It cannot be rushed or willed.

It happens the way the leg healed, a little at a time, through repetition — a thousand ordinary evenings where nothing bad happens, each one a small piece of evidence submitted to a frightened nervous system — until one day you notice the footstep in the next room and your heart does not jump, and you realize that somewhere along the way, without your marking the moment, your body finally came to believe what your mind had known for years: that it was over, that you had made it out, that no one was coming.

The trial, when it came, was not the long ordeal I had feared.

There was not much to argue about.