Schritt für Schritt (step by step)

Point zero

Surgery...

...happens at the end of week three. Finally. Leah hates being at point zero again. But she hated knowing that she would have to go there again more. She hopes that this is the last day she'll look back, today is hopefully the last day we look back, she posts. She knows it's not, but she's the first person who has to believe it.

Alex drives her to the hospital. Leah knows she's made it her aim to make Leah feel a bit like herself again. After having been the adequate amount of serious, she laughs a bit too loudly and listens a bit too empathetically. It's not like Leah recognizes the person staring at her from the mirror in the elevator now. Or like she loves the body she looks at. But Alex is like a rhythm guitar. She brings warmth and regularity, and her laughter is mellow. It is so calming to Leah's intestines that seem to grasp and grab and tear away at each other inside her. Her palms are not sweaty, but she does not know whether she'll ever play football again. Alex does not play the guitar but when she picks Leah up, Leah knows she's safe. She texts Lia she's safe. And sound. She will be.

Lia's home from training just a few minutes after Alex helped Leah inside. Alex had brought in Leah's bag first – Leah'd packed too many clothes, even though she'd known she would only really be wearing the revealing hospital-dress with white and blue stripes – and then supported her friend getting out of the car. The journey car-house was quiet and exhausting, as it would be now. The silence weighed. But Alex drowned it with a soft moan when dropping Leah on her turquoise couch. Leah chuckled. "Hard staying in shape, innit?" Alex, seemingly indignant, had her mouth wide open. She opted to respond; the comeback was so obvious. She decided it would be better to let Leah win this one.

Lia is a bit scared of what she'll find when she gets home. She's glad when she sees Alex' car, still in front of Leah's house, as she parks her own next to it. "Be dehei!", she calls, as she opens the door. While it was an inside joke at home, Leah called herself a proud Swiss german-speaker in front of her teammates. (At home? Not not at home, she guesses.) "Hey yah", Leah croaks, and Alex jumps up from the couch to embrace Lia in a tight hug. The non-injured share a few words of greeting. Receiving Alex' thankful, calming looks, Lia understands more than just what she's saying. She then makes her way over to Leah. "Sorry, is this space still free?", she asks. Another inside joke. Swiss people and their social codes in trains. "Secher", Leah responds, slightly unsure if she's saying it right. She's not, but Lia's not about to correct her. Instead, she asks: "How are you?" It's not unnatural or forced, like if she would have had to ask her. On the contrary, it's become pretty normal for them to actually express their emotions and talk about their states of mind. Lia made it clear that, after successfully avoiding deeper topics with her last roommate-of-sorts, Caitlin, that she would not be doing this again. "I think I just need some sleep, to be fair", Leah responds. "I have been wanting to sleep ever since I woke up." This makes Lia, and Alex from behind, giggle slightly. Leah's glad she's the reason they did. "Seriously now, I think it went okay. I was a bit nervous when I went in, but honestly, that's the last thing I remember. I think I puked when I woke up, that's the next thing. And then I remember a slight pain, with which this lovely nurse helped..."

Surgery +1/2 – night. Déjà vu.

It has always hurt a bit if she's honest. But how can something that doesn't have any nerve receptors in it, that is artificial now, good damn! – how can her stupid ACL hurt like a thousand punches in the face? The way she imagines her surgeons cutting her knee open would have felt like without anesthesia. Like lava coating her knee. Her brain can't seem to realize that the attack is coming from the inside, not the outside of her body.

She doesn't know what time it is. She doesn't know how to find out. She doesn't know if she fell asleep, but she knows she's awake now. And she knows she's been in a lot of pain for a while. Her hand searches the night stand for the pills sloppily. Instead, she shoves the glass of water that Lia's put there over the edge with her elbow. The glass doesn't break, there's a carpet on the ground, but it makes a loud THUD. "Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck.", Leah mumbles. The liquid spills over the floor unhinderedly. She knows that, even if she finds the pain killers, she won't be able to swallow them. She's always had problems with swallowing pills, especially without water. She can't move. She can't move. Pain. Breathe.