Almost like Running
I can’t run. But that’s no big deal since I can’t walk either. Nor can I sit up totally on my own or wipe my own ass very well. I’ve never been able to do those things though, so I’m not completely sure I miss them. Of course lots of people, mostly my parents, talk to me a lot about privacy and trying to respect mine since I don’t get much “alone time”. But as with my inability to move and the toilet routine, I’ve never really had privacy the way they think of it, so I don’t know how to crave it. I don’t know how to miss most of the things I can’t do. Except for running. That’s the one that gets me. My wheelchair is motorized and it can get fairly speedy; the wind blows my hair a bit and I feel the tingle of speed and its dangerousness. So I feel like I can say that while I have never run, I miss it. My body misses it.
“Vincent, are you going to miss me?” Nurse Nancy asked. I would and I knew it. But you can’t say that because who would yearn to be in the hospital.
“I’m ready to go home and since you can’t come with me…” I answered lightly.
“You’re such a sweetheart, little Vincent,” she said. I was always going to be “little Vincent” to the nurses at St.Stephen’s. They’d looked after me almost since I was born. But really, little Vincent was looking down Nancy’s scrubs whenever she vigorously tucked in the blanket at the bottom of my bed. I mean, I couldn’t look away when she did it. It was mesmerizing, that swaying flesh.
I dream about running a lot. Well, maybe not as much as I dream about flying and occasionally Nurse Nancy, but I think my running dreams are the ones that are simultaneously the best and worst of my dreams. The running dreams feel real. As though somewhere in my DNA is the program code for running and my brain can take it and play it through my mind and across my body so that during the dreams I feel totally whole. I am wind. My muscles and veins throb with life. And then I wake up. I can never go back to the same feeling if I try to go to sleep again right away. On those nights I don’t usually go back to sleep at all. It’s too depressing. So, I read.
“Whatcha reading there Big Guy?” my Dad asked.
“Something for school. Kinda boring,” I said. Total lie. I was reading “Dune.” I’d read the school assigned book in one night and had no intention of cracking it again because what I said about being boring was definitely true.
If there’s an invention that I think has made life hugely better for people like me in last hundred years, it’s the ebook. I don’t have to ask anyone to read or try to wrangle a heavy book into a spot where I can both see it and turn the pages. Harder than you think when you’re farsighted and can’t lean too far forward or turn over easily. If I’m lucky, my older sister will help me to bed and she’ll let me keep my earbuds and ipad close. My parents think those things are distraction from rest. I guess I get to be a normal teen at least in a few ways.
“Honey, you can’t have the ipad in bed. You’ve got school tomorrow and Nelly has a track meet,” Mom said.
“Aw, come on. I won’t use it unless I can’t sleep,” I said.
“You won’t be able to sleep if you know you can use it. Right? Give it,” my Mom opened and closed her hand at me like needy two-year old.
“Fine,” I said in my best surely-teen voice, but really I’d already snuck my ebook under my pillow. The ipad was just red herring.
After my running dreams, I like to read either science fiction or westerns. Frankly, I think they are mostly the same. I mean there’s always bad guys and a mission to do, or a wrong to right, and shooting things with either lasers or bullets. My favorite western is this stupid historical one that is kind of a romance novel I think. I found it for free in the stuff posted by authors on the ebook website. I don’t care so much about the love story and I really don’t care about this chick’s petticoats and their various levels of tightening. But the writer knows how to write about horses so well that I don’t care about the rest. The author, it says it’s by Terrance Walter but seriously that is not a name, must be from a horse farm or something. He has this amazing scene where horses from the chick’s family farm get loose and end up running through the streets of Chicago.
“Each horse in its turn, no more than half a footstep from the next, rumbled and thundered down the clapboard road at a speed that said anyone caught in their path risked the pain of death. Their brown coats heaved and swelled as their breathes reached peak to bring their trampling hooves down upon the earth like rail splitting hammers. Their legs pulsing as their hearts strained to keep the pace of freedom.”
Gets me every time. Reading it is almost like being in the dream. Almost like running. My breath always get a bit fast and I have to close my eyes to calm down before I set off any alarms on my monitoring machine in the night. That Terrance, he knows what it is to miss running.
“Corny, does running ever hurt?” I asked my sister.
“Shut up, Vicks,” she said and swatted at the back of my head. A moment later, “After sometimes. Like muscle cramps.” I nodded and wondered if massages would help, like the ones I get from my physical therapist.
Of course, I can’t think about running for too long before I also start to think about The Wind. No. Not the actual wind. Her. Edwina Moran, otherwise known as The Wind or, if you’re friends with her like my sister is, Winnie. She’s the star of my school’s track team, hence the nickname; which is probably good because a name like Edwina could cause you problems even in a school as touchy-feely as mine.
“Sweetie, you’re going to love it,” my mom said.
“I have to write an essay about what fears I have about starting high school? Seriously?” I asked and rolled my eyes.
“Everyone is scared to start high school honey. It is a big thing in life,” she replied.
“Ugh. I’m not scared though. Are there doctors with bone saws?” She shook her head no, “Then I'll be fine.”
I go to a private Quaker school. It is fairly fancy and known for good academics. My parents wanted me to go to a school that not only had great facilities for me and my wheels but an “attitude of acceptance and appreciation,” my mom had said. They started my sister Corny there first to help me get in. Ok, her name isn’t Corny. It is Cornelia, but I call her Corny because I have be the annoying younger sibling somehow. I guess that really says it all about my school though. They appreciate people like me and my fellow students have names like Edwina. There’s a dude in my art class named Zeus, my teachers all go by their first names and one of them is called Harmony. Yeah, that paints the whole picture right there I think.
“Hey dude, nice wheels,” Zeus said in all seriousness, admiring my motorized wheelchair. “My uncle’s chair has, like, voice commands.” He nodded to himself a beat after he spoke.
“Until they make a chair that will take a shit for me, voice command is pretty useless to me.” I said.
“That is gross, dude. And hilarious,” Zeus chuckled in a voice too deep for a fifteen-year old but perfect for someone named after a God.
Back to Edwina. Winnie is the love of my young life. I don’t imagine I’ll marry her or pursue her cross country to college in Washington state, where she’s planning to go according Corny. I just imagine that I’m going to love her as long as I can. And in all likelihood from a distance of about twenty feet. That’s the distance from the handicapped square where I sit in my wheels and watch her and the starting line of the track. I don’t go to watch the track team practice every day. That would be super obvious. But I do go to every meet. The coach sometimes calls me their mascot and ruffles my hair like I’m four. I resist the urge to bite her every time. After all, we are the Ballentine Bulldogs. Every now and then, Winnie will come say hello to me. I’m polite, but not too friendly. She sometimes says that it is really nice of me to support my sister and that her parents don’t usually come watch her. Once I told her that being good at something could be a curse, like maybe they got bored of watching her win. She said she never thought of that and promptly lost her next race.
“Hey, Vincent,” Edwina said just a few minutes before the start of Corny’s race.
“Hey, Winnie. You think Corny can win today?” I liked to keep conversation light and I tried very hard not to stare at her perfect face for too long. I focused on keeping my breaths even.
“Yeah, their top shortie isn’t here and she seems psyched,” Edwina nodded towards Corny shaking her arms out at the starting blocks.
“Hmm, yeah,” I wanted to ask her something clever. Something that would make her keep talking to me but not scream I’m in love with you! “Are you parents here?” Not my best work.
“My mom is supposed to come actually. But she’s always late. We call it ‘Betsy-time’ because it’s like normal time plus two hours. Laters,” and then she was gone.
I love to watch Edwina start a race. She’s a mid-distance runner, so like 800 meters, or two laps around the track. She never tries to be first off the blocks. I watch her watching her competitors, side-eyeing their stances and measuring them up. I can’t say for sure, but I feel like she hesitates a split second off the blocks just so she can see people start to pass her. Then The Wind lengthens her strides and ever so slowly inches to be even with whomever is in front. They might think they’re fine, that they can take her in the last 30 meters or something. They are wrong. The Wind then blows past them, barely speeding up then seemingly exploding down the line to the finish. It is magnificent.
“She’s pretty great, huh?” a voice next me said.
“Yes,” I said breathlessly, lost in admiration. I realized my mistake and looked up. A woman who had to be Edwina’s mother stood there with matching hazel eyes, rounded nose, and lips that thinned into a line when her mouth was closed.
“I love her too,” Betsy said. “But I’m not sure she’ll ever really know it. What about you?”
“Probably not.” I said and returned my eyes to the track where Edwina had, of course, just won her race. Betsy placed a hand on my shoulder and squeezed.
“Stranger things have happened. I got here on time after all.”
