When China Breaks//Ed Sheeran #Wattys2016 #NewVoices

holiday p2: baby steps

*I dont mean to whine, but can you guys leave comments? Thank you for voting too, but I likenreading a replying to comments because I get bored*

I hunched over the toilet, expelling my lunch faster than it took to consume it. The bile burned my throat, and it felt as if my esophagus had been rubbed raw with sandpaper. Tears streamed down my face.

"Aaliyah?" Mary Ella banged on the stall door frantically. "Are you okay?"

I used the toilet paper to wipe my face and tossed it into the toilet bowl before sitting down with my back to the door. The automatic toilet flushed and I covered my face with my shirt to avoid being splashed with the toilet water the jumped out due to the high pressure.

"I'm okay," I gasped. "I just...my stomach."

I wasn't sure why, but my stressed level had gone from about a three to a ten since we stepped into Peggy's office. I knew exactly what today was. Almost three months post-op, my prosthesis was ready, sitting in the next room. Before we even reached the building, I had begun to have to doubts and negative thoughts about it. The one that sent me over the edge was this: What if, by chance, the doctor misjudged me when she said I was okay to walk in a prosthesis, and it damaged my residual limb? What if I had to go back to do months of physical therapy after yet another reconstructive surgery? Those thoughts were enough to make me unsure about the one thing I wanted the most.

I used the toilet paper holder and lift myself up from the floor. I unlocked the stall door and I don't think Mary Ella was expecting me to be facing her. I was taller than her, and for some reason, that brought me great satisfaction. I wrapped my arms around her and she helped me to my chair. "Are you okay?" She asked me, wetting some napkins to wipe away my ruined mascara.

"I just panicked," I tell her honestly. "Gum?"

She reached into her purse and brought out a piece of mint gum. She passed it to me and I stuffed it into my mouth. "Peggy is waiting for us. Everything will be fine, don't worry." She assured me, pushing me out of the restroom.

Instead of going to Peggy's office, the way we usually did, I was instead pushed to a perfectly square room that reminded me of a dance studio. There was a large mirror covering the entire back wall, but instead of there being one long beam against that wall, there were two parallel beams running in the direction towards the wall. Peggy was sitting on the floor between the beams, fiddling with what I figured was my artificial limb. She looked up at the both of us and smiled. "Hi! Come in and we'll get started. No need to waste any time at all."

Mary Ella pushed me towards a chair directly in front of Peggy. I moved to the chair by myself, as I was becoming better at doing those things. I looked down st the prosthetic limb and found it to be the one I chose for myself. The shell of the upper half that would make up almost all of my leg below the knee was a shade of brown similar to my own skin tone. There was a foot that fit the shoe size eight, also my skin tone. Between the foot and the leg portion was a bit that would work as my ankle and I prayed that it wold work as intended.

"Well, here it is!" Peggy said excitedly. "This one has a pin mechanism that keeps the prosthetic on, but if you find that too uncomfortable, we can always change it to a vacuum seal, okay? Let me show you how to put it on."

She passed me a long, rubbery looking liner, that looked like a sock, but didn't have a foot. I pulled up my jeans and began to place the liner on. It was a bit like a condom, and I couldn't help but smile to myself as I imagine putting a condom on my leg. There was a black pin at the end of the liner about two and a half inches in length. Peggy passed me two more liners, but those ones felt like actual socks. I placed them both on, making sure the pin went through the holes at the bottom of the socks. Peggy held up the prosthesis.