Wheels

2

Arthur was cute. He really was. He had his little hairstyle and his green, green eyes and his little black and white riding gloves. He had a smile that was small but powerful.

And me? Yeah, I wasn't looking nearly as cute as he was. My blonde curls were a little ratty and greasy, from not being washed in two days, and I was dressed in that awful, dotted hospital gown that I had my mom safety pin in the back to keep from showing anything. I was tired and puffy and currently had horrible posture. I was the hunchback of Notre Dame.

And he was... Hercules.

Arthur watched me as I walked,  his wheels turning against the floor. "Does it hurt?" He asked softly, gesturing to my abdomen. He couldn't see it, but it was all bandaged up from surgery.

I nodded. "Yeah, a little," I told him, wondering why he was still even talking to me. I was a fairly friendly person but still, it was kind of weird to come up to some stranger in the hospital and start talking to them like you've been friends for decades. "The drugs are starting to wear off so the pain is slowly coming back," I elaborated, and Arthur nodded. He was very polite, too.

The obvious thoughts one has when meeting someone in a wheelchair ran through my mind then- what had happened to him? Was he in a car accident or involved in a crime or born with a condition or was he just doing a really convincing method-acting exercise? Was the damage permanent or temporary? What part of his body did it affect? My guess was that he was paralyzed from the waist down, mainly because he was moving all his upper-body, and his legs were just kind of limp, laying against the chair lifelessly as he rolled along. How, though, was the real question.

"What's your room number?" Arthur asked as we turned a corner. I took it very slowly.

"Uh... 4308, I think," I told him, clenching on to the IV pole. "It's just around this next corner up here."

"You okay?" He asked, a slightly concerned tone in his voice. He probably noticed I was growing a little weaker- more tired.

I nodded slowly, stopping for a moment and catching my breath. "Yeah. I'm fine," I insisted. I felt like I had just sprinted around a track- out of breath and unsure anymore as to how to move. "I'll be fine. It's just difficult to adjust- I've got a lower pain tolerance now that the medicine is wearing off."

"That and you're low, low, low in the energy department," Arthur added, rolling to a stop next to me.

I looked at my companion gratefully. I quite enjoyed his company- not only because he was keeping me from being alone but because I didn't know him at all. He was refreshing and new and totally uncharted to me. "So what school do you go to?" I asked him, curious. There were four schools in the county- Sacred Heart, the private Catholic school, Jefferson East, Jefferson West, and William McKinley High, where I attended.

He tapped his fingers against the edge of his wheels, a mannerism I found to be very cute. "Oh, I was homeschooled," he said, and I furrowed my brows, surprised.

"Really?" I asked, not really thinking before talking. "You don't seem homeschooled."

"And what sort of traits would someone  have to possess to seem homeschooled?" Arthur asked, his voice sounding a little irritated but the expression on his face- the little half-smirk and the glimmer of teasing in his green eyes- let me know he was just giving me a hard time.

My cheeks turned hot from embarrassment. "Sorry," I murmured, rolling my eyes at him. The moment ended and I looked at him. "You were homeschooled?"

Arthur nodded. "Yeah. I graduated last spring. I'm going to IU in the fall."

IU- Indiana University- home of the Hoosiers. It was in Bloomington, about an hour from our town of Jefferson. It was kind of a big school- like, its football games were televised and stuff like that. They offered majors in everything there, too- from European history to dramatic arts to geology to economics of underdeveloped countries. One of my friends who had graduated last year was going there in the fall as well and she told me she was taking a class called The History and Origin of Hip-Hop. It was a very nice, but quirky, credible school.