Noah was already putting on his jacket and lacing up his shoes when he texted Kent in all caps:
N: IT’S OCTOBER 4TH!!!
N: YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!!!
N: F R E E T A C O S B O I
N: U… me…. tacobell… meet in parking lot
He didn’t even check to see if Kent said anything, already slamming the door open to his dorm, practically skipping down the stairs. Free food sounds fly as hell right now. Especially with Kent. Very few people could match his energy, and after getting over his initial shyness about approaching a YouTuber he admired so much, he found out that not only was Kent inspirational and rad as hell, but fun too!
He had watched Kent’s videos when he was at his lowest, wondering if there would ever be an end to that hopelessness he felt every time he had to look down at his blanket covered legs. He could just look away and at Kent, talking about mental health and grief so openly. He felt less… alone, knowing someone was out there who really did care that there were people feeling the way he felt.
Noah wanted to be as inspirational and motivating as Kent. And someday… he wanted to be as open about his experiences in order to help other people. But that was a day for when he was all the way back to his former self. That would be the real inspiration story; beating the odds and getting back to normal after something so devastating.
Noah met each of their eyes carefully from his place on the hospital bed. He felt groggy; whatever medication they had him on made his head slightly fuzzy. His mother looked away when he caught her eye, his father’s hand coming up to rest her back gently. The doctor, however, watched him steadily as Noah stared him down, daring him to repeat his lie.
“Noah. You've been in a coma for three months. You were in a serious accident,” the doctor repeated calmly, but Noah was already shaking his head before he even got halfway through the lie again.
“No. No, I can’t have been in a… a coma for three months. I had practice the next day. If I lost three months, then I won’t be able to compete this summer,” Noah said, sounding quite confident in himself. But the air in the room that had already been vibrating with tension, suddenly stilled dangerously. Something heavy and dark began taking space up under his lungs as his father and the doctor shared a look.
And that was when he realized he couldn’t move his legs.
“No.” he said, his voice too loud for the silence of the room. “No!” he repeated, louder, as if he could drown out the sound of his pulse in his ears as he desperately tried to lift one of his leg at the hip. All he could manage was to wriggle his toes and flex his foot, but the rest of his leg simply shook, weak and unresponsive.
“Noah, I know this is a shock, but with work and physical therapy, you can get back most of the use of your legs-” the doctor began, but Noah didn’t want to hear it. This wasn’t happening. It was a bad dream. He fell asleep on the car ride home, and any minute now his coach would be shaking him awake, clapping him on the shoulder and bidding him good night. And then he would walk into his house and dream of gold medals and proud grins from his sisters.
He hadn’t even realized he had squeezed his eyes shut so tightly until he felt a hand on his arm, and he opened them up to see his father squeezing his shoulder.
“Dad-” and his voice cracked, an ugly sound, and he suddenly realized he had been crying.
“I’ll leave you to process this information. When you’re ready, we can show you some pamphlets for physical therapists in your area,” the doctor said to his father, who was nodding as he rubbed his wife’s back and kept his firm hand on Noah’s bicep.
His hand felt too real to be fake. Too warm. The bags under his mother’s eyes were too noticeable, brought into sharp relief against the paleness of her face. She looked over at him, and her eyes were shining with tears that wanted to spill over. He looked away.
No. This was too horrific to be real.
Anger
“What do you mean it might take years!?” he asked, his voice growing shrill as his physical therapist looked on with something like pity, as if he was a toddler throwing a fit.
“You were in a nasty accident, dear. We need to take it slow so you don’t hurt yourself,” she said evenly, her voice quiet and her eyes big. Noah gritted his teeth at the term of endearment, shutting his eyes to escape her searching ones and forcing himself to breathe.
How much worse could he hurt himself, seeing as he was stuck in a wheelchair barely able to do the small knee bending exercises he had been tasked with? He was sweating from it, just from that, from something so small. His legs used to launch him into the air, balance him on a high beam, steady him as he landed. And now they could hardly move.
He was glad he was here alone. He couldn’t take the sad looks his Mom and Dad were so fond of shooting him. He couldn’t take his sisters nauseated curiosity, interested in how the wheelchair even worked. But most of all, he couldn’t take Kelly.
She had taken to staring at him with a distant look in her eyes when she thought he wasn’t looking. She would look at his wheelchair, his legs covered by blankets, and then back up, but never at his face. He hated it. Almost as much as he hated the fact that his coach had abandoned him, even though he was the reason he was stuck like this.
The least he could’ve done was apologize. Apologize for not only crashing the car, but for making Noah feel like he was worth something, before taking it all away when he lost the use of his legs.
His stupid, useless, legs.
He snarled in frustration, attempting to kick his leg up, shake it so it would snap out of it and move dammit! But all that resulted in was a cramp that overtook his hamstrings and back, making him subconsciously arch to get away from the pain. His therapist was there in an instant, kneeling and pulling his leg into a position to take strain off of his back. It was humiliating, and he was hit with the urge to push her away.
“I don’t need your help,” he bristled, and immediately, the physical therapist moved away. No longer were her eyes full of pity, but instead full of her own frustration.
“Come back when you are ready to actually get to work. Until then, figure out what it is you really want from this,” she said, effectively dismissing him as she turned to her computer to type.
He gaped at her, before the anger he lost came back with a vengeance. He turned his wheelchair as aggressively as he could, and left, still fuming.
Noah wanted his fucking legs to work. What else could he possibly want from physical therapy?
Bargaining
“Please. There has to be something more I could do,” he begged his doctor as the other man finished checking his reflexes. Still so slow. It had been six months, and while Noah knew he was making progress, it was so slow it felt like nothing he did was actually helping.
“There’s gotta be some kind of experimental thing going on, right? I wouldn’t mind being a test subject!” he said desperately, and the doctor sighed as he sat heavily in his chair. He took off his glasses and looked at Noah carefully.
“Noah. You’re fourteen years old, and I highly doubt your parents would sign a waiver for you to become a test subject to any sort of experiment,” the doctor said, and Noah looked away, knowing what he said was true. “Besides, anything that could help you isn’t ready for human trials anyways.” That he hadn’t known, but he kind of wished it had stayed that way.
“Okay, but can you at least give me something to speed up the process?” he asked, simply grasping for straws now. He wasn’t surprised when the doctor shook his head, but it didn’t stop his stomach from plummeting with disappointment.
“This is going to take a long time, Noah. You are essentially building your legs up from scratch. You’re already improving much faster than we had anticipated when we had looked at the extent of your injuries. Let yourself heal,” he said, and Noah had no choice but to nod and swallow down the lump of despair in his throat.
“Okay. I… okay,” he said, and his doctor smiled reassuringly.
He did not feel reassured.
Depression
There was no point.
It had been a whole year since he had woken up. A year and three months since he had been in the accident. And yet, he was just now being promoted from wheelchair status to walker status.
“This is fantastic news Noah! You’re way ahead of the curve!” his physical therapist had said when he was finally able to take ten small steps across the room, walking so slowly he hardly felt like he was moving.
Right. Fantastic news.
Someone was knocking on his bedroom door. He didn’t care. He was too busy watching the light from the window bathing his red walker in light. It glinted, flashing back into his eyes, and he saw headlights coming head on, screaming, hearing the crunch of the car and the glass and his bones as the dashboard was shoved into his pelvis, and it was all pain pain pain until his head hit the roof of the car and-
Someone had opened the door to his bedroom.
He blinked away the memory, but stayed bundled up where he was. He couldn't care less who was there. It was probably his mother, here to ask him if he was okay in that quiet voice of hers. And he would say that he was fine, just tired, because that wasn’t a lie. He was exhausted.
He was tired of the nightmares, and the physical therapy and the weird looks he got from people on the street. He was tired of the whispering at school, and the way he had to use his wheelchair when it got too cold outside for his hips to work.
Every small step he took weighed too heavy. It just didn’t seem worth it anymore. What was he trying to prove anyways? He could never be a gymnast again, so what was the point?
Whoever it was had yet to speak, but Noah could hear them moving around to sit in the chair next to his bed. The chair was permanently there now, left from when he was still bedridden. They sat down, and Noah looked up into Kelly’s eyes that were watching him back sadly.
She was dressed up for a performance. Noah could tell by the makeup on her face and the tight bun on the top of her head. The sight of it made his stomach clench. Had she just gotten back, or was she just about to leave? Noah couldn’t tell; he had lost track of the time.
“Noah, it’s time for your physical therapy,” she said softly, and he shut his eyes, shaking his head. Before then. Great.
She was still for a moment, before she leaned forward and took his hand in hers. He didn’t react, allowing her to do as she liked. As if it mattered. He wouldn’t be able to stop her even if he wanted to.
“Noah,” she said softly, and suddenly, he was sobbing.
What had he done to deserve this? He wasn’t a bad person, and he worked hard to get to where he was. A place, according to the many specialist he had been to, that he would most likely never return to. Why him? Why?
“I don’t know Noah, I don’t know,” Kelly answered, her own silent tears making tracks in her make-up as she gripped his hand. He hadn’t even known he was speaking aloud, his mind whirling with helplessness and grief for the loss of his mobility that he hadn’t yet felt before.
“You’re going to be okay, Noah. You’re so strong. Much stronger than me,” Kelly said with determination, her lip wobbling dangerously as Noah’s breaths continued to hitch in his throat. He attempted to wrangle his emotions in, to stop the tears that just kept coming, his body shaking with the force of it. It had almost felt better when he felt nothing at all.
“Do you remember when you fell of the high beam and broke your nose three hours before a competition and coach asked if you needed to skip it?” she abruptly asked, and Noah blinked in surprise, but nodded, looking at her strangely through eyes blurred by tears. “What did you do?” she asked, and Noah blinked at her.
“I…I” he began, at a loss for what she was asking, but she didn’t seem to mind, squeezing his hand again.
“You wiped your nose on the edge of your sleeve and said “I broke my nose, coach, not my spirit.” You huge dork,” she said fondly, and that surprised a laugh out of him that lit up her face, before she softened again.
“That’s who you are, Noah. Not your legs. Not your abilities. You’re you because you don’t shy away from things that are hard,” she said. “Don’t let this be the exception.”
He stared at her, his eyes big. He wanted to say something, anything, but there were no words coming to mind. But, Kelly being Kelly, she seemed to understand, finally standing and pressing a kiss to the crown of his head.
“I’ll tell them you’re tired, but just this once, alright?” she asked with a wink, and Noah nodded, watching as she wiped her face and smiled, before heading towards the door.
Just as she reached the door frame, Noah called out to her.
“Kelly.”
She turned to look over her shoulder, the light from the hallway making her face glow.
“Thanks.”
And she smiled her sweet smile and nodded.
“Anytime.”
Acceptance (?)
Kelly was right. Since when has he given up on anything? So he had to put in some extra work; big deal! Why shouldn’t he work just as hard to get his legs back as he did to learn how to land a double handspring?
And so after four years of intensive physical therapy, Noah was walking on his own. He was running. He was jumping and doing cartwheels and living. The doctors called it a miracle.
Kelly called it “being Noah.”
“It’s very Noah of you to do a back flip after your last PT appointment,” Kelly had said dryly as Noah landed and bowed, beaming. He just had to do it though. He had to, because he had worked so hard for it.
That being said, Noah couldn’t go back to gymnastics.
He didn’t want to start over. He didn’t want to be seen as a tragedy miracle story they showed on 20/20 late at night. He didn’t want to stand in Kelly’s shadow again, and even thinking it made him feel guilty.
She had stuck by him for so much, but there was jealousy there that he had to beat out of himself by attending every one of her meets. He had succeeded for the most part, but it made him realize he needed something new. Something fresh and… not this.
He definitely wasn’t choosing to leave gymnastics because he knew he would never be well enough to do it. No, he knew as long as he kept working, he’d be just as good as he was before, maybe even better! He just needed something different to hold his attention, something he would want to put the extra hours in for.
