Tomorrows

"Tomorrows are all possibilities."
      I heard him say that and winced. I looked down at the crippled legs, my legs, deformed, bones protruding, the opposite of health or happiness. I could not contain the tremors that were shaking my hands and arms, the fingers clumsily dropping the blanket as I tried to cover up my legs. The brief moment of holding my head up to look at them was enough to make me sink back, exhausted.
     The doctors had assured me this wasn't permanent, that I could be cured. I knew they didn't lie. They just couldn't tell me when, tell me how long I would be imprisoned by weakness. How long my thoughts would be a torture in my cell. How long distraction would be a necessary as breath. How long?
     Prison sentences were written down in black and white. Many prisoners heard how long they would be incarcerated as the judge finalized with the bang of a dark wood gavel. I now wondered if that pronouncement was to keep them from going mad, rather than showing what justice decided. Uncertainty was torture. They at least could mark of the days on the walls of prison cells, if they did that. My fingers couldn't even hold the chalk steady.
     Tomorrow was nothing but pain. Not physical pain--drugs and life and apathy had deadened that to an unnoticeable ache. It wasn't even a distraction now. Except when I wanted to do something. My shaking fingers couldn't do much, but if I moved them slowly, losing a race to a near-invisible floating dust speck, I might be able put on music. Heroes, by Michael W. Smith. Inspiring, soaring, transcendent--distracting. It offered hope so unreal it became a dream, an escape. That deadened the pain, the pain of who and what I was--in the dream at least I didn't exist, and I could people it with characters like I wanted to be. This one changed the world, this one healed a friend, this one stood firm in a test, this one overcame the impossible. This one helped a hero, this one showed strength, this one reached a lonely person--this one changed at least one life. That one life changed others. No wonder reality was pain.
      Reality. Reality, that I was born this way. Reality, that someone loved me enough to bring me to a hospital, to help me heal and change. Reality, that I threw temper tantrums and yelled and screamed as thanks. Reality, that I could never meet that compassionate, all-covering gaze with even enough love in my own. I was too ashamed.
      He told me he would not give up till I was better, and I believed him. He told me I would one day be like him. I clenched my shaking fingers and wished with all I was that I could give that compassionate gaze to others, that I would have the power to help them change, to help them heal. How many other cripples could be saved? How many other twisted souls, straightened? How long till I could help his work?
     I did not want to know how many surgeries, precise, cutting blades, reconstructive movements, aching hours of physical therapy where he would not let me give up and I would not let myself thank him, how many more times I would tell him no, stood between me and that time. Tomorrow? No, I would not be healed tomorrow. That I knew, as much as I trusted him. Tomorrow I would still be crippled. Still shaking.
    Shaking. I looked at my arms. They were straight, they were long, they did not bend like an ostrich leg in three or more places. They weren't always that way. I could see them, too--something that had not always been true. (Sometimes I wondered if I didn't prefer the dark, to knowing what I was.) But who noticed straight arms, when they were covered in fading scars? Who noticed healed fingers, when they were stretched above my ugly legs? No, I did not want tomorrow.
    But he did. My friend, my savior, my reason for survival. He wanted tomorrow; he wanted today. He measured my growth with perfect, unfailing exactness, and loved my straight arms and scarred fingers. I could hear it in his voice, that he had work for my arms and hands, even when I could not walk. Even when I could not hold a blanket. Not the drudgery of work that means nothing, but work that helped him. Some of it--the squeezing of the exercise balls and counting one, two, three, one, two, three, four, five, six, one, two, three...it was tedious. But he told me it was getting my fingers ready, even as it made the muscles shake. He told me he was helping them to heal.
    And there had been the time he had brought her in, a little child named Mary, a three year old with her eyes squeezed tight, holding his shirt and shaking, and he had let me touch her cheek. My finger shook even harder as I brushed her hair behind her ear and she opened her eyes and looked at me. I don't know what she saw--she must have seen me with his eyes, for she grabbed my finger and held on tight. He told me it was the first time she had kept her eyes open for more than a few seconds. She had left creases in his shirt, where she had let go with one hand. I could not speak for crying when they left. It was beautiful to see his work.
     The older, grumpy cripples were harder to love, the grandpa scowling at his food, the thirty year old brunette a perfect model of whining self-pity. But I watched them squeeze their exercise balls, or do sit-ups (I dreaded the day I would do those) and watched the pain imprint ragged lines on the red, panting face. He told me the lines weren't permanent, but I could see that they, too, wondered how long pain would mark them as its own. He told them that today and its pain was his. My pain too. He told me he counted every tear. He told me they had not gone to waste. I wondered if they, too, left a mark, a mark for Mary to see. I wondered if that's the reason she could hold onto me.
    Tomorrow was full of possibilities. He said it with such joy, the tone of his voice more blazing than a smile, the strength of that joy more firm than the concrete hospital floor. I did not want tomorrow, with its pain, its battle against apathy, its long, slow time ticking another hour of monotonous exercises. But the grandpa spoke to me the other day, to tell me he sat up by himself. My friend had shared that joy as much as he shared our pain. The brunette, Karen, told me she was reassured every time she saw him look at me, because she knew he loved her, too. But Mary--maybe there would be more Marys. Maybe tomorrow really did hold work that could be done by a cripple with odd-shaped legs. Maybe tomorrow, if I left it to him, would be a possibility. Maybe tomorrow I would learn to trust him with the next day. Maybe tomorrow I would learn to smile. Maybe tomorrow...maybe tomorrow.
    Maybe today.