Wdevy

The Wheelchair Diaries - Ch18

I wake up to my own ceiling and the soft panic of remembering where my body stops. It's quiet below my chest. Same as yesterday, same as the day before. And the relief that comes with that still feels a little illegal. I prop myself up with elbows and hands because nothing from my chest down wants to help. Pause. Breathe. My arms already ache and the day hasn't even started. The physio said it'...

The Wheelchair Diaries - Ch 17

I am dreaming about floating. Not the grand kind with white light and harps. Fluorescent light, motel pool vibes, the sort of pool that smells like cheap sunscreen and over-chlorine. I float on my back and my legs are calm in a way they never were in real life, two obedient shadows below the surface. When I try to kick, nothing happens. I think, finally, like I have been holding my breath for s...

The Wheelchair Diaries - Chapter 16 (BEN)

It's the hour when the waiting room looks like a bus station and the coffee machine tastes like punishment. I'm halfway through a chart when Mags leans around the nurses' station, hair up, badge askew. "We've got a young woman in a wheelchair, looks septic. High temp, altered. You want eyes?"

Young woman in a wheelchair is a phrase that lands like a hand at the base of my neck. For a seco...

The Wheelchair Diaries - Ch 15

It has been a week since Ben left the bag and I keep pretending I am not orbiting it. I move it like furniture I am testing out. Chair by the wardrobe. Kitchen table. Floor beside the bed. Every time I set it down, I feel a small lift in my chest followed by a drop, like I have tricked myself and then remembered I cannot be tricked.

Work is the worst for pretending because there is time t...

My caring boyfriend

The Wheelchair Diaries - Chapter 14 (Ben's version)

The weight of the bag on my shoulder was heavier than it should have been. Not just from the vials, syringes, antiseptic swabs, but from the fact that I knew exactly what I was about to do. And how much it meant to her. I'd never carried something so intimate, so loaded. It was medical equipment, sure, but it was also fantasy equipment. The difference sat uneasily in my chest as I knocked on he...

The Wheelchair Diaries - Chapter 13

It turns out you can measure time in endings.

Mondays feel like waking up in a stranger's body and pretending I know where the light switches are. Wednesdays hum. Fridays are a kind of miracle. And Sundays... Sundays are loss, again and again, in smaller circles until I'm dizzy from recognizing the pattern. We've been doing the injection for a few weeks now, just long enough for my body t...

In sickness and health - Ch2

The clatter of plates and voices has vanished, leaving only a strange kind of echo that feels heavier than silence. I watch Will in the kitchen, moving like he's trying to convince himself that this is normal, that life can still be ordinary, even though nothing about tonight is ordinary.

He's rinsing a plate, water dripping down the edge, little rainstorms in the sink. I remember the sou...

In sickness and health - Ch1

There's this thing they don't tell you about coming home after months in rehab: it's supposed to feel like victory. Cue the inspirational soundtrack, the slow-motion montage of you rolling triumphantly through the door while people clap. Except the only soundtrack right now is the turn signal clicking like a metronome for my anxiety, and the only slow motion is me blinking at the same highway t...

In sickness and health - Prologue

You know when people say, "It'll be the happiest day of your life" and you think, Okay, but what if that's kind of... depressing? Like, the idea that it's all downhill from here? I thought about that on my wedding day. In between the speeches and the selfies and my mom crying so hard the makeup artist had to physically drag her out of the bathroom. I thought: If this is the peak, I should proba...

The Wheelchair Diaries - Chapter 12

I wake up to the dent in the pillow where his head was and the glass of water he left exactly an arm's length from mine. The flat is the kind of quiet that makes you hear the heating tick. For a few seconds I just lie there and check the map: shoulders fine, arms working, hands present. Abs soft, a slow sway under my ribs. Everything below, silent.

T6 is still here. Deeper than yesterday....

The Wheelchair Diaries - Chapter 11

By the time Wednesday rolls around, I've already sent Ben three texts in the past twenty-four hours that could be filed under "mild harassment."

He kept replying with cautious, half-teasing answers: It's soon. You need to pace yourself.

But I didn't want to pace myself. I wanted to feel that quiet again, deeper this time.

I finally called him during lunch and just said it outr...

The Wheelchair Diaries - Chapter 10

I wake to pale light pooling on the ceiling, as if the whole room's been bleached overnight. For a second, I think I dreamt it all. Then I move, or try to, and nothing happens below my stomach. The realization lands in me like the second swallow of coffee, familiar, almost comforting.

Except the comfort is tangled with something else. The knowledge that this will be gone soon. That my leg...

The Wheelchair Diaries - Chapter 9

The knock comes exactly when he said it would, which makes me wonder if he was standing outside for a minute before hitting the door. The sound is soft, but in the quiet of the flat, it feels like it travels straight into my chest.

I wheel toward the door slower than I need to, pretending I'm still adjusting my skirt, because there's something strange about knowing the man on the other si...

The Wheelchair Diaries - Chapter 8 (Ben's Version)

I step out of the hospital later than I meant to. Again. The automatic doors hiss shut behind me like they're exhaling, like even the building's tired of me. It's still Monday, my scrubs still cling to me under my jacket, and I can feel the faint weight of disinfectant in my hair, on my hands. I rub at the back of my neck as I walk, a kind of absent-minded self-soothing I picked up somewhere in...

The Wheelchair Diaries - Chapter 7

Friday.

The hum of the office isn't enough to distract me today.

It's warm, not hot, not freezing, just that dull kind of in-between warmth that clings to your shirt sleeves and makes time feel slower than it should. I'm at my desk, fingers hovering above the keyboard, pretending to respond to an invoice request while my mind is already in tomorrow.

Saturday.

I ...

The Wheelchair Diaries - Chapter 6

The carbonara smells like salt and fat and effort. It's not showy, but it looks homemade in the way that matters, like someone who's cooked it a hundred times before and never measured a single thing. He plates it neatly and carries the bowls over to a narrow table by the window, already set with wine glasses and a tiny IKEA candle flickering like he's trying, but not trying too hard.

"Wi...

The Wheelchair Diaries - Chapter 5

I wheel into the bathroom in silence, the sound of the tires humming softly over the tile. The flat's still, dim with early light, and outside the window the sky is the color of unwashed denim. I like mornings like this. They let me believe this is all normal. Routine. Just another day where I live in the body I was supposed to have.

I stop beside the toilet, lock my wheels, and lean forw...

The Wheelchair Diaries - Chapter 4

I leave work later than planned, my brain still buzzing with the low hum of conversation, paperwork, and pretending. Everything aches a little, my arms, from pushing; my legs, from holding them still; and my chest, from the constant fear that someone would see through me. But it's done. I made it. Day one, survived.

It's Monday, not the kind of night anyone usually goes out. Which makes i...

The Wheelchair Diaries - Chapter 3

When I wake up, it's early enough that the world still looks hesitant. The sky over London is pale and washed-out, like someone forgot to finish painting it. My apartment feels quiet, almost cautious, as if it knows exactly what I'm about to do.

I don't move yet. I lie there, feeling the gentle weight of the duvet covering me, aware of how still my legs are beneath it. Th...

The Wheelchair Diaries - Chapter 2

The girl who opens the door is younger than me, maybe twenty-two, but that kind of twenty-two that's seen things. Big hoodie, soft face, black expensive Spinergy wheels. She's in a different chair than the one she's selling. Hers is bright turquoise, shiny. It catches the hallway light like it's showing off. She has tattoos on her fingers, chipped black nail polish.

"Hey,...

The Wheelchair Diaries - Chapter 1

The apartment is small and smells like something artificial trying to cover something real. I think the last tenant liked incense. There’s a half-burnt stick crumbled in a saucer near the windowsill. I haven’t thrown it out. It’s the only thing here that makes it feel like someone lived before me. Or like someone could live here at all.

I moved to London six days ag...