The Wheelchair Diaries - Chapter 13

It turns out you can measure time in endings.

Mondays feel like waking up in a stranger's body and pretending I know where the light switches are. Wednesdays hum. Fridays are a kind of miracle. And Sundays... Sundays are loss, again and again, in smaller circles until I'm dizzy from recognizing the pattern. We've been doing the injection for a few weeks now, just long enough for my body to learn the choreography and my brain to start calling it home.

The routine is ordinary in the way that makes it sacred: Wednesday night, my bed, the quiet click of the black case, his voice careful and my yes steadier than that first time. The unfurl under my ribs, softness moving in like fog, my lower body letting go of its job. Thursday I'm giddy and clumsy. Friday I'm competent and still. Saturday I'm greedy for every inch. Sunday I bargain with a countdown that does not bargain. Monday morning my body responds to me, and I hate how easy it is.

I've stopped pretending it doesn't hurt. The first week I tried to be cheerful about the return of sensation. Look at me, a functioning woman with a functioning body. Now I just call it what it is: grief with a schedule. I do my bowel program, shower, feel the water on my shins and swear at the tiles. I dress in clothes that hide the outline of my body into the story I want. I roll to work and ignore the pen under my desk because I learned.

No one at the gallery notices the rhythm, which is both relief and private joke. They don't clock the shift from the days when my body is not working to the days when it behaves. They just see me: boots planted on the footplate, heels snug in the loops, toes angled out the way I like, matte-black pushrims, hair pretending to obey gravity. Liv drops crisps on my desk like confetti. Steph leaves me schedules with arrows that look like modern dance. I fall once more, the ruler incident.

And still, like clockwork, Sunday evening arrives. I can sit up too easily. My legs obey me. The hush thins. I feel evicted from my own body. I make soup. I text him sad and he replies I know. I sleep badly and wake Monday to the petty miracle of being able bodied and call it betrayal while brushing my teeth.

Three Wednesdays in, I realize I don't want to live in this loop where the truest part of me is rationed out like weekend data. The higher we go, the longer it seems to last; even staying at T6, my body lingers a little more each time, like it's learning the terrain. Now I can't stop thinking: what if we gave it more than two and a half days? Where Sunday isn't the end of something but just... day seven.

I didn't plan to bring it up tonight. We're on my sofa, he's telling a story about a registrar who mislabeled an entire shipment, and I'm laughing harder than it deserves because half of my body feels like home. I let him talk. His hands sketch shapes in the air, big surgeon-y arcs like he's still half in theatre, and I nod at all the right points but the truth is I'm watching the way his mouth curls when he gets sarcastic.

I'm supposed to be grateful. That's what I keep telling myself. It's more than I ever thought I'd have. Real paralysis, real absence, real proof. A taste of the thing I thought I'd only ever mimic. But gratitude doesn't survive long against hunger. Hunger keeps getting louder.

He finishes the story with a smug little grin, expecting me to volley back, but instead I blurt, too fast, too raw:

"What if we went longer?"

The room does that thing where the sound feels thinner after you speak, like I've cut the air wrong. He blinks, doesn't laugh it off, just studies me with that particular Ben look, half clinician, half something else. My stomach tightens.

I rush to fill the silence. "Not forever, I mean, just... a week. Or more. Just to see what happens. If my body... adjusts. A stronger dosage maybe?" My voice keeps tripping on itself. I hear how desperate it sounds, the way it edges on begging, and I want to rewind but also I don't, because this is the truth: I can't keep doing funerals every Sunday.

His face softens, not pity, something heavier. He sets his glass down on the table like it matters, deliberate, careful.

"You're saying you want permanence."

The word rings out, too sharp, too exposed. I want to deny it, dress it down, but my chest betrays me with a small nod. My throat feels tight.

I think of Monday mornings, the way my thighs argue with me, my calves buzzing alive when I don't want them. I think of pulling tights up over legs that refuse to be just decoration. I think of the relief of not having to perform the floppiness, the drag, the helpless angle of my foot sliding off the footplate.

"Yes," I whisper, quieter than I mean. "Or at least closer to it."

Ben doesn't answer right away. His eyes flicker like he's rehearsing consequences, or maybe weighing the weight of me against his own craving. He leans forward, elbows on his knees, voice low.

"You realize what you're asking me for isn't just another trial run."

And even though I know I should be scared, I feel the opposite: a kind of lightness, like maybe the loop could break, like maybe Sunday could stop meaning loss.

He exhales, and it sounds heavier than the registrar story ever could. "Jess... it doesn't work like that. These injections, they're temporary by design. The drugs clear, the nerves wake up. It isn't something I can stretch into a week or two, no matter how careful we are."

I feel my chest cave in, like the floor just went out from under me. "But it lasts a little longer each time you apply higher," I say, too quickly, too desperately. "You said so yourself."

"That's just your body adjusting to the block. It's not permanence. It's not scalable. And it's already risky doing it this often. Nerve toxicity, infection, things I don't want to even list for you." His voice dips, more serious than I've ever heard it. "I don't want to hurt you."

The word lands harder than I expect: hurt. I want to tell him that Mondays hurt worse than any complication he could name, but I bite it back.

"So there's no way," I say, a flatness creeping in.

He hesitates, and then: "There is a way. But it's not one I can give you."

I know before he says it. The thought has hovered at the edges of my mind for months, an obscene possibility I never dared articulate. Still, hearing him name it makes my throat tighten.

"The only way to make it permanent," he says carefully, "is surgical. Severing the spinal cord. And Jess..." His eyes pin me in place. "I can't do that to you."

The room goes silent, except for the buzz of the fridge in the kitchen. My legs under the blanket are absent, and yet the weight of them presses on me like accusation.

"I don't want to keep losing it," I whisper.

"I know." His jaw works, like he's swallowing something sharp. "But there's a line between helping you experience this safely and... destroying what you have. I couldn't cross that."

I nod, though it feels like defeat. My mind splits in two: one half wanting to curl into him for comfort, the other half screaming that he's gatekeeping the only real thing I've ever wanted.

I shake my head, too sharply, like I can dislodge the boundary he's just drawn. "You say you can't, but you want this as much as I do. Don't lie to me, Ben. You sit here and you watch me every time, you touch my thigh when you think I don't notice. You want me like this. You want me gone."

His face tightens, the softness evaporating. "That's not the same as cutting through your spine."

"Then what is it?" My voice cracks. "What's the point of all this if it just resets every week? Do you get off on watching me lose it and then crawl back on Monday? Is that it?"

"Stop." His tone slices through me, sharper than I've ever heard.

"No," I spit back. "You're making me believe in something that doesn't exist. You dangle it in front of me and then you yank it away. You don't get to sit there and tell me what's too far when you're the one putting the needle in me every Wednesday."

He stands, sudden, the blanket slipping from my lap as if gravity has picked sides. His voice is raised now, raw. "Do you have any idea what you're asking? You want me to gamble my license, my career, my freedom? For what? So you can feel authentic? So you can perform permanence? I could lose everything, Jessica. Everything."

The words slam into me, heavy, cruel, and true. I open my mouth to retort, but nothing comes. My chest feels hollowed out, like the block has reached too high.

He drags a hand through his hair, pacing once, twice, then grabbing his coat from the back of the chair. "I can't" His voice fractures, then hardens. "I won't do this."

"Ben"

But he's already moving, shoving his arms into the sleeves, not looking at me.

"Don't text me tonight," he mutters, and then he leaves.

And just like that, the room is empty, except for me and the body I don't want. I wheel into the bedroom because I can't stand the living room anymore, the echo of his presence, the sofa he left empty, the click of the door that still rings in my head. The air is cooler here, quieter, and it presses against my skin.

Then I see it. His bag, slouched against the side of the dresser like it has nowhere else to go. Half-zipped. Careless. Or maybe hurried. My pulse quickens. I know what's inside before I even touch it. The black case that always clicks open to the world I've been rehearsing for months.

I move closer, as if proximity could make the decision easier. My fingers brush the strap, hesitate, retreat. I know the routine. I've memorized it. The diagrams. The vertebrae. The way he angles the needle. I've watched him do it over and over.

Could I?