I climbed the stairs to my own bedroom again

Dear Delyara, After a spinal infection, I spent four months sleeping in a hospital bed downstairs because I could not safely manage the staircase. Physiotherapy began with standing, then stepping onto a low platform, then five steps with rails. My goal was not athletic. I wanted to sleep beside my wife again. Yesterday, the physiotherapist came to the house for the final assessment. We climbed slowly: right foot, rail, left foot, pause. Thirteen steps. On the landing, my wife was crying before I even reached the bedroom. The room looked almost exactly as I left it, except she had moved my books so I could reach them easily. I sat on the bed and felt exhausted enough to sleep immediately. That night, I woke at two and heard her breathing beside me. For months, illness had reorganized our marriage by floors. Yesterday, my body carried me back upstairs. I still need the rail, and some days I may use the downstairs bed. But the bedroom is a room I can reach again, not a place belonging to the version of me before I became ill.