Doctors and nurses arranged themselves side-by-side, forming dual lines that flanked the doorway. The medical staff all stood with straight-backed pride, chins held high. The only among them who didn’t stand ramrod straight was Alexandra Harmon, hunched as she was over the knobbed head of her cane. She alone stood between the two rows of medical personnel, her feet positioned on the threshold of the currently-deactivated automatic door.

In front of her was the medical complex, the doctors, the beeping machines that kept vigil over the sleeping; behind her was the stale breeze of an idle day, the twittering of single bird, the distant roar of a lawn mower—the life that always waited just beyond the hospital windows. The lines of men and women and Alexandra herself held in expectant silence, a pregnant stillness. All eyes were glued to the metal portal at the far end of the lobby.

With a ding!, the doors slid smoothly open. And there, with two attendants at his back for support he did not need, Brett Harmon stepped smoothly out of the elevator carriage. Cheering erupted from the lines of doctors and nurses as he advanced with smooth, measured steps. His arms swung naturally as he strode. His posture was upright, proud, and at-ease. Only two things about him betrayed the image of perfect health: the first was that he wore a smaller version of his communication board around his neck; the second was his unmoving face, but it was fixed in a comfortable expression, like that of a man reclining on a couch after a hard day of work.

As he continued past the lined-up medical staff, some reached out to touch his arms; some clapped him on the back with warmth. An elderly nurse leaned in to exchange awed glances with her work confidant, a neurosurgeon from down the hall. The nurse was still unable to believe that this was the man whose bedpan she’d been changing mere weeks ago, the man who needed to be sponge-bathed and rotated to avoid bed sores.

As Brett walked past the old nurse, she touched at the rosary around her neck, her free hand making the sign of the cross. “A miracle,” she whispered, hardly able to believe the words herself, for such was meant to be the provenance of the divine alone.

“When Jesus cured the crippled man, did he, too, send a bill for 3.2 million dollars?” asked the neurosurgeon.

“Perhaps Jesus never understood the market value of his services,” answered a third voice from beside the pair. Neither had to turn to recognize the voice of Dr. Brandie, here to see off her first patient. The pair fell into an embarrassed silence as Brett finished his walk down the aisle, stopping before the doorway.

At the threshold, mother and son stared at each other for ten seconds. Alexandra Harmon’s eyes took it all in: here, somehow, was standing the boy who would “never walk again.” Her eyes watered as everything she saw clashed with everything she’d once known, limitations she’d come to believe permanent, immutable, and hopeless. The attending staff hushed to expectant silence, as though to listen in, but there were no words exchanged: Brett could not speak, and Alexandra could find no words to express the gratitude and amazement she felt. She saw his eyes water, too, and a tear trickled down his cheek, followed by a second and a third.

Alexandra sobbed as she buried her head onto his shoulder in a smothering embrace. As she hugged him and wept, her cane clattered to the floor, but she paid it no mind, leaning on her son for support. And after the hug had run its course—after Alexandra’s eyes seemed to cry all the tears they could muster—she pulled back, gratefully accepting the cane offered by Dr. Brandie herself.

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“Let’s go home, Brett,” she said, and she laughed in delight at the simple joy of watching Brett nod his head in assent. As they walked, side-by-side, towards the minivan parked in the handicap space, Brett kept the perfect pace alongside Alexandra’s shambling, cane-aided steps. When they reached the car, Brett walked to the driver’s side and courteously opened it for her, gesturing inside with arms that the doctors had said would waste away with disuse.

“Still ever the gentleman,” Alexandra said with a sniffle, sidling into the car.

The radio played softly as they drove. Alexandra tried to fill the air with idle chatter, to make the drive feel less weighty, as treating it as something special seemed to acknowledge all that Brett had lost. Here was no cripple at long last returning to the life he’d lost for years… she would pretend that here was merely a mother driving with her boy, and so she passed the time with domestic concerns that might fit the pair.

“I’ll make spaghetti for dinner tonight—still your favorite, yeah?”

She looked at Brett, and his eyes were dewy and wide, overwhelmed.

“Right, sorry—after so many years stuck in a bed, the highway must be… a lot to you. Maybe too much motion and speed. That’s okay, we’ll take things a day at a time. I’ll exit here, and we’ll take the quieter roads home.”

Brett nodded, and Alexandra steered her way over to the promised exit. In minutes, they were ambling their way down sleepy, countryside roads, Brett’s eyes glued to the scenes beyond his window.

“Sure beats the same old tired forest every day, doesn’t it?” she asked. “You must’ve been itching for a new view.”

His head twitched—perhaps his equivalent of being lost for words.

The landmarks they passed—the buildings, the billboards, the lake with the crooked shack on its shores—these were familiar to Alexandra, as she drove past them every day to visit Brett. But now, as she closed the final miles to home, new landmarks appeared, and these ones would have been familiar to Brett as well. At the plaza to the car’s right was the pizza parlor that Brett had once loved, the one with live accordion music every Wednesday night; just past the overpass was the movie theater, the one with the tacky Greek-temple theme; straight ahead was Rose Hill Park, the place where Brett had played so often as a child.

“It’s such a beautiful day, Brett… would you want to stop by Rose Hill? We can wander the park, you and I, and just take a minute to take it all in. There’s no rush to start dinner.”

Brett’s head bobbed.

Minutes later, the pair of them walked through ankle-high grass among the chirping of crickets and songbirds. The plants seemed to breathe as the wind swept through them. Alexandra’s cane pressed into damp soil, setting insects scurrying away. She took a deep, shuddering breath, feeling renewed by the earthy scents of life, and though Brett couldn’t speak, she hoped he felt it, too.

A soccer ball rolled to a stop near Alexandra’s feet. She and Brett turned to see a group of giggling children running towards them, their lead pointing towards Brett.

“Hey mister—can you kick that back our way?”

With a winding up, Brett’s foot struck soccer ball in a spirited kick. The ball flew through the air until the wind caught it, and the laughing children ran after it to intercept, falling back into their impromptu soccer match. It was a moment that struck a deep chord for Alexandra, as Brett himself used to play little league soccer at the fields on the west side of the hill.

“You ever expect to be kicking a soccer ball again?” She asked, feeling recharged by the glee of the running kids.

She turned to Brett, surprised to see that he was crying again. Sure, he’d been able to walk for these past few weeks, and the novelty of the new mobility might have worn off by now… but today was the first day he could live again, and Alexandra offered a comforting squeeze of the hand as he processed.

“There, there,” she said, guiding him to take a seat with her at the base of a gnarled oak tree, “just take some time to let it all settle. We’ve got all the time in the world.”