After His Heart Transplant My Husband Forgot His Daughter Chapter 14
Half a year later, I had my third surgery.
With the new support brace holding my damaged hand in place, I was finally able to dress myself, feed myself, and hold a stylus.
The rehab specialist asked what I wanted to draw first.
I looked at Mom.
“Mom, don’t move.”
The lines were wobbly. The nose and mouth weren’t symmetrical. But Mom studied the portrait for a long time before carefully setting it as her phone’s wallpaper.
Three years later, I was eleven.
The doctor said my hand had recovered about sixty percent of its function. I could do most things, but I could never take off the brace, and I would never play the piano the way I used to.
I never touched sheet music again.
Instead, I poured all my time into digital art. If the stylus wouldn’t obey my fingers, I adjusted its sensitivity. What my hand couldn’t do, I taught the software to do for me.
That year, my piece took first place in the National Youth Digital Art Competition.
It was called Restored Landscape.
In the painting, the mountains weren’t whole. A great crack ran through them, but new trees grew from the fissure, and a river curved around the broken place, flowing toward a different sea.
The day the award certificate arrived, a bouquet of flowers was left at our door.
The card had only one name: Grady.
The card had only one name: Grady.
I didn’t even open the box. I threw it in the trash, flowers and all.
Outside the window, across the street from the school, a familiar figure stood in the same old spot.
“Mom, is he still there?”
Mom followed my gaze.
“Yes.”
I pulled the curtains closed and shrugged.
“Then let him stay. He’s not bothering anyone.”