“I’m hiding it.

Because I need to figure out who in this household actually wants to see me back on my feet — and who is counting on me never getting up.”

I stood in that locked room and understood that I had not been hired to look after a patient.

I had walked into the middle of a family where someone was frightened of a man’s recovery, and I was now the only outsider who knew the recovery was real.

I should say plainly what that locked door meant to me, standing on my side of it, because I have since heard people tell this part back to me as though it were the beginning of a love story, and it was nothing of the kind.