Chapter 1
The day was quiet, the trees blew softly in the wind as the sun began to set, creating a beautiful orange hue in the young woman's room. She sat in the new wheelchair quietly, waiting for the nurse to help her into bed. Her name is Abigail Miller, and she recently got into an accident petrifying her legs from the waist down. She wasn't handling it well, but tried to appreciate the help she was getting from the school despite the little staff there was.
"Thank you Mrs. Knight." Abby said quietly, her voice monotone and her eyes looking away from the nurse, she didn't want to be ungrateful but she couldn't have resented her situation anymore than she already did. "I won't need anything more tonight." She turned away from the nurse by rolling and facing the wall, her face went pale as the accident came to mind.
"No problem Ms. Miller." The nurse replied with a smile, completely unaware of Abby's bitterness. The nurse grabbed a handheld device and set it on the bed, "I doubt you'll need this but, just in case, I'm putting the receiver for emergencies on your bed.
"Thank you Mrs. Knight." Abby repeated herself, closing her eyes and sighing, she lifted her hands to wave her off. "I'd like to be alone now." she said, pulling the brown hair out of her mouth and behind her shoulder. The nurse nodded solemnly and exited the dorm room, closing the door quietly behind her as she left, leaving the door unlocked.
The room was decorated with posters from wall to wall, a lovely white desk by the window, a sewing machine she could no longer use sat on it, and a computer, standing by for any movement of its mouse. The bed was just a twin and had a beautiful periwinkle comforter with lots of frills and pillows, seven pillows, two king sized pillows, two standard ones, and three decorative, one of which was shaped like a heart and had multiple ribbons around it as well as ruffles making the shape defined.
Abby stared at the wall, heavy-hearted and tried to move her legs, to no avail. She sobbed quietly in her bed with her head under the covers. "You're never going to walk again." the doctor had told her, "Your spine has disconnected from your pelvis, most of the bottom of your spine is shattered, and the bone exited out your back so your body is missing fragments, and though some of it could grow back, it would never be enough to make you walk again."
• • • • •
The next morning, Abby rolled out of bed, expecting to land on her feet but ended up falling on the floor. She hit her face on the wheelchair beside her bed, causing a small cut to appear on her left cheek. She whined quietly as she moved herself toward the locked wheelchair, not wanting to ask for help, she lifted her torso to pull herself into the chair. She pulled herself up into the chair and attempted to turn over, but couldn't do it. She admitted defeat, and pressed the button on her bed to receive attention. The nurse came in about two minutes later.
"Oh, my!" the nurse exclaimed, before getting Abby off the floor and setting her on her rear in the wheelchair, "You shouldn't have tried to get out of bed on your own..."
"Thank you, Mrs. Knight." Abby repeated herself for the third time, "I didn't try to get out of bed while I was fully awake. I tried to roll and..."
"You should be more aware of your condition." the nurse interrupted, "Now come on, do you need to use to restroom, or anything?"
"I need to get into my regular clothes for school."
"Oh yes, dressing, of course. Silly me." The nurse turned away from the locked wheelchair and turned to look in the closet for her clothes, she opened up the closet to find a white long sleeved shirt, with an orange short sleeve shirt attached. "How about this?"
"No thanks." Abby said, not even looking.
"You can't wear that red dress for the fifth day in a row, it's all you've worn since the accident." the nurse replied.
"Then just give me some jeans and a green turtleneck." Abby said with a grumble, and with that the nurse did so, and helped the young woman get dressed. Though she was only 17, she had the wisdom of someone in their sixties, but maybe slightly less irritable. "Thank you, for helping me." she made a noise of discomfort as the high-waisted skinny jeans got buttoned around her belly button.
"You know jeans are supposed to fit comfortably."
"They used to." Abby replied, "I've gained a couple pounds due to... the fact that I'm stationary." Abby added, trying not to be bitter again, but it was hard not to spit venom when the nurse seemed to be blissfully unaware of her perspective. Abby pulled out a headset from the nightstand beside her bed and the door and attached it to her phone. Abby scrolled through her tunes and put the headset on, the volume clearly loud. "I can handle myself from here." Abby said, putting her wheelchair out of the locked function and turned the chair to the door and exited the room before the nurse could say anything else. Firewalk came on, she had just gotten into them recently, she didn't know why, but she couldn't help but listen to them every waking moment or else she'd get pissed.
Riding down the hall, past all the dorms and out the dormitory, to see a group of girls sitting on the bench next to the end of the handicapped ramp for the dormitories. Abby attempted to steer past them, but they pulled off the set of headphones and demanded her attention.
"Look who it is now... little miss disabled." one of them started.
"Haha, good one. Real original." Abby said, "You're not very creative bullies, which is like, the one thing you have to be good at." She snatched her headset back and paused her music as to not be rude, at least not that way.
"Don't need to be original, flat chest, you can do that all by yourself." the woman started.
"Y'know what, why don't we just skip the bullshit, and you just tell me what you want?" Abby spat at the bully, the three bullies looked at each other and then back at her and leaned in closer.
"Quinn wants to meet you after school." one of the girls said, "He's having swim practice here after school today, and once it's over he wants to talk to you about your... accident or whatever."
"R-Really?" Abby frowned, "That's the best excuse you could come up with to lure me there."
"Believe it or not, if you want you don't have to show. You could bail and stand him up, but then you'll never have any chance with him." another one of the bullies said, "Take your chances." they waved to her and took off.
"What fucking tramps." Abby crossed her arms over her chest, now a bit insecure of her chest size, and put her headset back on, listening to Firewalk play again.
• • • • •
Abby found herself by the side of the pool, waiting for Quinn to come out of the showers. She looked at the pool's glistening, clean water. Then thought: Someone definitely peed in that.
"Oh, look who it is." a voice echoed in the large space.
"Fuck me, really?" Abby said as she wheeled her chair to see the three bullies, "Baloney Beth, Looney Lauren, and... I don't even care about you enough to give you a mean nickname, Jaycin." Abby added.
"Oh you're going to regret those words..." one of the bullies said.
"Just like how you're going to regret wearing a white shirt without a bra, God, you're nipples are huge." the bully blushed, and grabbed the wheelchair and began pushing her toward the pool. "Woah! What are you doing?!" Abby grabbed the wheel of the chair and tried to hold them tight but to no avail, Beth was too strong.
"Go fuck yourself, freak!" Beth said and pushed Abby, wheelchair and all into the pool. Abby screamed under the water as she tried to get out of the water, but the wheelchair had pinned her legs. The bullies looked at her in the water and laughed, before taking off. Abby pushed on the wheelchair but couldn't get it off her foot. She let out her last gasp of air and tried to inhale, her lungs flooding with water. She coughed, but couldn't recover. Her eyes began to drift close.
"Fuck, I'm drowning." Abby told herself as pushed on the chair one last time. "Legs, please, move!"
Abby rose to the surface of the water and coughed up a storm, leaving her wheelchair on the bottom of the pool's floor. She swam to the side of the pool and dragged herself out of the pool, and got to her feet. She kicked her feet, and rung out her hair.
"Oh, god I'm covered in chlorine..." Abby whined as she looked at the thick turtleneck sweater now covered in water. She began to walk to the bathrooms when she realized it. She was standing. "This is impossible. They said it'd be months before I stood again..." Abby muttered to herself. Abby went and took a seat on a bench against the wall before anyone saw her standing. It seemed just as she sat, Quinn came out.
"Oh, hey!" Quinn rushed over, "Jesus, are you alright?" He opened his pack and threw a towel over her, "Someone told me they saw you get pushed into the pool by your older sister, but I didn't believe them, guess I should've."
"Someone saw me get pushed in and no one helped me?!" Abby shouted, then quickly retracted her statement, "I mean, no one helped me for so long. Coach dove in and got me, he was getting me a towel..."
Quinn continued talking, but Abby couldn't pay attention to him, her legs were working after only a week after her spine had been disconnected from her pelvis.
"So did you want to go?" Quinn asked.
"Huh?" Abby looked up at him, and away from her legs.
"Sorry, poor timing. I should ask when you're not soaking wet."
"No, I genuinely didn't hear you."
"It's cool. I'll ask another time then, see you Abster." Quinn concluded, before taking off.
"Wait, what about your-" Quinn was gone; Abby pressed the towel to her cheeks and sighed. She was going to have to do a lot of research now, on whatever happened to her legs.
/Hello everyone! Thank you for reading Life is Strange 3: Paralyzed, if you enjoyed please let me know, if you think there's something I can do better, please do the same!
Have a good day/night!