For the first time, the enormous biker looked almost embarrassed.
“Did you walk out?”
Emma leaned her weight onto the scarred blue steel.
Then she smiled.
“Watch me.”
She descended the stairs on the other side.
After the fitting, Hammer tried to leave before the hospital staff could photograph the crutches for their adaptive-mobility records.
Emma blocked the doorway with one crutch.
Hammer looked at the polished metal between them.
“That’s a weapon now?”
“Depends. Why were you watching the crutches instead of me?”
His eyes dropped toward the floor.
May you like
The answer came slowly.
For fourteen months, every time Hammer closed his eyes, he saw the delivery van sliding toward Emma’s Subaru.
He heard the Road King’s frame grinding beneath the vehicles.
He saw Emma trapped behind broken glass while his injured hand failed to maintain pressure against her leg.
Building the crutches had finally given those sounds somewhere else to go.
“If they failed,” he said, “then I took something from you twice.”
Emma’s expression softened.
Her voice did not.
“You did not take my leg.”
“Bike pushed the van.”
“The bike kept that van out of my chest.”
“Could’ve done better.”
“You had three seconds.”
“Long time.”
“No, Hammer. It isn’t.”
He finally looked directly at her.
Emma tapped the scarred midnight-blue brace.
“This metal did not fail me. Neither did you.”
Nobody said anything.
Hammer did not cry.
He simply reached down for the wooden case, realized it was empty, and closed the lid using both hands.
Somehow, the empty case looked heavier than it had when the crutches were inside.
Before he left, Hammer gave Emma the two sections of her original broken aluminum crutch.
Dr. Patel had removed the foam handgrip and cut the tube open lengthwise.
The concealed fracture traveled nearly all the way around the shaft.
A narrow shard had been less than a quarter inch from breaking completely through.
Mother touched it.
Her face went pale.
“You saw this under the grip?”
“Heard it first,” Hammer answered.
Mother stared at the same man she had called a monster in front of an entire hospital lobby.
“I owe you an apology.”
Hammer shook his head.
“You owed her protection.”
“I thought I was protecting her from you.”
“Looked like you had reason.”
That was probably as close as Hammer would ever come to saying he forgave her.
Mother hugged him anyway.
Hammer stood completely rigid with his arms hanging at his sides, looking like a man being searched by the police.
Boone laughed until Hammer threatened to leave him behind at the hospital.
It was an ordinary joke.
And somehow, that made it more meaningful than any speech.
CHAPTER 6 - WHAT THE ROAD KING LEFT BEHIND
Emma began visiting the Iron Lanterns’ garage every other Saturday.
At first, the visits were only for adjustments.
The cuffs needed softer padding.
One rubber tip wore down more quickly than the other.
Hammer changed the left grip angle by two degrees after noticing Emma’s shoulder rising during longer walks.
Eventually, she kept going because the garage treated her prosthesis as a piece of equipment rather than a tragedy.
Nobody whispered when she removed it.
Nobody congratulated her for being brave simply because she crossed a room.
A biker named Sparks Ortega noticed a loose bolt in the prosthetic knee cover and simply asked whether she wanted him to tighten it.
Boone always kept a folding chair beside the workbench without making a performance out of placing it there.
Hammer never asked Emma about Michael.
Emma never asked Boone about Eli until Boone himself was ready.
The ruined Road King remained beneath the tarp for another five months.
Then, on a November afternoon, Hammer finally uncovered it.
Most of the motorcycle was already gone.