Chapter 18 - The Anatomy Lab
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Grace came home for the winter holidays carrying a heavy textbook and a quiet sense of exhaustion.
Occupational therapy required a rigorous understanding of the human body. She spent hours at the kitchen table memorizing bones, muscles, and nerve pathways.
One evening, I sat across from her with a cup of tea, watching her trace the radial nerve on a diagram.
"It’s complicated," I observed.
"It is," Grace agreed, not looking up. "But it makes sense. Everything connects. If there’s damage here, the weakness shows up all the way down in the fingers."
She flexed her own hand, watching the tendons shift beneath her skin.
"Our professor told us today that trauma lives in the fascia," Grace said softly. "The body remembers where it was hurt, even if the brain tries to forget."
"Do you believe that?" I asked.
"I know it," she said.
She looked at her hands. They were strong. They were hers.
"When I was little," Grace said, "I used to freeze whenever Aunt Sabrina walked into the room. Before she even held up the camera. My shoulders would lock. My breathing would get shallow. My body knew what was coming before I did."
I set my teacup down. The memory of my own blindness during those years still carried a sharp, metallic guilt.
"I am sorry I didn't see you freezing," I told her.
"You see it now," Grace replied.
"Yes."
"That’s why I want to be an OT," she explained, tapping the textbook. "I want to help kids understand how their bodies work. I want to teach them that they own their muscles, their movements, and their space. If a child’s body is injured, or if it’s been controlled by someone else, they need to learn how to claim it back."
"You claimed yours back," I said.
May you like
"I did," Grace said, closing the heavy book. "And I’m going to make sure they know they can, too."
She went upstairs to sleep. I stayed at the table, looking at the closed cover of her anatomy book, grateful for the science of healing.
