Joseph ran and leapt, sailing over the hurtle gracefully while the muscles in his legs strained and glistened with sweat. Landing, he took several more bounds before once again launching himself into the air and clearing another hurdle.
It was when he was sailing over the next hurtle that everything changed. He felt like a fish being ripped from the sea by a bird of prey as his foot caught the hurtle.
A kind of stunned disbelief washed over him as the flew through the air, suddenly tumbling out of control. Remarkably he had kept his eyes open this time and, just before contacting the track surface, he reared awake.
Joseph gasped and swung forward in his bed, causing pain to shoot through his back. Although he could not feel his legs, he knew they were in pain as well, and could not help but cry out.
Miranda, his mother, awoke with a start, her book falling to the floor. She quickly made her way to his side and held him as he cried.
"The same dream?" she asked, stroking his hair.
Joseph did not answer, but he did not have to.
* * *
It was a week after he first got home that his coach, Sandra Robinson, came to see him again. For Joseph, only the scenery had changed, he was still in a bed, still limited to where others could take him.
Coach Robinson wanted him to come out to the teams next meet, to connect with coaches she knew on the national paralympic team. She told him to call her any time he felt ready.
But he was never going to feel ready. Every night he went to bed and every night he hoped, he prayed, he cried, and he wished he would and would not have that dream.
He wished he would for the brief moment that he felt complete, unaware of his new reality, but he also dreaded reliving that awful moment and worse, being jarred awake cold, alone, and reduced.
Joseph spent that winter at home, occasionally meeting with a tutor his mother had hoped would help him prepare for university. Instead he focused his energy on his weekly physiotherapy appointments. The doctors had told him that the damage was too severe and that he would never walk again, but he refused to believe them.
Every week his physiotherapist would massage his legs and help him carry out stretches before turning to metal exercises meant to build new neural pathways, ones that would allow him to regain control of his life and every week ended in frustration.
"'You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength'," he said after one of their sessions. "That's Marcus Aurelius."
Joseph smiled and nodded, waited until the therapist left, and cried.
* * *
One week in the spring the physiotherapist stopped coming. At first his mother told him the therapist was having car troubles, and then that he was sick. Eventually she admitted that the two had mutually decided the sessions had run their course, that it was time for Joseph to seek a different path.
Joseph was enraged; he felt betrayed, but deep down he knew they were not wrong. Still, Joseph resolved to prove that they were not right, either. He decided to call Coach Robinson and tell her he was ready.
When the van arrived at the track, he refused his mothers assistance and unloaded his own chair, climbing into it and pushing himself to the edge of the parking lot. He had to overcome his rut; he would not be pusillanimous. The Joseph from the dream was gone.
"I have power over my mind," Joseph said to himself as he rolled to Coach Robinson. "I am ready."
YOU ARE READING
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Short StoryA bizarre collection of short stories inspired by a single word (the title of each chapter). Lengths can vary and most are dark, but some are humorous with a little romance, and slice-of-life sprinkled in (genre in title).
