A life in grains

3.

I remember bitterly when the illness imposed its presence. I was eighteen, I was going to school and on the first step of the staircase my knee gave out. I went to the hospital, they bandaged my leg and sent me home. The crutches were not included and my mother called all the neighbors to borrow a couple. It seemed a matter of life or death, she was agitated like never before, at the end she had to buy them and I felt so guilty that I asked her to pay with my savings. My real life had begun, a life without running, jumping, walking. I kept going to school, not understanding what was happening to me, why I never got better. I was always waiting to go home so I could lie down on the couch and feel normal, the more I stood up and the more the desperation assailed me.

I felt ever exhausted and the ill leg was losing tone, often wearing cramps enveloped it, making me jump on the bed in the middle of the night. The screams were not enough to stop them, I began to cohabit with them and with the impotent cry of my mother in the background.

Liam was in my class and soon he realized that my leg had been wrapped up for too long and that I often skipped lessons. When I felt good enough to go to school, he helped me going to the bus and he never left me alone at break time. But a couple of months before the school end he couldn't stay with me on the bench in the courtyard, my other leg had also paralyzed.