Breaking Away

Seven

He's in his room alone, sitting up in bed with the desk pulled over his lap doing the schoolwork that Louis brought by when Tina walks in, pushing a wheelchair in front of her with Tom following along behind.

He looks up with a confused frown, eyeing the chair before turning to the nurse with wide eyes, stomach churning.

"What — what's that for?" He asks, knowing it's a stupid question but finding himself incapable of stringing any other words together.

Tom smiles. "Well, typically people sit in them, but I suppose there are other uses that I just don't know about," he says, tone teasing.

Niall can't smile back though. It's been two weeks since his first session with the PT — in that time he's mastered the whole sitting up thing as well as being able to pick up his own legs and drag them over the edge of the mattress so that his feet hover a few inches above the ground (he hates doing that, though, tries to avoid it at all costs because he can't feel it and all it does is remind him of why he's still stuck in this place after a month and a half). He's off the pain medication too now, though he sometimes has to ask for a few paracetamol after spending an hour having his legs and back rolled out by one of the nurses.

Despite all of what everyone keeps telling him is progress, the idea of sitting in a wheelchair makes him feel nauseous. His heart thunders in his chest, stomach churning up a storm. He sucks in a shallow breath and turns to Tina in the hopes of gaining something other than a sarcastic reply.

She smiles, pushing down a lever on the wheel of the chair and stepping around to his bed instead, glancing at the work spread over the desk.

"Geography?" She asks, nodding to the case study on a past volcanic eruption that he'd been working on.

He glances down, swallowing thickly before he looks up and gives a jerk of a nod. "Um, yeah. Lou says we're doing natural disasters for the whole of this last term of school, so..." he trails off, eyes flitting to the chair and back to the kind-eyed woman that he's grown to like. "Why's — um, that — that chair here?" He asks quietly, not sure why it feels like his throat is closing up because it's just a wheelchair.

The thing is though, it's so much more than that. If he sits in that thing, then everyone will be able to see. Everyone will look at him and know that he's sick, that there's something wrong with him, that he's broken. At least when he's sitting up in bed doing schoolwork, everyone seems to be able to forget why he's there. Sitting in the chair would surely just act as a constant reminder to everyone that his legs don't work at all and he doesn't want that.

He doesn't want to be the kid in the wheelchair, the kid who can't walk. He's always been Niall, the one who runs the fastest in PE and writes the best stories in English, the one who climbs the tallest trees and — and —

That's not him anymore.
(That hurts more than breaking his back ever did.)

"Well, I know it's a little last minute but we've got a spare bed in another room and this cubicle is going to be needed by somebody else soon," she says softly, helping to gather up the sheets and textbook on his desk.

His heart beats even harder then, almost to the point where it hurts; he can hear it echoing throughout his body, blood rushing noisily inside his ears. He gnaws at his lip as the desk is pushed aside, the railing lowered on one side of the bed.

"But — why — why do I have to go to another room? I'm okay here," he says, looking up at Tina with pleading eyes, wanting to push away the inevitable that involves him in the wheelchair that Tom is waiting behind.

Tina softens, squeezing his shoulder. "Angel, you don't need intensive care anymore. This is a big step, you'll have a little more freedom. Your Papa's on his way, we can wait for him to get here before we go," she explains, and it's all so sudden that his breath sticks in his throat.