Jake was balancing on the rear wheels of his wheelchair in the foyer of the VA hospital, waiting. It was below freezing outside, but no snow. He had come a long way over the last four months. Over time, as the strength of the core muscles had improved the pain had slowly subsided as well. He was glad that most days he could manage without strong pain medication now.
He contemplated the usual ceremony of wheeling someone all the way to the hospital door despite the fact that they were perfectly capable to walk there on their own—for insurance reasons someone had explained to him. He saw some irony in this fact so he had asked the nurse who saw him off if she needed to push him to the door or if he was allowed to wheel there on his own. She hadn't known the answer.
A week ago he had seen Tom again for the first time since their fight in September. Tom had attended the brief ceremony at the Quantico Marine Corps Base where Jake had received his Purple Heart, a commendation for bravery under fire and his honorary discharge from the Marine Corps. Jake had been all Marine precision. His hair cropped short again and wearing his blue dress uniform, he had looked nothing short of dashing. He had polished his dress shoes till they gleamed. More than any other step in preparing for the event, polishing his shoes had been a deeply emotional and painful act.
When Jake entered the hall in which the ceremony would take place through a side entrance, Tom was already there. Jake saw the reaction on his brother's face when he noticed him. It was stronger than before and Jake considered whether it was the combination of the uniform and the wheelchair. It looked like reality had just dealt Tom a physical blow.
Jake rolled up to his brother. "Hi Tom."
"Hi Jake." His voice was strained like he was trying not to cry.
Jake felt conciliatory. "Look Tom, it is what it is. This is my reality. The last thing I want is for you to feel sorry for me."
Tom sighed. "Okay, I get it, but it's still hard for me seeing you like this," he swallowed.
Jake regarded his brother and wondered if Tom felt guilty or if it was simply the fact that Tom saw a mirror image of himself that was no longer identical. Maybe it was the cognitive dissonance that was so hard for him to deal with.
The base commander entered with his staff and Jake turned away from Tom to take up his position among the few other Marines that were being discharged like himself. It was a brief affair. Afterward, when Jake turned his attention back to his brother, Tom seemed to have relaxed a bit. He walked next to Jake as he rolled towards the main doors of the hall and on towards the bus that was waiting to take him back to the VA facility.
Tom finally broke the silence "What are going to do now?"
Jake looked up at his brother. "Going back to Belvoir; in a week I'll be out of rehab. I'll go collect my stuff from Pendleton and then I'm going to find myself a place to live." The Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in California was home to the Marine Corps' 1st Reconnaissance Battalion that Jake had been a part of and had been Jake's home before he'd shipped out to Venezuela.
"My offer for you to come and stay with me still stands."
Jake stopped and rotated the chair towards his brother. "I do appreciate your offer and I have considered it, but I have decided to go back to Denver for now." Jake wasn't quite sure how to interpret the emotions he saw in Tom's face. Relief? He let it go.
"Denver? Why in the world would you want to go back there?" It was where they had grown up. "There's nothing there."
"Exactly, that's what I want right now. I want some anonymity. I need to find myself first." He turned again and carried on towards the waiting bus. He had rolled onto the chair lift and looked back at Tom who hadn't moved. "I'll call you when I've settled in" Jake had made his voice carry so that his brother would hear him over the noise of the lift. Then he had disappeared into the bus and had left Tom standing where he was.
Jake gazed at the barren landscape and half-empty parking lot beyond the hospital doors. Technically he was no longer part of the Marine Corps now, but being a Marine, he figured, was a state of mind. It wasn't about belonging to a specific organization; it was all about identity, all about attitude and how you defined yourself.
He still hadn't figured out exactly who he was going to be. That's why he needed to go to Denver and retrace his roots. He had accepted the fact that he was no longer the same Jake Sully he had been four and a half months earlier. The man with a purpose, the man with a clear direction and the man with a childlike enthusiasm for anything physical, fast and dangerous and it still hurt him to his core that in all likelihood he wouldn't be able to skydive again. Not that he wouldn't do it even now—no, he'd do it in a heartbeat, but the doctors at the VA hospital had told him he couldn't, and no commercial operator was going to take him other than on a tandem jump, because they feared the legal implications in case anything should go wrong.
He had argued until he was blue in the face, but no one seemed to care that he was a Marine with several hundred jumps to his name. All they worried about was that he didn't meet their fitness criteria and therefore would fall outside of their liability coverage. Not fit enough; that was a joke, really. Ever since Dr. Lassiter had given him the all clear he had worked hard to reclaim his body. His cardie-vascular fitness was as good now as before the accident and his upper body strength was even better.
At the VA facility's gym, he swam at least a kilometer each day now, as a substitute for his old self's daily running routine. He missed being able to run outside, even though that meant having to run with a full breathing kit. Yet that had been a minor inconvenience compared to the joy he'd felt at being outdoors and exposed to the elements. These days his workouts were very much an indoors affair: swimming, weights, Pilates under the instruction of his physio-therapist, more weights and lastly stretching exercises to maintain and improve his range of motion and flexibility.
Several times a week he played basketball with others, who like him where in need of a wheelchair to get around. He enjoyed the competitiveness and physicality of the team sport and though he talked to these others, he hadn't really made friends with any of the 'crips', as they called themselves. He pondered this now, why he had kept these people at arm's length despite their friendly efforts to integrate him into their group. The most important reason, he thought, was that by calling themselves 'crips' they were acknowledging, no more than that, they were actually creating a separateness and distinctness from the 'normal' people in society that he found hurtful. Though some would have thought that his refusal to accept their comradeship was a reflection of the refusal to accept himself as he was now, that was not at all the case.
He had worked through the denial phase of the grieving process and together with his psychologist and long chats with Dr. Lassiter he had come to accept himself as the Jake Sully he was now. Sure, some days were worse than others. Some days he would be ambushed by depression, but the bouts usually didn't last very long. As soon as he recalled Dr. Lassiter's words about his own responsibility the cloud would become less oppressive. So far he had steadfastly refused the chemical 'mood-enhancers' that would easily be at his disposal. Rather he would retreat into the corner of the gym where the overhead punching ball was suspended and punch the little ball until the sweat was pouring out of every pore and his arms were too tired to be held up over his head. In Jake's mind his body's own endorphins were infinitely better than anything the pharma-industry had to offer.
Jake did not want to become one of the 'crips', he mused, because he would never identify himself as a cripple. He did not consider himself disabled. He had no dis-ability. His abilities had simply shifted. He acknowledged, though, that he was facing an uphill battle against the public's perception of wheelchair users. Like the people in the various skydiving clubs he had contacted. That was one of the reasons why he wasn't sure yet, who Jake Sully was going to be. That's why he needed to go to Denver.
Finally the cab arrived that would take him to Dulles International Airport. Jake had opted for civilian transport. He had decided to face the public head-on after the relative seclusion of the last four and a half months. He ignored the uncomfortable stares of the cab driver and declined any help to get into the cab. The driver tried to engage Jake in conversation, but Jake simply ignored him. The driver gave up.
Jake thought about the trip ahead. He was going to fly to San Diego, where JJ, his best friend and fellow Marine would pick him up and drive him back to MCB Camp Pendleton. At the Marine Corps Base Jake's few personal belonging had been put into storage the day before he'd shipped out to Venezuela a little more than four and a half months ago. Now that seemed like a lifetime.
JJ was his closest friend, yet Jake hadn't been able to bring himself to allow JJ to come visit—despite that their friendship had a casualness to it that Jake thought he could never achieve with his brother. If anything, he and Tom continued to grow further apart.
To ease his own nerves, Jake had talked to JJ a lot during the last two weeks and he had made a point of showing him the latest improvements and tricks he had learned with his wheelchair through the video feed, to make it easier on himself and JJ when they finally met again in person. Jake sincerely hoped that their friendship would not become awkward.
The flight to San Diego was event-less. For security reasons he had had to trade his custom wheelchair for one of the airline's and it was old and tatty and made Jake feel clumsy. He hoped that he would have his own chair back before he met JJ. To board the plane they put him on yet another chair, a really narrow one that allowed navigating the narrow isle of the plane. Worst of all it didn't allow Jake to drive the chair himself. He bristled at being pushed down the gangway and into the plane. Dr. Lassiter's words came back to him. The reason you are here is the culmination of all of your decisions. It is your path and your choice where you go from here. He surrendered.
The same procedure when he disembarked in San Diego, and this time it wasn't as chafing as before. Nonetheless he was very relieved to see his own chair waiting at the end of the gangway. He retrieved his bag from the carousel and slipped it over his head like a scuba rig. That way he had the greatest freedom of movement. The door to the waiting area parted and Jake rolled through. He saw JJ immediately and felt quiet relief when JJ's face broke into a broad grin. Good old JJ.
Marine Captain John Julius Sharpe held out his hand and Jake took it in the familiar way like they were settling down for an arm wrestling match.
"You look good, man. Nothing like a little R&R at government expense, huh?" JJ's deep baritone was a perfect match for this tall, muscular, black man.
Jake grinned back. "So good to see a friendly face—you do realize I'll have to find a way to wipe that self-satisfied smile off it. If you think that you'll beat me more easily now, I'm afraid you'll find that I'm stronger than ever."
JJ chuckled. "We'll see about that. Want me to take your pack?" The immediate sense of understanding and mutual respect had put Jake at ease. He turned the chair around, rolled backwards putting some distance between himself and JJ and pulled the pack back over his head in one smooth move. Then he threw it at JJ. "Catch!" Jake stopped the backward acceleration of the chair before JJ had recovered from his surprise. He had caught the pack out of sheer reflex. Now he weighed it in his hands.
"I'm impressed". JJ beamed at Jake "Man, Jake, you have no idea how glad I am that you only lost your legs and not your sense of humor." Their bantering continued while they made their way to the public parking lot. After a few minutes, they arrived next to JJ's pick-up. It was a crew-cab truck with a raised suspension, not unlike Jake's own, but unlike Jake's, which was running on a standard hydrogen-electric engine, JJ's was a fossil—technologically speaking. It was a collector's item and required all kinds of special permits for running on an old-fashioned diesel engine. When Jake had received his marching orders they had joked about the fact that it was Jake's personal responsibility to make sure that JJ could continue to indulge in his expensive hobby.
JJ opened the passenger door and threw Jake's pack in the back seat. Then he turned around and regarded Jake, his hands on his hips. "I can throw you in just the same, do you want a leg up or are you going to climb in on your own?"
"Let's skip the throwing; I wouldn't want to break my back." Jake thoroughly enjoyed the easygoing banter.
JJ laughed out loud.
Jake carried on. "A leg up would be fine; I figure I'll start my mountain climbing career tomorrow."
"Okay, sure," and without any hesitation JJ bent down, put one arm behind Jake's back and one under his legs and lifted him up like he would a child. He placed Jake on the passenger seat. "This is your welcome present. Just don't think I'm going to do this all the time."
Jake noted that with JJ he didn't feel the usual awkwardness and resentment at being helped. He attributed it to JJ complete lack of self-consciousness in Jake's presence; no pity, just the unspoken sense of acceptance and respect that Jake longed for.