vivian had only barely glanced up before she was suddenly and vigorously being hugged, and she just had time to spot short brown hair and purple scrubs.  When her mysterious hugger backed out to arms length, her hands still on Vivian’s shoulders, Vivian was only vaguely struck by memory.

 

“Do you remember me?”

 

“Yes?” Vivian said, slowly, “...but… um—”

 

She let go of Vivian’s shoulder’s and gave a tight little wave.  “I’m Delia!  I was part of your team at St. Vincent’s?”

 

“Right,” Vivian said slowly.  She hadn’t remembered ever knowing the woman’s name before, but she also hadn’t retained the names of any of the doctors or nurses she’d seen anywhere, except for Dr. Jenny.  It was all such a blur.  But then her eyes drifted up and she saw that Delia had a pixie cut, and then the memory got a little stronger.  “I remember your hair.”

 

Delia’s eyebrows rose, and she turned to give Dr. Jenny a little smirk.  “I made an impression!”

 

“That’s half the job right there,” Dr. Jenny said, knowingly.

 

“Are you here to check on me?” Vivian asked, brow furrowing.

 

Delia laughed, and it was truly a joyful peal.

“I used to work at St. Vincent’s,” Dr. Jenny said, confidingly.  “Delia and I had lunch together pretty much every day.  Now we just get together whenever we can.”

 

“This is so cool!” Delia said.  “You’re still, like, the biggest recovery we’d had in a while, and look at you go!”

 

Vivian’s lips curled.

 

“Hey,” she said suddenly.  “Would you like to join us?  For lunch, I mean.”  She turned to Dr. Jenny, but the older woman merely shrugged.  Then she looked back at Vivian and said,  “That is, if you’re free?”

 

Vivian’s stomach had been growling below the radar, and she narrowed her eyes as she stared into the distance.  “I took the bus.  Darren isn’t waiting for me today… and I don’t think I have anywhere to be later.”

 

“Great!”  Delia looked around and blinked, and then locked onto Vivian’s cane.  “Woooow.”

 

“I know,” Dr. Jenny said.

 

“Already off the crutches!  That’s amazing!”

 

Vivian scooped it up, and then switched hands, like Dr. Jenny had shown her, at the last second.  Jen, as she preferred to be called away from the clinic, drove.  Jen and Delia had already made plans to get Tex-Mex, which she was fine with.

 

Vivian had a strange, dissociative moment when they were looking at the menu.   For years, she’d ordered burgers everywhere she went, for lunch or dinner, much to the chagrin of her friends, but suddenly it seemed like there were a plethora of options that appealed to her.  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d wanted to change the plan.  In the back of her head, she started wondering how she’d gotten into that pattern in the first place.

 

“Actually,” she said, while the waitress smiled patiently at her, “that salmon and asparagus looks really good.  I’d like to try that.”

 

The waitress nodded, took their menus, and slipped away.

 

“So,” Delia said, jumping into the silence, “Jen said you’re in a band?”  When Vivian nodded, she leaned in and continued in a whisper.  “I’m sorry if this is out of line, but, like, how screwed are you?  There’s no way your stay cost less than fifty grand. Like, even if you have a recording contract, that doesn’t give benefits, right?”

 

“Actually,” Jen said, leaning in a little bit, “She’s covered, so far.  Some of her friends got together and raised some money for her.”

 

Delia gave her a wide-eyed stare that bordered on dubious.  “You must have some pretty rich friends.”

 

“No,” Vivian said, “but there’s a lot of them.”  At first, she was going to stop there, but the urge to explain built up like an avalanche until she added, “There was a concert.  A benefit concert.”

 

“Someone threw a benefit concert for you?”

 

“Trust me,” she said.  “I was pretty shocked too.”

 

“And they raised fifty thousand dollars?”

 

“Seventy-two thousand,“ Vivian said.  “I think, like, nine thousand of that went to help the family of a friend, and then the rest came to me.”  She shrugged.  “It’s not enough to live on, but it’ll help keep me out of too much debt while I get back on my feet.  Hopefully.”

 

“That’s incredible!”

 

Jen leaned back, with a knowing smirk, and occupied herself with her phone.

 

“So the bands that played.  Did you know them?”

 

“Yeah.  Like, the first band, Killcreek, I helped them record.  I was in the next studio over when they fired their bassist.  I recorded, like, four songs with them that day so that they didn’t have to book more time. Studio time is really expensive.  I don’t know what I saved them, but they were really grateful.  The other one I sorta toured with for a little bit after their guy fell off a monitor and hurt himself.”

 

“And you stepped in for the rest of their shows?”

 

“Well, we’d opened for them that night.  They’re a way bigger deal than we were.  I was already backstage, you know?  I was standing right there.   When he went down and it was just a sprain, not something serious because they would have stopped playing for that, they kind of looked at me like…”  Vivian leaned back and raised her eyebrows.  “...and I just... jumped out there. Picked up his instrument, and tried to keep pace.”

 

“Without practicing?”

 

Vivian gave a sort of mixed nod/shake.  “I mean, I knew their set.  It wasn’t the first time we’d opened for them.  Their guitarist and drummer were real good about giving me signals when songs were gonna change pace, or key or whatever, and I just tried to keep up.  Their singer is the real show anyway.  A few shows a week, for a month.  He wasn’t super injured.  Wasn’t too big of a deal.  All I had to do was not fuck up too bad.”

 

“And you didn’t?”

 

She shrugged.  “It went okay, I think.”

 

Delia leaned back a little, folded her arms across her chest, and smiled.  “So you’ve been paying it forward for a while, and then when the time came they paid it back?”

 

“Honestly, at the time, I thought I was paying them back, because they’d let us use some of their equipment when some of ours went missing from our van.  Amps and pedals and stuff.”  Vivian was pretty sure it had not actually ‘gone missing’, but that was a whole other conversation.

 

“That sucks!”

 

“Yeah, it was expensive to replace.”

 

“Wow, so, like, people know who you are?”

 

Vivian nodded, and tried to keep the color from her cheeks.  “Our band was more famous than I am.  I think that’s why they came out.”

 

“Humble too.”  Delia nodded.  She took a sip of her tea and shared a look with Jen that Vivian was unable to follow.

 

“Her friend,” Jen said carefully, “the other bandmate?  She put it together.”

 

Delia looked back and forth between them for a moment.  “Oh,” she said, her enthusiasm suddenly dialed back.  “Are you… are you two an item?”

 

“I don’t know.”  Vivian took the straw wrapper in front of her, flattened it, and tried to fold it in half as many times as she could.  It helped to have something to focus on.  “Sometimes it seems like maybe, and then…”

 

Delia sat up a little straighter, and peered over the table.  “Are you practicing right now?  With your fingers?”

 

Vivian nodded without looking up.

 

“You are… really focused on getting better.  That’s—”

“Impressive,” Jen said, cutting in, and after a moment Delia nodded.

 

It really helped to have the straw wrapper to focus on.