1

Tommy's been a Granger instead of a Katz or a Cattaneo for almost seven months, and he's still not tired of signing his new legal name on documents, or seeing it printed in his email signature. He especially likes the sight of it in the elegant script of Leo and Dana's wedding save-the-date cards.

But even the charm of his new name, and the new life it represents, can't make up for the drudgery of yet another doctor's appointment.

His pleasant mood lasted through the sign-in sheet, and then sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with Lawson in the waiting room while they flipped through a magazine meant for children and failed spectacularly to find all the ways the two pictures were different. Lawson beat him by three finds, because of course he did; it didn't matter that Tommy used to be a cop, no one's as observant and detail-driven as his husband.

But then the nurse called him back, and his laughter died in his throat. Lawson patted his thigh and said, "You'll do great, babe." So he scrounged up a smile for him and tried to look positive about the whole thing. At least until he was out of sight.

Now, he leans heavily on his cane with one hand while he unlaces his shoes with the other. He's dressed the way the informational email told him to: something comfortable that gave him a full range of motion. Sweats, a t-shirt, a zip-up hoodie. His shoes are Nikes, new, running shoes, with thin, flat laces he ties into double knots to keep them from unraveling as he walks. They're good shoes…for someone who can run. For someone without a cane, and who isn't huffing, and straining, and nearly toppling over just from trying to keep his balance while he painstakingly picks the double knots loose one-handed.

For his birthday in March, his in-laws gifted him a pair of those Sketcher's sneakers you can step into, hands-free, no laces. "Life-saversssss," Bill said, smiling, not even frustrated with stumbling over the S. The shoes are black, with white soles, unassuming, and, while not the sort of thing he wore while playing a mob boss, at least not hideous. Exactly. Lisa pulled them out of the tissue paper and set them on the ground in front of him. "You don't even have to bend over!" she said brightly. "Easy peasy." She pointed to her husband. "Bill loves them."

A glance proved that Bill wore a pair of solid brown ones, more like boat shoes.

Hot, helpless shame prickled at the backs of Tommy's eyes. Because he was turning thirty-eight, and he couldn't manage a normal pair of sneakers. Because he needed step-in shoes like his stroke patient father-in-law.

The moment the thought formed, he hated himself for letting it cross his mind. His in-laws meant well, and he loved them to bits, and there was nothing shameful or embarrassing about Bill's situation.

"Thank you," he said, around the lump in his throat. He toed off his own shoes with minimal trouble, and stepped into the new ones. When he looked across the room, Lawson met his gaze, and his smile was small, and sad, and knowing. It's okay. I'm sorry.

He should have worn those shoes today, but his pride got in the way, and now his legs tremble, and he sways precariously to the side. He lets go of the knot and slaps his hand out against the wall to keep from falling. He's breathing hard, he realizes. Panting. There's sweat at his hairline and beading along the small of his back. He almost fell; he can't breathe, and all because he tried to take his fucking shoes off.

"Sir," the nurse asks, her concern impersonal, professional. "Would you like me to–"

"No," he snaps, and then grits his teeth, and takes a breath. "No, thank you. I've got it."

He slides his grip farther down the shaft of the cane, ‘til he's gripping the space just above the four-footed base of it, and tries again. This time, he gets both knots unstuck, and is able to straighten – shakily – and then toe the sneakers all the way off.

The nurse stands waiting for him, nothing amiss, ready with her clipboard. "Okay, if you'll turn this way for me, heels together, back against the wall, eyes forward."

He complies, shuffling and ungainly, when once he would have snapped right into position. He waits, skin prickling, floor cold through his socks, as she slides down the little plastic reader until it rests on the top of his head.

"Okay," she says, and he doesn't ask what it said. He knows what it said: his license says five-ten, but that's with special insoles. He's five-eight, when he doesn't slouch. Shorter, he thinks, since the shooting, now that his spine doesn't want to straighten all the way.

Damn it.

Next, he gets on the scale, and he's put on five pounds in the past two months. His blood pressure, when she takes it, is a little high. White coat syndrome, he thinks, which he didn't used to have, before the shooting.

Finally, he's seated in an exam room, waiting.

And waiting.

And waiting.

He checks his phone again and again, impulsively, gnawing his lip as he thinks about Lawson being later and later to work. He tried, earlier, to suggest he take an Uber to his appointment, but Lawson made a face like come on, man, so he slid into the passenger seat of Lawson's new car – a pre-owned Subaru with enough room for Bill's chair in the back – and has felt guilty ever since because Lawson was supposed to work a double today, and he had to get someone to cover his first shift.

Tommy hasn't driven since the shooting. He's tried to, more than once, and each time, he's crawled down the driveway, his right foot shaking so badly that he put the car in park before he hit the street, too afraid that his body would fail him and that he would crash, or, worse, hurt someone else.

The first time was a…bleak moment. When he parked back at the garage door, and stepped out of the car, his first instinct was to stomp back into the house. Instead, he nearly fell, barely caught himself with his cane, and was red-eyed and fuming by the time he shuffled into the kitchen. Lawson whirled toward him, concern writ large on his face. "Hey, what–"

Tommy threw up a hand and made his laborious way upstairs.

After that, he didn't expect success, and wasn't disappointed.

Lawson still drives him where he needs to go, or Lisa, if their schedules line up.

He still feels absolutely helpless because of it.

It's not something they've talked about, but he knows they'll need to, soon. A little voice in the back of his head points out, unhelpfully, that helplessness is a mental and emotional state, and not a physical ailment. He'll probably have to go see a whole different sort of doctor to tackle it, and isn't that just wonderful?

Despite a long wait, the click and inward glide of the door still startles him. He swears he can feel his blood pressure elevate, a tinny whining starting up in his ears. Calm down, idiot, he chastises himself, and attempts to push a pleasant smile across his face.

When he was first home from the hospital last fall, Noah urged him to come to New York and see a variety of specialists – just as he'd suggested for Lawson's father, before the shooting. And Tommy considered it, sure…but some reticence had kept him from so much as researching anyone. Instead, he worked his way through a series of specialists and physical therapists in Eastman and its surrounding satellite hospitals.

His new doctor – carefully selected thanks to her stellar reviews working with nerve damage patients – enters the room on a not-unpleasant cloud of hand sanitizer scent, still briskly rubbing her palms together, his chart tucked under her arm. She's tiny, and her scrubs are printed with little cartoon cats under her white coat, and her smile is unexpectedly bright and broad.

"Good morning!"

Tommy feels his face start to fall, and then corrects it. He thinks of doctors as stern and professional, but that's a ridiculous stereotype. Sternness and professionalism aren't synonymous.

"Morning." He can't do bright, but he can do polite.

She heels the door shut and goes over to the counter to set his chart down. She gives it only the most cursory of glances and then turns to give him her undivided attention. Despite the friendly smile, there's an intensity to her dark-brown gaze that he finds reassuring.

He lets out a slow breath.

"I'm Dr. Wilson," she says, "but, please, call me Rachel." Hands now apparently dry, she leans back against the counter, crosses one foot over the other, and stuffs her hands in her coat pockets. Casul. Easy. "I read up on your chart and cross-referenced with your previous PT last night, so I'm familiar with the details of your shooting" – she doesn't skip over the word or avert her gaze – "and recovery after the fact. It sounds like you're doing really well in a medical sense. Clean scans, a perfect resection. But." Her smile twitches sideways into rueful territory. "I take it if you're here to see me, then you don't feel like things are going all that well, right? So why don't you tell me what you've been experiencing, and we'll see if we can make things better."

Tommy blinks. His other doctors have been helpful and encouraging, but it's never felt like this…like a…collaboration. "Um," he says, intelligently, and her smile is smaller this time, and kind.

She nabs the stool under the counter and settles on it, which puts her lower than him, and somehow less intimidating; when did he decide she was intimidating? A question he can't begin to parse at the moment.

"That's okay," Dr. Wilson says. "Nerve damage like yours is tricky and can result in a lot of inexact symptoms. We can break it down piece by piece."

His face warms unpleasantly, and he smooths his palms down the thighs of his sweatpants before he can catch himself.

"You're still using your cane?"

"Yes." He glances toward it, fleetingly, where he left it over against the wall, out of reach from the table where he now sits. A small, probably stupid act of rebellion, and a pathetic victory, to cross the room without it; he's glad no one saw him floundering up onto the table, his upper body strength halved post-surgery. He's started lifting weights again, but nothing like he used to, muscles weak betrayers.

"Would you say you use it rarely, occasionally, or frequently?"

Last week, he insisted on going downstairs to fetch snacks when Lawson set his laptop up on the desk so they could watch a movie. Lawson tried to go, his face softly worried in a way that left Tommy hyperaware of his own shortcomings. Tommy snapped at him, more harshly than intended, and made the trip himself, sans cane. He tripped on his way back up, and loitered in the middle of the stairs, clutching the banister and sweating, not sure if he could make it all the way back up. The idea of shouting for help, of waking his in-laws, and panicking Lawson, made him want to scream. His eyes pricked with tears, and he hauled himself back up, arms shaking, bag of Doritos clenched in his teeth so he could use both hands on the rail.

He swallows. "All the time. I have to use it all the time, or I…"

Dr. Wilson nods. "Any falls?"

"Not serious ones."

His last doctor went grave when he mentioned falling. All falls are serious.

But Dr. Wilson only nods, and says, "Is it more of a strength issue? Or a balance issue? For instance: do your legs feel weak? Or are they slow to respond when you try to take a step?"

Weak, he starts to say, immediately, because he is weak. What else could it mean when he still can't drive? When it's been seven months and he still struggles to make it all the way through the grocery store? When Lawson sometimes (a lot of the time) helps him shower. When he sweat through the underarms of his t-shirt twenty minutes ago trying to untie his shoes.

But Dr. Wilson studies him, undemanding, wanting to help, and so he swallows down the word and really thinks about it. The time he fell out of the shower, he managed to actually shower, but the stall has a tall lip on it. He made to step over it, an automatic motion, and then his foot dragged, and caught, and he went down hard on his hands and knees on the bath mat.

In the grocery store, he had his cane hooked over his arm, bent down to snag a box of cereal off the bottom shelf, and then couldn't get back up. But not because his legs quaked and wouldn't support him; because he couldn't feel his legs, his whole lower half suddenly numb. Not only had Lawson needed to help him up, but the cane wasn't enough after that; Lawson had to walk with a strong arm secured around his waist, half-dragging him toward the exit.

"Slow to respond," he says, and doesn't know if that's better or worse, harder or easier to say. "Sometimes everything goes numb, and sometimes my legs just…won't move."

She nods, as though she expected as much. "Your nerves are still healing."

"But it's been seven months," he bursts out.

Again, she nods. "The nervous system is a fragile, remarkable, incredibly strong network inside the body. Sometimes, nerve damage is permanent, but because you can stand, and walk, and because you have moments of nearly normal functioning, I'd say that's not the case with you. Your body is healing. You can't put a timetable on that. One of my patients had Bell's Palsy, and it took her a year to regain full facial function." She smiles, encouraging, though his stomach cramps on the idea of a year, or more.

"The important thing," she continues, "is not to rush yourself. Give your body the chance to recover at its own pace without artificial timelines. And the most important thing, is to have a support network, which it seems like you do." She motions to his hand – to his ring.

"Oh, um, yeah. My husband, and his family. Our best friends."

She smiles again. He's never met a doctor who smiled so much. "Good. I'll give you some pamphlets to share with them when you leave. But now." She rubs her hands together and stands. "Let's see what you can do."

~*~

He can't do more than usual, and though he expects as much, it still stings: the way he takes two normal steps, and then his toe drags on the third, and he lurches forward. Dr. Wilson catches him, one hand pressed to his stomach, and one to his back, and she's shockingly strong for such a small person. Lawson would say the same of Tommy, he thinks, with a wry frown.

"That's okay, don't get discouraged," she tells him, and when he rights himself, she keeps her hands where they are. "I want to try some new exercises to work on your balance."

One of his "challenges" – she doesn't say "problems," and he feels coddled, even as he appreciates the distinction – is that he's trying to walk the way he always has, which is to say, fast. He always outwalked his friends, even Lawson, despite Lawson's miles-long legs. A memory surfaces, one of the good ones, Lawson huffing and hitching his backpack up his shoulder and calling, "Slow down, dickface!" This was of course in their early teen years before Lawson confessed to being crazy about both his dick and his face.

They work on taking slower steps, and not committing fully to them – not throwing his upper body forward with abandon – until he can assess how his legs and feet will respond. "Right now, walking can't be an unconscious activity like it was before," she says.

After twenty minutes, he manages to walk the length of the room and back three times without his cane, and without stumbling.

"See?" Dr. Wilson says, excited.

Tommy sighs. "I look seventy."

She cocks a brow. "Do you want to look cool, or do you want to walk?"

That's not really a debate, is it?

They wrap up the appointment with a lot of encouragement from Dr. Wilson, and with a stack of pamphlets that turn out to be more like booklets, dense as they are, bound along the left edges. Most are about his continuing physical therapy, the nervous system, exercise regimens, resources, even a diet plan. The last, the one he hastily shoves back to the bottom of the stack and which he plans on hiding as soon as he's home, somewhere Lawson won't look, is titled Recovery and Your Mental Health: How to Adjust to Your New Normal.

Nope. Not going there.

Dr. Wilson says, "That last one might be helpful for your husband as well." Encouraging. Dare he say eager. "Recovery affects more than just the patient, and sometimes it can be difficult to talk about the mental aspects of it with a partner. Tools like this can facilitate conversation."

"Do you moonlight as a psychiatrist?" he quips.

"You'd be surprised how much of my job involves the brain versus the body."

Armed with the makings of a physical therapy library clenched in one reluctant fist, he takes his cane, thanks her, and agrees to schedule his next appointment with Wynonna in reception.

Even with the cane, he walks in the new way, torso held erect, not leaning forward or back, and moves his feet slowly – much slower than he wants to. Having both hands occupied is a dangerous move, nothing free to catch himself with if he falls. But he makes it the little window in the hallway, pays, makes his next appointment, and he's not sweating and shaking for once.

He hates the way he must look moving this way, but he doesn't hate the whole not-falling-on-his-face thing.

When he reenters the waiting room, he sees that Lawson's made a friend. He's right where Tommy left him, but now there's a little boy in the chair Tommy sat in before, no older than five, maybe, sneakered feet swinging off the edge of the chair as he talks animatedly. He's gesturing with his hands, and his hair is bouncing on his forehead as he bobs his head, and Lawson has angled his body toward him and his whole face radiates amusement in a way so sweet and gentle that Tommy's breath catches in his throat.

When asked, Lawson claims to dislike children. "I don't do kids, man." Followed by a quick, decisive shake of his head. Dana teases that it's because he's an overgrown kid himself, which devolves into the sort of back-and-forth banter that leaves Leo catching Tommy's gaze in commiseration…only for Leo's face to fall entirely when Lawson turns his snark on Tommy, and Tommy hurls it right back. It's a miracle they haven't been kicked out of a restaurant yet.

Tommy knows Lawson genuinely doesn't care for teenagers. He's dealt with too many in every coffeeshop, boutique, bookstore, and restaurant he's ever worked in. But Tommy's never seen him be anything but patient and indulgent with children. The way he's being now.

"…and then it exploded!" Tommy hears the boy say as he draws near.

"It did?" Lawson affects surprise. "No way! You're telling me the Death Star explodes?"

"Yeah!" The boy throws up both hands in demonstration, stubby fingers spread. "It was awesome."

"Hayden," a woman sitting a few seats over calls. "Please don't be a bother."

Lawson shoots her the sort of smile Tommy's seen charm little old ladies and little girls, and everyone in between. He offers a wave. "It's fine." To the boy, he says, "What about Lando and the crew in the Falcon? Did they make it out before everything went…" He spreads both hands apart in a gesture eloquent of boom.

"Yeah, they did."

Tommy gets closer, and Lawson's head whips around. Before he smiles, Tommy catches the flicker of worry in his gaze, and is damn tired of being the one to put it there. "Hey, babe, how'd it go?" The smile stays fixed, but his gaze travels down to Tommy's feet as he takes the last few steps.

Damn it. He definitely looks like a weirdo walking this way.

"Fine."

The smile slips. A notch forms between Lawson's brows.

"How are things out here?" Tommy says, quickly, and tips his head toward the kid.

Lawson's little frown says they'll be having A Discussion in the car, but he lets it go for now. "Good. My new friend Hayden's been telling me all about The Return of the Jedi." He winks: play along.

"Aw, man," Tommy says, without being able to muster Lawson's pretend, for-the-kid's-benefit enthusiasm. "I always wanted to see that."

The kid turns to him. "Hi, I'm Hayden."

Unlike Lawson, Tommy really doesn't like kids. He dealt with plenty of teenagers as a beat cop, and his baby face meant he was always the responding officer who got to play the whole hey, c'mon guys, don't make my life harder, my sergeant's breathing down my neck already card. Throw in some relevant movie references and lingo and he could usually talk them down from their petty vandalism and skateboarding misadventures without a lot of fuss. But children, with their eyes taking up half their faces, and their blunt questions, and their guileless questions always trip him up. He's thirty-eight, an ex-undercover detective with a literal body count, who played a mob boss for five years, and one little boy in a waiting room makes him want to bolt.

"Yeah. Hi," he says, stiffly. "I'm Tommy."

"I have a friend at school named Tommy." The boy swings his legs some more, so hard Tommy's afraid he might swing himself right off the chair.

"Neat."

"Why do you have a cane?"

See? Blunt.

"I got shot."

Hayden's eyes get huge. "Whoa? Really? That's awesome."

"Hayden." The mother swoops in and takes him by the arm. "Come over here and work on your coloring book." She lifts her head, expression pinched as she glances between Lawson and Tommy. "I'm so sorry. Hayden, come on."

"It's okay–" Lawson starts, but the mom is hauling the boy up and leading him across the room. "Bye, Hayden."

"Bye, Lawson!" Hayden calls cheerfully.

Lawson stands, and both knees go crack. "Yeesh," he hisses, and chuckles under his breath. But he doesn't stumble, or falter, or lose his balance. He gripes about his "old man knees" every time that pop like gunshots, but he doesn't need a cane. He can walk for hours without missing a beat.

Tommy isn't jealous of the fact, but sometimes he watches Lawson jog across the yard toward the mailbox, or effortlessly take the stairs two at a time, and he marvels at the wonder that is the human body. The way it can do so much…until it can't.

"Ready?"

"Yeah."

"Here, I can take those." Lawson reaches for Tommy's handful of booklets.

Time slows. Tommy envisions the Recovery and Your Mental Health booklet, its benign, blue cover and silhouette of a human head. Thinks about Lawson seeing it; thinks about Lawson looking from it, to him, and seeing yet another way that Tommy is broken. Lesser. So different from the boy, and then the man, that he fell in love with.

Now sweat prickles across his skin. Panic lurches in his gut. "No," he says, too fast, and tucks the materials into his stomach; cups them there in the curve of his arm, protective.

Hurt flashes across Lawson's face, there and then smoothed.

"No," he repeats, softer, "that's okay. I've got ‘em."

"Okay." Lawson nods. "That's cool."

Tommy waits for the inevitable, familiar, welcome weight of Lawson's hand at the small of his back as they head for the door…but it doesn't come.