Chapter 32 #2
Austin flipped his clipboard up. “We’re framing out the second-floor dining and checking the stringers,” he said, nodding toward the interior. “Stairs are roughed in. They’re ugly as sin right now, but they’ll hold.”
Through the open maw of the barn, I could see the skeleton of the staircase—bare treads, open risers, no rail, angling up into the half-built second floor. Fresh snow clung to the work boots lined up by the entrance, melted into a sheen along the plywood where guys had tromped in and out.
“I’m going to take a look up top.” I nodded toward the staircase.
Austin hesitated, eyes flicking from my face to my leg and back. “You sure?” he said. “It’s slick as shit up there from the melt. I can bring the plans down if you just want—”
“What, you think I forgot how stairs work?” I hooked a brow, forcing my mouth into something like a smirk.
He huffed out a reluctant laugh, still not fully sold. “Sounds good, boss.”
“Let’s go.” I motioned forward. “You can show me your ugly-ass stringers.”
The truth was, I needed this more than I needed the oxygen in my lungs. Clara’s voice from the morning ran on a loop in my head—Look at you, boss man—and made me smile.
Austin thumped up the stairs first, boots leaving damp prints. I followed.
The first step was solid. My good foot landed neatly on the tread. The prosthetic came down with a hollow thunk on the next, the socket biting around my stump in a way I’d learned to ignore as we climbed.
Each tread had just the slightest film of moisture where snow had melted and refrozen. Not enough to see, just enough to feel in the faint slip of rubber.
An air compressor kicked on somewhere downstairs with a low, grinding roar. Nail guns popped in short bursts, sharp and staccato. It wasn’t the same sound as mortar fire, not exactly, but my nervous system had never mastered nuance.
A warning zap of phantom pain shot through the end of my thigh, nerves misfiring in the empty space. I gritted my teeth and kept going.
Not here. Not now. You’re fine. One step at a time.
Austin glanced back over his shoulder. “We’re reinforcing this corner,” he said, pointing, oblivious to the way my hands had tightened into fists. “Once the joists are—”
A two-by-four slipped from someone’s grip below and hit the concrete with a crack like a gunshot.
My body reacted before my brain could remind it we were inside a barn in Michigan and not halfway around the world.
My shoulders flinched. My good foot jerked. The prosthetic, mid-step, came down a few inches off where I’d aimed it—right onto a slick patch where the melting snow had turned the plywood dark.
The rubber sole slid.
For one hideous half second, I was suspended between steps, weight pitched wrong, good leg scrambling for something solid that wasn’t there.
Then gravity won.
My knee slammed into the tread, pain detonating up my thigh.
My hip met the sharp corner of wood a heartbeat later with a jolt that rattled my teeth.
My palm skidded out on the damp plywood when I tried to catch myself, skin scraping.
The socket dug into raw nerves as the prosthetic twisted at an angle it had no business being in.
Breath punched out of me. The world narrowed to the burn in my stump and the humiliating fact that I was suddenly on my ass on a half-built staircase, staring at my own boots.
“Shit,” Austin snapped. I heard the scramble of his boots coming back down. “Wes. Hold up, stay still—”
“I’m fine,” I tried to say, but it came out thin and wrecked.
I planted my good foot, grabbed a stair, and tried to haul myself up.
The prosthetic foot skidded again, shooting out on the slick plywood. The angle was all wrong. With no rail and nothing to brace against, there was nowhere solid for it to push. Every time I shifted, pain knifed through the stump, sharp and electric.
My good thigh started to shake from the effort of trying to do it all.
“Boss, don’t,” one of the guys called from below. Boots clattered as more of them hustled over. “Just hold on a second.”
Voices crowded the space, too close, echoing off unfinished walls.
“Careful, man—”
“Get his arm—”
“Watch the leg—”
“Fuck, is he okay?”
Austin dropped onto the tread beside me. “Hey,” he said, steady and calm, palms up like I was a spooked horse. “Hey, look at me.”
I was very aware of the fact that my chest was heaving like I’d just sprinted, that my hands were trembling where they gripped the wood.
“I’ve got it,” I ground out, trying again to lever myself up. My prosthetic slid with a useless little squeak and slammed back into the edge of the step. The jolt shot straight into the socket. My vision went white at the edges.
“Jesus, Wes,” Austin said quietly. “You don’t. Not like this.”
Hands closed under my arms, trying to help. Someone’s fingers brushed the metal of the prosthetic, trying to steady it.
“Don’t move, man,” another voice urged from somewhere above or below. “You’re gonna hurt yourself worse.”
Down on the floor, someone said the words that gutted me clean.
“He shouldn’t be up there.”
The words weren’t cruel or mocking. Just honest. The kind of thing a guy says when he’s worried about liability and the fact that his boss might crack his skull open on a jobsite.
It landed like a punch right under my ribs.
He shouldn’t be up there.
He doesn’t belong on his own site anymore.
Austin blew out a breath, then let his hand drop to the socket carefully. “Okay,” he said, voice firm. “I think the best plan is getting the leg off, yeah? Then we’ll get you down slowly.”
Humiliation scorched hot across my face. “I can—”
“Or,” Austin cut in, “you let me help you so you don’t eat another stair. You have to pick one.”
The crew had gone quiet. I could feel them hovering on the stairs, on the landing, radiating a mix of concern and not wanting to make it worse.
My fingers dug into the tread until my knuckles ached. Every worst-case scenario I’d ever played in my head about something like this happening—this exactly, this helpless, stupid scramble in front of my own crew—lined up with military precision.
I forced my hand away from my sides and reached for the leg.
Unlocking the prosthetic up here, with an audience, was ten times harder than doing it in my bedroom. My fingers fumbled. The sweat that had broken out across my neck made my grip clumsy.
The socket finally loosened. I eased the leg off, every inch sending fire through the raw skin at the end of my thigh. I had to clamp my jaw shut so I didn’t make a sound.
“Got it,” one of the guys said too brightly from below when Austin passed the prosthetic down. There was an awkward shuffle as he caught it. “I’ll, uh . . . put this somewhere safe.”
Like it was a posthole digger or a damn drill.
I stared at the spot where the leg had been, at my jeans wrinkling around nothing. The air on my stump felt cold and exposed, even through the denim.
Austin slung my arm over his shoulders in one practiced movement. “All right, man,” he said. “Nice and easy.”
Someone braced at my other side, ready to catch.
We started the descent.
With no prosthetic to balance me, every step was a lopsided, graceless negotiation—good foot down, pause, adjust. My thigh burned. My hip throbbed where it had hit. My pride lay in pieces on the plywood.
“Should we call somebody?” a voice floated up from below. “Like—clinic? Or—”
“We’re not calling anyone,” I bit out. “I’m fine.”
Nobody argued, which somehow made it worse.
By the time we reached ground level, my shirt was sticking to my back with sweat. They eased me onto a stack of plywood sheets near the open barn doors.
Austin pressed a water bottle into my hand. “Here,” he said. “You’re white as a sheet.”
I unscrewed the cap with shaking fingers and took a swallow I barely tasted. Around us, hammers had started up again in a half-hearted way, the rhythm wrong, the easy banter from earlier gone.
“Next time we keep the boss on ground level, yeah?” one of the guys said, trying to lighten it.
A few soft chuckles, nobody meeting my eyes for more than a second. No one was laughing at me. Everyone was being decent, kind even.
But the comment and pitying glances dug in deeper than if they’d pointed and snickered.
Austin crouched eye level in front of me, forearms braced on his knees. “You hurt anywhere that needs more than ice and ibuprofen?” he asked. “Be honest.”
My stump pulsed in time with my heartbeat. My hip would blossom into a spectacular bruise by tonight. My good leg was still vibrating from the effort of hauling more than its share.
My dignity felt like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it.
“I’m fine,” I said again, the words ragged.
He studied my face for a long beat and didn’t call me on the lie. “I’ll grab your leg,” he said instead. “We’ll get you settled in your truck. You can sit a minute and see if you want me to drive you to urgent care.”
“I said I’m fine.” The snap in my voice made a couple of guys glance over.
Austin’s jaw flexed. “You’re getting in the truck either way,” he said quietly. “We’re done doing stair gymnastics for the day.”
He pushed to his feet and went to retrieve the prosthetic, leaving me sitting on a stack of lumber like another piece of misplaced material.
I stared at my hands wrapped around the water bottle, at the faint tremor in them I couldn’t blame on the cold. The sounds of the job—the saws, the muffled music from a radio in the corner, the shuffle of boots—blurred together.
This site was supposed to be proof that I was still the man I’d been. Instead, it had done the one thing I’d been dreading most.
It had exposed me.
I wasn’t a leader, I was a hazard.