I picked up my weighted bar, cane-length, my hands at either end. I worked through the motions for that, bar from chest to straight out in front of me, down to my thighs, curled up to chest, then back out to straight out in front of me. I felt the stabs of pain at specific points during each movement, with the curl-ups in particular making my arm twitch like I’d been jabbed with an electric prod, but I was used enough to this to know it wasn’t a tearing, unhealthy sort of pain.

Three weeks of this. Three weeks of the physio, at the health building once a week and at home another thirteen times a week. Things were improving in some areas, but in cases like that curl-up arm jitter, I wasn’t getting that much stronger. Sometimes injuries happened where the physio wasn’t so much about getting better or getting over the injury, and it was more about keeping it from getting worse.

If I lived that long, I would potentially be doing exercises like these until I was old. For the rest of my life, when I got sick, I’d potentially backslide, and lose that five percent of progress I’d made over months of work. When the weather was bad, I’d feel the pangs and the tightness in the scars.

I penned in notes. Usual pain, fifteen sets.

After the bar was what I’d penned in as ‘fucking dips’. The second most colorful name I’d used for the exercises.

I put my hands on the bedframe, my back to the bed, feet out in front with my weight resting on the backs of my heels. It made my leg hurt, and holding my weight up made everything, even the bullet wound, hurt.

Again, not about strength, but what my injured muscles allowed me to do.

I was in the middle of the toughest part of lowering my butt toward the floor when my bedroom door opened. My hand slipped, my arm jarred, and I used my flight to catch myself before I crashed to the floor.

Ashley was talking to me. I only heard the melancholy rock music, and the notes of her voice. She was angry or annoyed. The two sounded very similar.

I took my time standing, grabbing my towel and holding it to my front, because I was only wearing a sports bra and pyjama pants. I took my time removing my headphones.

Her hair was damp, and she wore a black silk bathrobe.

“…What?” I asked her.

“Towels.”

“What about the towels?”

“Are you using the black towels?”

“Yes,” I said. “You had the white, your sister had the black, and she’s gone now, so I started using the black.”

“It fundamentally stands to reason I’d default to black.”

“Does it?” I asked. I debated if I wanted to argue the point. “I’ll use white from now on, then.”