“I don’t need you to take time off to take care of me,” I said, frustration making my voice tight. We had been over this already. Before he could say anything more, I threw my napkin on the ground and used the edge of the kitchen island to pull myself up.
I could see Ethan bracing himself as if to catch me in case I fell, which only stroked my temper a bit more. “Excuse me. I have to use the bathroom.”
I walked out of there before any of them could say anything more.
I locked myself in the bathroom and sat on the closed lid of the toilet.
I loved my siblings.
But they could be suffocating at times. Especially Ethan.
I rolled the fabric of loose yoga pants I wore up over my leg until it reached my thigh and took in the red skin.
Moving my hands down I gingerly ran my fingers across the raw skin that was touching the socket of my prosthesis, before moving down and massaging it.
I was wearing a gel liner to take away some of the impact of the socket, but the skin was still rubbed raw, and I knew I needed to find a doctor here soon to get a new one fitted. The liners usually lasted about four years, and this was only my third year, yet it was already showing signs of wear and tear.
After I left the theater that night, as I was crossing the street, a car ran a red light and ran me over. I found out later the driver was drunk off her mind because she caught her husband of eleven years cheating on her with her sister.
I was rushed to the hospital after, though I remembered very little about that night after I was hit.
I was told the doctor had to perform surgery on me for an avulsion fracture of my left knee from the trauma, and the surgery was a fucking success. I had been expected to make a full recovery, but whether I would obtain full mobility afterward was questionable.
The infection happened after the surgery. The wound had become septic, and it was life-threatening.
It had spread quickly.
Too quickly.
The doctors had to act quickly.
There wasn’t anything they could do but amputate my leg.
I was told how rare it was for that to have happened.
A twist of fate, perhaps.
I had grown up valuing my legs. In sixth grade I had taken a nasty fall off the swing, trying to impress a boy in my class by saying that I could make the jump.
I couldn’t make the jump, and I ended up with a broken leg to show for it. It wasn’t even the humiliation of it that got to me, but that I hadn’t been able to dance for eight whole months.
It just about killed me, and I was inconsolable during the first few months, no matter what my mom did to make me feel better.
I didn’t have my mom with me now. This wasn’t something I ever thought I had to go through without her.
It wasn’t something I ever thought I had to go through, period.
I had been devastated.
And fuck if those first few months weren’t the hardest.
I was wheelchair bound the first few weeks, and it was a long and grueling process to get me fitted into a prosthetic leg. I had to learn how to walk all over again. Something I had done my entire life without even a second thought had become a lesson in tolerance.
It was during those first few months that I had wished I never woke up after the surgery.
I shook away the dark thoughts now. That time in my life wasn’t something I wanted to come back to—ever.
There were things I was severely limited to that I hadn’t been before, but what was worse was it felt like my family were the ones most affected by this loss of my identity.