You die, I die too

Chapter 22

"Sorry." He apologized quietly.

"No worries."

"I'm almost done." I stood up again, this time without any accidental happenings and he finished putting the underwear on. He signed out in relief that he had done it, and then slowly opened his eyes again. His eyes met mine and we just stared at each other, not able to speak or move. Eric was the one interrupting the silence.

"Well, finally that's over. Quite a challenge. I hope I won't have to do that again."

"Yeah, only the rest of the clothes left to help me with. You may have to do this tomorrow as well, and the day after that until I'm able to dress on my own."

"Damn, I forgot about that. I knew I should have asked Lauren to do this."

"At least you don't have to have your eyes closed for all of it." With that we both let out a laugh, before he grabbed the pants and put them on with some help from me. Then it was time for the t-shirt to be removed and we were once again silent and nervous. Me mostly because Eric had never seen my scars before, especially not the gunshot wound. He was probably worried because he had never seen me without a shirt before.

He reached out to pull the hem of the t-shirt and I gave him a small smile in encouragement, which he returned and then proceeded to pull it up over my upper body and over my head. When it was off, he once again stared at me. This time not at my eyes, but at what was before him, my slightly scarred covered body. He held something in his eyes that I could only recognize as shock. He was most certainly shocked at what he saw, the scars that Michael had given me over the years. The one scar that stood out the most was the scar that had almost killed me. However, there was one scar that was not visible to the eye, that scar was imbedded in my mind. It was a scar I never wished for anyone to find out about. Not even Tobias knew about it, and that said a lot.

"He did all of this?" Eric suddenly asked. It was silent for a while before I spoke up.

"Yes." That was my only answer.

"Son of a bitch" He whispered, mostly to himself but I could clearly hear him and I couldn't agree more. After he had helped me get dressed, he took me to the bathroom where I brushed my teeth and brushed my hair. We then went to the kitchen were Eric was going to make breakfast. We could have easily eaten in the dining hall, but Eric thought it best to stay here since we were going to work on my rehabilitation in here. Breakfast was quiet, no one said anything. I guessed the tension was still a bit awkward from what happened earlier. It wasn't until after Eric had cleaned up that he spoke up.

"I think we should start as soon as possible, are you ready?"

"Uhm, yeah. What are we doing?"

"We will start slow, just basic stuff like standing up, walking a few steps. Kind of like learning how to walk for the first time."

"So basically, I'm a toddler again. This should be fun."

"You say that now. Wait a few hours, you won't say that then." And how right he was. My first attempt of moving was like walking on ice, my legs shook and I almost fell down if it wasn't for Eric, who had caught me just in time. After my fail attempt to walk on my own, Eric held my hands from behind me while I slowly tried to move my legs forward. Due to my severe back injuries, I had fracture my sacrum and vertebra, which detoriorated my ability to walk. Fortunately the vertebra hadn't torn off or I would have been paralyzed for life.

Even though Eric helped me a lot and didn't go hard on me, it was still hard to walk. It was like my body had a mind of its own, and didn't want me to move. It was physically impossible to move without any struggle or protest from my back, and I could only imagine how much pain I would be in when the medicine wore off.