Asher ✓

44 | handicap

JANUARY 23, 2016 / DELROV HOUSEHOLD

"Do you need any help?" Vasily asked. 

As soon as Vasily had parked the car, he'd dashed around to the passenger side and extended a hand, ready and waiting to support Asher out of the car. Asher batted it away.

"It's alright. I want to start learning how to do things myself."

"You're only just out of hospital, son. There'll be plenty time for adjustment later."

Asher sighed, feeling like when you're not such a pathetic mess was missing from the end of that sentence. Upon seeing the vexed expression on Asher's paler-than-usual face, Vasily relented.

He went to the trunk of the car, lifting the plastic bags of bandages, salves and antibiotics and made his way to the door. Stifling the urge to run to his son and help, Vasily simply watched Asher make his way to the door. He'd practically mastered walking with his crutch, hobbling forward on his right foot, dragging the crutch half a meter in in front of him, hobbling again.

But getting up was another matter. At the hospital, nurses had helped him in and out of bed. The bathrooms were already fitted with rails to help the mobility impaired. The place was practically designed for people like him. Hurt. Injured. Crippled.

But back in the real world, Asher was confronted with a bitter truth. There were no helping hands or cleverly-placed hand rails. The time that pedestrian lights were green for wouldn't be long enough for him. He'd have to take baths instead of showers now. Probably sleep downstairs for a while.

Just during the trip home from the hospital Asher realised how everything would change with the loss of his leg. He didn't know how exactly, but he was sure he'd find out. It was integral to moving, dancing, riding his bike. Everything that had given him joy and made him so uniquely him - well, he wouldn't be able to do quite the same anymore.

He avoided looking at his motorcycle, parked by the garage, on his way to the door.

"You're doing so well, Asher. I'm proud of you."

"Thanks, Dad," Asher mumbled, hopping over the threshold when Vasily held the door open. "I probably don't say that enough."

Vasily led Asher to the lounge. Asher dropped his crutch on the carpet and swung his leg onto the couch. Perched amongst the throw cushions, he felt like an old teddy bear finally come undone after years of wear. Put out to pasture on the couch. He would keep some granny company one day, and they'd both reminisce about the days where their bodies were young and springy. 

It was about time, Asher tried to reason, I made it to nineteen years. What a full life.

But his thoughts were bitter. Even he couldn't kid himself how devastated he was. All his life, his imperfecta had hung around like an ominous thundercloud. A demon waiting for him to slip up so it could finally claim and obliterate his body. But as it turned out, it wasn't the imperfecta that had ruined his life so completely. It was a fucking drunk driver. An utter idiot who had filled himself to the brim with alcohol and spilt the shitty contents of his life into Asher's.

And knowing this — knowing that the hard yards he did in keeping himself safe, rejecting hangout invites, and passing on field trips had been for nothing — killed him. His adolescence had been the gauntlet of his life. It was the only thing that stood between his dream of security and the caution-fraught shadows where Asher had resided beforehand. But, as it turned out, life could be really fucking cruel. There was no limit to the destruction it dealt the most undeserving people.

Asher didn't know why he had let himself forget that.

__________

It was late when Asher woke up.

His leg felt like it was on fire. Like it was being ripped slowly from the knee, each nerve and tendon severing in hellish agony. Instinctively, his hands went to clutch his calf but instead wrapped around thin air.

Fuck, Asher cursed internally, fuck fuck, fuck.

He'd been warned of this phantom limb syndrome, but never had he expected such torture. The worst part was that if his leg had indeed been there, he'd have hacked it off himself to end the pain. Since that had come and gone, there was nothing Asher could do but miserably squeeze a pillow to his chest and breathe deeply. It didn't help much to take his mind away from the excruciating flames tearing at his missing leg.

A hand fell on his shoulder.

Asher's eyes flew open, pinning a concerned Ryanel under their gaze.

"Hey," he murmured softly. His eyes flitted nervously from Asher's stump to his eyes. "Are you okay?"

Swallowing, Asher could do nothing but gaze up at his best friend. He hadn't seen him in weeks. He'd gone with Ryanel to his engineering faculty Christmas party, which seemed millennia away now looking back. So many things had happened in the short space between that the Asher that had partied the night away seemed like a stranger to the current one.

When the pain in his leg dulled to a throb, mainly due to his squeezing cutting off the blood circulation, Asher asked, "Where have you been?"

"I— I've been busy," Ryanel said sheepishly. There was a gauzy quality to his voice, like the words he'd said were flimsily constructed veils rather than the truth. His eyes were cast down at his lap. Asher knew he'd be able to see the lie if Ryanel would just dare to look at him.

"Too busy to say goodbye to me? I mean, I could have died. What was more important than seeing me?"

Ryanel snapped his head up. For the first time, it seemed, ever, there was pure fury in his eyes. His lips curled. His eyebrow twitched.

"You don't think I wanted to see you? I wanted like hell to be there for my best friend, the person who tutored me for physics and let me sleep over for solid weeks."

"Then why didn't you?" Asher bit back.

"The person lying in the hospital bed was not my best friend. That person was a stranger, with a strange condition he never trusted me enough to tell me about."

Asher was speechless. He tried thinking of excuses to explain his secrecy, but none came to mind. That part of him was kept firmly between his family and his doctors. It just didn't feel natural to share it with anyone, since his mother passed.

"There's not a thing in the world I wouldn't have told you. You're the closest person to me. And it hurt to find out from the tabloids that it wasn't the same on your side."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. There's nothing else I can say."

Seeing the desperate guilt smeared across his face, Ryanel softened.

In truth, he had visited today because he finally made peace with the secret. He'd had days to process his feelings of shock and betrayal. When the visceral anger wore off, he was able to think more clearly.

Ryanel considered life from Asher's perspective; the uncertainty, the caution, the pain. In the end he still couldn't understand fully how it must have been like, but he knew a few things clearly.

Asher was smart. He was kind. And obviously resilient. Ryanel had to trust that his reasons for concealing his imperfecta were valid. Wordlessly, Ryanel wrapped Asher in a hug. The men acknowledged that a ceasefire had been called, in light of more important things.

For one, the value of a best friend.