The safe was twelve feet away.

Twelve feet is nothing, on two working legs.

On the floor, with a femur rebuilt that morning and no medication and a body going into shock from cold and pain, twelve feet was a mountain range.

But I have thought since about what my grandmother would have said, and I know exactly what it was, because she said it to me a hundred times: the distance does not matter.

Only whether you start.

So I pressed my forearms flat against the freezing concrete, and I set my one good leg, and I pulled myself forward — a few inches, and then I had to stop, and breathe, and wait for the world to stop swimming, and then a few inches more.