Ain't No Mountain High Enough

"Broken Wings"

I'm really into those Metal Gear Solid games. The day Phantom Pain released, I waited in line for hours to get a copy. Yeesh, and I say Keto is the nerd around here.

When I actually got to play the game, I was kinda freaked out about Solid Snake being in a coma for nine years. The more I thought about it, the more freaked out I got. I mean, that's being asleep for a long time while the rest of the world moves on with life. I figured nine years might have been a little unrealistic, but I have no clue how the medical world works. I only code video games for a living.

When I woke up, I was in a hospital bed with tubes up my nose and an IV drip stuck in my arm. No one had been around when I woke up, so I laid there for a moment to contemplate what had happened, with only the beeping sound of the monitors tracking my heartrate to keep me company. Honestly, I was so drugged up any thoughts I had were complete nonsense, and in the end, I tried to rip my IV out and go figure out what the heck was going on.

A nurse quickly came in to stop me from hurting myself and explained exactly what was going on, but I still didn't understand completely until later that night. The good news was that I hadn't been in a coma for nine years, but I might as well have been with the amount of homework that got dished out at school while I was in this vegetable state. Er, vegetative state. (See, I told you I have no knowledge of the medical world.) It really sunk in that night that I had been in a coma for three weeks.

Later on, the whole gang came to visit. Veronica felt horrible, since she was in charge of grocery shopping anyway, and kept going on and on about how she should have been the one in the car. Keto kept trying to console her, but she just sat in the hard hospital room chair with a haunted look in her eyes.

Arjun Harlow, another good friend of ours, had come, too. Apparently he had been the one the police had contacted about the car accident, since he was at the top of my contact list and they hadn't been able to get a hold of my mom. That's no surprise, considering that I haven't spoken to her since she ditched me back in my sophomore year of college. I didn't have a dad either, since he had died when I was in high school.

"I'm guessing they explained everything?" he asked. He was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest.

I nodded. "It's only just now hitting me," I said. My throat was hoarse from the freakily large tube that had been stuck down in it in the two weeks following the wreck, when I hadn't been able to breathe on my own. "I guess we need to get the brakes fixed on Leon."

Keto ran his hand through his hair as Veronica covered her face with her hands. "Yeah, about Leon," Keto said. "He's totaled. Completely."

"You're lucky you're not in the same boat," Arjun said. "They kept telling us not to get our hopes up that you'd wake up." He smirked. "Guess it takes more than a wreck to take you down though, eh?"

I was still reeling over the fact that I basically killed Leon. I mean, I didn't, but that BMW did. I was still high on pain medication, and a silly thought popped into my head about avenging Leon's death. That's right, I'm going to go and get revenge on the BMW for the death of my car.

"Did anyone die?" I croaked out. I remembered trying to get the nurse to tell me, but she refused to budge on that one.

Arjun looked at the floor, and Keto shifted his weight. I realized Veronica was silently crying, her face still buried in her hands.

"Yeah...," Arjun said. "The guy who hit you died, and so did whoever was behind you. A couple others got out okay, though. One guy's around in this hospital somewhere."

It's a strange feeling to realize you were a part of something that caused other people to die. It's even stranger when it sinks in that you almost died, too. I rubbed my hands over my face and tried to keep the emotion out of my expression, because that wasn't the only thing that was bumping around in my head.

The thing was, the doctor had come in later to inform me that I would never walk again. When the BMW hit me, it paralyzed me from the waist down. I guess that's why I hadn't been able to move my legs when I woke up. I sighed, staring up at the white ceiling. "I guess...I'm para...para...what is it again?"

"Paraplegic," Arjun said. He finally looked away from the floor long enough to meet my gaze.

Veronica let out a sob, and Keto patted her shoulder.

I felt myself going into a mid-life crisis with the sound of her crying and the monitors beeping to let me know I was alive going on in the background. Out of everything I could have lost in life, somehow the ability to walk was not near the center of my radar. I guess this meant I'd have to be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. I tried to find a bright side to the situation, but ended up only finding frustration.

"Valerie will be by to see you in the morning," Arjun said. He stood up straight with a sigh. "I'll bring her by. She's been dying to see you. Well, see you while you're awake, anyway."

My heart thumped so hard in my chest it hurt. Valerie was the last member to join our little middle school "uncool" club. Even in college, she was one of the more intelligent people in her classes, if not the most intelligent.

She was also the girl I had had a crush on ever since puberty hit us both and I walked into my freshman homeroom on the first day of high school and noticed how different she looked. While I became an awkward teenage boy, she became a beautiful, graceful woman. She was way out of my league, but I still hadn't been able to kill my feelings for her.

"Thanks," was all I could get out. "I mean...thanks for coming, you guys."

"What did you expect?" Keto said with a laugh that sounded way too forced. "We can't just abandon you now, right?"

I couldn't help but smile. For better or worse, these freaks were my friends, and the only stable family I ever had. I was incredibly lucky to have them.

I had hoped at that moment that I would never become a burden to them. Moving forward, it was all I could think about.

And that's when I started to sink.

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Check out the Mr. Mister song, "Broken Wings". 

Peace ✌ ~ A.J.