Sliding Down the Sky Read Free Page A

my head now.
    It had been almost five months since he’d found me curled up in the corner, half-dead. Some days, I felt like I was still there. My life was so different it was almost unrecognisable, especially to me. My music had fallen silent. It no longer thrummed in my veins or beat out a steady rhythm inside my chest. The deafening multi-instrument orchestra in my head was gone. Instead, there was a vast emptiness and the knowledge that it was my own fault. My punishment was that I had to live with it.
    I gave up the lease on my apartment, and I moved in with them. It was the freedom I had been craving. No paparazzi. No press. Just us.
    I slowly got used to living again. I could leave the house without having a panic attack. I ate without being reminded to. I showered every day. I didn’t shy away from looking in the mirror. I closed my heart to the sound of him playing guitar in the living room.
    I got rid of the reminders of my old life and tried to think ahead.

Chapter Four
     
    “Sometimes bravery is as simple as following your gut.”
     
    – Taylor Swift
     
    Callum
     
    “So, what happened?” I asked, taking another sip of my beer while Jack just stared at his.
    Barney’s was getting busy, but at our usual table in the corner we were tucked away from the masses. It had been two weeks since that night at dinner, and so far I’d managed to keep the situation under control by feeding them both a crock about being under pressure at work.
    It wasn’t total bullshit, because work was a pain in the ass lately. We’d lost a mechanic six months ago, and Bill hadn’t found a replacement yet, which made things worse. It also didn’t help that Bill was bugging me about coming into work hung-over, but I never mentioned that part. It was enough to get them off my case, at least for the moment, and it wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t the whole truth, but I could live with it. I found I could live with a lot of things lately.
    Sitting across from me, Jack didn’t look like a man who was overjoyed to find out he was probably going to be a father soon. In fact, he looked like they’d just been given the worst possible news. Two specialists in two months. Ally was determined, as usual. She only had two speeds – all or nothing.
    Patience wasn’t one of my virtues. I kicked him under the table, like I used to when we were kids.
    “Hey – you hear me? What happened today?”
    That seemed to do it. He frowned over the table at me, then took a sip of beer. Quickly putting all the variables together in my head, I came up with the worst case scenario and tried to prepare myself to offer some sort of moral support.
    When he set his beer back on the table between us, his hand was trembling. The odds were stacking up. He sat back against the booth and exhaled like it was his final breath.
    “He said pretty much the same thing as the other guy. There’s no reason she can’t get pregnant, carry to full-term and deliver a baby by c-section. Apparently, women with her level of injury do it all the time.”
    I stared at him, trying to associate the positive words coming out of his mouth with the look of pure desolation plastered all over his face.
    “I’m no expert, but isn’t that good news?”
    I was obviously missing something here, something big.
    “Oh yeah,” he continued. ”And he also mentioned autonomic dysreflexia, high blood pressure, mobility problems, deep vein thrombosis, urinary tract infections and about a million other things that scare the living shit out of me but don’t seem to bother her at all.”
    He sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly, shaking his head.
    “She’s dreaming if she thinks any of that is worth it – or that I’m going to just stand by and let her do it.”
    Shit.
    “Have you told her that?”
    “Not yet.”
    I saw his dilemma. The risks were obviously real, but so was her desire to have a baby. Rock, meet hard place.
    She’d subjected herself to two appointments with two