They crashed on a bend after a long, straight section of road, running through the country-side. Her mother died just before sunrise on the next day, August 23rd, 1983. Her father joined her mother two days later. She was flown back home to begin rehabilitation October 2, an orphan. It was late February before they first bent her at the waist and sat her up. She was lowered into her first wheel-chair in late March, and she was discharged on June 18th, 1984.
When something terrible happens to us, we learn a whole new vocabulary, connected with the terrible fate that has befallen us.
SPI: Spinal cord injury.
Gatched: To be bent at the waist, for example, when propped up in bed. Slightly less boring than staring at the ceiling for months.
Lesion: A technical term for damage, used to talk about the injury to the spinal cord.
Frankel scale: A grading system for rating how much function you have left after a spinal cord injury.
Paraplegia: Where both legs are paralysed. Internal organs below the waist may always be affected.
Quadraplegia: Where your spinal cord has been damaged higher up, so you have no limb function at all. Basically, you're fucked.
Decubitus: Pressure sores from lying or sitting in the same spot. These little bastards smell, and can get infected. They can also kill you.
DVT: Deep vein thrombosis. A clot inside a deep vein, often in the legs. If the clot dislodges and travels to the lungs, you get a pulmonary edema (see below).
Pulmonary Edema: A blockage of the main artery supplying the lungs with blood, normally from a blood clot. Pains in the chest, difficulty breathing, and death in 26% of cases.
Autonomic Dysreflexia: A condition caused by nerve signals from below the spinal injury. It causes high blood pressure, headaches, sweating, blotchy skin and a feeling of doom. It can lead to seizures and brain haemorrhages.
Ambient Temperature Intolerance: Basically, you either feel too cold, or too hot. It's very hard to find a temperature where you're "just right". Like Goldilocks, with only two bowls of porridge.
Muscle atrophy: The wasting away of all the muscles in the paralysed region. If you don't use it, you lose it.
Spasticity: Increased reflexes and stiffness of the limbs. It's not just a playground taunt.
She cruised through the car-park, heading towards the Disabled parking bays. Fuck. No free spaces. Again. She found a bay with an empty space next to it. Pulling the folding wheelchair out from the back seat and levering herself into it was the usual struggle, but at least she didn't fall over. At one point in the whole exercise a young man started to walk towards her, about to ask her if she needed some help, no doubt. She glared at him with such ferocity that he moved away, mortified. Her bed-sores had opened up again, and she couldn't handle the look of disgust he would give her when he ended up covered in pus. She found the smell hard enough to bear, and she was used to it.
Along with the vocabulary, she had learnt a whole new way of existing. Spending lots of time in a wheel-chair hurts your neck. That's because you spend most of your time looking up, talking to people who tower over you. It also makes you feel - diminished somehow, less important. If you patronise someone, you talk down to them. If you think badly of someone, you look down on them. Middle-aged women speak of suddenly becoming invisible; people no longer look at them. A woman in a wheel-chair is one worse - you know that people are looking at you, it's just that most of them won't meet your eyes.
Shopping isn't much fun when you can't reach above the second shelf. She got what she could, balancing the basket in her lap, then trundled off to Customer Assistance. She couldn't attract anyone's attention for a while; the counter was too high. Eventually she spoke up.
"Ahem. Anyone there? Hello?"
The shop assistant leaned over, and jumped.
"I'm sorry. I didn't see you there". He blushed.
"That's OK". She handed him her list. "I can't reach these, would you mind?"
"Of course, of course, be right back. Just wait there, OK?"
She watched his ass as he tripped into the store. He was young, pretty. Not really her type, but when had that ever stopped her? At least he didn't speak to her like she was brain-damaged. She might be paralysed from the waist down, but she wasn't a mental cripple too. So many people seemed to think that you had to be spoken to slowly and slightly loudly if you were in a wheel-chair, as if you were brain damaged. He'd been surprised to see her, not prepared for human detritus appearing in his shop, but his eyes had been kind. Tonight she'd think about him, remember his tight ass, his kind eyes, his smile.
At home, unpacking her groceries, she found the note, slipped into the bag by the shop assistant. A name. A number. "Call me".
She picked up the telephone. Behind her was the trapeze she used to hoist herself into bed, to help her get positioned comfortably. A large oval mirror was positioned at the foot of the bed. She histated, then dialed.
"Hello Derek? I found your note in my shopping; you helped me at the store earlier today"
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Short Fiction 
