For three days, Bryson stayed in his apartment. He stretched cautiously. He did some gentle exercising. He iced and heated various parts of his lower body. Mostly, he rested, even when that little voice in the back of his head said he was all fixed up and ready to go—that he had been since the day prior—and that holding out any longer was milking it. It was an evil voice and it always had been. It told him people had it worse than he did, and they still managed to live their lives and go about the things they had to do every day. It told him he was spoiled. It liked to make him question himself, the doctors, his parents, and friends, whenever the best path to recuperation was quiet stillness or anything that could be considered even slightly indulgent. Sometimes that little voice even got
