All tagged Madelyn's legs
“My evil side plots your death at my hands,” he tells her. “But only 1.5% more than usual.”
“Master Mind,” Joy says from the hammock. “Why are your hands there?”
He takes his hands out of his chest cavity. “I have protected your paper heart from getting wet. I was afraid the water would damage my only prized possession.”
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“Lie down,” Master Mind tells Madelyn as he holds the axe in his hand.
“Not on the porch!” Suzy suddenly says.
We’ve both been very quiet. These last few minutes have been beyond our experience. Suzy shrugs when I look at her. I know her. She feels stupid that this was the only thing she had to say, and yet it had to be said.
Madelyn goes down the stairs and lies down on the soil of our garden. She makes sure her legs are straight and easy for Master Mind to cut.
Master Mind walks down the stairs with the axe.
“I can’t watch,” Joy says and hides her head inside the hammock.
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Madelyn nods. “I will wake up soon. I have tried to burn my legs. To shoot my legs. To cut them with a knife. But I cannot. I cannot harm myself. You must do it for me.”
“What? What?” Justin stammers.
“Please. It is not my real legs. You will not really hurt me. This is just a dream. Take this axe,” she hands him an axe. “And cut them.”
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Justin’s mouth falls open in shock as Master Mind tells him what happened when Joy tried to ride the magic carpet to the roof while wounded.
“Okay. Okay. Okay. You,” he points at Joy. “Never do that! Listen to adults for a change! When we tell you it’s dangerous, it’s dangerous! Grandma and Grampa know more about that because they’ve lived longer! You should listen to them! Got it!”
Joy looks down, but doesn’t answer. Justin doesn’t wait for a response. “Master Mind, good job not listening to her once she fell off the roof. I don’t trust her to listen to me so you have complete authority from me to never let her do something that can open this wound or any other wound! Got it?”
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After Madelyn flies off god-knows-where, Joy wants to go after her, but Master Mind refuses to let her out of the hammock. Her protests do not help, since he no longer accepts her orders after what happened with the magic carpet.
Joy stops her protests as her own leg hurts more and more.
She lies back and moans in pain.
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“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!”
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Madelyn is looking down at her legs and is clearly at a loss.
“Well, uh, this is your dream,” Suzy tries to help. “Maybe in your dream you want legs this time?”
Madelyn shakes her head, horrified.
Three people appear behind her on the porch, a man and two women. Master Mind turns his full attention to them. Joy, in the hammock, puts her hand on the laser pistol in her belt.
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The first Dreamer to appear is Madelyn. She appears on the deck. She runs down the ramp and onto the porch.
It is impossible to not notice that this woman who had no legs for all the time I knew her is now running with shorts on two completely new legs. It is very strange. And when she passes me I notice how tall she is now.
“How is Zhoy?”
“She is sleeping, she is fine,” Suzy says softly. “I think she’ll be all right.”
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“Three weeks with no adventures! Just kill me now!” she exclaims. Madelyn and Charlie are shocked and they both gasp.
Justin is the only one who isn’t fazed by the things she says. “Two weeks,” he says.
“Two days,” she says. “I’ll be walking and jumping in two days!”
“Don’t you dare try to do that! The wound will open up and it’s not even closed yet!”
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“And she almost died!”
“Yuppers,” I say.
He finally looks at me. “Yuppers?”
“Yuppers.”
“That’s not a word.”
“It’s a word if I say it’s a word. Now it’s a word.”
He looks forward, now slightly calmer. “I’m going to start thinking you have a sense of humor, Dad.”
“Perish the thought!”
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Charlie lands on the deck of Bonny’s Revenge, dropping Master Mind behind him, and runs to Joy. The rope that ties him to the big robot stops him in the middle. Without thinking, he whirls around, cuts it with a knife that just appears in his hand, and keeps running. The knife disappears.
“Joy! Joy! Are you alive?”
“Charlie, I’m okay. I’m okay.” But her face is paler than usual and sweaty.
“When I saw you get shot…” he looks her over and starts to cry.
She grabs his hand. “Charlie. Charlie. I’m okay.” Her voice is weak and she’s in pain, yet she’s trying to make him feel better. What is this girl made of?
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I am here with my granddaughter. I’ve stopped the bleeding. Artemis’ arrow is in her leg.
I’ve created a tourniquet but she’s lost so much blood! She needs help and I’m the only one here!
I hear a familiar sound above me.
Madelyn’s super wheelchair comes flying from the tunnel, and she heads right towards us.
“Mon dieu, Zhoy!” she leaps off the wheelchair and lands next to her. And suddenly she has legs! “Mon dieu, mon dieu, mon dieu,” she can’t stop saying it. “This is all my fault! How are you feeling, Zhoy?”
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And here we are again, entering Madelyn’s dream.
As the glass elevator descends, we see that we are above a tennis court.
“What’s tennis?” Joy asks.
I look at Justin, almost horrified. “Justin, have you never shown Joy what tennis is?” Justin looks away from me and shakes his head. “But it’s such a big part of your life! Even now!”
He shakes his head again.
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“Do you speak French, Joy?” she pronounces the name ‘Zhoy’.
“I don’t know,” Joy answers happily. “What’s French?”
Charlie peeks from behind Joy. “She doesn’t speak French, miss,” he says.
Madelyn takes a deep breath. “Then it is harder.”
Both Joy and Charlie are looking down at her. Even though Madelyn is clearly a tall woman, standing without legs she is shorter than them.
“Zhoy,” Madelyn speaks slowly, choosing her words. She knows English, but it is hard for her. “Do you know what it is like to… to win?”
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There are only a handful of people walking or sitting in the pool in Madelyn’s dream. They all have regular shadows, which means they’re all dreams.
I look around and there are no people with movies in their shadows, like the shadows of Justin and Charlie.
“There!” Justin points out. “Swimming in the pool! The tall woman!”
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