Page 42 of Dear Future Husband

Maybelle Mason

18 Your Mom Saved My Life

Maybelle

The next few days were a blur.

I was always sleeping, or how Chelsea liked to put it, alwaysrecovering.

I hated it.

The sluggish, hollow feeling of my body lacking the strength to even stand on my own two feet?

Absolutely horrible.

It had been eight days since I woke up. Eight days…and I was just as useless as when I had been in a coma. Except now, I was cognizant—fully aware of my stale existence.

The only time Chelsea encouraged, or more like, kindly forced me out of bed and into the land of the living was to be brutally tortured in my physical therapy sessions. It was cruel and unusual punishment, the stretches and exercises my body was being subjected to.

Annalise Jones, the sadistic tormentor that claimed to be a physical therapist, came to the Turner home the last three days to bend and push my body in ways I refused to believe were healthy.

“I promise, if we keep up with this, May, you’ll be walking on your own in no time,” Annalise promised in her chipper, southern accent as she pulled my joints intoa new, excruciating position.

I had to keep my mouth closed when she said things like that, because I was all too tempted to scream at the woman each time. Despite that, I really liked her. She was a sweetheart, and what I appreciated most was how much she pushed me. Yeah, I may have wanted to maim her in the heat of a painful muscle extension, but I was starting to feel the progress.

I wasn’t feeling strong by any means, but my body was starting to feel more solid, even reliable. Still, by the end of each of the sessions with Annalise, my body would ache with absolute exhaustion.

I got into a routine in which I would wake up at some embarrassingly late hour of the day. Eat what I could get down. Get through therapy without a scrap of my dignity left, eat again, shower, and sleep.

Each day was a poor regurgitation of the last.

Especially since Trey left back to school for football training at the beginning of the week. He had spent the first few days at the house, helping me settle in, but was gone by Sunday. Even when he was here, I didn’t see much of him due to my “recovering”. We hadn’t spoken nearly as much as that first day, which I couldn’t help but be a little disappointed about.

Trey said, before he left for school, that he would be back next weekend and would spend Friday night, Saturday and part of Sunday back home. But would have to be back at school before Monday.

Today, Thursday, I laid supine on my bed, staring up at the white, cloud-textured ceiling, mentally preparing myself for the torture session I had with Annalise in an hour. My gaze meandered and settled on the three picture frames hanging on the wall above my bed.

There was a shift in my chest, like a lightweight dumbbell had been placed there to rest, making it almost painful to breathe.

When I had first seen the pictures, I could only focuson the facts, pointing out my face, and acknowledging the other unfamiliar faces of the people I couldn’t remember. The photographs now only loomed over me as a reminder that I was a stranger in my own body. An outsider that had no real connection to the world around them.

It terrified me. I tried desperately, in the few hours I found myself awake and staring up at the ceiling, like I did now, to remember.

My brain was a massive library. Aisle after aisle, row after row of filing cabinets filled with memory files. I could spend hours scouring each of the drawers for the information I lacked. But each time, the files were empty—blank.

Two soft knocks clicked against the bedroom door.

“Come in,” I answered.

Chelsea poked her head in, a wide smile splitting open her face. “Good to see you’re awake,” she said sweetly, but I cringed. It was a couple of hours after noon. Chelsea, being surprised to see me already awake, was proof of just how lazy I’d been.

“I know. I need to get up,” I acknowledged sheepishly, but she stopped me from rising off the bed with a hand on my shoulder.

“You’re good to rest until your session. I know it takes a lot out of you. Don’t beat yourself up about it though, it will get easier.”

I snorted. “I sure hope so. Annalise has been telling me the same thing.”

Chelsea reached and brushed a ratted blonde curl from my forehead to behind my ear.