This Life Of Mine

Chapter 7

Trina
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Trina was given crutches shortly after she and Karen received her X-rays. Apparently, she had broken her bibia, or tibia, or something, on her left leg. Her doctor said it was almost a miracle that she hadn't died. At this, Trina knew that death had been the goal for her human counterpart.
The crutches she was given were so complicated, that Trina had to assume that there were easier ones, that just wasn't given to her for some odd reason. She was told to wrap her appendages (that she learned were called fingers,) around the bottom bar, and put the top bar under her arms, which hurt. But getting them in place wasn't the hard part. It was walking. It was some arrangement of walking and jumping that Trina just couldn't get the hang of. Maybe the fact that she had never walked before played a small part in her inability to master this medieval-looking contraption. At least she didn't have to put pressure on her feet. She could learn to walk another day.
But now, her goal was getting back to Karen's car.
She was given a wheelchair for the majority of her transportation, but she still dreaded having to use her crutches. She had asked Karen if she could only use the wheelchair, but Karen said that if they did, Trina would have to push herself, but Trina hadn't quite mastered the whole arms thing. Right now, Karen was pushing Trina through the parking lot. They found that this method was a lot more efficient than running full speed.
"When we get back to my apartment, you are going to have to use your crutches," ordered Karen.
"Can I please not?"
"Unless you can learn to wheel yourself, then no. And, how do you expect to get up to the apartment?"
"Isn't there a thing that goes up and down?"
"The elevator? Yes, there is. Ha, I forgot about that. I suppose that you would need the elevator either way, but I am not pushing you."
"Fine," sighed Trina. "The crutches it is."
"Good. And, crutches are easier to get around with. A wheelchair is big and bulky, and bangs into almost everything."
"I already agreed."
Karen pulled into her designated parking spot and turned off her car.
"So, how should I get out of the car?" Asked Trina.
"Well, since you are going to be using your crutches, I will grab them out of the trunk, and bring them around to your door. Then you will have to push yourself out of the car and get walking."
Trina sighed in despair.
"Hey, don't sass me."
"That was not sass, I just don't know how I'm going to be able to do this."
"It's going to be okay, I'll try to help you. Should I leave your wheelchair in the car?"
"Probably. I can't imagine needing it."
"That's what I was thinking," Karen popped the trunk and fished out Trina's crutches. "Are you ready?"
"As ready as I'll ever be."
"It won't be that bad."
"It will be that bad. I have very little control of my arms."
"Wait, why don't you have control of your arms?"
Trina panicked, "Oh, um, I don't know, really."
"Huh, that's odd."
"Yeah, I know. I can move them a bit, just not a lot. And occasionally they spasm."
' Karen furrowed her eyebrows, "I'll have to look into that."
Trina smirked, "Yep, you do that." Karen would not find anything remotely close to the truth. She was fairly sure that there was no diagnosis for trees that were turned into a human. At least she thought that. One could never be sure what you might find on the internet. From what she'd heard, there were a lot of weird things on the internet, many of them false.
Trina hadn't realized how long her monologue had been going on until Karen opened her door and practically shoved the crutches in her face.
"Hey, Earth to Trina."
Trina blinked a couple of times to clear her head, "Right, sorry." She stretched out her arms and reached for the crutches. Surprisingly, her arms only twitched once before she grabbed the rubber handholds. The texture was unnaturally bumpy and made her shudder, but she wrapped her fingers around it nonetheless. She placed the bottom on the hard pavement and used the traction to propel herself forward. Trina narrowly missed smashing her head into the neighboring car.
Karen whistled in relief, "Thank God you didn't hit that car."
"Why?"
"Well, the obvious reasons being that it would hurt you, and the person wouldn't appreciate a face-shaped dent in their car. Also because that I know whose car that is. And they are not nice. I imagine that he would come out here the second that you did it and yell and make me pay for the damage done."
"Wow. Sounds like a real jerk," she speculated.
"You got that right. Once he yelled at me for having my television volume too high. Too bad that these walls are too thin."
Trina didn't know what a television was, but that sounded serious. She decided to focus on her crutches for the time being, as Karen rambled on about her frequent encounters with her notorious neighbor. Place down. Jump. Place down. Jump. This method was surprisingly helpful. She wondered why she hadn't thought of it earlier. Trina kept her eyes on the ground in front of her. "So Karen, which house do you live in?"
"Well, it's not a house, it's an apartment, and I live in building 30, and apartment number 314."
"Cool. How far is that exactly?" Her crutches were getting uncomfortable in her armpits.
"Not far from here. We just need to walk for about a couple hundred more feet."
Trina sighed in exasperation, "That's so far!"
Karen shrugged, "You could have chosen to use the wheelchair."
"No, I couldn't have. I told you, I'm not good with my arms." As if on cue, her arms spasmed and her crutches collapsed under her. With a yelp, Trina fell to the ground. At the last second, she twisted, just barely avoiding falling on her broken leg.
"Oh my god, are you okay?"
"Was it worth it?'
"What? Was what worth it?"
"You not wanting to push me. Aren't you glad?"
"Of course not! Why would you even say that?"
"I don't know, I just needed to lash out. It really hurts."
"Fine, I'll go back to the car and get the wheelchair." Karen jogged back to the car and had the wheelchair out quicker than Trina imagined possible.
"Wha- how?"
"What can I say? I'm really fast when I have to do something that I don't want to do."
"That is so weird."
"Hey, that's me you're talking about!"
Trina tried to ignore the absurdity of that comment and focus on getting inside. Place down. Jump. She looked up to see Karen looking at her weirdly.
"What?" Trina asked.
"I thought you wanted the wheelchair."
Trina blushed, embarrassed, "Right." She dropped her crutches and hopped over to the wheelchair. She sat down and threw her arms up in the air, "Push me!"
Karen sighed, "I already regret getting this wheelchair."
"But you love me," Trina said cheekily.
Karen sighed again, "I do."

Soon enough, they arrived in Karen's apartment. They experienced a minor complication, the elevator. Trina's wheelchair almost didn't fit through the doorway, but Karen somehow managed to shove it through. She just continued to surprise Trina.
"Okay, so you can sleep on my bed, and I will sleep on the couch. Oh, and since you don't have pajamas, I will run out real quick and get you some of those, and a toothbrush and anything else I see that might be necessary. And since it's getting pretty cold, especially at night, I'll have to get you long pajamas, and I'll cut off the left leg."
"Thank you."
"Of course. In this short period of time, I've come to think of you as a daughter. A while ago, I had a husband, and no matter how hard we tried, I couldn't get pregnant. We were going to adopt, but then he was diagnosed with lung cancer. He never even smoked, but he had told me that he was frequently exposed to smoke because his mother smoked. I'm sorry, I'm rambling," she said, wiping her eyes. This must have been fairly recently because her pain looked fresh.
"No, no. It's fine. I like rambling. It's only then when I feel like I'm fully expressing myself. Most of the time, I just ramble in my head, but it feels better to ramble out loud."
Karen sniffed, smiling weakly, "You're right, it does. Anyway, I'll be back soon, and you sit tight."
Trina scoffed, "You say that as if I have the option to move."
"Well, you could always wheel around."
"True, but I still have not mastered that."
"If you want, when I come back I could clear out one of these rooms and you could practice wheeling around, or you could practice in the clubhouse."
"What is the clubhouse?"
"It's the building right by the entrance that has a bunch of empty space."
"That sounds great, but maybe in the morning? I'm so tired right now. The very idea of doing anything makes me want to pass out."
Karen laughed, "That's understandable, considering the past twenty hours that you have had."
"Exactly." Had it really been that long? It felt pretty long, but not that long. But, as she thought about it, it felt about right, especially considering how much time she must have spent in surgery.
Karen was already putting her coat back on, "Bye, Trina. I'll be back soon."
"Goodbye," Trina called after her, but she was already gone.