Chapter 23: Thirty Feet and Then Some

Luca cleared me on a Thursday, with the X-ray up on the kitchen laptop.

"Solid," he said, tapping the screen. "Bone's whole. You can do whatever you like with it."

"Whatever?"

"Within reason. Don't do anything Damiano would do."

I woke Damiano at five on Friday morning.

"It's dark," he said into the pillow.

"I'm going for a run."

He was out of the bed so fast that I laughed.

We drove down to the Bay Ridge pier in the grey before sunrise, with the windows open and the air smelling of salt and diesel.

The heat wave had broken weeks ago.

It was cool now, and the water was flat and grey.

Nobody else was on the boardwalk except a man with a fishing rod and a gull.

I stood at the start of the pier in running shoes I'd bought on Wednesday.

They still had the tag on one tongue.

"You don't have to," Damiano said.

"I know."

"We could walk."

"We could."

I bent and tore the tag off, and put it in my pocket.

My right leg looked like every other leg, except for four small pink marks and a slight crook where the bone had knit.

It was mine.

I had hopped on it, and hauled it, and watched it go dark in a steel cage.

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