Chapter 22: Ten Weeks

Jo's POV

The cast came off on a Thursday, ten weeks to the day after the stairs.

Bea did it herself in the Northgate therapy room, with a small whining saw and a face of great pleasure.

"Hold still," she said. "If I take off your foot, I'll have to explain it to Arthur."

The saw bit through the plaster, and she cracked the two halves open.

My leg lay in the light, thin and white and strange.

The skin was flaking, and a neat pink scar ran down the shin.

"It's hideous," I said.

"It's a leg. Put your heel down."

I put it down.

"Now stand."

She held my elbows, and I stood.

It hurt, and it was mine.

"There she is," Bea said, and her voice cracked, and she turned away to wipe the saw.

"The rehab floor at the Institute offered me a job yesterday," she said to the wall. "Head of the floor."

"Take it."

"I did. I said yes before they finished the sentence."

I hugged her from behind with the new leg trembling under me.

They fitted me with a walking boot and a cane.

Bea let me go out to the waiting room on my own.

Arthur was there with his own cane, in a bow tie, reading a magazine upside down.

Graham was there too.

He sat in the corner chair with his hands between his knees and a paper bag on the floor beside him.

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