Free After the Fall by L.A. Witt

sore and getting used to moving around on flat ground.” He stopped messing with his tie and folded his arms. “Doesn’t seem like a good time to be tackling six flights of stairs on your own, you know?”
    “I’ll be fine . I’ll just leave early and give myself time to get to the bottom without breaking my neck.”
    “If you were on two crutches, I’d say that was a good idea.” He eyed the single crutch under my arm. “But with one? Dude, you are asking for it.”
    I glared at him.
    He put up his hands and shrugged. “Your funeral.”
    Okay, so maybe he had a point. His point didn’t trump my stubbornness, though, which was probably why he quit arguing. We’d been friends long enough, he knew when it wasn’t worth it. A lesson I probably needed to learn myself, but whatever. I could do this, damn it.
    I’d taken almost a week off work so I could swim in pain pill euphoria for a few days, and the cabin fever had officially become unbearable. Time to get back to work. Plus, I was bound and determined to leave this apartment and get around on my own. No way in hell was I relying on other people to cart me around, especially up and down the goddamned stairs, because that would turn my apartment—my sanctuary of independence—into my own personal Alcatraz.
    So, not long after Brad left for work, I headed out myself.
    I stopped at the top of the stairs.
    My nemesis. We meet again.
    One step at a time. I could do this. Using the crutch like a cane and resting my cast hand on the railing, I gingerly took the first step. Cast first. Good leg second. Then again. Same slow process, over and over, but eventually, I made it. As my foot touched down on the landing, I grinned. No way in hell was a flight of motherfucking stairs making me its bitch.
    Leaning on the crutch, I turned the corner.
    My grin fell. My heart slowly sank all the way into my feet.
    One flight of stairs might not make me its bitch. It was the remaining five that could be a problem.
    I inched closer to the top step. Then I took a deep breath, adjusted my crutch, and started down. By the time I made it to the next landing, I was sweating. Just four more, and I could relax in the car. And my job kept me at a desk most of the day—plus Mike would probably forbid me from moving around much once he saw me like this—so all I had to do was get past these damned stairs, and it was all downhill from there. So to speak.
    Slowly, steadily, I made it down the third flight. At the top of the fourth, my right leg started seizing up from my hip all the way to my calf, fatigue and the stress of doing the work of two legs stiffening it until it wasn’t much more flexible than the cast around the left.
    I gritted my teeth. No one had ever said this would be a pleasant process. I’d come this far, I could make it the rest of the way.
    I started down the fourth flight.
    After two steps, my right knee buckled. I dropped my crutch and grabbed the railing, which stopped me from falling, but I was helpless to keep the crutch from clattering the rest of the way down. It came to a stop with the shoulder pad on the very last step, and the rest of the crutch extending across the landing in a crude display of what I would be doing if I didn’t successfully navigate these steps.
    Heart pounding and joints screaming, I swore under my breath and eased myself down onto the third step.
    Okay. This wasn’t going to work.
    Halfway down was also halfway up. Three flights to go in either direction. Up would have been the easier option— Mike, I think I need a few more days off; is that okay? —if I hadn’t exhausted my uninjured leg fighting my way this far down. Now both directions were equally daunting. No two ways about it: I wasn’t doing this alone. Not today.
    Sighing, I pulled out my cell phone and glared at it. When it came to asking for help, I was like a straight man asking for directions. Pride wouldn’t get me up or down these stairs, though, so I grudgingly