Chapter 17: The Gate

"Tell them I'm coming down," Damian said.

Kent looked at me, and I looked at the man in the bed.

"Damian, you walked three steps yesterday," I said.

"Today I'll walk thirty," Damian said.

He said it in a flat, cold voice I had never heard from him.

Delaney's voice rose up through the open window, thin and sweet and pitched for cameras.

"My fiancé is being held in that house," she was saying. "His own mother can't see him. I've come to bring him home."

My father's voice followed hers.

"We only want to know he's alive."

I turned from the window and found Damian already sitting up, with his feet on the floor.

"Dress me," he said.

I did, with my hands steady and my pulse loud.

Kent held the cane.

It took us a long time to get him down the stairs, and none of it was graceful.

Beatrice met us in the hall in her navy suit, with her chin up and her makeup perfect.

"Whatever you do," she said, "do it standing."

At the gate, the crowd was thick.

Delaney stood at the bars in a white dress, with a pink ribbon on her wrist, and my parents behind her.

My mother wore green.

I saw Grandma's face in my head, saying that my mother wore the green when she was lying.

The guard opened the gate.

Damian walked through it.

He leaned on the cane with one hand and on my arm with the other, and each step was a fight, and every camera in the road came up.

The shouting stopped.

Delaney's mouth fell open.

"Damian?" she whispered.

"Hello, Delaney," Damian said.

He didn't whisper.

His voice was hoarse and strong, and it carried to the back of the road.

"I'm awake," he said to the cameras. "I've been awake for weeks. I'm walking out of my own house, and nobody is holding me."

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