Wheels

1

-August 11-
One of my favorite things to do when I'm sick is watch those teen comedies from the 80s- I'm talking Sixteen Candles, Can't Buy Me Love, Heathers, The Breakfast Club. If it has Andrew McCarthy or Molly Ringwald in it (or both like the cinema classic Pretty in Pink), you bet your ass I'm watching it.

And somehow, two weeks before my senior year began, I was taken to the hospital because I was sick.

Appendicitis, the doctors said. It'll require a surgery, they told me.

That's how I ended up here, in the pediatrics ward of St. Mary's with a slit in my stomach and a copy of Footloose playing on the laptop at the foot of the bed. Kevin Bacon was teaching Chris Penn how to dance, and I smiled lazily. I would need a day or two to recover from the surgery, according to the doctor, and then when I was discharged I really needed to take it easy. My stomach hurt- obviously- but it was masked by this layer of medicine that sort of made the pain numbing. The pain wasn't gone- it was still there, but it definitely wasn't as bad as it could be.

My mother had been with me the entire time since we'd stepped foot in the emergency room the night before. She sat in the little armchair next to my bed, watching the movie with me but yawning every four seconds. It was annoying. She needed to go home and go to sleep. With all my might, I lifted my right foot and pressed the space bar on the computer, pausing the movie. "Mom," I began, looking over at her slowly. "Mom, you should go home. I'm fine right now. Go home, go to sleep."

Mom looked at me like I was a crazy person. She usually wasn't so overprotective but I also usually didn't get admitted into the hospital. "Sweetheart, I don't mind staying," she said to me, her voice low and soft because she was too tired to raise it anymore than that.

I shook my head slowly. I could move, but it was at the same rate that molasses rolled out of the jar, the same rate of baby sea turtles crawling back to the ocean, the same rate of an old woman walking up stairs. So, in a nutshell, slow. "Mom, I appreciate you keeping me company, but you should go home for a little while and take a nap or something. Have you slept at all since we got here?" I asked her. She shook her head slowly. "Then go home, okay? Go to sleep, take a shower, eat some normal food. I'll be fine, I swear."

"Kacey, honey, I don't want to leave you all by yours-"

"Mom, what's gonna happen if you leave for five hours? I'm. Going. To. Be. Fine." I cut her off, raising my eyebrow in a I'm-right-so-deal-with-it manner.

She rolled her eyes and stood up. "You're gonna be okay?" She asked, concern present in her eyes as she grabbed her purse.

"I'm going to be splendid," I told her, nodding my head a few times, for effect.

"Alright," said Mom rather reluctantly, running her hand through her dark blonde curls that were almost identical to mine. She leaned down and kissed my forehead. "Don't cause trouble and you call me if you need anything," she said whilst heading toward the door, and I nodded.

"Get outta here," I laughed lightly, a small but bearable twang of pain occurring in my surgery site. 

_______

An hour later, my nurse, Debra, came in and asked if I was feeling up a for a small walk. I moved slowly and gingerly while standing up from my bed, holding on to the IV stand for support. Debra told me to do one lap around the pediatrics floor very slowly so not to cause any infliction on the scar in my abdomen.

My IV stand rolled along with me as I moved inch by inch down the hall, taking in deep breaths and trying not to over-do anything. I was careful and followed Debra's instructions to be very aware of my condition and only go as fast as I could manage. I was slow- very, very slow. I took in the scenery. I was not yet eighteen, so I legally was required to be admitted into the pediatric wing of the hospital, and so there were little jungle scenes painted on the walls- monkeys swinging from vine to vine, birds soaring in the open air, and tigers haunting the jungle brush. The murals were beautifully painted, really, and I spent moments examining each scene that I came to, really absorbing it all.

I was so incredibly focused in on the jungle scenery that I barely noticed the boy in the wheelchair that looked about my age at the end of the hall, circling around against the tile floor, spinning round and round like a top. The corners of my lips turned up slowly into a smile that I didn't even think about, and just as I begun to turn the corner, the boy stopped what he was doing and he looked at me.

And I looked at him, and that quick, thoughtless glance between the two of us lasted for a millennium.

And then he looked away, and I did too. And that was that- nothing to it, or so I thought as I made my way down the second quarter of my lap around the hallway. I drifted back into my thoughts, daydreaming while walking, an activity that was quite hazardous. I was moving slowly and gingerly, feet sliding against the smooth floor of the hall.

I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn't even hear the wheels rolling against the tile- a rough, sandpaper sort of sound. The boy pulled up next to me, his tires moving just as slow as my feet. They were almost stopped, really. "What're you in for?" He said, breaking me out of my trance.

"Hm?" I looked down and noticed him looking up at me. My bra-less-ness was much more apparent to me now.

He had short, dark hair that was side-swept across his forehead, broad, baseball-player shoulders, bright green eyes that seemed to make the jungle even more alive than the murals on the wall, and a smile that went on for years and years. His wore black riding gloves, and his hands were wrapped around the edges of his wheels, pushing himself almost as slowly as I walked. "What're you in for?" he asked again, his eyebrow quirking up a little.

  Oh. "Appendicitis," I said softly, because I knew I couldn't really talk much louder. My medicine was starting to wear off, and so the pain was slowly returning. "Post-surgery," I added, slowly smiling at him. "What about you?"

The boy nodded as I spoke and then opened up his own mouth. "My little brother broke his arm. He's getting his cast taken off." I nodded. "He's seven."

"Wow, that sucks. And through the summer, too? Poor guy." I frowned sympathetically.

"Yeah, he's happy to get back to playing normally and all." The boy said to me. "What's your name?"

"Kacey," I replied, looking into his jungle eyes. I could get lost in them, honestly.

"Kacey," he repeated, smiling at me. "I'm Arthur. It's nice to meet you."

"It's nice to meet you, too," I said.

And it was, at the time.