"What?" Cole said. "What is it?" "I need imaging to be sure," Portoris said carefully.
"But I can tell you right now that what she's been walking around on for 3 years is not something that was ever supposed to heal on its own. There's structural damage in here." He set his hand flat over her knee, gentle. The reason it gives out is that there's essentially nothing holding it the way it's supposed to be held.
Every time she puts full weight on it, wrong. It's not the pain that's the danger. It's that the whole thing can go. And every time it goes, it does a little more damage on the way down.
The room went very quiet. You're telling me, Cole said slowly, that every time her leg's given out, every one of those hundred times she keeps bragging about, "She's been making it worse," Portoris said. Yes. Emily lay on the table and stared at the ceiling and said nothing because there was nothing to say because a part of her had always known that had felt it getting worse month by month had chosen not to look directly at it because looking at it meant admitting she needed help.
She couldn't afford and admitting that meant the whole careful structure of her life came apart. How long? Cole said in his voice had gone rough again. If she'd kept going the way she was going, behind that counter, up and down those stairs, how long before it went for good? Portoris took his glasses off entirely.
Hard to say, he said. Months, maybe less. There'd have come a day it gave out and just didn't come back. And at that point, we're not talking about surgery to fix it. We're talking about surgery to keep her walking at all.
Different conversation. Much worse conversation.
He looked at Emily in his voice softened. You've been very tough. I want you to know I understand that. But I want you to hear me because I don't think anybody said it plain to you. You didn't need to be this tough.
Somebody should have caught this 2 years ago. And the fact that nobody did is not your fault and it is not a thing you should have had to carry by yourself.
Emily turned her face away because that the kindness of it, the nobody said it plain to you of it was worse than any pain the leg had ever given her. Cole watched her turn her face to the wall and something in him that had been building all afternoon finally reached its limit. He pushed off from the corner and stepped up beside the table and he put one hand on her shoulder and he waited until she looked back at him.