Madelyn’s three friends vanish. She screams in frustration and turns her back to Joy, clearly cursing in French. I know some of those curse words. They are harsh, and they’re aimed at Joy.
Master Mind climbs out of the ocean and into our garden.
Suzy takes a few steps towards Madelyn, who, now, with her legs, is more than a head taller than Suzy. “Madelyn, she didn’t mean to. She doesn’t understand what you must have had to cope with to—”
“Cope with?!” Madelyn whirls around and shouts at Joy. “Do you know how many nights and days in the beginning I spent in pain and wishing I could get my legs back?! Do you know how hard it was to learn that this is my body now,” she points at the wheelchair. “No legs! Just this! Do you know how much pain and physio...physio…”
“Physiotherapy,” I jump in.
“Physiotherapy that is so painful I had to go through! Do you know how long it took to hurt even less?! And do you know how the only way to live is to know that this,” she points at the chair again, “is my body. This! This! No legs! I made so much progress! I accepted so much! I am so much stronger! I am a better person now! I do not want my legs!”
Joy looks at her plainly. She isn’t afraid, she isn’t overwhelmed by the intensity of Madelyn’s emotions. She looks at Madelyn the whole time, and then she says, “Then why did you dream you have legs?”
Madelyn stops her tirade and looks down at her legs. “I do not know. But it was a dream. It was just a dream. Until you touched them. And now they are real. Now they are here forever! I cannot have legs! I do not want legs! I want to be me!”
She looks around herself at all of us with disgust.
“I do not want to be here anymore,” she says.
Her futuristic, flying, laser-shooting wheelchair, the one I call ‘super wheelchair’ appears behind her. She sits down on it.
Her face turns bitter. “It is not the same.”
The wheelchair’s jets begin to work and she flies away from us.
(To be continued…)
—Told by Grampa Walt