Catie’s eyes went to the wheelchair she kept at this apartment. “I don’t want to be in a chair,” she said quietly. “Not every amputee can or even wants to use prostheses, and I’m all for having as many mobility options as possible.” She never pushed prosthetic limbs on children or adults who didn’t want them.

“All I want is for everyone to have a choice—and my choice was to become a full-time user of prosthetic legs and then a competitive runner.” She squeezed her fingers into her palms, her shoulders tight and stomach churning. “I sweated blood to learn to walk again, run again, went through endless prosthetic fittings, put up with blisters, pressure wounds, and more to get to this point. The idea that I could lose it all… It makes me so angry.”

It shoved her back into the hospital bed in which she’d woken disoriented and in pain at age eleven. She’d had moxie, that kid, had made up her mind to run again even if she didn’t have legs. But she was no machine; there’d been dark times along the way, and in those dark times, she’d raged against the unfairness of it all.

A big warm hand closing over one of her tightly fisted ones. “It sucks,” Danny said. “But—and don’t punch me for what I’m about to say—it’s not your reality right now. If you start panicking and let it take over, you’ll have already lost everything.”

She glared at him. “Did you get that off a fortune cookie?”

“No.” He glared back. “Gabriel. He told me that when I had a panic attack soon after he got injured.” A shake of his head. “My big brother was the one hurt, and I was the one panicking. I’m definitely the baby of the family.”

Hearing what he didn’t say, she flipped her hand to weave her fingers through his. “He was your hero, and you saw him fall.” Just like she’d seen her own hero fall. “It’s hard to handle.”

“Yeah.”

They sat, hand in hand, for a long time, just thinking. She knew he was right, and most of the time she managed to keep the fear at bay. “My aim is to be more like Posey, more zen about life in general.”

“She’s got a good, what, ten years on you? Maybe she was exactly like you at your age. You should ask her.”

Perhaps she would, when her friend was feeling better. Right now Posey needed all her energy for herself. “Want to watch some TV?” She needed to zone out, stop thinking about her leg and the damage she might’ve done to it.

“Sure.” A dramatic sigh. “I’ll even let you pick the show.”