I am nothing now and it's been so long
Since I've heard the sound, the sound of my only hope
This time I will be listening
----
The Wheelchair still feels unfamiliar. If only because he doesn't want it to feel familiar, which it might if he let it (but not in any way good familiar). It's been a while (one year, four months, two weeks, five days), since he woke up to find himself like this (hurt, broken, mutilated, different). If he had ever thought about something like this happening to him (which he hadn't, oddly), he never ever imagined it to be like this.
Sometimes it even feels okay, though it took him a while to get to this point. It took a lot of action, a lot of therapy, a lot of pain (oh, the pain), a lot of everything he didn't think he'd be strong enough to get through.
Sometimes it feels slightly normal (sort of, in an abnormal kind of way). Like he's never had legs in the first place. He's met people in his situation, he hangs with them. It feels like there's no world outside where people walk around on two legs. Sometimes (but never for long).
Sometimes he forgets. Those are the times when he feels good, whole (for entire seconds, beautiful dreamy seconds). For a moment (that feels like a lifetime) his mind tells him he can just get out of bed and stand. Every once in a while (always) he wakes up in time and stops just short of falling out of the bed. He mostly wishes he could let himself fall (weighing the pain of the fall and the pain of the shame). He never actually does.
Most of the time he just tells himself to get over it. He lives through his days (has now for 506 of them), he gets by, he moves on a little more every second (he tells himself). Ray Barnett lives for tomorrow.
But not today (no, not today).
Today he lives in the past (the far away, painful past). A past that goes back further than The Accident, one that goes back to when he was still the Altar Boy (faithful, innocent, oh so eager to please).
It's been so long since he'd been in this church, any church (fourteen years, in fact). He wasn't going to tell his mother he came back here. It would only get her hopes up, and she'd never get her Good Little Catholic Boy back (if he could help it).
He's not going to tell her about the (ancient) rosary beads in his hands either. She'd get mad, or cry, or both. And he doesn't like it when she cries (or any other woman, really). So he's going to leave her to wonder what happened to his father's (grandfather's, great-great-great-grandfather's) beads. It might make him a bad person, but he's in a church now (it chills him), and if he believed enough (he doesn't) he'd go Confess anyway.
But he's not here to ask for Penance. He's not here because he stole his (dead) father's rosary beads fourteen years ago. He's not here because he wants to believe again (his faith was lost when his father was lost, plain and simple). He's here because he received a call.
A call from Hope (oh, the irony), with news that stopped his heart (his brain, his breath). Neela (the faith he'd had, 506 days ago) was coming back to work. She was excited, as always. Ray hadn't knows she left in the first place (he pretended he did).
So he made some calls (one, six, eighteen) and got the details. Every single one. The stampede, the coma, the surgeries. He received one year, four months, two weeks and five days worth of details. Afterwards he wished he'd kept his fingers away from the phone.
But he couldn't undo it, so he panicked . And in the haze of his panic he ended up here, in this old church, with rosary beads in his hands and the twentieth Hail Mary on his lips.
(Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…)
He remembers all his prayers by heart. They were pounded firmly into his memory. Still stuck there fourteen years later. He never prayed for himself after The Accident, but he feels like this is the only thing he can do for her now (even if it feels ridiculous).
blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus…)
For nearly two months he blamed her and everything she represented for The Accident. If it hadn't been for her…(he never truly ends the sentence).
Then for the next few months he blames himself. His stupid (stupid, stupid) naïveté. If he hadn't been such a fool, then maybe…(his psychiatrist tells him not to dwell on the past).
He wanted to place the blame with God, because he's told himself he doesn't believe (he refuses to believe), and if he'd place the blame with something nonexistent the blame would be gone. But even in his mind that wasn't logical, so he couldn't place the blame there (at this realisation he cursed that God-he-doesn't-believe-in's name).
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners…)
He's gotten far enough now to refuse to blame anyone (anything) for The Accident. He's recently come to the point that he doesn't resent The Wheelchair anymore (not as much).
And now the times it feels sort of okay are more frequent. The times is feels sort of normal have multiplied, even around people who stand on their own two feet.
He never forgets (not ever), but he thinks it's possible he's not supposed to forget. He's starting to see it as a lesson now (not one from God, thank you very much). He's not dead, that means something. He can still be a doctor (he plans to be). Life hasn't stood still for him, no matter how much he liked to pretend for a while.
(now and at the hour of our death…)
He lost faith long ago (it seems like an eternity). But he needs it now, he knows. He feels it now, all around him (on the inside, it glows). It may not be perfect, that possibility hasn't been there for a long time (one year, four months, two weeks, five days), but it's there.
Things are looking up. He's getting along fine (better than he's let himself believe). He's getting prosthetics tomorrow (nobody knows). He intends to find himself, every part of himself. Old, new, in between.
After over a year of heartache (506 days, he thinks now he'll stop counting), in this old church (after fourteen years) Ray Barnett has decided to take a stand.
Moving on is not forgetting the past, he knows (deep down inside). It is not giving in to your pain (he would never, not really). It's something different (completely, absolutely), it's taking what's been given to you (by God, or whomever, he hasn't yet decided) and using it.
So he will. He's going to walk again (out of this (un)familiar Wheelchair). Even if it will be difficult at first. Everything is difficult at first, he knows. Nothing has ever come easy to him (The Good Little Catholic Boy inside tells him God makes nothing easy. Nothing).
The rosary in his hands (his trembling hand), feels cold and familiar in a not necessarily good way (like the Wheelchair).
He's going to call Neela later, he promises himself (and God, silently). He thinks maybe after he's back on his feet (shiny new feet) he'll even go see her.
But he's got 130 more Hail Mary's to go first (like a Good Little Catholic Boy).
(Amen.)