My mom’s fiancé falls to his knees, slowly picks me up and places me back onto my bed. My knee shakes uncontrollably.
–––
“I Don’t Need Help”
by Madison Abercrombie
I lie on the floor. I try to find a way to move, to power my own body. Without anyone else’s help.
I fit my brace over my right knee and try to stand. I grab onto the first thing my hand touches, my bedpost.
I realize that nothing can help me.
I try to use my arms to push off the ground and lift myself up. But I lack the strength to lift my 102-pound body.
“You’ve got this, Maddy,” I say to myself. “Just a few steps to go to the bathroom. C’mon, Maddy. A one-year-old can do this. You’ve got this.”
But I don’t.
I never imagined walking to the bathroom would be a struggle. Well, maybe when I’m old and need a “Life-Alert” necklace, but not at 15. Not when if I’m not walking or running everywhere, I’m skateboarding everywhere.
It’s 4 a.m.
I’ve spent the past 90 minutes trying to stand on my own.
At 5:30, I give up.
I hate the way people stare at me when I walk. The same look they give homeless people; the look I give homeless people. The look one gives a homeless person when we want to offer help, but we can’t or we don’t.
I hate the look that says, “What happened to you?” “Why can’t you walk?”
“I can do it!” I yell at my sister Jasmine who wants to help me dress.
“Maddy, please. It’s no big deal. Let me help,” she says.
I blow her off and try to balance on my good leg.
“Maddy, please.”
I lean against the wall trying to balance while pulling on my shirt.
“I can do it!” I insist.
My body aches as I slip on my shirt.
My road burn on my lower back bleeds, but I keep quiet. Else Jasmine will make me change my shirt, and I can’t go through that again.
“Madison,” my mother calls. “Are you dressed yet?”
Then she’s standing in the doorway, and I lose my balance. I fall. My leg bangs against my bed. My mom rushes over, but I refuse her help.
“I can do it, Mommy. I’m not three years old. I can dress myself. Please, just let me do it.”
As I speak she sits on the floor beside me, helping me change.
I can’t skateboard to the corner store for an Arizona iced tea. I can’t go to school. I’m going to miss the last three weeks of the fall semester and what happens to my grades? My credits? Only one teacher has checked in. The administration has said nothing. Perhaps a kid getting hit by a car is not an extraordinary event.
Yet another doctor’s appointment. I fear he will say that I am as broken as I feel.
“You might have a hairline fracture,” he says.
And what does that mean?
“Keep your brace on and do not walk without your crutches.”
Early January.
Another week until spring semester begins.
I feel like a robot. I walk but without bending my knees.
My sisters, Jasmine and Danny, are about to walk to the store.
“I’m coming,” I yell.
They sit and wait patiently for me.
I attempt to walk “normal.”
I trip and fall down the stairs. I crawl to the kitchen.
“Baby!” my mom screams. “Baby!”
My mom’s fiancé falls to his knees, slowly picks me up and places me back onto my bed. My knee shakes uncontrollably. I try to hold it down, but it seems as if it has a life of its own and wobbles every which way.
I try not to cry. But I fail, and breathing is next to impossible.
My mom holds me, “Breathe Maddy, breathe.”
She strokes my hair. I am a child again.
Unwelcome thoughts rush through my mind, “I can’t do it. I can’t walk. I can’t run.”
My mind reels backward to the moment of impact. I step off the curb and Wham!
I am being rushed to a hospital.
I remember my father crying as he stared at me while I lay in a hospital bed, my eyes barely cracked, my back bleeding, my neck in a brace, my leg swollen to the size of a watermelon.
I remember the ambulance ride. My mother holds my hand, gripping it tightly.
I remember the moment of my sudden immobilization. The bus bench eight inches away, and I couldn’t make my way off the asphalt to safety.
I remember screaming from pain, the sounds coming as if from someone else’s newly wracked body.
I remember that next morning. The day I realized I would need help. The day I realized my leg would never be the same. That I would always walk with a slight limp.
I try my hardest to appear normal.
I try not to replay that moment when I tumbled over the hood of the car and flew in the air and landed on Venice Boulevard and lost consciousness for a few minutes.
As my mom strokes my hair I don’t bother to refuse her help. I don’t ask her to leave me alone so I can calm myself. I look at her and I accept her love, her sweet, motherly embrace, and I feel, for the moment, that I “just can’t do it alone.”
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