Chapter 11

He laughed quietly, the first real laugh he had made in months. "I spent my whole life building things," he said. "Companies, deals, investments. I thought that was hard. But this... this is different.""This is not business," she said. "This is survival."He looked at his legs again. "Then tomorrow," he said slowly, "we don't just practice standing."She tilted her head. "What do we practice?"He looked at the long stone path that ran along the garden. "We practice walking," he said.That evening, back inside the house, she sat across from him at the dining table, going over wedding plans: guest lists, flowers, music. She looked happy, relaxed, confident."We should practice your vows," she said with a warm smile. "You'll be sitting, of course, but it will still be beautiful."He looked at her for a moment and then nodded. "Yes," he said calmly. "Beautiful."But in his mind, he was not thinking about vows. He was thinking about standing up—standing up in front of everyone, standing up before she could take everything, standing up before the chair became his life forever.The next few days settled into a routine that looked normal from the outside and felt like preparation for war on the inside.Every morning, she brought the pills and the water. Every morning, he pretended to swallow them. Every morning, he waited until she left the room, then got rid of the pills and hid the evidence. He began to keep them in a small metal box in his desk drawer, lining them up in neat rows: white, round, silent. Enough pills to steal a man's legs, one day at a time.Every afternoon, he went to the backyard. From the kitchen window, it probably looked like a sick man getting fresh air: a man in a wheelchair, sitting near the garden, watching the trees, trying to accept a smaller life. But behind the stone bench, where the camera from the house couldn't see clearly, a different story was happening."Again," she said.He pushed himself up from the bench. His legs were still weak, but they were changing. The first few days, they had trembled like they belonged to someone else. Now the shaking was still there, but underneath the shaking, there was strength trying to come back."Stand straight," she said. "Don't look at your feet. Look forward."He straightened his back and looked ahead at the fence."Now, one step," she said.He moved his right foot forward. It was still slow, still unsteady, but it was a real step."Now the other one."

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