Paper Walker

Chapter 19

The flash blinds me, did I get so unaccustomed? I blink a few times and then I find myself on a small protruding ledge of a mountain.

A real, freaking mountain. And not a little one at that.

Screaming my head off, I grab hold of the wall behind me, but there isn't much I can hold onto. Next to me, some pebbles fall down and with wide open eyes I look up.

Someone is hanging on a rope. Is he climbing? Keeping my hand protectively over my eyes, I stare a few minutes at the bungling legs and then I gaze down. I can't even see the bottom, that's how deep it is. Is this a suicide attempt?

When some more pebbles fall down beside me, my eyes fixate on the climber again and while I listen to the tock tock tock of a piston getting jammed into the rock. I try to calm my nerves. This is a book, nothing can happen to me, I tell myself. Would the same be true when one is falling of a mountain? Because there is such a thing as a stress level, or what ever it's called. You can see it in films where they are given a virtual body or something like that. When you die in the fake world, your head can't cope, etcetera. Oh please, continue the story, I want to get out of here.

If I could, I would crawl even deeper into the wall, yet I can only close my eyes and hope for the next scene.

That arrives faster than expected and is a lot less pleasant. I hadn't thought it possible. On the other hand, I could have guessed it. The main character is after all a boy in a wheelchair, this must be the prologue.

He falls. Almost giving me a heart attack, by landing at my feet. And even though girls usually like cute guys to fall for them, this is a little too literal for me. The boy falls, is unconscious and gets picked up a few hours later by a helicopter that was send to look for him, after nobody heard from him any more. I learn all that from the rescuer, who pulls me aboard.

We fly to a hospital, where the boy, Finn is his name, is diagnosed with a spinal cord injury. Even worse than Sorley's. Finn will be paralysed from his chest down, for the rest of his life, with only limited use of his hands. He can't do anything himself any more and has to learn how to live all over again.

I almost quit. I this how Sorley felt? I see up close how Finn gets temper tantrums and shouts and screams until he's almost out of breath. Other moments he locks himself away from the world completely and doesn't speak for days on end.

He attempts a suicide, but it fails and I cry together with his mother when she pleads with him to at least continue the examinations. That hope, that gets smashed. Every time.

After what must be the hundredth doctor who wants to try something new, I leave the book. I don't need to hear anything else.

Whether Isla, in some gush of wisdom, knew this would happen, or if she was just hoping I would be able to talk about it again, I don't know. Neither can I agree for one hundred percent, that she's done me a favour. Finn's situation is different from Sorley's, yet now I can understand a little bit of the frustration Sorley must have felt, when I mentioned a solution. Even though nothing bad happened to me inside the book, and even though I got the full use of my legs again after my little accident, the doctors constant believe they'd discovered the golden egg, drove even me mad. Imagine how Finn must have felt.

It takes me an hour to realize I can't possibly fall asleep like this and after a few very deep sighs, I turn on my night light. Growling, I grab my phone and I growl even louder when I see it's been half past twelve. I'll be a wreck in school, tomorrow.

I tap on the WhatsApp icon, scroll down, see the thirty and immediately turn my phone off again.

In the dark, after turning my light off as well, I stare at the familiar shadows. The curtains, the large wardrobe, my desk and chair. I've slept here my entire life.