My heart started to race when I watched the nurse testing my feet for sensation. Stranger things have happened in comics than a paraplegic getting hit by a car and waking up able to walk again. But my origin story had come and gone a long time ago, and this was real life, not some funnybook.
As expected, I still didn’t feel anything from the hips down to my big toes. And yeah, that means everything in between.
My energy dwindled after that. Whatever they had in my drip had me dozing in and out. Laura stood nearby, then sat by the window, then paced—but always with me. Years since I’d saved her, and still, she was there. No matter how often her father might’ve told her to keep away from me, she always showed.
Eventually, my consciousness winked out completely, and when my eyes opened again, I rasped for breath all on my own. I still had oxygen plugging my nostrils for that extra little boost, but now it wasn’t enough to help me ignore how sore my every muscle was from the waist-up. The injuries I’d suffered from being hit by that mail truck were healed, or healing, judging by the sling they had my left arm in.
The truck! I realized.
My right hand shot out and at Laura. She’d fallen asleep reading some law book and startled awake. I could see the twitch of her muscles, ready to defend herself as if that asshole Vinny Statman had just shown up. I know that pain never went away. That fear. It’s always there. Always gonna be. People who’ve gone through what she has… they never wake up easy. No matter how put-together they look on the outside, there’s always one piece of the puzzle lost under the carpet.
“Mich…” I struggled to say, throat itching. The muscles of my larynx stung. “Michelle,” I forced out. “Is she—”
“She’s fine,” Laura said. “Thanks to her guardian angel.”
“Far from that, I’m afraid.”
She smiled, ignoring me, and nodded toward the bedside table to my left. The SuperBall I’d given Michelle lay against a smudged glass of water.
“She had me bring it for you,” Laura said.
I tried to reach with my slung arm to grab it and failed miserably.
Laura leaned across me to get it. Her arm brushed my cheek, and her shirt draped against my chest. I had to close my eyes. I hated seeing her stretched out like that. Exposed. All I could picture were her tears that awful night.
“Here,” she said. She sat back down, placed the ball in my hand, and folded hers around mine with it in the center.
“Great,” I said. “A memento from my slayer. Car bumper.”
Laura rolled her eyes and let go of me. I rolled the SuperBall along my palm.
“You give a kid one gift,” I said.
“It’s the thought that counts,” she replied.
“Says every shit gift-giver who’s ever lived.” I placed the toy back on the table.
“I think her life is a good trade-off, no?” Laura’s playful façade faded, and tears welled in her eyes. I didn’t become the most infamous vigilante anyone’s ever heard of by not being perceptive. It clearly took all the meager energy she had to keep herself composed.
“Reese, what you did—I can’t—”
I raised a finger to my lips. “A hell of time you had bringing Michelle into the world,” I said. “Her life wasn’t going to end because of me.”
Laura sniveled and wiped her face. Her lips parted to speak, but nothing came out. All she could manage was a timid nod. This time, I took her hand and clasped it in my own.
“I’d do it the same every time,” I said. “You never need to thank me.”
She cleared her throat. “The doctors say that your chair absorbed the brunt of the crash. Without it, you’d have been killed instantly.”
“Saved by the prison I can’t escape. Lucky me.” I looked around. “Where the hell am I?”
“Downtown at Iron City General.”
“You know I hate it downtown. All the suit-wearing, shoe-kissing—”
“It’s the best hospital in the city,” she interrupted, avoiding eye-contact now. I’d known her long enough to know that meant something bad. Especially after she stood and started pacing again. She always did that when she was nervous.
“What else is it?” I asked.
“Nothing. I’m just glad you’re alive.”
“Laura, I’m a cripple in a hospital bed, stewing in his own shit and piss. It can’t be that bad.”
She breathed out slowly and shook out her wrists. “Well… you were in a coma for a month and the doctors—”
“A month?” I cut her off, my jaw dropping. No wonder I could sense the muscle atrophy.
“And three days,” she clarified.
“That long, hooked on life-support in Iron City’s finest with no insurance? How the hell is that possible?”
And then I saw her features darken tellingly. She was hiding something, and we didn’t have that sort of relationship. I hid almost everything while she always told the truth, futilely hoping that might eke more out of me.
“Laura, how is that possible?” I asked again.
She swallowed hard and turned away. “They, uh, didn’t think you were going to make it, and you have no next of kin, so I… I had to pay the hospital not to pull the plug.”
“You mean your dad?”
She shook her head. “No, me. He said it was hopeless and time to let you go.”
“And you didn’t listen…” I grumbled.
“What was I supposed to do?”
“Let me go.” My head slumped back into the pillow. “How much, Laura? How much was keeping me around worth?”
“You think I only did this for myself? I saved your life, Reese. The least you could do—”
“That’s my job!” I smacked the stupid little plastic tray hovering over me, spilling a cup of ice chips I hadn’t seen brought in. They trickled over the side into my worthless lap. I gave the tray a shove, sending it banging against the wall.
Laura’s purse was on it too, and now, its contents were all over the floor. She flinched, turning away, with her hands extended as if to stop some unseen force. And in that brief moment, I saw primal fear flash across her features like it had in that alley. Only this time, I was the trigger.
“I. Save. You,” I said, panting, barely able to see straight my head ached so bad. “That’s how it works. Not the other way around. You have a daughter, an apartment, loans. And you wasted it on a guy who almost rolled himself into a river because he’s got nothing left?”
Raising my voice strained my already hoarse throat too far, and I started coughing into my sling. Any time I tried to keep talking, it escalated. As I did, Laura braved getting closer again. She half-sat on the side of the bed, rubbing my back like I was a little kid or some kind of an invalid. Why couldn’t she just walk away?
“But you didn’t,” she said softly. “You don’t get to play God, Reese. And yeah, maybe I did want to keep you around. You barely talk to me, yet you say more than my father ever does.”
I peered up at her, each breath rattling out as the phlegm cleared. My temples throbbed.
“How much?” I asked.