I was staring at a bed of flowers in the garden of the hospital compound. Or rather, I was staring into space. I still couldn’t believe fate had played this trick on me. Never in my life was I a guy who sped or took risky turns while driving – and yet, here I was sitting in a wheelchair after a car crash that broke my spine.
Quadriplegic. The docs said I needed to be grateful to still be alive. But was I?
I used to be an athlete. I remember I was on my way to some sports tournament when my life suddenly took a halt. Sitting around all day wasn’t something I’d done a lot in my life. Looked like I would from now on.
My cell slipped off the blanket on my knees and fell to the grass right next to the flower bed where the nurse had left me in my wheelchair. Damn it. I couldn’t reach it, of course. I stared at the fucking phone as it lay face down in the grass and tried to keep the tears from spilling over my eyelids. It was all so fucking unfair.
A shadow fell on me and someone bent down to pick up the phone. I sniffed and rubbed savagely at the wetness on my face with my hand. I looked up and hoped my voice was steady enough. “Thanks.”
Just my luck. It was Mr Hot, Muscled and Bearded. The one I’d been admiring from afar. The one I would have loved to get to know in the biblical sense, if circumstances had been different. But here I was, paralyzed from the waist down and staring at a hot muscle bear who I just knew from a distance, because the dude used to walk around the hospital grounds in circles, seemingly unaware where he was and what he was doing. A nutcase, my former self would have called him. Now, crippled and broken myself, I wasn’t so quick to label other people so carelessly.
“Are you okay?” Mr Hot Guy asked me as he handed me my phone. I swiped my hand over my eyes once more and gave the best fake smile I was able to.
“Yeah, thanks man. It just fell and I couldn’t reach it.”
He smiled down at me with a perfect row of blindingly white teeth. I could see on his bald skull that he had a gash on the side of his head that must have been a few weeks old. He only wore a band-aid over it now instead of a full-on bandage like the first time I saw him. He also seemed much more collected than during those first days, when he acted all dizzy and confused in the hospital hallways and a nurse had to go fetch him countless times.
“You been in that chair long?”, he asked.
I shook my head. “Just about 4 weeks. The major surgery has healed, but docs say I will probably never walk again.” I looked at my feet and willed the tears away. I felt like talking about someone dying. I should be happy to even be here. I knew I should.
He put his hand on my neck and after my initial surprise over the unexpected closeness, I welcomed the warm touch. “I’m sorry,” was all he said.
I knew. They all were. Hell, I was too.
“What’s your name?” I said to change the subject.
He looked up and stared at something I couldn’t see. “The nurses call me John. So I guess John it is. I don’t remember my actual name, can you believe that?”
I gaped at him. “What happened?”
To my surprise, he laughed. He had a deep and rich voice. Instead of answering, though, he pointed at the wound on his head. Oh.
“Wish I could give you a wild story of how I managed to hit my head. But truth is, I don’t remember. It’s like with those hashtags. Woke up like this, you know?”
I stared at him. Was he fucking with me? I’ve seen the tv shows where people lost their memory, but was that a thing that happened in reality?
“I’m sorry,” I said dumbly. He squeezed my neck gently in response. Damn, he looked good. He wore a white t-shirt and white pants. He looked like hospital staff. Just, you know, tan and buff. A bit like the way I had been, but after a month of wasting away, I guess I wasn’t much to look at anymore.
He squatted down next to me, so we were eye to eye.
“But you know what’s really crazy? Whatever happened to me to bring me here, I’m happy right now.” He smiled brightly again. I lifted the corner of my mouth a bit, trying to catch a bit of John’s positivity, but as usual, my smile fell flat and I just stared at my useless, blanketed legs. My hands balled to fists in my lap and I closed my eyes, relishing John’s safe hold on my neck. To my disappointment, he let go and moved his hand down to mine. He gripped my fist and slowly pried it open, so he could intertwine his fingers in mine. I let him.
“I’m happy and I know you can be too,” he said.
I felt a tear flow down my cheek and I couldn’t hold back my raw emotions anymore. I sobbed and started to cry. He tugged me toward him and embraced my upper body until my face was pressed to his and I could feel his breath on my damp cheeks. He held me softly as I cried my heart out.
When the flood inside me began to ebb, I sniffed and stuttered against his face. “You know, when I was still whole, I was gay. I would have loved for a man like you to take an interest in me.”
He laughed softly. “You are still whole. And what do you mean, you were gay? Aren’t you anymore?”
“I’m paralyzed from the waist down. I’m of no use anymore,” I said flatly. The tears were gone and in their place was just plain cold acceptance. I was sure he’d pull away now and focus his attention on somebody else. Someone who wasn’t as broken as me.
He pulled my chin up, bringing our eyes in line again. “I don’t remember anything about my life, but I do remember that I am gay. And I like you. That’s all that matters.”
He lifted his hand to my cheek, swiping his thumb through my tear tracks. I caught his hand with mine, pressing his warm skin against my face, enjoying his closeness for another minute.
“Where do you wanna go next?”, he said. I looked at the way the sunlight reflected in his red beard. I could tell from the hair on his arms that he was red all over his body. I envied any man who got to be with John.
“My room,” I said.
He brought his lips close to my face and gave me a peck on my cheek. I was stunned and turned my head towards him, but my lips only caught the corner of his mouth as he drew back. But he wasn’t chasing for more. It was just a gentle peck and smile to lift me up.
“Your room it is.”
+++
The nurse hadn’t said anything when John brought me back to my room and even helped me onto my bed. He got me a glass of water and sat down on a chair beside me. I’d been sorting my ‘Magic’ collector’s cards on the small table on my bed to kill time between my examinations. He looked at me for permission and I nodded, so he picked up a couple of cards.
“Those look cool. Monsters and wizards and other stuff. Can you actually play with those?”
You could. I showed him how to play them, but I could see that the intricate rules of this particular game were a bit hard to follow for him. His eyes grew heavy and when I asked him if he wanted to go to his own room and sleep, he declined sleepily and said he just needed to rest his eyes a bit. So he fell asleep in the chair next to my bed and I used the opportunity to look at him. He was beautiful. He must have been in his late 30s or early 40s, because I could see lines around his eyes and mouth. He looked peaceful in his sleep though. If this weren’t a hospital, I would have offered to let him sleep next to me on my bed.
I wasn’t tired, though, so I picked up my cell and looked at the many new Whatsapp messages I’d received in the meantime. Most of them were from my mom, trying to cheer me up. She had been with me during the first two weeks, but as my dad also needed caring, she had to leave once the docs were sure that the worst of the surgeries were behind me. I wasn’t too keen on the group messages from my circle of gay friends, many of whom I just knew as acquaintances. They didn’t all know about my accident and were discussing things as if life hadn’t just stopped for me. One of the messages caught my eye. Frank had posted a porn clip with the comment ‘Too bad this hottie apparently died recently’. The thumbnail looked weird to me. I turned the volume to zero and clicked on it. It was a clip from twitter that opened to a scene of a bald muscle hunk bottoming to various men, with the title ‘Who wants to go next?’.
I stared stupidly at the short clip of the guy lying on his back with his feet in the air, allowing guy after guy to have a go at his ass. All bareback of course, as it was done in porn these days. The bottom guy suddenly looked at the camera and smiled – and my phone slipped from my hand and dropped to the floor with a loud bang.
John sat forward in a rush, disorientation clouding his eyes, until he remembered where he was. We stared at each other and finally he smiled.
“You dropped your phone again.” He bent down and fetched it for me. The screen had gone black after the fall, thank heavens.
“Thank you.” I still stared at him, my mouth gaping open.
“I love that you seem to have a thing for dropping your phone. It means I have a reason to stick around, right?”
“You want to stick around? With me?”, I asked, dumbfounded. He smiled that flashing smile again, the same one I’d just seen on my cell screen.
“Sure, if you’ll have me.” He bent forward and kissed the corner of my mouth again. “Want something to drink?”
I nodded and he got up and went for the door. “Wait”, I said. He turned around, waiting for me to say something. His bulging arms rested against the door frame in a relaxed stance.
“When you said, you were happy now. What exactly did you mean?” I stuttered. I hated how I couldn’t get my voice under control when I was nervous.
He looked at me for the longest time, before he said, “I wasn’t in a happy place. Before. It’s not a memory, actually, more a feeling. Like a shadow. Here, I feel useful. I’m making friends. I feel like I make a difference. Hank, the nurse who works on neurology even said, I could go to nursing school or something. That is, if they ever find out my identity, so I can get my paperwork and stuff. Right now, I’m nobody.”
I smiled. “You’re not nobody. Do you want to have your old life back?”
“No.” His response was so fast that he could not have thought about the question. “No, I don’t want my old life back. But what I want is a new beginning.” He smiled at me and left to fetch us some water.
A new beginning was something I could use too, I figured. I clutched my phone tightly and pressed the button to power it down.
“Well then, to new beginnings, John.” I whispered and smiled. And this time, for real.
