Learning to Dance

through the hospital lobby, standing in the elevator, looking
at the door she’d turned her back on so long ago. She felt as
if someone else was controlling her body, like she was just
a spectator in some unbidden act of puppetry. She wanted to
turn and run again.
What am I doing here? I made my choice two years ago.
Didn’t I?
Some invisible string made her knock.
“Come in.”
It was his voice, the same one, gruff, drawling, familiar.
A stabbing bit of hope penetrated her panicked haze. She
pushed open the door.
He was sitting at a desk, looking through papers, his hair
thick and silver, his moustache in place above his lip. He
wore a simple G.L.E.E. t-shirt and sweats, and his feet were
bare. She stood in the doorway, taking him in, trying to
force her brain to catch up with the rest of her. He hadn’t
looked up yet. But surely he could hear her heart beating.
“Up?”
He went very still. Slowly he raised his eyes to where
she stood, and blinked.
“Taz.”
He stood then, and she could see that he’d been building
muscle mass again, that his mobility was infinitely better
than it had been when she’d left. There was just the
slightest limp in his gait as he came around the desk and
stood several feet away from her, staring at her the way she
was staring at him.
She didn’t know what to say to him, even though she
had been the one to leave, and now the one to return. It
wasn’t fair, none of it was fair, but she waited for him to
speak first.
“I wondered if you’d come,” he said finally. “When I
saw the mission roster.”