Chapter 51

The doctors said three months. I gave myself five weeks.

They said I wasn’t to stand for ten days. I stood on the fourth, holding on to the iron rail at the foot of the bed with both hands, with Nana Odette on one side of me scolding and a young nurse on the other side of me crying, and I stood there until the room stopped turning, and then I sat down and was sick into a basin, and the next day I did it again.

They said I wasn’t to walk for a fortnight. I walked the length of the hospital corridor on the eighth day, and back, and on the ninth day I walked it twice. My left leg dragged. My shoulder burned whenever I lifted my arm above my chest, a deep slow ache like a coal that had gone to ash but kept its heat. The wound in my side pulled with every breath. My wolf healed it all, slowly, from the inside, but she was tired—so tired that some days she only lay curled at the bottom of me and didn’t speak at all—and the rumac had left something behind in the healing that sh