VICTORIA'S POV — SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
The notification came while she was doing her hand exercises.
Twenty minutes every night, the physiotherapist had said. Every single night without fail, the same sequence of movements....open, close, flex, rotate designed to maintain what function remained after the surgeries. Three surgeries in eight months. The first two in Sydney, the third with a specialist her mother had found in Melbourne who had looked at Victoria's hands with the careful neutrality of someone managing expectations and said the words significant improvement in a tone that meant this is as good as it gets.
She did the exercises anyway.
She did them because stopping felt like surrender, and Victoria Ashford had not survived everything that had happened to her by surrendering to anything.
Open. Close. Flex. Rotate.
