The Loss of Control

A Faint Glimmer of Hope

I awoke to the sensation of my mother gently shaking me; I opened my eyes and saw her smiling face, “Come on honey, you have a big day ahead of you.” She said this as she put one arm behind my shoulders and pulled me up into a sitting position. My mom then went though her normal routine; helping me get dressed, brush my teeth, comb my hair, and finally carrying me downstairs to where my wheelchair sat waiting for me at the bottom of the stairs. Why don’t I just get ready in the morning on my own? Why do I have a wheelchair when I’m only fourteen? Because I have duchenne muscular dystrophy, I’ve needed a wheelchair since I was eleven, before that I was fine using leg braces, but this form of muscular dystrophy quickly progresses. The only benefit of having the disease I do is that you still have most of your upper body strength until your twenty, that’s when you start having problems with your heart.

Mom gently placed me in my chair and asked, “Do you need me to help or are you good?”

I looked up from my chair and said, “No thanks mom, I can handle it from here.” She nodded then smiled kindly and went off to the kitchen.

I pulled my hands out of my lap and wrapped my fingers around the cool aluminum rail on the side the wheelchair, I gently pushed forward on the rail and I moved forward. When I got to the kitchen I was glad to see that my sister wasn’t there yet. I raised my hopes to soon; I could hear her walking down the stairs. When she walked into the room she was listening to her music player, she looked up and spotting me promptly sneered and said, “What’s up retard?” Mom didn’t even bother telling her off, my sister was what most would call a fucking bitch. She did whatever she wanted and didn’t care what happened because of it. Sadly my sister was right in the fact that I was a retard, or at least that’s what the tests said. It’s yet another symptom of duchenne muscular dystrophy, having an IQ below eighty. I don’t feel stupid, I am good at reading and writing, and that’s about it, but that doesn’t constitute retardation does it?

After a breakfast of pancakes and eggs we all got into moms van, which was powered only by solar energy and kinetic energy. I had to get in with help from my mom since we couldn’t afford a lift. According to my mom times have changed a lot since she was a kid. When she was a kid scientists were predicting that the last of all fossil fuels would be around the year 2030, and now we were living in a time where everything had to be powered by ether solar energy or nuclear energy. There have been many advancements in the last quarter century, like how nano bots are now being used to do everything effectively, even finding their way into the medical field, treating things like cancer and even doing surgeries in the brain. In fact, after school, I was going in to see a specialist about a new and theoretical way to actually cure me of muscular dystrophy.

When we pulled up to the school my sister jumped out of the front seat right away and hurried off to her friends in the cafeteria; mom unloaded me, and said she would pick me up after school. Being considered mentally retarded had really hindered my efforts to impress girls and make friends, especially since they put me in all ILC (individual learning center)-most of the kids in ILC weren’t dumb, they just had some sort of severe trauma- which is why I demanded I take a test that would allow me to partake in normal classes, even some AP courses, I passed with difficulty.

My favorite class by far was AP literature; it was my first class so I wheeled myself up the ramp into school and went to class. I was the first to class; I was followed by three girls and two boys. One of the girls, Jessica, sat in the seat next to me just like she always did. “Hey Nick, what’s up?” Jess said in a soft ringing voice, just like always her voice I mean. She smiled at me as she spoke, resting the side of her head on her palm.

I grinned back at her, “Hey Jess, nothing much and you?”

She straitened up and said, “Oh you know, life as a freshman, so boring.” She rolled her eyes as she said boring.