I still miss your grandfather. I think of his kindness every day.

Some things you never get used to being without."

Like a right leg.

Like moving effortlessly everywhere.

Like dance.

FINDING.

My

VOICE.

A nurse enters, carrying a sponge and a basin.

She draws the privacy curtain around my bed and starts undressing me as if my body belongs to a doll she owns.

My body is not hers.

It's mine.

I still have most of it.

"What are you doing?" I'm surprised I sound strong enough to make her step back.

"Sponge bath." The nurse's voice wavers.

"I can do it myself.

I've got arms."

I'm finding my voice though I've lost my leg.

EXPERIMENTAL PROJECT.

Dr. Murali is followed into the room by a strange man with flame-gold hair and bright blue eyes.

Is my pain medication making me hallucinate?

"We're lucky," Dr. Murali says, "to have, working with us, Mr. James, from America, who is collaborating with an Indian research team to create cost-effective modern prostheses.

He's agreed to help with your rehabilitation and with the fitting and making of your prosthesis . . ."

He suggests I'm lucky, too, to be part of the project, because my family doesn't have enough insurance.

I feel the American's eyes on me, looking as though I'm more than an amputee, a number, a ch.o.r.e.

He crosses over to me, his strides large, a broad smile on his lips.

"Veda? Did I say your name right?"

"Yes, Doctor."

"Call me Jim. Please." His left hand in his pocket, he holds his right hand out to me.

As though we're equals.

"Thank you, Doctor-I mean-just Jim," I say.

He chuckles. "Haven't done anything yet."

He has.

No older man ever invited me to shake hands.

No other adult ever asked me to call them by name.

He even said "please" although I'm a patient.

A smile tugs at face muscles I haven't used for a while.

My hand slips into his as though it remembers his touch and we've held hands often in a previous life.

"Think it over," he says. "Take as long as you need."

I let my fingers stay in his pale palm like brown roots sinking into chalky white soil. "I'll do it."

"Good," Dr. Murali says. "He'll have you walking fine in no time."

"I don't want to walk fine.

I want to dance."

The American-just-Jim-lets my hand go, but his gaze holds me.

His eyes, blue and bright, light a sparkle of hope inside me.

LESS UGLY.

I used to dream of handsome men whose touch made my skin tingle.

In the hospital's airless exercise room, I hurt from deep in my ribs to the surface of my skin when handsome Jim lifts me out of the wheelchair, helps me hold on to parallel bars

to do the simplest of movements-

bending and straightening, moving what's left of my legs.

"You're doing great, kiddo," he says.

I don't feel great.

My shameful croaks of pain grate on my ears, harsh as a frog's.

But when Jim says "great,"

rolling the r's around like melting sweets

in his American mouth,

when he calls my lopped-off leg a "residual limb,"

when he says I'm "differently abled,"

not handicapped, not disabled, when he's nearby, using his kinder words, he makes me feel a little less ugly.

VISITORS.

Chandra visits wearing a wobbly smile, with her wet-cheeked ma and her pa, who clutches her ma's shoulder for support.

I watch Chandra walk across the green tile floor, her strong, muscular cricket-captain legs gliding toward my bed.

She takes no notice of where slopes and cracks hinder a wheelchair ride.

Chandra says, "Can't wait for you to get on the cricket field."

I don't care about cricket.

All I want is to dance again.

She should know.

She tries, "The whole team's waiting for you to get back."

-A polite lie I never expected to hear from my best friend.

I hardly ever spoke to anyone on the team except Chandra.

She says, "I miss you in cla.s.s, too."

I say thanks.