Wild Ride - The Alternative Version (Book 2)

Chapter 48~The Birthday Girl

*Two Months Later*

Jimmy's POV

It was now the month of April, and tomorrow would be Abbie's ninth birthday. Just thinking about it makes me feel old. I still remember the little six year old girl who refused to look up from her coloring book to see who had entered her room until she was done coloring in the sky. She's going to have Dustin over since her birthday falls on a Sunday this year, and we told her that she could have one friend where we'll have the family over too. He's been over quite a few times since Abbie got out of the hospital two months ago, and I've gotten maybe a smidge more trust when it comes to him. 

Since getting her surgical staples removed the week after she was released from the hospital, Abbie's been working really hard these past couple of months on getting her stamina, strength, and agility back up to pace again. She's been struggling so much with it, especially at first. She couldn't run even a short distance without panting heavily and having to chug almost a whole bottle of water. But she's improved a lot since then, and she's almost there. This month we started bringing her into LA where there's a sports center that has all sorts of ways for her to get active. They've got this giant basketball court that has about four sets of hoops as it spans down so that there's room for all sorts of people, and Abbie immediately fell in love with that feature. Across from where the courts are, there's this huge swimming pool that has two racing lanes sectioned off, a hot tub, and a whirlpool where there's a volleyball net. On the second floor, there's a place to lift weights and use treadmills, and there's a built in track. 

What we've been having Abbie do a lot of, is running. The doctor gave us a set time goal for her to reach running distance-wise, and we've been helping her to get there as much as we can. We had to start her out on a treadmill because she had to work up to getting comfortable just even in a running pace again. Then, once she got past that level, we'd have her go run laps on the basketball courts, back and forth across the court. We'd have her do different forms of line runs, where she'd have to bend over and touch with at least two fingers a certain line on the court. After that, we'd go through actual basketball drills she's done in practice with the ball, both shooting and running. Abbie's just started to do swimming, and she's been using the racing lanes to swim laps and she's been doing really well with that, she's so close on meeting her goal. Her biggest challenge, and the one she's struggled the most with is running the track. She has trouble running distance for a certain amount of time, and that's been the hardest thing for her to improve on, and the slowest. I know she can do it though, with just a little more endurance and she'll be set. The others have been helping her too, sometimes they'll come with us and we'll play a basketball game. When it comes to running, either the stuff on the court or on the track, usually either Elise or I will run with her to try and get her motivated to keep going because sometimes she just wants to sit down and give up. We've found that if there's someone running along beside her, encouraging her, she doesn't get so frustrated and pushes her limits a little more. But we always do our best to make sure that we don't push her too hard, and we give her long breaks between activities to let her rest up. 

Abbie had to give it another week after getting the surgical staples removed before she could start drumming again, so during that week I taught her to stick spin. But once that week had gone by, if she wasn't outside trying to get herself back up to speed, she was in the basement drumming. She'd much rather just do that all day every day instead of trying to run laps without getting winded after the first three, but unfortunately that's just not how it works. Then somewhere in between she fits in school, homework, and friends. 

Now, we had Abbie had just gotten changed into her bathing suit and was getting ready to try and reach her time goal. With swimming, it wasn't about the distance covered. She was going by how long she could keep moving without getting too slowed down. Her goal was twenty laps, and her latest she's reached is eighteen laps. She had decided that she wanted to do swimming first today where it was easiest for her. Today Brian and Sabal were with us while Brady and Ella were with Brian's parents.