Summary

99: The speaker’s injured friend is visited in the hospital by a fellow quadriplegic who tells her that it will take at least three years for her injury to feel normal.

100-101: Counting days may seem to promise change, but despite therapists’ claims, the speaker feels the same for years. She polls her friends to see how long they would give someone before a period of depression became a life of depression: they settle on seven years. Most Americans might give themselves two; Bush gave the country ten days after 9/11.

102-104: For years after the accident, the speaker takes care of her friend. Even transferring between wheelchair and bed is immensely painful. The friend always feels brittle and burning. The pain can drain her color away and put up a barrier to the world. The speaker feels pain when she pains her friend...