Power Of Suggestion

Power Of Suggestion

a Price Of A Wish story

by Abbacor

Day 0: Trouble Imagined

My phone rang while I was talking to Charlie so I answered.

“Hey, this is Len talkin’ atcha, who’s calling?”

“Lynn, you never do look at your caller ID you bum!”

“Jamie! Hi! What’s up? How ya doin’?”

“I’m good and not so good at the same time. I’m in the hospital.”

“Oh no, what happened?”

“I tripped and fell. I’m mostly okay though.”

“Well, that’s mostly good then? What happened? Why are you calling from the hospital?”

“Well, I tried to catch myself and hurt my thumb in the process. They say it’s a grade two sprain, almost a grade three, so they put a really small cast on it. It covers just my thumb and the palm of my hand. I have almost normal movement of my wrist. It’s still really annoying though since I’m naturally left handed so it’s on my dominant hand that I try to use all the time.”

“Okay, that doesn’t sound so bad. So why are you still in why the hospital?”

“I kinda hit my head too and have a concussion. They are admitting me overnight for observation to make sure my head will be alright. I have this huge goose egg on the back of my head with a cut that needed stitches and got a big ol’ bandage wrapped around my head now.”

“Ouch. That would explain the hospital. And it’s kinda weird too.”

“Weird? How? You know I’m a klutz. This is practically par for the course with me.”

“Yea, you’re right, it is. But this is the weird part. You’ll never guess where I am right now.”

“Oh my god, you’re in the hospital too?”

“Yep, I sure am. But it’s not for me.”

“What?”

“Yea. I’m in California. I’ve been visiting my friend Charlene, or Charlie, for the weekend.”

“Oh, you’re visiting a sick friend? That’s so like you.”

“Not exactly. Charlie got hurt just today too. Similar to you, except she dropped a heavy box on her foot and fell backwards hitting her head. Now she has a concussion and is being admitted for the night for observation too. And, she has a really short slipper cast on her foot for a grade two or three sprain to her big toe.”

“Hey, who are you talking to and telling about me?”

“Oh wow, that’s so weird. Can she talk? Put us on speaker phone!”

“Hang on a sec. There.

Jamie, meet Charlie.”

“Hi Jamie! Why is Len telling you all about me?”

“Hey Charlie! Well because I’m in the hospital too for the same type of injury as you. Except I have a short little cast on my thumb and have a concussion.”

“Yep, that is weird. When did you hurt yourself?”

“Just today. About two hours ago in fact.”

“No way. I got hurt just about two hours ago too. I got stitches and a bandage around my head for the concussion.”

“Me too. I hurt my left thumb.”

“Mine is the right foot, or big toe really. How small is your cast? Mine covers my big toe and goes around my heel, but I pretty much have full movement of my ankle.”

“Cool. I can move my wrist still but the cast goes over the entire thumb and the palm of my hand.”

“Wow. What color did you pick? I went with a Christmas color because of the season and chose a dark green that is so perfect for Christmas.”

“No way. I went with a Christmas color too, except I chose a really cool red. It’s not neon red, but not all dark either. It’s more of a Santa Clause red.”

“Neat! It’s like we’re opposite mirror twinkies!”

“Yea! It totally is! And it’s all Lynn’s fault!”

“Hey now! Don’t go blaming me just because two of my good friends who’ve never met before are total klutzes. I had nothing to do with you tripping out there in New York, and Charlie was in a whole ‘nother room when she had her accident! I just got her here to the hospital to get checked out. By the way, which one of you has the pencil moustache and lip goatee now?”

“Uh-huh, right. Neither of us. Which ever one of us is the evil twin won’t show it that obviously. We’re girls and girls don’t get facial hair.

“So, Charlie, did they seed your cast or make it all the way by hand?”

“They totally made it by hand. Said it was a small enough cast to make it complete without having to seed and let it grow. They even used a single two inch wide roll for it. And I only have to wear it for like two weeks.”

“Dang, they did the same thing for me, said almost the same thing about why they did it by hand, and I only need mine for two weeks too.”

“Okay, this is getting weird for sure. And the common denominator linking us together is the person who’s phone we are talking on right now.”

“Yep. Totally your fault Lynn.”

“Oh come on Jams. How is this my fault?”

“Look at the evidence. Both of us have an accident at the same time. We both get a concussion that needs stitches. And we both get a tiny little boring cast for a grade three sprain that will come off in two weeks.”

“Yea, so? How does all that include me?”

“You’re the bridge. Because of you we got hurt.”

“Sounds like it to me.”

“You too Charlie?”

“Sure. And you’re going to get it too.”

“I am so not. And I still don’t see how I’m some mystical bridge. I’m not a klutz like you two, although I love you both as BFF’s. And, I’m going home today to where I belong. I’ll be home by five PM or so.”

“Bingo. That’s it.”

“What’s it Jams?”

“Your mystical bridge. Where do you live?”

“In Texas.”

“Right. Texas. To be more specific, right in DFW where the whole living casts started up twenty-one years ago. You’ve lived there your whole life in the epicenter, so of course it’s all your fault,” Jamie giggles.

“Oooh, woooo, yea, all sixteen years I’ve been alive. So totally my fault that I was born and orphaned in the magical metroplex. Oooo.”

Charlene gets the giggles at that. “Totally,” she agrees.

I just look at her and huffed while rolling my eyes.

“Yep. The emancipated teenager who lives in Texas, the home of magical casts, has cursed us all,” Jamie giggles some more. “We’re all doomed now!”

“Oh come on now. How am I doomed? I’m not hurt. And both of you have stable casts that you can just about pull off they are so small.”

“Right, we are totally cursed by the Texas native.”

“Oh great, here we go,” I moan and shake my head. “And just how are you two cursed?”

“Our casts are going to grow bigger over night,” Jamie starts. “When I wake up my thumb cast will encompass my wrist and about a third of the way up my forearm. And Charlie’s cast will encase her ankle a third of the way up her lower leg.

“Of course they will have to keep us in the hospital because the casts get bigger over-night to try and figure out what is going on. Each night our casts will slowly get bigger when nobody is watching.”

“Yea! The next morning my lower leg will be in a cast half way up to the knee, and the rest of my toes will be held on a toe-plate.”

“Yep. And my cast will be half way up to my elbow and it will include my ring and pinky fingers in a boxers cast.”

“Totally. And on the next day your cast will have grown up again to a full short arm cast size and include your other two fingers into a full four-finger-and-thumb-spica cast. My cast will be a full size short leg cast and totally encase all my toes with a really narrow opening at the end so you can just barely see the tips of three toes.”

“Right, just like the cast covering my fingers. Then the next morning my cast will have grown into a sugar-tong cast that stops me from rotating my forearm and wrist.”

“And my cast will have grown into a PTB cast to stop me from rotating my lower leg and foot.”

“The casts will just slowly keep getting bigger every night in stages. You’ll get a long-leg cast then a single-hip-spica so you can’t walk. I’ll get a long-arm cast then a shoulder-spica cast so my arm is totally useless.”

“Oh, and your shoulder-spica will grow an abduction bar making it even more rigid!”

“Yes! And our casts will just keep growing bigger up our bodies! I’ll slowly wind up with a hip-spica all the way down my left side just like yours and I’ll be in a full half-body cast on my entire left side!”

“And mine will keep growing at the same slow rate up my right side until I have a shoulder-spica out to the ends of my fingers and get an abduction bar like yours! I’ll be in a total half-body cast on my right side! And since I’m right handed and you’re left handed then our dominant sides will be totally immobilized and anything we try to do will be that much harder ‘cause we’ll be forced to use only our non-dominant arms!”

“Oh geez, here they go. Great Jams, you got Charlie started too. My friends are totally crazy. And how do you guys know all these correct cast terms?”

Jamie laughed. “Oh come on, everyone knows all about casts these days. Ever since casts started growing on their own practically everyone knows all the terms now.”

“No, they do not. A few more people might know the right medical terms for the types of casts, but not everyone like you claim.”

“Oh yea? You seem to know what we are talking about smarty-pants.”

“Well, um, uh, yea. Okay, you got me there. So I know what to call them. Big deal.”

“Uh-huh, says the guy from Texas who has cursed us all. All your fault Lynn.”

“Dammit Jamie! It’s still not my fault! And I still don’t see how I’m all caught up in this mess you two are cooking up.”

“Because you’re going to wind up with casts just like both of us of course. And the only way to stop it will be to get all three of us together in Texas to break the curse, otherwise we’ll never get out of our casts.”

“Come on Jamie, it’s been over twenty years since that first happened. They totally have casts under control these days. And, there are no such thing as spontaneous casts just appearing. I have no plans on tripping and getting hurt or dropping anything on my foot at the same time.”

“Well, there are those people who get into a cast and it grows wild on them that happen.”

“Those are crazy people who put a cast on for fun then let it get away from them. And those are so rare these days that the news barely even reports it anymore. Plus, still no spontaneous casts just appearing.”

“That we know of,” Charlie added. “There was that story last year about the girl who slowly ended up in a full mummy cast way back when things first started. She totally used home-made materials and it slowly mummified her over a week, totally looking like a real mummy at the end. Then she just totally disappeared. There was even video and pictures on you tube showing it and the person in the video claimed they were cursed to live forever as an aware mummy in some museum.”

“Yea, right. That was just a big hoax.”

“I’m not so sure, Lynn,” Jamie replied. “They never proved it was a hoax, and the girl who put it all up said she was the victim’s BFF and swore it was the real deal.”

“Well, maybe, but I still say it was a hoax. They also never found the mummy, where ever it ended up.”

“Maybe. But still, you’ve cursed us Lynn! We are so totally doomed!” Jamie giggled.

“Oh good grief Jams! Stop it! And will you please stop calling me Lynn. It’s Len for short and you know it. Short for Leonard.”

“Uh-huh. Sure. You are totally one of the girls, Lynnette. And don’t you dare deny it girl. You have the best fashion sense of any guy I’ve ever known, you cry at sappy movies just like a girl – and that includes me too – and we’ve had talks about how you feel on the inside too. Totally a Lynn.”

“What? What talks are these Leonard? I totally agree on the other points though. You even keep your hair long and wear girls clothing. Don’t deny it,” Charlene said when I started to sputter and make noises of denial, “I can tell you get your clothes from the ladies and teen-girls side of the store when you go shopping.”

“Uh, well. Dammit Jams, why did you have to go and say that! That was private!”

“Oops. I’m sorry Lynn, it just kinda slipped out? Don’t hate her Charlene, she’s still so the BFF you’ve always known.”

“Why would I hate someone for being who they are? I’m a little disappointed she hasn’t told me anything, but yea, totes still my BFF.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t said anything to you Charlie. I only just told Jams last week and that was hard enough. I couldn’t get up the courage yet to tell someone else.”

* sigh *

“Look, I’m transgender. Inside I’m pretty sure I’m a girl. And my real name is Lynnette. Lynn for short. But I’m still in the closet dangit. You can’t tell anyone else! That goes double for you Jamie! You just spilled to someone you didn’t know!”

“I know Lynn. I’m sorry. I’ll do better. At least it was a BFF, right? And I was feeling so comfortable with Charlene it just kinda slipped out. Comfortable enough to maybe even call you a BFF too? I mean, we are going to wind up in matching casts after all,” she giggles.

“Totally a BFF, Jamie. But Lynn is going to be the real victim here you know. She’s going to wind up with both of our casts after all.”

“That’s right she is. But it will be the ultimate Christmas cast! It will be my red, your green, and also white! All three of the classic colors for Christmas! She’ll get white stripes on her casts as they grow, and when the two sides merge they will combine the colors on the torso in a cool kris-cross pattern, kinda like a diagonal plaid!”

“Right! Lynn will be in a half-body cast from her left arm to the right leg when they join together. She’ll have white spirals on her red arm cast and green leg cast which will combine into the diagonal cross pattern with all three colors over the body, then as her cast grows to include her other leg and arm it will become a mummy cast holding both legs together with all three colors in a neat double diagonal spiral pattern! And her arms will both wind up in a double velpeau cast across her chest just like a mummy!”

“Yes! And because she is the bridge for the curse it will include her head too! Total mummy with just the eyes left open!”

“Of course she will end up with tubes to feed her and take care of breathing and waste elimination. No disappearing to some unknown museum or anything like that, we want to keep our BFF around!”

“Totally! In fact, her mummy cast will be her chrysalis. Once Lynn gets out of her cast she will be all girl, inside and out with all the good and bad parts that entails!”

“Yes! Perfect! We totally get our all the way girl Lynnette!”

“Oh good grief. You two are totally nuts and deserve each other as BFF’s. I have no idea how I wound up with you two though.”

“You’re just lucky!”

* snort * “Yea, right. Maybe, maybe not. The jury’s still out on that one,” I giggle. “There’s just one big flaw in your whole cursed cast theory here.”

“Oh really. And what is that?”

“You said that all we have to do is get together to stop the curse. As soon as it starts happening all I have to do is to tell enough people that at some point someone will listen, look up your two hospitals and find out what’s going on, and get us all together in Texas. Curse broken. We may end up in some full leg and arm casts at the worst, but I don’t see it going any further than that. Heck, even you two can start yelling about it enough to get at least one person to follow up and find out.”

“That might work, smarty-pants, except for one thing.”

“And what is that Jams?”

“Your accident.”

“Um, I’m not a klutz, remember? No accidents happening here from my end.”

“Sure, you might not trip or drop something on your foot. But that doesn’t stop someone else from being some kind of klutz and involving you in an accident. You’ll totally have and accident at the airport. And your injuries will be different from ours. Yours will stop you from talking!”

“Yea! You’ll end up with a totally broken nose and broken jaw! Your jaw will have to get wired shut so you can’t talk, and your nose will be so bad that they’ll have to pack it with gauze and you can’t breathe through it. You’ll have to get an emergency tracheostomy so you can breathe; no air through your vocal cords that way. And you’ll have a concussion too.”

“But they won’t know the concussion is really bad and end up sending you home doped up on a bunch of drugs. When you wake up in the morning you’ll have copies of our two casts and be cursed just like we said. And because of the concussion you won’t be able to get up out of bed until it’s too late and the cast keeps you in bed. Then you’ll be doomed too.”

“Right. Now you guys are starting to take this out there into coo-coo land. And what is going to stop the two of you from talking?”

“Um,” Charlie thought about it. “Our concussions are also worse than was originally thought and we end up unable to communicate until it’s too late also.”

“Yea, fine. Okay.” * sigh * “Sure, why not. Sounds like sooo much fun. We’re all cursed and I’m going to end up in a full mummy cast and magically turn into a girl. You guys are nuts, but I think I’ll keep you both anyways. It’s a fun fantasy with an end result that any transgender male-to-female might wish for.

“And if this somehow actually manages to happen then I’m throwing in my own restrictions. Once we wind up together to break the curse so the casts can finally be removed, then you two are going to stay in your left and right side half-body casts for as long as I remain stuck in my mummy cast. And you are going to get your own set of tubes of some kind too. You two aren’t getting out before I do, and you get to suffer some indignities as well dangit.”

I check the time on my phone and see that I need to get going.

“Look, Charlie, it’s about time for me to go. Are you going to be okay?”

“Yea, it’s only for the night. I’ll be out first thing in the morning.”

“Same here Lynn, I’ll be fine.”

“Alright, then I’m going to go so I can catch my flight home. Talk at you later Jams. You too Charlie.”

“Bye BFF’s. And again, I’m sorry I spilled.”

“It’s cool. Like you said, Charlie is a BFF and I would have come out to her soon enough.”

“Talk at you again some time new BFF,” Charlie yells as I end the call. “And you, watch out for the curse,” she giggles pointing at me.

I just giggle with her and give Charlene a hug before leaving.

Interlude: Imagination Realized

I look out the window as the plane touches down and begins to taxi towards the terminal.

‘What a fantasy. Still, I kinda wish it could happen. To change and become the girl physically on the outside that I feel that I am on the inside. That would be just ... I’d be whole, and it’d be ... * sigh * wonderful.

‘But magic like that does not exist. Not that anyone has ever heard of at least. Even if it did, such a huge change, even to just one person, would have to include a big price to pay. There is no such thing as a free lunch with that kind of power. There has to be a balance of some type for something like that. A price must be paid. To receive the good, you also get the bad. The price those two would have to pay for their part is kinda decided already I think. They’d have to be stuck in their fancy casts for however long it takes for my metamorphosis to occur.

‘My price would be much bigger since I’m the one receiving the gift. I don’t know just how big that price would have to be, and would it be too much for me to handle?

‘I think there is one thing I could take and adjust to if it could actually happen. Yea, I’d pay that price and deal with the results. That one I could do.’

“The plane has come to a complete stop,” the stewardess announces on the intercom. “You may move about the cabin and begin to depart. Thank you for flying with us today.”

I chuckle as I unbuckle my seatbelt and stand up to collect my bag from the overhead bin.

“But it can’t happen. No accidents leaving PSP in Palm Springs, and there won’t be one here in DFW either. Still, I’ll just keep an eye open just in case. Jamie is just crazy enough that it could happen. Especially with Charlie getting involved. I love them both, but sometimes they are scary with the weird off the wall things they come up with that turn around and somehow really happen to some degree. I don’t want to end up a mummy even if I do come out as a girl in the end. No telling how long I, we actually, will be in those casts before the curse could be broken.”

Exiting the plane I make my way up the gangway and into the terminal. Looking around for any possible accidents waiting to hit me in the face I head over to the luggage carousels and wait for my suitcase to show up. The luggage from our plane takes a while and I get bored with standing around so I start playing games on my phone. Eventually the revolving light on the carousel starts flashing and the buzzer sounds to let us know our items are coming.

I keep playing my game while half looking with one eye for my purple suitcase to show up. Other passengers start pulling their luggage off while I play my game. I just barely notice my luggage show up and snatch it off the turnstile then leave it on the floor in front of me and concentrate on my game again. I’ve hit a new high score and I’m not paying any attention to what is going on.

“Look out!” someone yells.

I look up just in time to see a rolling suitcase that has gotten away from a young boy and is rolling right at me. I have just enough time to jump out of the way and breathe a sigh of relief that I didn’t get knocked down. Unfortunately my relief is very short lived as I jumped right in front of an electric cart coming down the hall and it hits me from behind knocking me down. Not seeing the cart I am taken completely by surprise and I go down in a practical belly flop face first right onto someone else’s suitcase.

Someone else’s hard, metal, suitcase. Right on my face. My world and my face explode in pain for a brief moment then I mercifully black out.

Day 1: Simple Beginnings

New York

Jamie wakes up in the morning and stretches. Her left hand feels strange then she remembers the cast. Looking at it she sits up quickly and stares at it. The cast is bigger than it should be. She is no longer able to bend her wrist because the cast has grown over her wrist to about a third of the way up her forearm. In fact the cast now holds Jamie’s wrist in a cocked-up position at about a twenty degree angle while still fully encasing her thumb.

“Oh, no. No no no. It can’t be real. My cast is bigger! Ohhhh.”

Unfortunately sitting up as quickly as she did makes Jamie extremely dizzy and even sick to her stomach. She falls back down onto the bed and turns her head to the side just in time so that when she vomits most of the mess goes off to the side and on the floor. Fumbling around with her right hand Jamie manages to hit the nurse call button.

‘Please, let Lynn and Charlie be okay. Especially Lynn.’ Is the one thought in her head as the nurse comes in to find their patient in a bad situation.

California

Charlene wakes up to a splitting headache. She reaches up to her head with one hand and moans in pain. Opening her eyes only makes the situation worse as her vision doubles and the room seems to spin. She tries to sit up so she can reach the nurse call button. The movement is enough to finish off her queasy stomach and she regurgitates what is left in her stomach out onto her front. Rolling to the side Charlene finishes emptying her tummy onto the floor.

A nurse is passing by the room and hears the sounds of someone being sick. She calls to a fellow nurse for assistance and they both come in to find their patient is worse than expected this morning. They immediately move in to help her and get the initial mess contained and off of Charlie.

“Um, this is odd,” one nurse says to the other. “Isn’t this just supposed to be a slipper cast with toe-spica ...”

Texas

I wake up and for a moment I’m disoriented. It takes a minute before I recall how my evening and night went so horribly wrong. I’m somewhat amazed that I actually got any sleep at all with how I am feeling.

‘Ugh. I feel like I just got run over by a truck. On my face.’

I lay still and keep my eyes closed while I recall what I am able remember about what happened. My memory has some gaps in it as I passed out a couple of times, but there is more than enough to know what took place.

--- remembering what I could from yesterday evening and last night ---

I got hit hard from behind by a courtesy cart which threw me forwards and down to the ground. I still see the bright silver metal suitcase rushing up to greet my face and the sudden explosion of light and pain that suddenly faded to black as I passed out. I woke up in the ambulance as is screamed down the highway towards the hospital. In fact it was almost there when I came to. By that point my neck was in an extraction collar holding my head still and I had an emergency tracheotomy cut in my neck with a tube inserted so I could breathe. The EMT in the back of the ambulance with me had a big blue rubber bag attached to the tube and was squeezing the bag hard every thirty seconds or so. I was strapped down on the gurney pretty firmly and couldn’t really move. My arms were pinned to my sides and my legs were held down in several places. My entire face and jaw was in a lot of pain and I could tell my eyes were swollen up some too since I was having a hard time opening them more than half way.

We arrived at the hospital and the EMT’s jumped out and wheeled me in to the emergency department lickity-split. As soon as we were through the doors I was surrounded by several more nurses and doctors. Things got really confusing for a little while with people trying to shine lights in my face and talking to me which I couldn’t answer due to both the pain I was feeling and the tube inserted in my neck.

Eventually things slowed down enough that I recognized I was in the x-ray room having pictures of my head taken from several angles. From there I was wheeled over to a small emergency room of my own where I waited only a few minutes for more medical people to descend on me. The entire time I was kept on that bag attached to the tube in my neck and someone kept forcing air into my lungs at regular intervals except when I was being x-rayed.

I finally was given an injection of some drugs that made some of the pain lessen a good bit, although not all the way unfortunately. Shortly after that I heard someone talking about surgery and getting me prepped. The bag got disconnected from the tube in my neck and I was hooked up to an actual machine that apparently gave me a knock out gas since I fell asleep in just a couple minutes.

When I woke up I was still on the machine with a tube through my neck, but it was only pumping air in me once every few minutes. Otherwise I seemed to be breathing on my own for the most part. My face still hurt, but it was like the pain was distant so I assume I was being given some pretty good pain medicine then. I could see a bit better than before although my eyes still felt a bit tight and couldn’t quite open all the way normally so I guessed the swelling had gone down some but was still there. What I did see was what looked like tape or bandages over my nose and a long blue corrugated tube leading from the ventilator down to the tube through my neck.

I tried to groan but no sound at all came out. The tube was blocking any air from getting past my vocal cords apparently. My lips felt really dry and starting to chap, but when I tried to lick my lips I couldn’t open my jaw at all. Reaching up to my face I inspected the bandages on my nose first. Some kind of splint was tapped over my nose that went from up on my forehead, down between my eyebrows, all the way down to the tip of my nose, and spread out down the sides of my nose and over below both eyes. On top of this it felt like there were several strips of tape going across my nostrils which completely blocked them shut and it felt like there was a lot of something stuffed up inside my nose as well. Even if there was no tube in my throat I was pretty sure I would not be able to breathe through my nose at all. On top of this indignity I found a tube taped to my right cheek that went up through the tape over my nose and I assume through the packing in my right nostril.

Coming down from my nose I gently spread my lips open and with a finger I felt along the outside of my teeth. Or at least I tried to feel my teeth. Instead my finger encountered a whole lot of metal. Using my finger I felt all the way back around both sides only to find a lot of metal wires and hooks. Top and bottom and all tied together top to bottom with more wires. My jaw had been wired shut. Flexing my tongue I also found that there was some kind of plastic plate in there too that was holding my tongue down which seemed to run between my upper and lower teeth. Trying to swallow was difficult since I could not move my tongue hardly at all and the motion also alerted me to a feeling of something going down the back of my throat on the inside. It took me a minute but I guessed it was the tube up my nose, probably a feeding tube going down my esophagus to my stomach while the breathing tube was inserted from the front in my trachea. I also found several thick bandages taped down all along my jaw line from one side all the way around to the other side.

Looking around some it looked like I was in a recovery room from whatever surgery they had done to me. I was feeling weak and a little nauseous and while I was certainly getting pain medications I still felt dull pain in my nose, jaw, and throat.

I had laid there for a little bit before someone, a doctor, came in to check on me.

“Ah, you’re finally awake,” he said. “I’m sure you have a lot of questions, but you are going to have a hard time asking them. I’ll see if I can answer most if not all of them here for you up front.

“Do you remember what happened to you at the airport?”

Sine I didn’t have a collar around my neck I was able to nod an affirmative; although that caused a strange sensation with the tubes in my neck and throat.

“Okay. Well the damage from your face being slammed into that metal shell was pretty bad. Your nose was essentially shattered and your jaw was broken in three places. When the EMT’s arrived you were having so much difficulty breathing they had to perform an emergency tracheostomy to insert a tube in your neck so you could breathe.

“We had to insert three small plates in your jaw with about twenty screws total to realign and fix your jaw then wire it completely shut so it can heal. We also needed to include a plastic bite plate to help properly align your teeth and keep your jaw straight.

“For your nose a basic reconstruction, but still a major surgical procedure, was done just to create a fairly normal shape. For the most part it’s mostly a whole lot of firm packing to recreate the basic natural shape of a nose and sinus cavity. Through the middle of that we also had to contend with the fact that you will be on a liquid diet for a while and had to get the feeding tube in place without deforming your newly realigned nasal passage. Your nose will remain just like it is for a bit, then a nose specialist can work with you on a more aesthetic reconstruction job to make it look more natural. Tonight we were primarily concerned with giving you functional working sinuses. You can worry about how it looks later.

“With your nose completely blocked off for the immediate future and your mouth also closed off, we had little choice but to clean up the tracheotomy and put in a more permanent trachea tube intended for long term use so you can continue to breathe. Once the other injuries heal up a bit then the stoma can be reversed and closed up. But that’s going to take some time before that happens.

“As for how long you’ll have to endure all of this, well it’s a bit subjective I’m afraid. With the extensive damage to both areas it is going to be longer than we would normally expect. For your jaw I’d have to say you’re looking at anywhere from four to six months minimum with it being fully wired shut. After that it will probably be another three months with partial wiring before all the hardware can come out.

“As I mentioned, we are simply trying to recreate a functional system for your nose right now. The current splint you see on the outside and the internal packing is going to remain there for a month. At that point you’ll just come in to have the packing replaced for another month and a fresh split put on the outside, then one more time for a total of three months. After that you’ll be able to start looking at further reconstructive surgery to give you a more aesthetic looking nose again. Depending on how involved that surgery gets you’ll be looking at another two or three months with out the use of your nose still.

“So, probably the best case scenario is going to be around six months or so with all of this hardware for your nose and jaw in place. The tracheotomy will also remain in place for at least that long since you’ll have no other way of breathing, and most likely for another couple of months past that as a safeguard. Possibly with a different trachea tube that can allow you to start talking again though, but that will depend on how you are doing and how things are going at that point.

“I’m sorry for all of the bad news, but it could actually be a lot worse. You’re lucky that the accident does not seem to have injured your neck or spine at all. You could have wound up with a lot more extensive and serious situation if your neck had also been injured. At the very least you would probably still be in surgery right now and when you woke up you’d have a metal ring screwed into your skull on top of everything else and probably for the same length of time too.

“As it stands, the surgeries were pretty straight forward and simple all things considered. Your other injuries are fairly minor in comparison and should be healed up in just a month or two. It’s only about nine-forty-five in the evening right now. I’m going to disconnect the tube to the ventilator right now, and if you do okay breathing on your own for the next hour I see no reason you can’t go home tonight.”

Reaching over he grasped the tube at my neck with both hands.

“Ready?”

Giving him a thumb up affirmation he disconnected the blue tube from the one in my neck then held it close by while I continued to breathe on my own. After a couple of minutes with no problems he turned off the machine completely.

“Alright. Keep breathing normally on your own for the next hour and we’ll get you discharged and on home,” he said. “I’ll have a couple of nurses come in and get you set up with a proper filter-cap on that trachea tube and get you situated with some take home materials and instructions. We’ll also have someone come in to see about setting you up with some home health care visits on a daily basis for the next few months at least. You’re going to need a bit of assistance with all of this and learning what you can and can’t do along with how to take care of yourself with all of this.”

With his last statement the doctor answered my last burning question about how I was going to handle all of this on my own so I waved in thanks as he left. A few minutes later two nurses came in and put some kind of filter cap over the end of the tube I was breathing through and talked to me about a lot of what they called basics about taking care of the tube in my neck, the tube in my nose and throat, the packing in my nose, and the wires in my mouth. It was a lot to take in all at once, and they gave me a bunch of pamphlets and papers that also went over everything and let me know that the home health care nurses that would be showing up would also work with teaching me what to do or not do. They gave me a bag full of supplies which seemed like a lot to me, but they said would take almost no time to go through. A regular supply would need to be setup through a supply company for my long term care. Not too long after they left a woman came in and with a lot of patience and me writing down everything she got my info so daily home nursing could be started in the next few days. At the longest it would be a week, which I was being given just barely enough supplies and instructions to last that long.

The hour went past with no trouble breathing once I got used to the filter cap on the tube and they began to discharge me. A ride home on a medical transport van was arranged and I was pleased to find that someone had gathered up my bags at the airport and they were there at the hospital to take home with me.

--- back to the morning and waking up at home ---

Arriving at home I had been given another large shot of medicine by the nurse who rode with me and what ever she gave me was what let me get some actual sleep last night. She had even told me she gave me something extra to help me sleep as they were pretty sure that I had a mild concussion floating around in there among the more serious crap that had needed surgery, and at that point sleep was a good thing for me.

I continue to lay there for several more minutes keeping my eyes shut and just relaxing the best I can. The last pain medication I’d been injected with last night was definitely wearing off or gone by now and I’m going to have to figure out how to give myself some more pretty soon. I raise my right hand, my dominant one, and gently feel around my face and jaw.

‘Yea, that still sucks and hurts. Damn.’

Going down a little further I run my fingers around my only means of breathing right now.

‘Gods, that feels so strange. Compared to the rest it doesn’t really hurt all that much at least. But hell, it’s the only way I can keep breathing for now. This is going to just suck. The only way I can communicate is through written pages or texting. Speaking of which, I’m going to give Jamie one hell of a text yelling at her for this.’

A headache I had not noticed at first is starting to make itself more prevalent the longer I lay there, so I open my eyes to see how things are going to go. The view is slightly blurry and the walls and ceiling waver a little. Not so good, but hopefully not terrible. I turn my head to the side and see a bunch of supplies setup on a table that has been moved over next to my bed. Guess the nurse and driver of the van got me setup a bit more than I recall. I must have been more out of it than I thought.

‘I wonder what other little things I don’t remember from last night. Hopefully nothing too major.’

I thought about it for a minute and actually remembered what the nurses had told me about giving myself medicine. I’d definitely be using all liquid medicine for a while, either injections or through my feeding tube. If I went via the tube I’d have to make sure to flush it through with water afterwards.

‘Damn. My feeding tube. That just kinda sucks to have to say that. Right along with my breathing/trachea tube, and my wired jaw, and my liquid diet/formula, and all the other my’s that are going to go along with this crap.’

Reaching over to the table so I can get some pain medicine going I start to extend my left hand out. As soon as my hand comes into view I stop moving and stare at it. That nagging feeling I’d been getting that has been drowned out by the other much louder feelings of pain I have suddenly shoots right up into the number one slot. I’ve been feeling something on my left hand and now that I can see the thing it is very obvious.

I have a cast on my hand. It completely encircles my thumb holding it rigid and goes down around my wrist locking it in place too. After a moment I realize the cast is red, with a white stripe on it. My wrist is bent upwards slightly and the cast only goes up my forearm about a third of the way. It’s still enough to keep me from being able to bend either my thumb or wrist.

‘Well crap, that counts as something I’d call pretty major that I don’t remember. Looks like I broke my thumb or wrist somewhere in there too.’

Shifting my legs a little bit my left foot hits something rough and hard on my right leg.

‘What the heck?’

I pull my right leg up while reaching down with my right hand to check it out. It takes me a moment to figure it out, but I realize that it feels like I have a cast on my lower right leg and foot. Reaching a little more I find that it even goes all the way down and completely covers my big toe too with just a little opening at the end where I can touch just the tip of my toe.

‘Crap. Did I break my foot and toe too somehow and don’t remember that either? Or do I? Didn’t one of the doctors say something about other minor injuries? I can’t remember.’

Then something clicks in my addled brain. I have a cast on my left hand and one on my right foot. The cast on my hand is red, with a white stripe. And it’s on my left hand. Just like Jamie’s cast is.

‘Oh no no no no no. This can’t be happening. No way. Wait, what color is the cast I am feeling down on my foot?’

Pulling the blanket and sheet away I sit up while pulling my right leg up to where I can see it. And I find a green cast on my foot that covers the big toe, goes up over my ankle and about a third of the way up my lower leg. A damned green cast with a white stripe. On my right leg. The same type of cast that Charlie has.

‘Holy rubber crutches! It’s really happening! Damn you Jamie and Charlene! NO WAY ... OOOHHH crap. I don’t feel so good.’

Sitting up so fast my vision suddenly triples on me and the room really begins to spin hard and fast. All of this on top of what I was already feeling makes me sick, but if I throw up it has nowhere to go! I let myself fall back down to a lying position as gently as I can manage while still getting down fast then for the next ten minutes or so I fight the need to vomit. Thankfully I win and keep what ever is in there down. Hurrah for small victories.

Once I feel like I am not going to hurl anymore I gently roll onto my side and slowly work through everything that had been set out on the table for me. Big plastic syringes for feeding and smaller ones for medications, the medications in both oral, or in my case feeding tube, and injectable liquid concentrations are there along with water that I can squirt down through my nasal tube and what looks like some actual nutritional feeding formula too. Reading the labels on the bottles I find both pain relief and anti-nausea are set out for me. I also see my smart phone sitting where it should just be in reach.

Trying to work with one hand in a cast that immobilizes my thumb and wrist while lying on my side is a real exercise in difficulty, but some how I manage to eventually give myself a full dose and a half of pain meds, and one dose of nausea medicine then a big double injection of water to flush it all down through my feeding tube and into my tummy along with giving me some fluids. The formula is going to have to wait until later when I’m a bit more confident the liquid food will stay down. The medicine and water are already threatening they may try to come back up as it is.

Apparently the pain meds are either really strong or have something extra to help with sleep, because in a short while I start getting really sleepy and drift off into dream land in short order. Of course I did take an extra half dose on what I hope is basically an empty stomach.

Day 2: Simple Is Complicated

New York

Jamie wakes up to find herself still in the hospital. Her head is pounding and any little movements of her head just make things worse. It takes her several minutes for her thought to become more or less coherent. The first real thought she has is about her cast.

‘Did I really find my cast was bigger earlier? God I hope not.’

Slowly opening one eye Jamie lifts up her left hand so she can look at it.

‘Oh shit.’

The cast on her arm is bigger yet again. The cast is a full gauntlet length, or half way up her forearm, and now includes her ring and pinky finger in a combination boxer and thumb-spica cast.

‘Shit shit shit. Not only is it real, but it looks like another day has gone be too. My cast is definitely bigger and covers three out of five fingers. Ugh. And I can hardly move my head around. Why did I have to dream up a worse concussion than I originally had? That was stupid. I hope Charlie is doing alright. And poor Lynn. I’m so sorry.’

Jamie simply lies still as that is the best thing she can do right now with how her head is feeling. She sees there is an IV line going into her right hand that is supplying her with a regular drip of something. The combination of the concussion and the drugs she is receiving conspire to take Jamie into a state where her thoughts become broken and muddled. A bit later a doctor comes in with the nurse.

“Hello Jamie. As you can see you’re still here in the hospital. There are two reasons for this. One is your concussion is apparently much worse than we had originally thought, and we are treating you for that still. The other is your cast. You started out with a rather simple thumb-spica cast that only encompassed your hand and thumb. Yet two days later it has now become a much larger cast covering two more fingers and half of your lower arm. We need to figure out what is going on to make this happen and if at all possible stop it.

“I don’t suppose you can shed some light on this for us can you?”

Jamie is barely able to follow less than half of what the doctor has been saying, and when she tries to form a response to him she is only able to mumble incoherently.

“This is unfortunate,” he says after a couple of minutes. “The concussion is certainly worse than we thought. We’ll have to wait for the major symptoms to subside and we can lessen the doses of medication before we can get any cognizant response from our patient it seems. I just hope her cast has not grown to the point where she is unable to provide some answers by then.

“Let’s keep a close eye on her for the time being and we’ll just have to wait and see how things go. Also, movement of her head seems to cause further discomfort and nausea so I want to put her in a neck collar to reduce any motion. Use a soft collar for comfort, but get the tallest most restrictive one we can get to minimize as much movement as possible. That should help.”

“Right away Doctor.”

California

A nurse comes into Charlene’s hospital room and checks on her. The girl is sleeping fitfully, doped out on the medications she is being given for her concussion. Looking down at her right leg the nurse frowns when she sees the cast has gotten a little bit bigger over night once again. Now the cast has a full sized toe plate that runs underneath all four of the rest of the girl’s toes and is half way up her shin as well.

She makes note of the change on the patient chart then goes and gets a doctor.

“Doctor,” she is saying as they walk back into the room, “Her cast is bigger again. We’ve made note of the changes to the cast on her chart both mornings.”

“Yes, I see. Interesting. The cast appears to be growing in small stages each night so far. Have we been able to talk to ... Charlene here yet?” he asks while checking her name on the chart.

“No sir. Her concussion is apparently quite serious and we are having to keep her fairly well sedated right now just to try to keep her comfortable. We even added the extra tall foam collar to support and reduce the amount of movement of her head to try and relieve some of the dizziness and motion sickness she has been experiencing.”

“Unfortunate. Keep a closer watch on her for the concussion, and once we are able to get her a bit more lucid we can ask about the cast and see if she has any answers for us.”

“Yes doctor.”

Texas

I try to groan as I wake up only to hear air whistling through the filter on my trach tube and I am reminded of what my current status is.  I lay there quietly for a bit until I remember the two casts I have been graced with.

‘More like cursed actually. Damit it all.’

I wiggle my left hand and right foot only to verify the casts are really there. I also find that two more fingers are immobilized in the cast on my hand, and it feels like there is something solid under my four other toes on my right foot.

‘Crap on a stick. The casts are bigger. That means it’s been another full day already.’

My stomach chooses to announce that it might actually like some food now, but even trying to sit up slowly leaves me dizzy once again.

‘Not good. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to hold out, but I’m going to have to go to the bathroom at some point. Probably sooner than later I bet. That is going to be a whole new level of this sucks when I have to get to the toilet.’

I move as slowly as I possibly can and work the best I can with the new bigger cast on my hand. With only two working fingers it is extremely hard to do what I need so I can feed myself some of the nutritional formula along with more medicine. I start with the anti-nausea solution, then move on to the formula and a bunch of water before giving myself a single standard dose of pain killers followed by more water. It takes me around two hours I think, but I manage to get it all down successfully.

Once I get something in my belly I actually feel slightly better. It’s enough that I try to remember more of what the nurses told me from back on what is now two days ago. I seem to recall them saying something about getting a drip or a pump setup to feed me on a steadier basis. I try to look around to see what is there that might accomplish this, but I don’t find anything that appears to be for that function. I do find some supplies to clean my trachea tube and replace the gauze around it so I take another hour to make that happen. The medications eventually start to take effect, and with the effects of the concussion still hitting me pretty hard I am more than happy to let myself fall asleep once again. Although I dread what I might find when I wake up again. My final thought is that I have not seen or heard anything from the home health care people yet and hope they show up soon as I am not doing too well here on my own.

Day 3: Complicated Grows

New York

Another day has gone by, and Jamie wakes up to find a foam collar around her neck. The collar is soft and warm yet thick enough that it holds her head still as long as she does not try to move. Trying to gently move her head around the collar still restricts her movements quite a lot.

Jamie lifts her left hand to check it out only to see that her entire hand is now completely encased in red fiberglass out past the tip of all five fingers, and the cast extends all the way up to just below her elbow. Her stomach growls to announce her hunger.

‘Dang. Not only has my cast gotten bigger again and turned my hand into a useless paddle, I’m not getting enough food in me and I’m actually hungry. And I still feel like total crap. I can’t see straight yet and even just lying here quietly I’m still dizzy as all get out. I don’t think I could manage to keep any real food down though even if I could sit up.’

Later in the day a couple of nurses show up to check on Jamie and get her onto a bedpan so she can relieve herself. They try to talk with her, but end up just talking at her for the most part. Jamie is unable to communicate in any meaningful way. The few moments when she seems to be the most lucid is when she first wakes up on a new day when nobody is around. Otherwise she is unable to concentrate well enough to do more than follow simple instructions at best, and even those have to be repeated two or three times to get a response. One of the nurses sets a sealed package on the bed.

“We’re going to have to insert this feeding tube so you can get enough nutrition. You’re not eating and the IV can only give you so much.”

They carefully tilt Jamie’s head back while spraying an anesthetic into the nostril the tube will be entering. The spray is cold and Jamie flinches from the mild shock. After measuring the tube for the proper length, a dab of lubricant is placed on the end and the nurses carefully push it up into Jamie’s nose. Jamie tries to struggle and pull away, but the high collar around her neck and the nurses hands keep her head still enough that they are able to get the tube in and inserted down into her stomach in a few minutes. Once they check the tube is actually in her stomach by suctioning a small amount of fluid and checking it for PH balance, they tape the tube down securely to her face and mark the tube just outside of her nose to show where it enters while seated at the proper length. A bag of nutritional liquid formula is connected a short time later to feed Jamie.

California

Charlene groans and mumbles incoherently as the nurses are inserting a feeding tube into her left nostril and push it down her esophagus to her stomach. When the tube is in place and secured they clean up the packaging and remove the exam gloves they wear, then fresh gloves are put on and Charlie’s genitals are exposed. A sealed package is opened and an indwelling urinary catheter is carefully inserted up into her bladder and seated in place. Once both tubes are properly inserted and hooked up, the additions are noted on Charlie’s patient chart. Looking down the nurse writing the updates includes the changes to the cast on her right leg. The cast now extends all the way up to just below the knee and has completely encased the toes leaving just a narrow opening at the end that extends a short way past her toes.

Checking the monitors and various bags on the IV pole, the nurses verify that all of the medicines and now the nutritional feeding formula are flowing freely through their tubes and pumps at the proper rates, and the new urinary drainage tube has no kinks or bends to block the flow of fluid to the collection bag hanging on the side of the bed. Confirming all is as well as it can be for their patient they make sure she is relatively comfortable and leave to check on other patients on the floor.

Texas

The sun actually shinning through a gap in the blinds and hitting me in the face wakes me up. That window faces east so it’s another morning.

‘Damn, slept through another day again.’

Turning my head with one eye barely open make me dizzy again, so still not out of the woods. Unfortunately my bladder and bowels are telling me it’s time to do something about emptying them so I’m going to have to get up. I take it as slow and as gentle as I can when I roll onto my side and start working on sitting up. With my bed up against the wall I end up on my right side to face out and use my left hand to push up with. Except I don’t have a hand anymore.

‘Crap. The cast grew some more. Looks like I have a club on the end of my arm now.’

I try to wiggle any of my fingers and nothing moves. My wrist is just as frozen. The cast covers all of my fingers and right up my arm to just below the crook of my elbow. It’s tight enough that everything held inside feels like they are completely immobilized. I can press against the padding on the inside but that’s as far as I can move my fingers or hand. At least it gives me a solid bit of leverage to push on to sit up. It’s a good thing I’m right handed, having no use from my left hand now is going to really make things extra hard. It would be so much worse if it were my dominant hand.

Once I get mostly upright, I let my back bend and I lean my elbows on my knees, I sit very still for several minutes with my eyes closed until my head stops spinning. While I sit there I try to wiggle my right foot and toes and I get no more movement than I get from my left hand. All five toes are firmly held still, and trying to move my ankle is just a useless. I can tell the cast is now up to just below my knee from feeling the edge. When I finally open my eyes I see the toes are fully encased out past the tips.

‘Damn those two.’

I try to stand up and get all of two inches before I abruptly sit back down.

‘Nope. Not going to happen. I’m going to throw up if I try standing which would probably drown me in my own vomit. Well, maybe not drown with the breathing tube blocking off my trachea like it does, but I still don’t want to go there. Guess I’ll try crawling on the floor instead.’

I get down on the floor and slowly work on crawling the fifteen feet to my bathroom which takes me a good twenty minutes. Having the cast on my arm just makes it harder. Another seven minutes is needed to get three more feet to the toilet where I rest with my cheek pressed against the cool porcelain for several minutes. I get my sweats and underwear pulled down before trying to sit up on the toilet.

Getting up there is a pain thanks to my arm cast. The hard fiberglass is rough as hell if I rub it against my skin, but on the hard tiles of the floor or hard porcelain of the tub and toilet it gives me no purchase and slips all over the place. With several slips and near falls I finally get seated in the right place and I hang my head between my knees as I let things go. Getting myself wiped off afterwards is a challenge to say the least.

‘Thanks so much for this arm cast Jams. I hope you’re suffering from yours right now.’

I don’t really mean it, but I am so irritated and upset right now the feelings I have for a certain two others are not charitable. I work my clothes off all the way with a bit of a fight getting things over the leg cast, then slowly crawl back into my bedroom. Looking up at my dresser I curse. The dresser is tall enough it comes up to my nipples when I am standing up, and my underwear is in the top drawer. At least the sweats I reserve for wearing at home are piled up on a short plastic shelf that I can reach from the floor. I strip off my t-shirt and get up so I am in a doggy position, kneeling on my knees and right hand and semi-balanced on the end of my hand cast.

Using my left arm mostly for balance against the dresser I slowly straighten up and drag myself upright on my knees with my right hand. I get really dizzy and lean heavily against the dresser. Ten minutes later I shift sideways far enough that I won’t hit my head and carefully pull the top drawer open enough so that I can reach in and pull out a pair of clean underwear and a sock. Closing that drawer I open one a couple levels down and pull out a random clean t-shirt. Getting back down on the floor I lie down and don’t move while my head stops spinning once again.

Getting dressed with one hand while lying down is odd and frustrating, but it’s better than trying to sit up and risk vomiting. I shuffle over so that I can sit up with my back against my bed where I’m next to the table and take more medicine to quiet down my tummy. When that starts to work I take more pain killers and feed myself enough formula so that I actually feel full. I recall that I really should be cleaning my trach and replacing the gauze around it at least twice a day. Working with one hand the best I can I get that taken care of again. Finally I grab my phone and take a moment to check for any messages and find none. No text and no voice mail.

‘Urgh. I’m not all that keen on falling asleep here on the floor, but damn it my bed is taller than the toilet and getting up there to do my business damn near did me in. I better get moving before the meds kick in or I WILL be sleeping on the floor.’

With a great amount of effort and several stops to just grab on and hang in one spot I half crawl, half climb back up into bed. I get comfortable just in time for the drugs to really take effect and I’m out for the day and night again.

Day 4: More Growth

New York

‘Another morning to herald in another day of barely knowing what’s going on. I hope this concussion starts to settle down soon.’

Jamie tries to wiggle her fingers and wrist and gets the expected result, nothing really moves. She bends her elbow only to feel the cast rub against both sides and she is unable to extend her arm past a forty-five degree angle. Lifting her arm up she sees the cast now has wings that go up around either side of her elbow and partially wraps around the back as well. Trying to rotate her lower arm is stopped now by the extended edges around her elbow.

Rolling her eyes she sees the feeding tube hanging from the IV pole.

‘Just a little bit more disabled with this new growth on the cast, and a new tube.’

Using her right hand Jamie gently grabs the tube and follows it down until she finds where it connects to the NG tube that is taped to her face and enters her nose.

‘And now it looks like I’m being fed by a tube. I barely recall them putting that thing in my nose yesterday at some point. I’m kinda glad I don’t remember it too well. It was not pleasant from what I recall.’

Settling back Jamie relaxes and waits for the drugs to kick in again, not wanting to experience the dizziness or nausea that being awake has been bringing her the past few days.

California

The nurse finishes hooking up a new bag of formula to Charlene’s feeding tube then clamps the drainage tube from her catheter so the collection bag can be emptied. Returning with the bag empty it gets reconnected and the clamp is opened up again. Inspecting the cast on Charlie’s right leg, notes are made showing that it now is a PTB style cast. Rotation of the lower leg is no longer possible, and the last fifteen or twenty degrees of extension are restricted by the cast.

Texas

I am woken by a beeping sound.

‘Dang alarm going off. When did I manage to set that thing?’

I reach out with my left arm to hit the snooze bar and try to turn my red and white fiberglass paddle to the right angle, but I can’t turn my hand and my elbow stops straightening too soon.

‘What?’

I open my eyes and look to see the cast is now partially up around my elbow.

‘Crap. It got bigger again. Looks like a sugar-tong cast now.’

I try to move my right leg around and confirm I can’t rotate my foot anymore and I don’t have full extension in my knee either. The beep that woke me sounds again from the bedside table.

‘Oh, that’s my phone message beep that woke me up. I wonder who called.’

With a bit of difficulty I manage to retrieve my phone and check the voice mail on it.

“Good morning, this is Lisa with Home Health Care Services. I am aware that you cannot speak due to your injuries, and I am leaving this message to let you know that we should have someone out to you later this afternoon or tomorrow. We will have the nurse assigned to your case call you directly from a number which you can text message her back at. Have a good day.”

‘Well that’s good. It’s about time they got back to me. I hope they make it today.’

I go through my day as slowly as possible to avoid the nausea, taking the anti-vomit meds early on and again later in the day. I manage to carefully visit the bathroom again as well. Not being able to turn my hand around anymore makes several things even harder to do. Yesterday I was able to push the flat side of my cast against things like the roll of toilet paper when I needed tear of sheets for use. Now I can at best use the narrow edge of the cast which means I have to hold against the roll, tear a part off along the perforated line, shift my cast over, tear again, shift and tear one more time to get enough for one wipe. It’s frustrating and takes longer, but it is what it is for now. I manage to get myself fed a bit, but not enough to make my tummy satisfied. It’s just too much work now with the new restrictions from the cast. Cleaning my trachea tube and replacing the gauze is beyond me now and I give up after a few minutes of trying.

I force myself to not take the pain meds even though I am needing them. I want to be awake so I can reply back to the nurse when she calls. Late in the afternoon she finally calls me. After listening to her message I work at sending her a text message. Unfortunately she will not make it until tomorrow morning.

- Unable to get to door - concussion bad - think door unlocked - please knock and announce and come in when arrive - need supplies -

Getting my message out I gladly take the medicine I’ve been holding off on and blissfully fall into sleep when they take effect.

Day 5: More Complications

New York

The morning sun wakes Jamie to a new day. Still more asleep than awake she tries to roll over to a new position. Moving her left hand over to assist in pushing herself over she is unable to bend her elbow. Lifting her arm up to where she can see it, Jamie opens her eyes to see the cast has grown up to just below her armpit and her elbow is now fully contained within and immobilized.

‘And it just keeps growing. I won’t even be able to move any part of my arm come tomorrow. Not like I’ve been able to do anything for myself as it is, but now I have to contend with a rigid elbow frozen at ninety degrees if I want to roll over.

‘Looks like I’m going to wind up in that half-body cast soon enough, and that means Charlene will too. And poor Lynn. I have no idea if I’ll be able to convince anyone of the need to get us all to Texas to break the curse. I’m sorry Charlie and Lynn.

Might as well get this day over with, from my perspective at least.’

Jamie groans in disgust and gets a resigned yet determined look on her face. A moment later Jamie forces herself to quickly sit up in bed. The sudden movement is more than enough to send the room spinning like a top in her vision and a moment later the vertigo triggers her nausea to full blast and she begins to violently throw up. By the time the nurses hear her sickness and rush into the room she is lying half off the bed and a large part of the floor on that side is slick with fluid. The contractions from her stomach and abdomen are strong enough that Jamie looses control of her bladder as well.

Getting Jamie cleaned up and sedated once more takes the better part of an hour and includes changing the bed sheets. An adult incontinence brief is put on in place of a panty and the drug pump is manually overrode to try and make her comfortable.

California

Charlie’s morning nurse finishes checking on her patient and notes on her chart that the cast is now a full leg cast extending up to just below the girls groin. During the early afternoon hours she returns to the room to find the attending physician there along with another doctor.

“Good afternoon nurse. We have a doctor here who is more knowledgeable on the behavior of the living casts. He has a question or two for you if you don’t mind.”

“Of course Doctor, how can I be of assistance?”

“I want to confirm with you that this patient was originally treated for just a severe foot and toe sprain with a simple toe-spica slipper cast.”

“Yes Doctor, that is correct. The cast only covered the big toe and the foot, leaving the other four toes and the ankle free.”

“And since then it has grown in stages from day to day?”

“Yes sir.”

“And nobody has seen the cast grow?”

“No sir. It appears to grow some time during the night. When I or another nurse come to check the patient in the morning the cast has extended or grown from how it looked the previous day. The cast will remain in the new configuration for the entire day with no changes being noted. Then the next morning we will come in and find it has grown again. We have been keeping notes and measurements on the patients chart tracking each change.”

“Thank you.”

“This is highly unusual,” the second doctor states. “Normal growth of a cast is steady and continuous; and while slow can be observed over a relatively short period of time. Even with those individuals who self cast and allow their desires to get out of control the cast still follows this routine. To grow overnight and remain in a stable configuration through the day then grow once again at night is unique.

“Looking at your chart here, I see that the cast has moved from one type of cast to another each time.”

“Yes Doctor. Each day we are presented with a fully formed cast that precisely conforms to a known type of cast.”

“Interesting. I assume that the usual tests have been made to see if the cast is self correcting and heals?”

“Most certainly. The various levels of casts have all been perfectly formed to the leg and to the style of cast being presented. Any and all attempts at altering or removing the cast have the expected results.”

“Of course. Thank you for your time.”

The two doctors leave the room while in conversation as the nurse checks on and takes care of her patient.

Texas

I wake up slower than usual and I am feeling even worse than yesterday. A strange sound catches my attention and it takes me a moment to realize where it is coming from. Each time I breathe there is a gurgling or rattling sound that accompanies each breath.

‘That can’t be good. I hope the nurse gets here early.’

A little while later someone knocks loudly on my front door.

‘Please let that be the nurse. And please let the last people who were here left the door unlocked like I think.’

The knock is repeated then I hear the door open.

“Hello. This is Diane with Home Health Care. I’m here to see a Leonard.”

I want to let her know I’m here and where I am at, so I try to knock on the wall to my left side and I can’t bend my elbow at all. I reach over with my right hand and feel the cast on my arm. It’s all the way up to my armpit and the elbow is held at ninety degrees. I feel my right leg through the sheets and it is easy to tell the cast there is all the way up to my groin. I try to flex my leg and guess my knee is bent pretty well, probably at a forty-five degree angle or more. I couldn’t make it to the front door on my own now even if my head were clear. I knock on the wall with my right hand as hard as I can.

“I hear you. I’m coming in.”

The nurse enters my bedroom carrying a couple of bags with her. She stops in the doorway and takes in the sorry state of me.

“My, you don’t look too good. I know you can’t speak or even make any noise, but that cast on your arm was not mentioned at all.”

I manage to throw the sheets off my right leg enough for her to see the cast there.

“Oh! A cast on your leg too? That’s not right. I know the service might miss one or two little things, but I’m sure they’d never miss two full length casts.”

She sets her bags down and pulls out a folder of papers and quickly shuffles to a particular sheet.

“No mention of injuries requiring such large casts like those two, just small ones.”

She comes over and checks both casts which brings her close enough to hear the rattle as I breathe.

“Never mind these casts, that sound is not good at all. You need to have your tube suctioned out right away and the filter changed. We’ll worry about anything else once I get your airway taken care of. Although with what I am seeing you should still be in the hospital, not at home.”

The filter cap is removed from my trachea tube then she leaves for a minute and comes back with a large case. Opening it up the nurse sets up a suction pump and plugs it in, then proceeds to insert a smaller size tube down into my throat and suctions out a bunch of mucus which clears up the rattle when I breathe. A new filter cap is snapped into place when she is done.

“I have a dry-erase whiteboard here so we can try to talk. First thing though I am going to call for an ambulance to get you back to the hospital. You are in no shape to be here alone.”

Once her call goes through and she explains the situation she asks me several questions. I am disoriented and it is hard to form clear answers for her, but I manage to get across the concussion was much worse than originally thought and I have been fighting severe vertigo and nausea for the past five days. I am unable to confirm for her if the casts were applied at the hospital or not because I just don’t remember, but verify they were not applied by myself or anyone else since returning home.

With how long it takes to get the messages across, and the nurse is also checking on my other symptoms and actual injuries, the ambulance arrives before any more can be said. They EMT’s take their instructions from the nurse and I am quickly loaded up and taken back to the same hospital I was released from. A random thought goes through my head that it is also the same hospital where the living cast phenomenon began.

Back at the hospital I am admitted and examined closely. The casts are checked and tested to see if they can be cut off, which of course they are proof against the saw making any real headway before they start to seal back up again. Once the medical staff are satisfied with poking and prodding me as much as they can I am taken to a room with three other beds in it, all three empty for now.

I wasn’t able to really communicate much more than I had to the nurse while in my home as the ride and examinations had left me even less well and unable to communicate. I do have one thought as I finally rest in my hospital bed before succumbing to the new drugs I have been given.

‘You’re going to have a real surprise in the morning.’

Day 6: Will Wonders Never Cease

New York

Jamie tries to take a deep breath as she wakes only to feel her chest restricted by something solid.

‘There it is, my cast is now a shoulder-spica. I wonder how far down it goes?’

Using her right hand Jamie feels the cast starting from her left shoulder and works down. The edge of the cast is tight up beside her neck, but the soft padded edge only rubs on her skin. Following the edge the line of the cast goes down across the top of her chest to pass under her right arm only a few inches below her armpit. It firmly encloses both of her breasts and continues down her chest, over her belly and abdomen, and stops a couple of inches above her hips. Feeling around the side between her left arm and torso she finds a fiberglass covered rod attached to the cast at the waist. Running her hand up the bar the other end is attached to the cast on the forearm slightly above her wrist.

‘Wow, practically all the way down. And as usual it conforms as closely as possible to the shape of my body to immobilize everything held within.’

She tries to get any movement from her left arm and is stymied. An attempt to bend her back meets with the same lack of success.

‘Yep, as totally immobilized as possible with an abduction bar included. I’m not doing what I did yesterday, that was not fun. But I’m not going to just lie here and wait.’

Pulling the foam collar off her neck, Jamie carefully looks around to the left where the IV pole is at and the drug pump attached to it.

‘Figures. The pump is on my left side. No way I can roll over and reach it easily. Well, here goes nothing.’

With a good deal of effort Jamie works herself over in the bed far enough to where she is able to reach up with her right hand and access the controls on the pump. Straining her neck a bit and rolling her eyes as far as she can she pushes the buttons to give her an extra dose of the medications it controls. Once the machine beeps Jamie quickly gets back in the middle of the bed again and puts the neck brace back on one-handed the best she can. Just in time she closes the velcro on the collar as the drugs take effect and put her to sleep.

California

“I see the cast has altered once again. Our patient is in a single hip-spica cast that goes all the way up to just below her breasts. Did the camera I asked to have setup manage to catch the event of the cast growing?”

“I’m sorry Doctor. I’m afraid that there were some technical problems with getting a camera available to setup in her room, and by the time the camera was operational the cast had already fully altered to this new configuration. Nobody saw it take place.”

“How frustrating. At least the camera is working now, correct?”

“Yes Doctor.”

“Then we should be able to see what happens with this cast tonight.”

Texas

‘Ugh. Where am I? Why can’t I ... Oh, yea. Hospital. And a new day so new casts.’

I try to move my left arm and it stays rigidly in place. My shoulder feels like it is at a forty-five degree angle with my arm held pointing down and out to my side. My elbow is still at ninety degrees so my hand is pointing straight up at the ceiling. My right leg is also unable to move at all. My hip feels to be held at an angle that has my leg pointing up at an angle with my knee in line with my hip and shoulder so the knee is up in the air in front of me and not out to the side. I am guessing my heel is possibly resting on the bed and not floating in the air, but I can’t be sure.

I try to roll over a bit and nothing moves. An attempt to twist at the waist is just as useless. Using my right hand I touch my left upper arm and start following the cast down. I go over my left shoulder, down my chest, over my belly, and on down my right hip and thigh as far as my hand can go. The cast is solid and unbroken the entire way. I am held in my cast so that I am lying flat on my back and looking straight up at the ceiling.

‘Damn. I was hoping that it would at least be two separate casts today so I could still get a little bit of movement from my torso. Guess not. Looks like I am stuck lying flat on my back from now on since my shoulder-spica is going to stop me from rolling left. Pushing to roll right is going to be more effort than it’s worth, I’d only fall back flat again as soon as I let go.

‘I wonder how the staff here is going to react when they see this?’

Looking down as best I can, the cast is quite colorful. My entire left arm is red with a white stripe from finger tips to shoulder. What looks to be an abduction bar covered in simple red fiberglass is attached to my arm and goes down towards my side where it most likely is attached to the cast around my waist. From what I can see my right leg is a dark green with a white stripe from toes to hip. Where the colors all come together over my body I can’t quite describe it. The best I can get is what Jamie said six days ago. It’s a diagonal kris-cross plaid-like pattern of red green and white with the colors weaving over and under each other from shoulder to hip. The red at my shoulder seems to just flow into the pattern naturally, and at my hip the green emerges just as easily to continue down my leg.

About an hour later I get my answer. I hear someone come in the room but never see them. All I hear is a gasp and they run out of the room calling for the doctors. While the room fills up with people in white coats and earth tone surgical garb the poking and prodding starts up again. Most of it I can ignore until one person voices concern that the cast is obviously growing and I will require additional mechanical assistance with life sustaining procedures. In short, they are about to put more tubes in me to help give me sustenance and remove bodily waste. A respirator is brought in and I am hooked up to it via my trach tube. The machine is turned on and set so that it is taking over about half of my breathing functions for me. I already have an NG feeding tube in place, so they insert an IV line in my right hand and wrap on a splint board so my right wrist can’t bend. The next tube they insert is rather uncomfortable since it is an indwelling urinary catheter. They follow that one up with a bardex anal catheter as well. And to add a final insult they wrap a hard plastic collar around my neck so I can’t move my head.

I watch as four bags of some type of drugs are added to the IV pole beside the bag of feeding tube formula that was already there and the tubes from those bags are threaded into a drug pump to regulate their flow. Only two tubes emerge from out the bottom side of the pump and even those are connected with a y-connector to the single IV line in my hand. The settings on the pump are adjusted and the drugs begin to flow in short order. One doctor and a couple of nurses remain in the room as the drugs start to take effect.

As the drugs hit my system I begin to feel pretty relaxed, then really relaxed. Shortly I begin to experience trouble with breathing on my own at all and I start gasping as the respirator is not able to keep up. Apparently this is what the doctor was waiting for as he reaches over and adjusts the settings so the machine takes full control and starts breathing for me.

Day 7: More Movement Restricted But Some Clarity Returns

New York

Something uncomfortable intrudes into Jamie’s consciousness as she is waking up. Trying to sit up, she is restricted by a hard shell around her body.

‘Right, I’ve got a cast down to my waist. Not going to be bending my back too much here.’

Jamie tries to roll over onto her right side by pushing with her left leg so she can sit up. But her leg also encounters a hard shell stopping it from moving. Looking down over her fiberglass encased chest she sees her knee sticking up in the air, hard red fiberglass bandages encircling her thigh down to just above the knee. The uncomfortable feeling resolving itself as the back of her knee pressing into the edge of the new growth of the cast that now holds her upper leg at a forty-five degree angle above the bed. Her knee is still able to bend almost normally so her lower leg relaxes with her foot resting on the bed again. Jamie tries to move her torso and it is locked in place from shoulder to hip. Using the controls on the bed she raises her head up until the cast around her thigh is laying flat on the bed with her calf extended out and resting on the bed as well.

‘Well then. Next step in the half-body cast I guess. I’m not going to be sitting up on my own anymore it seems. Let alone walking.’

A nurse enters the room and sees Jamie in a partial sitting position.

“Well now, did you do that on your own sweetie?”

Jamie blinks and visibly thinks for a moment, her face scrunching up in thought.

“Um, yea.”  ... “Leg uncomfortable hanging in air.” ... “Raised the bed.”

The struggle to speak in complete sentences is apparent, but she manages to get her thoughts known.

“Good for you. That’s an improvement over the past several days. Looks like you’re starting to recover some from that concussion we’ve been nursing you through.”

“Good.” ... “Tired of being in haze all the time.”

“I can imagine. Seems you’ve got a bit of a problem with your cast there. It’s been growing on you each night. And now it appears that you’re going to be stuck in bed or a wheelchair with that new hip-spica extension on it.”

“Yea.” ... “Cursed cast.” ... “Gonna get bigger.”

“Oh my, it is? So you know what is going on?”

Jamie looks tired and closes her eyes for a moment before looking at the nurse again.

“Yea.” ... “Hard to think.” ... “Tired.”

“Okay honey. You’ve done good to make this much effort with that trauma to your head. You rest now. Maybe tomorrow you’ll feel even better and someone can talk more with you about it.

“I’ll let you know though, with that spica we’re going to have a hard time with a bed pan. And if it’s going to get bigger like you said then we are probably going to have to use a catheter for you.”

“Yea, okay.” ... “Do it.” ... “Need to rest.” ... “Can get some drugs now?”

“Let me check,” the nurse says as she goes over Jamie’s patient chart. “I think we can give you a little boost this morning.”

Jamie closes her eyes and relaxes as the nurse manually overrides the pump settings and gives Jamie an extra push of a half-dose of her medications.

About an hour later two nurses enter the room with a sealed package in hand. Jamie is awake and aware enough that she grimaces and makes mild complaints as the indwelling catheter is inserted into her bladder. An incontinence brief is wrapped around the cast and her right hip for privacy once the tube is in place.

California

Charlene opens her eyes and looks up at a ceiling that is white with numerous little holes in it. The same ceiling tiles she recalls as seeing in her hospital room.

‘I feel like total crud and it looks like I’m still in the hospital. How long has it been?’

She tries to sit up or roll over only to find that she is unable to do so. A hard shell is holding her down.

‘Oh crap. It feels like the cast has gotten really big. How much of me does it cover now?’

A wiggle of the toes shows they are all encased. ‘Toes, no movement.’

Pushing her foot up and down is resisted by hard fiberglass. ‘Ankle, not going anywhere.’

Testing her knee shows it is held within the cast, and also bent up a good bit. ‘Knee, same thing, held firm.’

Trying to lift her leg up so she can see it goes nowhere. ‘Hip, also not moving.’

Taking a deep breath is stopped before she can fully inflate her lungs all the way. ‘Damn. Body, also encased. A little tight and can’t breathe fully. Shoulder?’

Pulling her right hand up so she can see it only gets her fingers and part of her palm in view. ‘Yep, that’s immobile too. Elbow is still free and can move,’ Charlie thinks as she semi waves her hand around but is unable to lift her elbow up off the bed.

‘Double damn. That means I’ve been out of it for, what, about a week now I guess.’

Using her left hand Charlene runs her hand and fingers over the cast as far as she is able to reach. She can just get her fingertips onto the cast encasing the top of her upper right arm, goes over the right shoulder, feels the cast over her breasts chest and belly, checks and finds the edge of the cast just a few inches under her left armpit at the top and running across her left hip at the bottom, covering her right hip, and her fingers make it almost halfway down her right thigh before she can’t stretch any further.

Reaching up she feels the foam collar around her neck. She also encounters the feeding tube going up her nose. Going back down to her crotch Charlie finds what feels like an adult diaper over her privates. She works her fingers between the elastic waist band and the hard fiberglass to reach her genitals and finds the catheter tube inserted in her body.

‘Looks like I’ve been out long enough they’ve put tubes in me for feeding and peeing. Think I’ll leave the collar alone for now, I don’t need to see all this that badly. I still feel a bit dizzy just laying here and the neck brace is probably helping keep that down.’

Closing her eyes, Charlie relaxes and drifts back into a light sleep.

Later that afternoon a couple of people are in an office talking.

“So the camera got nothing at all?”

“I’m afraid not. The memory card that got put in the camera was only a one-gig card. That got filled up with the first hour of video it recorded. Once it filled up the camera shutdown.”

“And nobody noticed it was off all night, and again nobody was there to see the cast grow?”

“Correct.”

Texas

‘I’m already flat on my back, now I’ve got to deal with this.’

I woke up just a short bit ago to the sounds of the air pump breathing for me and the beeping of machines monitoring me. A few minutes after waking up I realized my left leg was hurting a little bit just above my knee. Wiggling my leg to relieve the discomfort my thigh encounters a hard shell holding it still which stops just above the knee. It feels like my left leg is held up in the air at about the same angle as my fully encased right leg is.

I try to reach down with my right hand only to find I can’t move my shoulder anymore, the padded edge of a solid fiberglass shell encircles my arm to just above the elbow. I check and I can still move my left knee and everything below it, and my right elbow and down are also free, but the cast has grown to include my left hip and right shoulder now.

I can’t even reach up enough to get at the dang neck brace they put me in so I can try to look at the new additions.

‘Unless someone around here wants to play blinking games or maybe get a computer with eye tracking software on it in front of my face then I’ don’t think I’ll be telling anyone a darn thing about this deal. It looks like it’s going to be up to Jamie and Charlene to convince the right people of what is happening and what need to be done. I hope at least one of them is up to the task.’

Day 8: Just Going With The Flow

New York

Waking up, Jamie finds herself looking at the ceiling tiles again.

‘Flat on my back again? I’m pretty sure I went to sleep in a semi-reclined position.’

Finding the controls for the bed she starts to raise the head of the bed again but stops before getting too far and lowers it back down again.

‘Ouch. What the heck?’

Wiggling her left foot and calf Jamie realizes the cast has grown to cover her lower leg to just above the ankle which forces her foot to remain down on the bed now. Trying to raise the head of the bed had tilted her cast so that it forced her foot down against the mattress and pressed the edge of the cast down on top of her ankle when her foot could not move any further.

‘Guess I’m flat then, unless they can somehow tilt the foot of the bed down too. Not much left to get added to my cast now.

‘That means Charlene is almost done too. And Lynn. I’m so sorry Lynn. I hope you’re doing alright.

‘I don’t feel any better today than I did yesterday. Maybe I can tell someone enough to get things moving in the right direction at least. I’ll try.’

Before Jamie encounters any company to communicate with, the drug pump kicks in with a regular scheduled dose of medications. With the improvement to Jamie’s condition from her concussion being less than a day old, the doctor had decided to not change the level of drugs being given her yet so the dose is enough to pull Jamie back down into a twilight haze.

California

“Tell me we got something this morning?”

“Not a thing.”

“What? A new, bigger memory card was used for last night wasn’t it?”

“Yes, a twenty gig card was used. Unfortunately the brand and model of card inserted was not compatible with the camera. So, while the camera appeared to run all night long nothing was recorded.”

“I can’t believe this. We can’t seem to get anything recorded with this cast. Please tell me that you’re going to take measures to ensure we get something to review tomorrow?”

“I am going to personally verify the correct hardware is used and turn on the camera myself come tonight.”

Charlie slowly wakes up to the feeling that her hand is floating in the air. She tries to put her hand down on the bed or her tummy and can’t. Opening her eyes she looks down.

‘I can still see all my fingers and half of my hand. No cast on them yet.’

A wiggle of her elbow and twist of her forearm reveals the cast is holding her elbow at a ninety degree angle which has her hand pointing straight up now, but stops just below the wrist where she can feel the soft padded edge rub against her skin.

‘Almost done. One or two more nights and I’ll have my full half-body cast I guess. Gotta tell someone about this thing, but I’m still too out of it yet. Hope that clears up soon.’

Texas

‘Another morning. I wonder how far it got last night.’

I try to move anything at all.

‘Left arm down to right foot still totally encased.’

Moving my right arm and left leg is less productive than yesterday.

‘Encased down to my ankle and wrist it feels like. At least all four of my limbs are still separate, even if I can’t really move any of them all that much anymore. I wonder how many more days it’s going to take until I’m a complete mummy. That’s going to be too soon as far as I’m concerned.’

I do everything I can do for the day, and just like yesterday I simply lay there.

Some time later a couple of nurses come into my room. They are already treating me more like a thing than a person. Almost no direct interaction anymore. They hook up a fresh bag of formula to feed me, check the settings on the machines, and empty out the drainage bottle for my catheter.

“We’re going to need to start a regular routine of suctioning your trachea tube,” one of them says while looking me in the eye.

‘Well that’s something new. I wonder what that will be like.’

“I’m afraid it will not be pleasant for you. It means we have to take you off the respirator for a few minutes while we insert the suction catheter down into your trachea to remove any mucus and secretions that have built up. You’re not going to be able to breathe hardly at all due to the drugs during this time. It will need to be done at least twice every day unless we find the expectorate is building up faster. We’ll get it done as fast as we can, I promise.”

‘Sorry I asked, but at least you told me what to expect ahead of it.’

“Okay, time to do the suctioning. Here we go.”

The air hose is disconnected from my trach tube, and it takes nearly three minutes to get the job done before the air hose is reconnected. While the hose is off I can only gasp feebly for air between the in and out poking of the suction tube into my throat. By the time they reconnect the air hose I am sure my lips are blue and my face pale from lack of oxygen. At least the machine quickly takes over and I am breathing normally at its regulated pace in short order.

‘Crap. You need to get faster at that, or give me some air in between. That damn near killed me.’

About the time the nurses finish what they are doing, some more people come in. The cast is measured, the new changes noted, repeats of the tests to see if it might get removed take place, and I am subjected to several of my own pokes and prods as well on the few remaining areas of my body not covered in fiberglass. They also seem to take a bit of joy in the enema I am given. At least it is warm.

Day 9: Are We There Yet

New York

Jamie wakes to the sounds of a couple of nurses changing out her bag of formula and emptying her drainage bag. Turning her head slightly still brings about a sense of vertigo so she remains quiet with her eyes closed. While the nurses go about their duties Jamie tests the cast that envelops her body.

‘Fingers and hand, check. Arm and shoulder, yep. Torso, still tight and rigid. Hip and knee, solid. Oh, this is new. I can’t move my foot now. It feels like the cast goes right down to the edge of my foot leaving my toes still free. Yep, foot now immobilized in the cast Is that going to be it, or will my toes get covered too? I’m guessing there will be one more change tomorrow morning and my cast will be done.’

A short time later two nurses enter the room.

“Jamie dear, we are going to roll you on your side to change the bed sheets. Let us do the work honey.”

Jamie is rolled to her right side and held up by one nurse while the other pulls the sheets up against her cast. They lay Jamie back down and with a bit of effort tilt her to the left as best they can to pull the sheets out from underneath. Once the dirty sheets are out they repeat the same steps to place the clean sheets on the bed.

‘Oohhh, that got the room spinning again. Just about got my tummy rolling too much even. Not fun. I hope I’ll be able to talk clearly soon so I can get someone to listen to what needs to be done so I can get out of this cast some day.’

Jamie closes her eyes and waits for the medicine to catch up and stop the nausea she is feeling.

California

Charlene wriggles her fingers and pushes her hand against the new extension on her cast.

‘Wrist is locked down this morning. Still the same green fiberglass all the way.

‘My head is not feeling all that bad this morning. No spinning holes in the ceiling tiles and I think my stomach has settled down too.’

Charlie reaches over with her left hand and is just barely able to grasp the cast on her right hand with the ends of her fingers. She manages to curl a couple fingers around the cast and tugs on it.

‘Just as solid as the rest of the cast, of course. Why did I think it would be otherwise.’

Dropping her hand her fingers brush against something in between her arm and torso. Feeling around she finds an abduction bar connected from her waist to her forearm.

‘Huh. Forgot about that. But there it is. Just one more bit to keep me rigid.’

When a nurse comes in to check on Charlie a bit later she tries to speak to the nurse.

“ ...”

Although she fails to make any recognizable words, the nurse does hear the soft gasping sounds that are produced.

“Oh! You’re awake! Hang on a sec sweetie, let me get you a bit of water then we’ll try again.”

A cup of water with a straw is brought over and Charlie takes a couple of sips.

“There now, try again.”

“I’m feeling a lot better this morning.”

“That’s wonderful! It’s good to see you responsive and aware again.”

“Thank you. It’s nice to be back. Is there a doctor I can talk to?”

“Feeling up to a bit of conversation are we? I’ll ring your attending physician and someone else too. I have a feeling they’ve got a few questions for you,” the nurse says with a smile.

Charlie smirks, “I bet they do. I have some answers in return.”

“Well let’s see if we can get them in here and have some answers for everyone then.”

It takes half an hour for both doctors to arrive, and the nurses on the floor find cause to be in the room as often as possible during the long conversation that takes place.

“So let me see if I have this right,” a doctor says an hour later. “You were on the phone with two other people and joking around about how you got hurt. Between you and the others you worked up this cast that now envelops your entire right side.”

“More or less. And it’s not just me. The other girl, Jamie, is probably in a half-body cast just like mine too. Except hers is on the left side and red. And Leonard is in an even worse situation. He’s probably in a full body cast or close to it by now and is going to wind up a mummy in a day or two. His cast is red green and white.”

“I see. And what information can you give us to confirm any of this? How are we to find these other two?”

“Well, I’m afraid that I’ve told you pretty much all I know about Jamie. I just met her on that phone call so I only know her first name and the size and color of her cast. I have no idea where she is at.

“Leonard is a bit easier. Besides the description of the cast, and the fact that he is probably on a respirator-”

“Ventilator dear.”

“Right, ventilator. Leonard is on a machine to breathe and in a huge body cast. And he lives in the DFW Texas area.”

“Well, that at least has some possibilities. Although I doubt that your friend in Texas is actually in such a state. Casts do not spontaneously appear. As for finding your other friend, there is very little to go on and the chances of them also being in a cast as you describe is very slim.”

“Oh come on. So you’re telling me that I somehow made all this up and I’m the only one trapped in a cast that covers half of my body?”

“Well Charlene, the cast you are in is of course self evident, but I doubt that you’ve been able to cause two other people to be encased in their own casts just from a conversation over a phone. It is more likely that you had a dream, or nightmare, that caused your cast to grow to such an extent.”

“Yea, okay. Fine. I see a video camera over there. Did you get any footage of my cast growing?”

“Well, actually no,” her doctor replied. “It seems that we have not been able to catch it happen for one reason or another.”

“Right. Just like I said. It grows at night when nobody is watching. And it won’t come off ever until I get together with Jamie and Leonard.”

“Now Charlene. That just won’t happen. Your cast was put on for a simple third degree sprain of the foot and is supposed to come off after just two weeks. Since you have not told us anything about new broken bones even once, then this cast should start to degrade in another week at the most and we’ll have you out of it in no time.”

“Suit yourself then. Come see me again in a month and tell me how things are going. But I’m telling you there is going to be one more change to this cast tonight. All of my fingers are going to be included then my cast will be done growing.”

“We’ll see Charlene.”

Texas

I try again to move anything and the only thing that moves are four fingers on my right hand and four toes on my left foot. Everything else is now firmly encased in the cast.

‘Great. Looks like I have one more day to go for the almost full body cast. Then how ever long it’s gonna take to become a mummy.

‘Now that I can see a bit of the cast on my arm it looks like the green with white stripe on my right leg is continued on my right arm too without any red to it. Oh well.’

The doctors and nurses make their appearances through the day, once again poking and prodding and trying to cut off any part of the cast while also taking care of the other aspects of my health needs. They actually manage to cut off both of the abduction bars that are on my arms by using two cast saws at once and cutting both ends of the bar at the same time. In mere minutes they simply grow back. I hear one of them mention trying to remove the abduction bar that is apparently between my legs, but with the bars on my arms growing back as fast as they did that idea is rejected.

Day 10: The End Result For Two

New York

‘And there’s my toes all nice and snug in the cast. Nice and tight with no wiggle room just like all casts these days. Not too tight to be uncomfortable, but plenty tight enough to reduce any movement to just pressing against the internal padding.

And I still feel like total crud. Why did I have to up the ante on this dang concussion like that? That was stupid of me. I’m never going to get over this. My cast is finished and I’m going to be stuck in it for the rest of my life at this rate. The others are going to be doomed to living in a cast until they die too because I can’t tell anyone what they need to know.

‘I hope Charlie and Lynn are alright.’

Jamie remains quiet and still as the day goes by. The nurses attempt to talk with her, but Jamie is slipping into a depression fueled fugue and barely responds to them. The most effort she makes is to indicate she does not feel well and asking for an increase to her medications which is granted again. The drugs take effect and Jamie slips down into a mostly peaceful twilight existence where she barely recognizes what is happening around her.

California

“Good morning Doctor,” Charlie calls out loudly. “Did you try to stay awake all night then? Bet you couldn’t. And your camera failed to catch anything either I’ll wager.”

Charlie’s loud greeting is enough to fully wake up the doctor who is sleeping in the lounge chair-bed in her room. He sits up and looks at the cast that now fully covers all of her fingers out past the tips of the fingers.

“No, I was not able to remain awake,” he says with chagrin then sighs. “I’m not even going to bother with checking the camera.”

“Well you don’t have to worry about my cast getting any bigger, I promise. It’s done growing and I’m stuck in it for the long haul now. Just like the others.”

“Okay, yes Charlene. You have been right about your cast. And tomorrow will prove or disprove whether it is done growing. I am inclined to take your word on that.

“However, having two other people affected by your fantasy, dream, nightmare, what ever, is highly unlikely. Especially with having someone spontaneously grow a cast out of nothing. And as for the long haul as you call it, in a few days we’ll be cutting you out of this cast and it will be over.”

“As you say, doctor. You’re the knowledgeable one here.”

Charlie frowns and sticks her tongue out at the back of the doctor as he leaves the room.

“Dipwad. You think you know it all. You’ll see. Everything has happened just like Jamie and I said it would so far. At least for me and my cast that is. No reason to not believe Jamie and Lynn are not also in the same situation too.”

‘Considering I was only sorta joking about this cursed cast growing on me, I’m not too upset with how it has turned out for my very first cast. I always wondered what having a cast would be like. It’s pretty comfy once you get past the whole can’t move part of it.

‘The concussion was not fun though. But I did kinda egg Jamie on so I can accept the consequences of that. And it seems that I’m getting over it now too, so I can sit back and enjoy my cast for however long this is going to take.’

Wiggling her fingers the one centimeter they can move against the padding in the cast, Charlene settles back and waits for the time to pass.

Texas

‘With this hard plastic collar wrapped around my neck and forehead, I’m pretty much in a total full-body cast now. The cast covers everything from my shoulders down out past the tips of all ten fingers and all ten toes are completely encased with both big toes wrapped up in their own separate shells as well.

‘I wonder how long it will be for the mummy effect to take place. And what’s going to happen to all of these tubes in me when it does? I’m pretty sure that I can feel an opening between my legs still right now for access to that area. The cast goes around my chest below my trachea tube, and is nowhere near the NG tube.

‘Although it looks like the IV line they stuck in my right hand got pushed out or removed somehow. That’s going to be interesting when they find that.’

It doesn’t take long after I wake up for a nurse to come in and find my new cast additions. The IV line is quickly found to be dangling down the side of the bed. After a bit of consultation with the doctors who show up, one of them turns to me.

“We need to keep an IV line in place for administering medications and additional nutritional supplements and help keeping you hydrated. Since it appears that the usual place in the hand or arm has been rejected, we are going to insert an IV line into your neck in the jugular vein. It can be a bit painful to insert, and we’ll have to change your neck brace for a more restrictive one to accommodate the IV along with your tracheotomy.”

‘Will joys never cease. Get it over with. Not like the neck brace is going to stay around for all that long. This cast is going to take over my head soon enough.’

It takes them about fifteen minutes to bring in the IV kit and get the needle in my vein. Getting stabbed in the neck definitely hurts, but once they finish they are able to give me an extra shot of pain-killers to compensate.

The new neck brace takes several hours for them to find one they like and get it brought in. With a needle in the side of my neck and a tube through the front I am not inclined to move my head around too much as it is.

Day 11: Two More Days To Go

Texas

Something has changed in my cast. It’s hard to tell though for sure. I can still see the tops of my hand casts sticking up out to the sides. But my legs don’t feel the same. I try to wiggle them around the best I can to figure out what’s different. It takes a few minutes before I get it.

‘Damn. Stage one of the mummy cast I guess. I’m pretty sure my legs have been pulled together and straightened out. It’s hard to tell since it feels like both legs are still in separate fiberglass shells so any wiggling I do just rubs against the inside of the cast and not against the opposite leg.

‘Both catheter tubes are definitely still in place. No missing that feeling when I try to wiggle my hips. I guess there is an opening or two in the cast to allow them to come out and still do their jobs of removing pee and giving access for enemas.

‘This should be fun when someone comes in this morning.’

True to my funny bone, the reaction from the first nurse who comes in to check on me is pretty good. I hear her open the door and walk in then stop.

“Holly crap!” she exclaims.

Then I hear a slap on the wall and a light starts flashing.

“Emergency on the floor! I need the doctors here stat!” the nurse yells out.

In minutes the room is full of people yammering on and making a whole lot of noise, but not really doing anything useful. A new round of cutting poking and prodding begins, yet nobody seems to be inclined to try and communicate with the one person who is encased in the mystifying cast in question.

‘Idiots. If they’d just slow down and take some time to try and talk with me I could answer some of their questions and even maybe get out that there are two other people involved in this whole mess.

‘But no, I’m just a warm body presenting them with a medical mystery that couldn’t possibly know what is going on or have anything useful to impart.’

The results of all the testing and poking are about as clear as they have been the previous days and the experts come up with squat. Again.

New York & California

Jamie continues to slide down into her depressive funk, not realizing that the effects of the concussion are finally releasing their hold on her. She manages to convince the staff that she needs more medications which leaves her in a drugged out mindless state.

Charlene spends the day resting comfortably in her cast and talking with the nurses who take care of her. She does get a couple to listen to her about how there are two other people that they need to find, but the doctors still refuse to listen so any progress on the needed fix is minimal at best.

Day 12: Almost There

Texas

I look up at the ceiling and if I could I’d sigh. But the respirator has complete control over my breathing and I can’t.

I woke up this morning to find that from the neck down I was now in the classic mummy position. My arms are crossed over my chest with my wrists overlapping just between my nipples.

Or at least that is where I imagine they are placed. With as little movement as I have available it took a bit of time for me to figure out how I think my arms are positioned now. Not seeing my hands anymore was a pretty obvious clue, but the exact placement took a bit of wiggling. Like my legs, both arms are still in their own separate casts. They are simply attached to the cast on my torso now in a Velpeau style and still encompass all my fingers as well.

From the neck down I’m encased in a solid red, green, and white cast with openings just barely big enough for a couple of catheter tubes to emerge from the back side of the groin area. I did sneak a look at the cast yesterday while my neck was free from the collar, and the diagonal plaid pattern on my chest had continued on down over my legs now that they were bound together. I assume that the pattern has not been interrupted by my arms now being secured to my chest.

The oh so wonderful medical staff here has another field day with the new update to my cast. At least they didn’t poke and prod me as long this time, and the attempts to cut my arms out are half-hearted at best and quick.

‘Maybe they’ll actually try communicating with me in a couple of months or so. Would be nice of them.’

At least the cast is comfortable, despite my being stuck laid flat out from the shoulders down. Hopefully the addition to my head will remain as comfy.

Day 13: Are You My Mummy

Texas

And there it is. I have no idea where the neck brace went off to.

I have a single opening around my eyes that closely follows the ridge of my eyebrows at the top, around the corner of each eye on each side, and along the line of my cheek bone at the bottom. It goes right up and over my nose with a little bit of a rise up between my eyes but not close enough to touch or connect with the top edge. Rolling my eyes around in a circle, the edge of the cast is close enough I can see it all the way around.

As far as I can tell there are openings in the cast for the trach tube at my throat and interestingly one for the NG tube at my nose. Attempting to swallow confirms that tube is still there going down to my tummy. I can’t tell if the jugular IV is still there or not, the cast around my head is tight enough that I can’t wiggle my head or neck to get any movement from the IV if it is still there. I kinda hope it still is since it seems to be my only way to get some of those medications they want me to have.

I woke up in the middle of the night and have been laying here since with the feeling of my mummy cast fully enclosing me. It’s kinda cozy in a way. It holds me firmly and securely, not allowing anything to intrude that might harm me. Of course, it won’t let me move anything at all either, but that’s what a cast is supposed to do. I guess I’d better get used to it. I have no idea how long I’ll be like this.

Day 14: It’s Real You Know

California

Charlene giggles as she recalls the excitement for the day. The stuffy know-it-all doctor had come in with a cast saw earlier in the day.

“It’s been two weeks now. Time to cut that cast off of you.”

He proceeded to start cutting through the cast on her right foot, the one the cast was originally intended for, and even before he got up past the ankle on one side the cast was already reversing the damage and sealing shut once again. He spent a full half-hour trying to cut through various parts of the cast at different locations from top to bottom before he gave up.

“Fine. So it’s too soon then. We’ll try again in a few days,” he exclaimed, as if that was the definite answer then left the room in a snit.

“Yep. That’ll do it then,” Charlie giggled. “See you soon dodo brain. How much longer is it going to be before you start listening to me?”

“That one is stubborn child. It could take a while,” the nurse who was checking on Charlene said.

“I see. Well, no skin off my nose. I’m just stuck laying here for the duration.

“I don’t suppose there is anyway I can get rid of these tubes could I?”

“No, I’m afraid you can’t. Policy with unknown reasons for cast growth are that certain life sustaining procedures such as waste removal and feeding be regulated by medical intervention. Just how that intervention takes place is up to your attending physician. You’re luck that you are not intubated and on a ventilator too.”

“Oh. I guess I won’t complain too much then. How is the search going for my friends?”

“Unfortunately, since it’s not an official search we can only go through the grapevine so to speak, or word of mouth. It’s going to be slow at best, so nothing new yet.”

“Alright. As long as someone believes me and is trying, that’s better than nothing at least. Thank you.”

Texas

Apparently the IV in my neck is still there. I’ve felt it get tugged on a couple of times now since I woke up in my full mummy cast yesterday. The poking and prodding was a lot easier to take this time around at least. They really couldn’t do hardly any at all with no available openings in the cast to work with other than the holes to allow tubes through.

However I really hope they don’t want to repeat the attempt to cut through and remove the cast any time soon or all that often. The vibrations and noise that went through my whole body seemed to echo especially loud in my skull, and they didn’t even try to cut the cast anywhere around my head.

Day 90: Still Not Going Away

New York

“Good morning Doctor. How can I help you?”

“I’ve been assigned to a case as the new primary physician, a girl called Jamie in a half-body cast on her entire left side?”

“Yes Doctor. She’s in the room just down the hall here.”

A moment later they enter the room and the doctor takes a look at the patient lying in the bed. A red fiberglass cast encases her from the tips of the fingers on the left hand, up the arm, over the shoulder and down the torso, around the left hip, and down the left leg to the tips of the toes which can barely be seen peeking from between the narrow opening. She rests with eyes only half open, and what can be seen of them is dull and glassy in an obvious drug induced stupor.

Reviewing the patient’s chart the doctor frowns and makes several unhappy noises.

“Why is this person still being so heavily sedated nurse?”

“When she first came in there was a severe concussion that required medication to help control the effect from the trauma. There was a brief period where it seemed that she might start getting better, but she complained of mounting pain and nausea for a week which necessitated continuing and even increasing the dosages. The attending physician ordered her medications continued indefinitely when nothing else seemed to be able to work for her.”

“Well I am now her attending, and I want these drugs ceased. We will take it easy on her and step them down in stages, giving her less each day until they she is off them. I want to have a bright eyed and responsive patient to talk to in no more than five days tops.”

“Yes Doctor.”

California

“They still won’t really listen to me, but I bet they are getting tired of hearing me tell them the same things any time they talk to me.”

“The good doctor has been quite frustrated that he seems to be quite wrong. I think he might even be ready to change his mind and listen to you Charlie.”

“Well I hope so. He almost screamed in anger earlier when he couldn’t make any progress with trying to cut the cast off again this morning.”

“I can tell you there has been some small progress through the grapevine. I’ve heard rumors of a couple of people who could possibly be your two friends.”

“Really? That’s good to hear. It’s been two and a half months already in this cast. I’m sure Leonard is about sick of the cast he’s probably stuck in right now. I’m not sure how Jamie feels about it though.”

“And how are you feeling about your continuing confinement?”

“Honest answer? Off the record?”

“Honesty is preferred, and I just see the two of us in here right now.”

“Alright. In truth I’m doing fine. I can’t move the entire right side of my body at all which is a bit frustrating since I’m right handed. Learning to use my left hand has been interesting, but I’m getting the hang of it. The fact that you all were able to switch my bed to one that could adjust the head and foot parts enough to at least let me recline was a god-send. Laying flat on my back staring straight up at the ceiling was so boring.

“The cast of course is perfect, just like they all are these days. I’m sure I’ve had some atrophy, but the cast remains tight and secure while the padding inside is still soft and comfortable. It’s grown on me, pun intended, and I’ve come to like having its protective embrace on me twenty-four-seven. If they ever listen to me and get us all together so that it can eventually be removed I think I’m actually going to miss it.”

“Well, you’ve remained in there long enough already that you’ll be dealing with a good bit of physical therapy to regain the use of your right limbs again. And if it goes too much longer then you’re probably going to wind up with braces and splints for a time afterwards too. Being held immobile in the cast will seem much nicer than having some PT gorilla bend and stretch muscles and joints that haven’t moved in however long it winds up being.”

“Oh. I hadn’t thought about that. You’re right, this cast will definitely be missed then. It just holds me tight and still like a continuous hug. PT afterwards is not going to be fun at all.”

Texas

I’m not sure how long I’ve been confined in this cast now. I lost track of the days at some point and haven’t been able to catch back up again. Of course, my days are rather boring. I sleep in short bursts most of the time unless they give me something extra to knock me out for longer periods.

I think it was about a week after the mummy cast finished that they switched my bed out for the frame they’ve got me strapped into now. There are four wide belts that hold me in place against a somewhat narrow padded board that goes from the back of my head to my heels. One strap goes just above my ankles, one over my thighs, another over my waist, and the last one just below my shoulders. It lets them tip me side to side so I am lying on my left or right, and it can rotate upwards so that I am technically in a standing position or right on over so I am lying on my front. I’m pretty sure, but thankfully they haven’t done it to me yet, it can tilt me on over so that my head would be lower than my feet and I could end up standing on my head. I don’t think that would go over too well.

I’ve had enough trouble with getting disoriented as it is. I can swear at times that they’ve turned me too far and my head feels like it is lower than it should be, and it takes looking around at the non-moving and static bits of machinery around me to break that feeling and convince me that I’m not getting turned on my head.

“Hello.”

‘Holy crap! Who the hell is that? Step over where I can see you.’

A woman wearing scrubs steps into view where I can see her and it’s someone I have not seen before.

“Hi. I know you can’t talk or even make any sounds, and have a really difficult time trying to communicate. I’m here to see if we can’t make a bit of a difference for you on that.”

‘Well yea, when the staff around here don’t even try to talk with me in the first place it’s kinda hard to communicate with anyone. You’re the first person to even talk to me in I don’t know how long.’

“I get the feeling that nobody’s really tried all that hard either. Let’s start with some simple yes and no answers with blinking your eyes.”

She explains how she wants to do it and I pick it up right away. In just a few questions from her we establish that I prefer my nickname, I have lost all track of time, and I’m seriously going crazy from boredom.

“Well Len, from your charts here you’ve been in this full cast now for around two and a half months. As I am sure you realize, nothing that has been tried has been successful with trying to remove it.

“Now, do you have any idea why this has happened to you?”

YES

“Mm-hmm. If we come up with a better means of communication, are you able to tell me what happened and maybe give me a clue as to how long you might remain in this mummy cast of yours?”

YES

“I thought as much. Hasn’t anyone tried at all to talk to you about this?”

NO

“Of course not. Well even this little bit of conversation is enough for me to authorize a message board of some type. I have a feeling that you’ve got a good bit to say, so I’m going to order a computer board with eye tracking software that you can learn to use. That will let you activate a voice synthesizer for short answers, or write to a text document for more detailed information you may wish to provide.

“How does that sound? Think it is something you’d like?”

A tear escapes my eye to be absorbed by the cast padding when I answer.

YES YES YES

‘Finally! Someone who is trying to talk to me and listen! I’ll be able to tell them what needs to be done!’

Day 95: Answers Are Forthcoming

New York

Jamie’s new primary doctor enters her room with a nurse.

“Hello Jamie. I hope you are doing better. I’d like to talk with you about your situation if that’s alright with you.”

Jamie looks at the doctor for a minute before responding.

“What difference is it going to make? I’m more than likely going to be stuck in this cast for the rest of my life. I don’t want to live like this. Just put me back on the drugs so I don’t have to remember anything.”

“Jamie, that’s not a healthy attitude to have. And I’m sure that there is something we can do to make your life better. Maybe even figure out a way to get you out of your cast. But to do that you have to be able to talk with people with a clear head.

“I’ve taken you off almost all of the drugs that were keeping you so sedated you were more of a zombie than a real person. Now, do you think we can talk a bit? We can talk about anything you want, and maybe in the process we can find out how you wound up in this cast of yours.”

It takes time, but Jamie slowly starts to open up and talk with the doctor and nurse.

California

“That is how it happened, like I’ve been trying to tell you people all along,” Charlene tells the new doctor.

“Very well. So there are two other people, one it Texas and another somewhere else, that are involved in this deal. And you have to all be brought together, specifically in Texas, to fulfill some requirement that will allow your cast to finally be removed?”

“Yes sir, that is correct.”

“But you don’t know who the third person is other than a first name, and you’re not entirely sure where this Leonard is at?”

“Well, not exactly. I don’t know Jamie’s full name, but how many people are going to be in a big red fiberglass cast immobilizing the left side of their body just like mine does my right side? And Len is going to be in a mummy shaped cast that is red green and white that only exposes his eyes. And both of them will have been in their casts starting at the same time, and for just as long, as I have been in mine.

“If you’d just talk to them, the nurses have a potential lead on both of them.”

“Very well Charlene, I will see what they have come up with.”

“Thank you. It would be nice to make some progress on eventually being able to maybe get out of this cast at some point.”

Texas

‘And save. There, it’s done.’

It took me a couple days to learn how to use the computer they finally set me up with so that I can communicate. Then I had to get used to working with the software properly so I wouldn’t make so many mistakes. But I figured it out and have been working on my document to tell them all I know about this damn cast I’m stuck in.

‘But, I’m not telling them about the sex change. Hopefully that won’t be necessary. I just need to get Charlie and Jams in here with me and we can get out of these casts we’re all stuck in. I hope.’

A bit later in the day my savior shows up.

“Good afternoon Len.”

The voice synthesizer I chose sounds electronic and female, so it comes out like a girl robot. “Hello.” Simple responses like this are preprogrammed so I can select them and reply quickly. Actual thought out answers take longer as I have to spell the words one letter at a time on the message board.

“Did you get your document finished yet?”

“Yes.”

“Oh good. Can you send it to me and I’ll read it right now.”

I take a minute to switch screens and shoot a copy of the file over to where she can access it. “Done.”

“Got it. Okay, give me a couple of minutes to read it here.”

She reads over the file which tells about the phone call, and Jamie and Charlie getting crazy with their big fantasy casts, and how they jokingly blame me and pull me in to the whole deal. Of course I left out anything about me being transgender or how this is supposed to magically give me a sex change, but I do include all of the information for where both my friends live and methods of contacting them or their families. I also make it clear that while getting us together is necessary, the time frame of when the casts will finally be able to get removed after that was more than a little bit vague.

“This is excellent information, Len. I’ll get some people right on finding both girls. If everything checks out we should be able to work out transporting them here to this hospital soon enough.”

“It. Will. Check. Out. I. Promise.”

“Sounds good. In that case you should have two new roommates before too long.”

Day 105: A Step In The Right Direction

Texas

Currently I am rotated so that I am in my ‘standing’ position. My frame and slew of machines take up most of the space on my side of the room, so only two other beds are able to fit in here. Standing like I am, I can look across the room at the two other beds in the room. Both of which are now taken up by Jamie and Charlene. Jamie is on my right, and Charlie on my left. That places them so their mobile arms and legs are next to each other in the middle.

They arrived about an hour apart, and when all three of us were in the room we insisted that we all be placed side by side with me in the middle. Some pictures were taken of that moment for the records and for us to keep.

Once the two of them were settled in their beds the doctors immediately tried to cut us out of our casts. Of course it failed, all of our casts self-repaired almost faster than they could cut into them. I remind the doctors about what I had pointed out in my document, and that it might take a little time before we could be freed. They got us comfortable and fed, then left us alone for the evening.

“I. Can. Not. Believe. You. Are. Both. Finally. Here.”

“I know! It’s been just over three months now and you have got to be tired of being stuck like a mummy.”

“I. Have. Got. Used. To. It. Charlie. To. A. Degree. It. Is. Not. All. That. Bad. At. Least. The. Cast. Is. Comfortable. The. Worst. Part. Is. That. It. Covers. My. Nose. And. Jaw. Injuries. So. They. Can. Not. Be. Changed. Or. Removed. So. I. Am. Stuck. Voiceless.

“How. About. You. Two. Are. You. Doing. Okay.”

“I’m doing good. Really good actually. I have to admit, I was kinda looking forward to this once I realized what was going on. I’ve never had a cast before and I always wondered what it would be like. Now that I’m in this one I like it. I’m going to miss this cast once it’s off. Of course, my concussion really hit me hard at the beginning and I was totally out of it for over a week I think. By the time I woke up I was already in a body cast all the way up to my wrist.”

“I can’t say that I like it the way you do Charlie, but it’s not all that bad. I am doing okay with it. I’ll handle it for however long it takes, but I’ll be glad to get out of it.

“I’m definitely doing better now than I was. The concussion really did me a bad turn too, but not as bad as you got apparently. I remember waking up each day to a bigger cast then having the room try and tip sideways on me. It got to where I slipped into a really bad state of depression for a while. I even convinced the doctors to drug me out of my mind for a couple of months. I really don’t remember much of that time at all.”

“Oh Jamie, no! I am so sorry to hear that. I hope you’re doing better now that we’re all here together?”

“Yea, I am. I got a new doctor back in New York who took me off the drugs and made me talk to them. Just talking about what happened broke the ice, and they made sure to give me several progress reports each day on their efforts to find you guys. That really helped a lot.”

“It. Is. Fortunate. That. We. All. Were. Making. A. Search. At. The. Same. Time. It. Made. The. Search. Much. Shorter.”

“No kidding. I had been talking to my nurses in Cali about you two, but the doctors weren’t listening to me for a while so they couldn’t use official channels to try and look you guys up. They did find out a little info though, so once the doctors opened up the official search they were able to plug in what the nurses had unofficially heard and boom, you two turned right up.

“Apparently, Lynn, you gave your team all the contact info you could about us which was also a really big push too.”

“Yes.

“Do. You. See. Any. One. Doh. Dumb. Software. Anyone. Out. There.”

“Nope. Not that I can see. How about from your angle Jamie?”

“No one in sight.”

“We. May. Have. A. Problem.”

“What do you mean?”

“You. Two. Tied. My. Um. Gender. Into. Us. Getting. Free.”

“Oh. Oh! Damn! You’re right. We did kinda say that once we got out of our casts then you’d be our Lynnette for real.”

“Oh hell. You’ve got to be kidding me. Are you telling me that I could still be stuck in this cast for months yet? I was thinking now that we are together it was only going to be a matter of a few days or so before I got free. I don’t know if I can handle several more months.

“Or longer. How is a cast going to give you a total sex change? Shit. I may never get out of this cast! I’ll be stuck like this for the rest of my life!”

“Whoa, whoa there Jamie. It can’t be that bad.”

“Yes. Slow. Down. We. Did. Say. That. We. Would. Get. Out. Of. Our. Casts. At. Some. Point. That. Is. Definite.”

“Right. We just kinda left it really vague on how long it was going to take.”

“Correct.”

“So, I’ll get out of this thing eventually? But we don’t know how long?”

“I. Am. Afraid. That. About. Sums. It. Up.

“I. Have. No. Idea. How. I. Am. Going. To. Become. A. Girl. But. Something. Will. Happen. To. Satisfy. That. Condition. Then. We. Will. Be. Able. To. Be. Freed. From. Our. Casts. We. Just. Do. Not. Know. How. Long. It. Is. Going. To. Take.”

“Damn. Fine. I’ll try to focus on the positive then. I’ll be free some day, and until then I’ll just have to grin and bear it.”

Day 112: New Developments

I wake up from another one of my semi-sleep times to see the lights in the room are all off.

‘It must be night time again. I am glad I have Jams and Charlie here now. I don’t lose track of the time or days anymore with someone to talk to again.

‘It’s been another week since they arrived. No clues still on how I’m going to be a girl. Yet. I’m sure something will come up though.

‘Who’s that?’

I am in a tilted position again such that I can partially see the door to our room. For just a moment I could swear that I see what looks like a great big bear person standing in the doorway. It looks like it is talking to a fox person that is standing next to it. They both turn and seem to look straight at me, and I’d swear the fox person giggles. I blink a couple of times, confused at what I think I am seeing. In between one blink and the next the figures resolve themselves into more natural forms.

The new night nurse that started working about four days ago walks into the room holding the hand of a young Asian girl. Young enough that she should not be here this late which is still odd.

The nurse is a rather large woman, and I don’t mean fat. She is definitely of African descent with her dark skin tone, and speaks with an accent that I just can’t seem to place. I guess she is probably around six to six foot five in height, and built like an Olympic track and field athlete. I would not be surprised at all to see her competing in any of the field events.

She is holding the hand of the girl who is actually skipping as they approach me.

“Wow,” the girl says with big round eyes, “you weren’t kidding. She really is a Christmas mummy! That is so awesome! Can you turn her around so that I can talk to her at my level?”

“Of course, little one.”

The nurse takes the frame controls and rotates me back into an almost flat lying position. I am tilted just a little bit so my head is higher than my feet.

The child climbs up the frame and sits down on my chest. This close I get a better look at her and it appears that she is probably about nine years old. Her hair is dark and long and she looks to be Japanese. Except for her eyes I’d swear she is up past her bed time. Looking into those eyes is like gazing into a pool of great depths. The owner of that gaze is certainly no child and is someone who has seen a great deal more than a child of her apparent age could have possibly ever experienced.

“So. You and your two friends here have gotten yourselves into a bit of a pickle it looks like,” the girl tells me. “It seems that a bit of intervention is going to be necessary.”

‘Who is this kid? And what can she possibly know about us?’

“My friend here heard about you three and decided to check you all out. She caught a whiff of the magic surrounding you and contacted me. I must say that you have done a good one here. It’s complicated and is going to need some help if you all are ever going to see the end of it.”

‘What the heck is this kid talking about?’

“Trust me. You’re in over your collective heads on this one and we need to talk frankly here.”

I look over to the side where my computer screen is currently resting.

“Oh goodness no, while useful that thing is going to be too slow not to mention noisy. I have a much better way.”

Reaching forward with a finger, the girl’s form shimmers and grows. The finger that touches the cast over my forehead is on an adult hand. It is also furry. The figure that sits on my chest now is a fox woman.

‘HOLY SHIT!’

“Now now, there is no need for language like that. I told you you’re in over your head here.”

‘But, you ... you’re a ...’

“I am a Kitsune, or were-Fox. My friend is a Gurhal, or were-Bear. She is quite an accomplished healer and moves around from hospital to hospital helping the patients. Many recoveries deemed miraculous are due to her work. She is also the one who was there to greet me when I emerged from my own fiberglass chrysalis twenty-one years ago, so she knows a thing or two about how casts behave these days and keeps an ear open for unusual cases.”

‘Oh good lord. This can’t be real.’

The fox, Kitsune, sitting on me giggles.

“This is very real. You have stumbled into a much larger world than you knew existed. But that will need to wait a bit.

“You girls have gotten yourselves into a situation where you’ll never be free of these casts unless I help.”

‘Never get free? Do you mean ...?’

“Yes. Your gender change. Without some form of outside intervention the terms you all have set can never be satisfied. If someone like me doesn’t provide a push so to speak, then Lynnette will never be able to emerge and the three of you will remain in these casts for the rest of your lives.”

‘Crap, I knew there was a flaw in the curse. I’ll never be able to become a girl. I’m going to be a mummy for the rest of my life. And Jamie and Charlene are stuck because of me.’

“Slow down there. I said that without intervention that would be your fate. I can give you that push to make the seemingly impossible happen.”

‘You can?’

“Yes, I can.”

‘How? I was born in a male body. Unlike some frogs, humans can’t just change their sex.’

“No, humans don’t just spontaneously switch from male to female. It takes something powerful to make that happen. I have a bit of experience with that.”

‘Then how?’

“Silly girl,” the Fox-woman giggles. “Has it not occurred to you that we’ve been talking to each other for several minutes now, yet not one word or sound has passed your lips? I’ve been reading your mind this whole time.”

‘Oh my god, you have! But, that ... that’s magic.’

“Right you are. Magic. And a pretty simple spell for a Seven-tail like me.”

She leans sideways so that I can see multiple fox tails waving behind her. My years of fantasy gaming finally kick in seeing the fan-like spread of red and white fur, the fox-grin on her furry face, and the amused twinkle in her eye.

‘Seven Tails. Impressive. But wouldn’t it take a full Nine-tail to make the changes you’re implying?’

“Ah, there’s the intelligence. I was wondering when your brain would finally kick in. Yes, normally it would. But I have a special connection to the magic that brought about the changes to how casts work. You see, I’m kinda the one responsible for that in a way.”

The nurse who has been fairly quiet so far snorts and says “Kinda?”

“Alright, fine. It was my wish that made it happen. But I didn’t provide the initial magic for it.”

“No, you didn’t. But you did get turned into a Kitsune and saddled with watching over all the changes and resulting problems that your wish caused. Like this one.”

“Yes, I did. That is why I am here thanks to you alerting me to this. I’m still trying to work around the problem with another mummy, but that’s not your concern. I’m here about you.

“So, Lynnette, I can push things into the right positions to make your own wish come true. And in the process release your friends from their own part of the mistake that was made.”

‘I guess that I did mess that up a bit. But I didn’t know it was real. I thought it was just a fantasy. Nothing would really happen.’

“Did you now? Some part of you believed it enough that the magic took hold and trapped the three of you in a nasty little loophole. Your friends are not entirely blameless in this either. Both of them believed it enough to lend their own strength to what became a real curse. As of right now, the three of you are going to be confined in these casts for the rest of your lives.”

‘But you can do something, right? You can break the curse and free us can’t you?’

“No. I can’t break your wish. It’s been made and set in the fabric of reality. What I can do is work with the magic using my own powers to setup the situation that will satisfy the conditions that have been set.”

‘Oh. Okay. What will that take?’

“It’s going to take creating an environment where we can use the Laws of Similarity to weave the magic into place that will give you the changes to your body that you and your friends want to happen.

“And yes, there is going to be a price to be paid for this. You’ve already set a high price for yourself. If you are truly willing to pay such a price it will go a long way to making this happen. And your friends have agreed to the price you set on them by requiring their mutual confinement while you go through your change. That is a generous sacrifice for them to make, but it is not going to be quite enough for their part in this. It will take a little bit more from them I’m afraid.

“But you are the first one who has to make the required sacrifice. Are you truly willing to pay the price you yourself have set?”

‘I suppose some part of me knew that this could possibly work, and if it did then there had to be a price to pay for it. I made that choice and offered up the price I will pay. I am ready to live the life that I must if I am to be whole in body and mind. No price is too great to attain that.’

“Well said, child, and with truth. The price you give is accepted. Let us hope that your friends have the strength of will that you show. Their price will not be so harsh, but it will still be a burden for them all the same.”

“Yes my large furry teacher, it is time to bring the other two into this.”

Hopping down to the floor, my apparent gatekeeper approaches the beds where my friends lay sleeping. With a snap of her fingers she commands, “Awake.”

My frame is tilted up some more so that I can see my two friends. They have obviously awoken and are looking around with some confusion. Seeing the Fox-woman standing between their beds with a big furry were-bear to one side, they stop and stare.

“You ...”

“You’re not ...”

“Oh, I am quite real and possible. So is she. I need to ask the two of you something quite serious, so I would appreciate it if you would please refrain from any screaming or denying my existence. Think you can do that?”

“Um, sure,” Charlie answers with a small squeek.

Jamie just nods in shock.

“Good. And thank you.

“Now, it seems that the three of you have concocted a rather fine knot to be untied here. Your friend, Lynnette over there, is kind of stuck in the wrong body. Without your help she’s going to stay a boy physically for the rest of her life. Because of the wish you three have collectively made that means that she is going to remain in her mummy cast for as long as she lives. Unfortunately that also means that you two are going to get to keep the rather nice casts that you are currently in for just as long.”

Hearing that they are indeed stuck in their casts until they die instantly gets their undivided attention. Sparing just a brief glance across the room then at each other, they concentrate on the Kitsune with a singular intensity.

“You said without our help. Does that mean that we can do something to make that fate not happen?”

“Yes Charlene, you can. In fact, you already have done something towards that goal. You’ve both willingly accepted to remain in your casts for as long as Lynnette remains in hers. That is a big step in the right direction, but it is not quite far enough.

“Please allow me to explain before you start asking questions.

“Left alone as you are now, the magic that rules the casts is not enough to make such a drastic alteration as changing someone from male to female. Your wish is dependant on that change happening so that you can all be set free. It can’t happen so you will wear those casts for the rest of your lives unless an outside force or power intervenes.

“That’s where we, my large friend and I, come in. We can provide both the avenue and the magic necessary for Lynnette to become the girl she needs to be. However, there is no such thing as a free lunch as they say. There must be a price paid for such a service to be provided. That’s where you two come into this.

“I already mentioned that you’re paying a price for this, and you are. It’s almost enough, but not quite there. You see, for the magic to have the greatest chance of success we need to use the Laws of Similarity. This means that if we can create an environment with as many similar situations as we can, then the resulting atmosphere of, well, sameness will help direct the flow of magic to produce the result we are going for.”

Jamie finds her voice and asks, “So what similarities are needed to make this work?”

“We have several already happening,” the bear-nurse explains. “You all have wished for the same thing, to give Lynn her true form. We have all three of you together in this room, two females and one male. This calls to the Laws of Similarity to make all three the same, so with two females present then it is easier to make the one a female as well rather than make the two male. All of you are bound within some form of cast which share the same colors in Lynnette’s cast, and in some manner resemble each other; especially with the two of your casts being mirror images.

“Added to this we have the three of you. Three people who empowered the wish. Three people who are involved in the results. And three people who are sharing the price. Three times three times three. The Power of Three is also a strong tool.”

“So it is,” agrees the Kitsune, “and the environment here is strong because of that and your will to see it happen. So, to tip the scales just that much further in our favor, I am asking if the two of you can find it within yourself to pay just a little higher price for this.

“The cost is already set; you just have to be willing to pay it. To truly make this work the two of you will have to endure one more discomfort for as long as it takes the magic to work. You will have to be intubated just as your friend already is. It would be one more similarity that we can use and another hardship on your parts to add to the power.”

“How soon would it have to happen?”

“It would be done now, tonight. The magic needs to be started as soon as possible.”

“And how will all this get explained?”

“My friend here will take care of making thing work out as smoothly as possible. She is a trusted nurse in the hospital after all. Some subtle changes to your records, a sudden problem with your ability to breath on your own, it’s quite simple. In a way, humans resemble the lemming; they tend to not question the unusual if presented with the right documented evidence and will follow the crowd. And we will also be using some subtle magic to nudge them in the right direction. Nobody will question it.”

“I see. So it’s up to us. And if one or both of us are to say the price is too high? What then?”

“In that case Charlie, I will still do what I can and set the magic I have to the task. It would probably still work for the most part. But I suspect it will take a good bit longer to finish and may not be quite as effective as it could be, which would leave Lynn not quite as fully female as we are hoping for.

“But that is not going to be a problem for you, is it? You’ve already made your choice. The price is not too much for you.”

Charlene smiles gently and nods.

“So it’s down to me then. With all this talk of prices being paid, what price does Lynnette have to pay?”

“Ah, that is up to Lynnette. She knows what her price is for wholeness and has already made her choice. Right now she is no more than an observer. She has not been allowed to take part in our conversation so that she can not influence you one way or the other.”

“Can you tell us what will happen?”

“Once you make your choice then we will tell you how it will go. Not before.”

“I thought so.

“I am already tired of this cast and look forward to getting it off. The constant restrictions it enforces on me are frustrating and grow a little bit more by the day. I don’t know how much longer I can handle it. And to lose my ability to talk to anyone on top of that? That is a hard pill to swallow. I fear that it might prove to be too much.

“But I look over there, and I see the brightly colored mummy that we have created. A hard fiberglass shell that contains within it my friend. Someone who trusted me enough to tell their inner most secret and desire to me. To forebear that trust and deny one of my closest friends something so dear, something that I could give them, would indeed be more than my heart could take to say no to her. I could not live with myself if I deny Lynnette this chance.”

“A true friend will do no less. So be it, the price is paid.”

With those words the were-bear turns and leaves the room.

“Your nurse goes to collect the necessary machines and equipment to support your life and will be back shortly.

“You will have a tube inserted through your mouth and down into your lungs tonight and be placed on a ventilator machine that will take over for you. It will prove necessary for the both of you to remain on mechanical intervention for the duration. In about a week the tube will be switched out for one that will be inserted through your neck directly into your trachea and will remain that way just as Lynnette has to endure.

“Lynn, your records are going to be subtly altered to account for the Hormone Replacement Therapy treatment which you will begin first thing in the morning. A precursor of anti-androgens will be started tonight. Of course, normally the drugs are incapable of enacting such a complex undertaking as a complete sex change. The HRT will be the catalyst and vehicle which the magic will use. Just another use of Similarity, and the replacement being done will be a true replacement. Your two friends here possess double X chromosomes while you sport a pair of X and Y chromosomes. Through the HRT drugs the magic will slowly alter yours so that the Y chromosome will grow an extra leg to become an X. By the time that you are able to be freed of your mummy chrysalis, your body will be have changed and be producing its own feminine hormones at the right levels for a naturally born woman with a body to match.

“As to how long this is going to take, well, think about it like having to give birth. It takes a woman nine months to develop and give birth to a new life, and that is what we are doing here, more or less. We are giving birth to your true self. Nine months is not such a long time compared to that.”

“Nine more months like this? And on a ventilator the whole time? Damn. It’s a good thing I love you girl, and I want to see the new you. You better turn out good,” Jamie says with a frown.

All I can do is to look her back in the eye and try to project my love and gratitude back to her.

Our nurse returns to the room pushing two machines before her with a pile of sealed packages on top of each.

“You can start with me,” Charlie calls out. “I think I’m going to enjoy my nine months like this and can’t wait to get started.”

With assistance from the Kitsune, the nurse sets up a ventilator by Charlene’s bed. Opening a package the endotracheal tube is prepped and Charlie’s head is tilted back about forty-five degrees. A spray of anesthetic is done into the back of her throat and a minute later the tube is pushed down in.

“Don’t fight it Charlie, just let it slide in. That’s it. Now cough for me. Got it.”

The tube slides all the way down into her throat until just a few inches of it remains exposed on the outside. A small syringe is connected to a port on the side and the plunger pressed down and suddenly Charlene is only able to breathe through the tube, the inflatable cuff having expanded to otherwise seal off the airway. The external end of the tube is taped to her face to secure it.

“We’ll give you a couple of minutes to get used to breathing through that. It’ll take about ten minutes for this medication to take effect,” the nurse says as she injects a liquid into the port on Charlie’s IV line. “Once it takes full effect you won’t be able to breathe on your own tonight and will need that machine to breathe. I’ll monitor you both closely and hook up the ventilator at the right time. By morning your body will be used to the machine’s rhythm and won’t fight it when the drug wears off.

“It’s your turn now dear,” she says turning to Jamie. “No use putting it off, the longer you wait the worse your mind will make it seem.”

“Yea, I know. Let’s get this over with. I love you Lynnette.”

I send all the love and gentle wishes for an easy intubation that I can as I watch them set up Jamie’s ventilator then prepare her for the ET tube. Jamie tries to not fight it as the tube is pushed down her throat, but she still has a much harder time with the process and momentarily chokes on it. With several powerful coughs the tube finally slides in place and the cuff is inflated.

While Jamie’s tube is taped down by the Fox-woman, the were-bear checks on Charlie and sees that her breathing has become very shallow. Turning on the machine she connects the air hose to Charlene’s tube and in moments her chest is rising and falling at the command of the pump. A few minutes later and Jamie succumbs to the drug that is injected and her breathing is taken over by a machine as well.

“And here is the first step in your transformation, young lady,” the nurse says as she adds a bag of clear medicine to my IV pole and hooks it in to the line so that it begins a steady drip.

“You three better get used to seeing me around,” the were-bear says. “I’m going to be here for the duration to make sure things go the way we want them to and you all stay as healthy as possible.

“I also have a little gift for the three of you.”

One by one she goes around the room and places a thin silver necklace on each of us. The necklace has a crystal or gemstone of some type centered in the middle of the chain.

“The crystal on these is a high quality rose quartz. They are enspelled so that the wearers can talk with each other through telepathy. It will take between twelve and twenty-four hours for the crystals to attune themselves to you. Be aware that I have one as well, so when I am close I will hear and be able to talk to you mentally as well.

“For tonight, I’m going to add in a sedative to put you all asleep. It will look a bit more appropriate this way for what I am going to report took place and required the addition of the new ventilators. You should wake up in about eight hours or so.”

Injecting the medication into our drug pumps, she smiles and quietly leaves the room.

“I have one more thing to tell you three before you fall asleep. I already hinted at this with Lynn.

“With this large of a magical working, the three of you are going to experience a small part of the world that before now has been hidden from you. Because you are all going to be permanently affected by the magic in some way, what we call the veil is not going to completely hide things from you anymore. You may start seeing little things that most humans only suspect exist in their dreams.

“Many of the things you thought to be fantasy are in fact real. Like my large friend and I here. We and many others are as much a part of the world as you are.  Most of the time, we prefer to remain quiet and hidden from notice, so don’t worry that you’ll be caught up in dangerous situations every time you turn around. That’s just not the case.

“Where most humans might think they see something odd out of the corner of their eye and turn to find nothing there, from time to time you may see something out of the corner of your eye and when you turn to look you’ll actually see something. Ignoring it is fine; or you could quietly just nod a quiet hello and go on your way. That’s about as exciting as it needs to be. Go about your daily life the same way you always have.

“I see the sedative is starting to take over. Good night ladies. Have a pleasant night.”

Day 113: Did That Really Happen

Charlene wakes up slowly the next morning.

‘What happened last night? Did that really take place or was it a dream?’ she thinks sleepily.

The sounds of what she thinks is Lynn’s ventilator intrudes into her awareness. The hiss-click hiss-click of the pump seems to be extra loud and close. A moment later she realizes that she can feel her chest rise and fall against the inside of her cast in exact rhythm with the sound of the pump she is hearing. Opening her eyes the blue plastic air hose connected to the tube in her mouth and throat is immediately apparent.

‘Oh damn, it’s not a dream. It really happened. I’m on a ventilator.’

She tries to look around but finds her head movement restricted. Reaching up with her free hand Charlie finds a hard plastic collar around her neck.

‘That nurse must have added on a solid neck brace after we were asleep. I wonder if Jamie has one too?’

She is able to look down with her eyes and see Lynn in her cast and frame on the other side of the room, but she can’t turn her head enough to see Jamie beside her.

Looking at Lynn, Charlie sees that she has been turned to a more upright reclined position and is awake and looking back at her. Thinking about the necklaces Charlene tries to talk to Lynn, but nothing seems to happen and she does not get a response.

Lying back she listens to the sounds in the room and is able to detect the sounds of each of the machines pumping air into the three of them. The ventilators are not in sync with each other and with a little attention she can tell which one is which.

A while later a couple of doctors and nurses enter the room. They check the various machines and all three ventilators, then one of the doctors stands in the middle of the room at the foot of the two girl’s beds and addresses Jamie and Charlene.

“It is unfortunate that you both had to be intubated last night. Looking over the notes on your charts it appears that one of you began to experience difficulty with maintaining regular breathing, and your distress seems to have caused the other one to also react in a similar manner. With both of you going into extreme distress together it just made your reactions continue to get worse until you had to be medicated and put on mechanical intervention. Now that you are both calm and the relaxant you were given has worn off, I want to explain what most likely happened.

“This is not a wholly unusual occurrence with patients who are confined in a large cast that includes the chest. We call it Cast Syndrome. The constant restriction of the cast around your chest causes the impression that you are not breathing enough. While this is true to a small degree, the cast does hold your chest in place fairly firmly, the feeling that it is restricting or even pressing in against your ability to breathe is largely a false mental inaccuracy. The cast is not going to cut off your ability to breathe and you can survive just fine without the need for assistance from a machine.

“Unfortunately when the one girl started to react to this syndrome and began to believe they couldn’t breathe, the audible and visual signs of the distress caused the other one to also start to think they too were unable to breathe. With both of you able to hear the other one gasping for air it just made you minds believe the false feeling even more and you both ended up actually causing your own respiratory distress to reach the point where the night staff had to intervene and you have ended up as you are now. The neck braces were added to help keep you from moving your heads around which would move the tubes in your throats and could cause further reactions from the feeling of something in your body that is not normally supposed to be there.

“Do you both understand what I have told you?”

Jamie gives a thumbs up with her right hand, and Charlene gives one with her left hand.

“Now, with that all being said and explained, I want you both to understand that you should be fully capable of breathing perfectly fine on your own, and you do not need the ventilators or tubes in your throats to maintain normal breathing. We are going to turn off the pumps and disconnect the air hoses from the tubes here then take off those collars, and you will be able to breathe on your own. Once you are breathing fine through the endotracheal tubes, we’ll then take them out completely and everything will be fine.”

Moving over to Jamie’s bed he begins to loosen the collar around her neck while the second doctor starts the same with Charlie. The ventilators are turned off and the air hoses are detached then the collars are removed. The medical professionals wait for the girls to start breathing normally through the tubes on their own, but are shocked when both at first do not breathe at all for almost a minute, then are only able to barely gasp shallowly as they fight for air.

They watch for a moment as the girls eyes grow wide in panic and their lips begin to discolor. Both ventilators are turned back on and the air hoses are quickly reconnected which gives them the air they were unable to get on their own and desperately needed. The machines take over and Jamie and Charlie are once again being mechanically supplied and regulated with oxygen.

“I’m sorry ladies, that was quite unexpected. It seems that the drug you were given may not have cleared your systems yet. It should only be a short while for it to be gone. We’ll come back later this afternoon and give it another try.”

Both girls look over at the other briefly then nod to the doctor.

One nurse checks the chart on Len’s bed.

“It seems that we are starting a new drug protocol with you here. Doctor, does this look right to you?”

One of the doctor’s looks over the chart the nurse is holding.

“Seems to be in order to me. Look, the androgen suppressant is already in place and started. Go ahead and get the appropriate medications and get them going as well.”

“Of course doctor. Right away.”

The nurse leaves, and shortly afterward so does the rest of the medical staff. Ten minutes later the one nurse returns and adds a second IV pole to Len’s bed then hangs several small IV bags on it and moves one over to the new pole from the first one. A second drug pump is connected and the lines from the new bags are fed through. The first drug pump is stopped while a new connector is switched out on the IV line leading into Len’s jugular IV. The new connector allows the nurse to hook in all of the lines from both the old and new drug pumps.

Getting everything connected and turning on both pumps she smiles in satisfaction. “There we go, all done and working perfectly if I do say so myself.”

With a smile for Len and a pat on the shoulder of his cast, the nurse checks everything one more time then leaves. Inside of her shell Lynn is smiling as widely as the fiberglass and metal will allow. Although she knows she can’t possibly feel the drugs entering her body, she could swear there is a gentle warm sensation that starts in her neck and spreads out to the rest of her body.

Later that afternoon when the doctors’ return the attempt to take Charlene and Jamie off the ventilators is no better than what happened that morning. Jamie and Charlie remain dependant upon mechanical support for the air they breathe. After the second attempt the hard collars are also placed back around their necks at their request. The doctors promise to return the next day and try again.

Later in the evening after the second failed attempt has taken place, Charlene thinks she hears someone seemingly from far away.

‘Hello? Can you hear me?’

‘Who’s there? Where are you?’ she thinks.

‘It’s me. I’m right across the room.’

‘Lynn? Is that you?’

‘Yes, it’s me. Are you getting this?’

‘Yes! I can hear you, so to speak. These crystals really do work!’

‘Ah, there you are. Yes, I guess they do. It was like you were at the far side of a football field at first, but now you’re coming in loud and clear. Amazing.’

‘Yea, it is. And kinda weird too. It’s like I am hearing you talk, but at the same time I’m not. It’s odd.’

‘I agree, but I don’t care how weird it is. I can finally talk to someone else without that stupid slow computer. I wonder if Jamie can hear us yet?’

‘Good question. Hey! Jamie! Are you there?’

‘What is that? Hello? Is somebody there?’

‘Jams! It’s me, Lynn!’

‘And me too, Charlie!’

‘Hello? I can barely hear you. Who is this?’

‘Ugh, she’s taking longer to tune in than you did. JAMIE, IT’S LYNN AND CHARLENE! CAN YOU HEAR US?’

‘Whoa, not so loud Charlie. Yelling like that really pumps up the volume so to speak.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I think I heard that. Charlie? Lynn? Is that you?’

‘Jamie! Yes! It’s us!’

‘I can barely hear you. What is going on ? How are you, we, able to talk?’

‘It’s the necklaces! Don’t you remember? The Bear Nurse gave them to us!’

‘You’re getting clearer. Did you say, bear?’

‘Um, yea Jams. The Bear and the Fox from last night? Did you forget already?’

‘I thought that was a dream or something. It couldn’t be real.’

‘And how do you think the two of you wound up on ventilators at the same time?’

‘Um, like the doctor said, we had a mutual bout of Cast Syndrome?’

“Right. And that’s going to explain how we are laying here talking to each other through our minds. Girl, this ain’t Egypt, but you are definitely in de Nile.’

‘Be nice Charlie. This has got to be hard on Jamie. She doesn’t have the background that you and I do. She never got into any of the role-playing games like we did.’

‘Thank you Lynn, but Charlie’s right. And so are you. I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around all of this, and I am denying it to some extent.’

‘Well you’re finally coming in loud and clear on our mind-channel at least.’

‘Mind-channel? That’s an interesting thing to call this, but it works for me. And yes, the two of you are also finally sounding clear to me too. I guess I need to think outside the box more. I really am talking to the two of you, aren’t I? I haven’t gone crazy?’

‘No Jams, you really are talking with us through telepathy.’

‘Only you ever call me that Lynn. I guess it really is happening. I can’t deny what is going on. I’m lying here in a hospital bed, confined in a cast that covers the entire left side of my body, with tubes in me to provide food and medicine and remove liquid waste, and another one down my throat hooked up to a machine that is breathing for me because I can’t breathe on my own. And I’m talking mind to mind with my two best friends who are in the same or worse situation as me.’

‘Yep, that’s my Jams. The logical side is finally kicking in and adding it all up.’

‘Yes it is, and although the end product is nowhere near logical, it still adds up true. This is real. And in nine months we are going to get out of our casts. And I’m going to give my BFF Lynn the biggest hug of HER life in congratulations! Girl to GIRL!’

‘That’s going to be a girl to GIRL to girl GROUP hug!’

‘Awww. Thanks you two. While I will gladly accept and return that hug, I think you need to be aware that it’s not going to be quite as easy as you think it will. We’ll all be weak and in need of a lot of PT after a year of being immobilized in our respective casts. And other reasons too.’

‘Other reasons? Is there something else?’

‘Wait. That Fox lady said that you are paying a price for this too. Is that what you mean Lynn? Are you going to have extra problems once you get out of your cast?’

‘As usual, Charlie catches on quickly. Yes, there is more that is going to happen to me because of this. Before we all realized just how far this was going to go, in fact even before I had my accident at the airport, I chose the price I would be willing to pay to turn into a girl for real.

‘My price is pretty steep. For some I’m sure it would be way too much.’

‘What price Lynn? You’re starting to worry me.’

‘Sorry Jams, I don’t mean to scare you. Don’t worry, this price is mine and mine alone. Neither of you will suffer the same thing.’

‘Lynn, what is it? What’s going to happen to you?’ Charlene asks quietly.

‘I ... I don’t want to talk about it. I know what’s coming, but it’s difficult to accept right now. I’d rather focus on what all this is going to result in instead.’

‘Oh Lynn, are you sure?’

‘Yes Jamie, I am. For the chance to become the girl I am supposed to be, I am willing to pay that price. It’s nothing in the face of what I will be gaining. When they cut me out of here, it will be done. I’ll be a complete woman. A W-O-M-A-N. That’s the really important part here.’

‘But Lynn, at what price? What’s going to happen? What are they going to do to you?’

‘Jamie. Remember, I am the one who chose it. Before I ever even had the accident that wired my jaw shut and gave me this tracheotomy. It was my choice. And when the Kitsune questioned me on it I told her that was my offer to pay. I made the choice, again, to pay it. They only confirmed that it would be so.’

‘Okay. Okay. So it’s going to be that way. I get it. You made the choice and made the offer. But it sounds like it’s going to be pretty significant Lynn.’

‘It is. It’s something that I am going to have to live with for the rest of my life, and it will bring along a sack of difficulties for me.’

‘That sounds like it’ll be a hard price to pay, but you’ve always been resilient. You always figure out how to adapt and make the best of things. If anyone can make it work out right it’s you.

‘But don’t you DARE try to go it alone Lynnette! I’m going to be right here for you! If you need ANYTHING that I can give, you better make sure you tell me or ask.’

‘Me too Lynnette. I’ll be right there beside Jamie, kicking your butt all the way if I have to. You’re not going to be alone. Got it?’

‘Yea, I hear you. Both of you. Now I know why I picked you two as BFF’s. I don’t deserve you.’

‘Yes you do. And we got you in return, which is more than a fair trade in my book.’

“Well now, I’m glad to see that you are still getting along nicely with each other. It seems that the three of you are going to do just fine.”

Startled at the sudden intrusion into what they thought was a private conversation, all three girls jump or twitch in surprise as much as their casts will allow.

‘Eek!’

Walking into the room the Gurhal shifts from her bear form to that of the human nurse they are used to seeing at night.

‘Dang it! Stop sneaking up on us like that! Give us a bit of warning first!’

“Heheh. Did you all forget that I told you I have a necklace too and will be able to listen in when I’m around?”

‘Well, no. We just didn’t hear you coming until you were right there in the door way and scared us. Um, just how much did you hear anyways?’

“Not everything I’m sure, but enough. And, since I’m the one who made these charms then I have just a bit longer range than the three of you will, once you are able to move on your own and separate.”

‘Oh. So you mean we get to keep them?’

“Of course you do. I said they were a gift. Plus, now that the crystals are attuned to each of you it’s difficult to get them to work for someone else. They’re nice little trinkets, but nothing spectacular. You’re not going to be able to talk across the country with them or anything. But, when you’re within about ten miles or so of each other then you can use telepathy to talk.”

‘Oh, okay. Well thank you all the same. It’s very nice of you.’

“You’re welcome. And don’t worry too much about the price Lynnette is paying. She’ll get there in the end. She’ll figure it out and get on with her life just fine. And from what I heard the two of you will be there for her as well to give her the support she is going to need.

“Lynnette, I’m going to tease you with one little thing. There is a silver lining to the price you pay. I’m not going to tell you what, but it’s a good one. And don’t even bother trying to get it out of the Fox, if you ever see her again. She’s every bit as much a prankster as her kind are reported to be. She’ll lead you around in circles and you still won’t get a straight answer out of her. I love her greatly, but damn if she didn’t take on and exemplify all the annoying aspects of Kitsune too.”

‘Alright. Thank you for that tidbit, even if it is just a teaser.’

‘Um, so about the ventilator.’

“Yes Jamie?”

‘Is this thing really going to be here from now and until I get out of this cast? They’re not going to be able to remove it at all when they come back tomorrow, are they.’

“Yes dear, it is there to stay. They are going to try at least three or four more times over the rest of the week. And no, not one of those attempts will work any better than the first time. You won’t be able to breathe on your own and at the end of the week they are going to perform a full tracheotomy on the both of you. It will be easier on you than having that endotracheal tube in your mouth.”

‘Oh. It’s the magic that is doing this, isn’t it? We can’t breathe without the ventilators now because the magic is making it that way. Right?’

“Yes, it is. You are firmly caught up in this now and the magic is going to dictate how things go from now on. It would take a great deal of effort and power to get it to change course, and trying to break the spell entirely would be beyond almost anyone.”

‘Why?’

“Because Charlene, the three of you have made it so. Your collective will is what is giving power to the magic, and that combined willpower is truly phenomenal in its strength. The depth of your belief in this is frankly astounding. Even you, Jamie, doubts and all.”

Day 119: A Bit Of Pain

Jamie and Charlene gingerly look over at each other while turning their heads as little as possible. Charlie reaches up with her free hand and very gently feels again the tracheotomy tube that has been inserted into her neck.

‘This is so uncomfortable, but weird at the same time. It feels really strange if I wiggle it around. It also hurts a bit too.’

‘Gods, will you stop playing with that thing Charlie? Of course it hurts, they just cut open our necks and stuck these tubes in this morning. You’re making me hurt just watching you play with it.’

‘Sorry, I’ll stop.’

Charlene puts her hand back down again and looks over towards Lynnette who is currently lying face down in her frame.

‘Lynn? You there?’

‘I think she’s taking a nap again.’

‘Mmmm. Huh? YAWWWNNN. Did someone say something?’

‘You are too funny with that yawn thing Lynn. Were you sleeping again?’

‘Yea, I was. I’ve always had a big ole yawn when I wake up, so now that I can’t even move or breathe on my own I like to do it mentally. It makes me feel a little bit more normal.’

‘I can understand that.

‘Was it this bad for you when they cut you open and shoved your tube in?’

‘I can’t really say Jamie. The EMT’s did an emergency trach on me while I was out cold from the accident. When I woke up briefly in the ambulance it was already there. Later in surgery they cleaned up the emergency trach and made it a bit more permanent for long term use. I had all the surgery they did for my busted jaw and face on top of the hole in my neck so it just kinda blended all together.’

‘Oh geez. I guess a simple hole in your neck is kinda minor compared to what they did for your jaw.’

‘For the most part, yea. I barely noticed the tracheotomy all that much.’

‘So what did happen with the accident? And what all did they have to do to you?’ Charlene asks.

‘Well, I basically got run over by one of those extra large golf carts they run around with in the airports to carry people between gates. The cart hit me from behind and threw me forwards. My face landed first right into somebody’s hard metal suitcase that was sitting there.

‘They cut open my jaw and screwed it back together with about three plates and a bunch of screws, then had to go in and basically rebuild my sinuses which they packed full of gauze bandages to maintain the shape they wanted. There’s a plastic bite plate of some kind filling up my mouth to keep my teeth and jaw properly aligned on top of all the metal used to wire my jaw shut. All that mess is still in there by the way. The cast covered it all up and they can’t get back in to change or remove any of it. Without the trach tube I would not be able to breathe at all.’

Jamie began to cry hearing what had happened due to the accident.

‘Holy crud! We did all of that to you with our silly fantasy? I am SOOO sorry Lynn! I had no idea that would happen!’

‘Yes. Yes you did do this. It’s all your fault I am going to have to deal with a messed up face and probably more surgeries once I get out of this cast. But at the same time none of us knew it was even possible at the time, so in a way it’s not.’

‘Damn, that sucks Lynn. I am ashamed we did that to you,’ Charlene adds in quietly.

‘Well, think about what it was like for me to wake up at home with all that crap and pain in my face only to find I also had a cast on my hand and foot. It’s all still a bit fuzzy with those. I’m not sure if I got them because of the accident or not. I don’t remember them saying anything about injuries to my hand and foot, but then again I have a hard time clearly remembering everything from that day anyways. It’s possible the cart running me over did that too.’

‘I’m ashamed too. We shouldn’t have done that to you. It’s not right,’ Jamie says.

‘Dang it all, my nose is running and I can’t even sniffle it up,’ Charlie complains.

Reaching up to her nose Charlie wipes it off with two fingers then wipes her hand on the bed sheet.

‘Heh. Suffer for your evil deed you will,’ I say snarkily.

‘But seriously, I can forgive you both for that. While it sucks and I’ll have problems with it down the road, we honestly had no idea it would actually happen. Really guys, I forgive you. If none of this had happened, then I would still be stuck as a boy and have to answer to Leonard for the rest of my life. It’s worth it to get the chance to become the real me.’

Day 205: When Will It Happen

I wake up from another long nap and look around. I am lying face up and from the position of the things around me it looks like I am flat on my back again. The lights are off so it must be some time at night.

‘Hello?’ I call out as quietly as I can. ‘Are you guys there?’

After a few minutes with no response I figure Charlie and Jamie are asleep. Since there is little else I can do I start to think about how I still have a price to pay for the miracle that is taking place in my body. It’s only been three months or so that I’ve been on HRT, but I think I can detect some changes starting to occur. Or maybe it’s just wishful thinking. But, I still have yet to experience the price I chose to pay as far as I can tell.

A little bit later our ursine caretaker appears above me looking down.

“Good evening Lynn, or maybe I should say good morning considering the hour. How are you doing this night?”

‘I guess I’m okay, all told. Are Jamie and Charlie asleep?’

“Yes, they are.”

‘Good. I want to ask you something without them hearing.’

“Alright. They won’t hear this, so what is it you wish to know?”

‘My price for all this. When is it going to happen? And will it be done all at once or slowly in stages?’

“Ah. A fair question. I suppose it depends on you dear. You made the pact, but didn’t really set the time frame.

“If you let it go on as you are now, then I suppose that your terms will not be met until they cut you free of your chrysalis. Or maybe just before. In that case it will probably occur all at once in one big go.

“On the other hand, I suspect that if you wish it, then you can make the payment at any time between now and when you are cut free, and you can have it happen as quickly or as slowly as you want. It’s up to you.”

‘I see. And, if I make good on it now, will that cause any more problems for me because I’m stuck in this cast?’

“In what way do you mean more problems, Lynnette?”

‘Like I could cause further harm because of the cast and I wouldn’t feel it.’

“Oh, I see what you mean. No, you would not need to worry about something like that. Ever since casts became as they are now that particular problem is no longer a concern. It’s just not possible anymore for a cast to cause a pressure sore from being too tight or pinching. Even with what you are looking at giving up, you will not have to worry about that type of problem due to the cast.”

‘Thank you. That does relieve some of the worry I had about this.

‘Um, you said that there is a silver lining to this. How will I know what or if that is also taking place?’

The nurse smiles down at me, “Dear I won’t tell you what will happen, or when. However, I have a feeling you will figure it out.”

Day 210: Changes and Miracles

‘What in the world has been going on the last couple of days? It seems there’s been a lot more activity out in the hall than usual.’

‘No idea Charlie. I wish someone would say something.’

‘While that would be nice Jams, I doubt we’ll hear anything. Patient confidentiality and all that. Not to mention if it’s something bad then they wouldn’t want to spread it around. We might get lucky and see something on the news when they turn it on for us though.’

‘Good point Charlie.

‘How are you doing over there Lynn? You’ve been unusually quiet even for you the past few days. You okay?

‘Lynnette?

‘Come on Lynn, say something.’

‘Yea girl, talk to us. What’s going on?’

‘SIGH. I’m fine. I just don’t feel’ I choke mentally for a second on that word, ‘I don’t feel like talking.’

‘Okay Lynn, if you’re sure. You know you can talk to us any time. Day or night. Just call out.’

‘I know. And thanks.’

I mentally turn off the ‘switch’ we’ve all learned to control so that my thoughts don’t get broadcast over our mind channel to the others.

Three days ago, I made the choice to pay up. All the way. Up front and all at once. The changes to me were both subtle and hugely noticeable all at once. Because I am completely immobilized in this mummy cast, in one way it is kinda hard to tell if now I really am like I said I would be. The cast keeps me from being able to move anyways so what’s the difference. Yet at the same time, it is hugely obvious. I’ve suffered a major change to my body now.

Yesterday was catheter change day for all of us. While they can’t cut my cast open any to make it easier, there is just barely enough room that with some patience and taking their time the nurses are able to change out my two catheters. They did their job and changed out my catheters with only a little extra difficulty on their end. The urinary catheter can be difficult where the other one seems to be pretty straight forward if uncomfortable. The evolving changes to my sexual equipment down below makes for some interesting problems for them. But, the changes are slow and happening over a nine month period, so each time the changes are comparatively small and they just work at it until the new catheter is in place. They don’t seem to find it unusual at all. I guess the magic is subtly making it appear normal in some way. I’m not so lucky and it can get more than a little uncomfortable and traumatic while they figure it out.

This time around it was a lot different, at least for me. There was no discomfort or trauma at all despite it taking noticeably longer this time. One more glaringly obvious thing slamming home what has happened. I have to remind myself that I made this choice. I chose to pay this price. I accept that and I can live with the results. But it’s still hard to deal with in the short term right now and I’m having to deal with a good bit of depression because of it.

Interestingly enough, the flurry of activity that’s been going on coincided with my paying up. With such a large change you’d think they might notice and all the commotion would be centered around me, but that’s not the case. What ever is going on is in some other room on the floor.

One of the day nurses comes into our room to check up on the three invalids in here.

“Can you believe it?” she says while suctioning out Jamie’s trach tube.

“It’s just amazing!” she gushes.

Charlie grabs her whiteboard and writes on it then holds it up for the nurse to see.

What’s going on?

“Oh! Nobody’s told you? One of our patients on the floor here is doing better than anyone hoped she would!”

So what is it?

“A young girl that was brought in about two weeks ago had been hit by a car. She was hurt really badly, and had been paralyzed from the neck down. Or so we thought. Three days ago she woke up and was able to move her legs normally! Well, as normal as her injuries would allow. She still has two broken legs, but she can move and feel them with no loss! If it weren’t for the casts on her legs I’m sure she could get up and walk! We have even been able to remove her catheter and she has full control of her bladder again!

“It’s just amazing! The doctors were certain she’d be a complete tetraplegic for the rest of her life, then poof! Three days ago she can feel and move again! It’s really a miracle!”

Hearing the nurse talk and get so happy and excited for the girl, I get a warm feeling in my mind that makes me feel so much better.

That night when our large and favorite nurse comes in to check up on us, I look out at her with questioning eyes. Looking back at me, she gives a single slow nod and smiles.

‘A silver lining indeed, and worth its weight in gold pressed latinum’ I think to myself.

Day 293: Time Marches On

‘Good morning everyone,’ I call out.

‘Uhm, hey Lynn. Good morning,’ Jamie says sleepily.

‘Good morning to you two as well. How’s it going over there Lynn?’

‘Not too bad this morning, Charlie. My head still itches some, but not as bad as it has been. Still, it’s been a while now with the drugs so I’m hoping that I have small breasts at this point.’

‘Well you’ve been on hormone therapy for like six months now,’ Jamie points out. ‘I would hope that you’d be recognizing some changes by now. And only three more months to go.’

‘How about down below? Notice anything different down there?’ Charlie queries.

‘Um, no, not really, it all seems to be the same to me,’ I hedge. ‘The nurses keep having trouble with the slow changes every time my catheter needs to be changed, but they never seem to notice.’

‘What about those ... womanly ... changes,’ Charlie giggles.

‘Uh, gross Charlie. But no, they have not said anything about me starting to menstruate, nor has it happened yet for all I can tell. Unlike the two of you with your casts open down there, I’m all sealed up tight in here and nothing has changed with my cast to give a new opening down there.

‘At least not that I can tell or that the nurses have mentioned. Can either of you see anything since I’m standing up again?’

‘Nope, not that I can see from over here. How about you Jamie?’

‘Looks the same to me, no new opening down there. Your chest does seem to be slightly bigger though, although it’s hard to tell from this angle. I bet it would be easier to tell if I could see it from the side.’

I smile, even though they can’t see it. Any mention of my change to female is welcome and makes me happy. And although it’s a downer to talk about things that I can’t feel in my body, I can handle it so much better these days than I was at first.

The news about the little girl who had the miracle recovery really turned things around for me. It showed me what was truly important. We even got to meet the child a few days later. She was doing so well they had gotten her up in a wheelchair and were taking her around to visit with other patients on the floor at her request.

Because of the circumstances concerning our self imposed casts, the staff didn’t want us to tell her the whole truth about what was going on with the three of us. The fact is they had no idea of the real truth to begin with. So, we came up with a bit of a fib about why all three of us were in such big casts like we are and if anyone asks we just tell them the fake story. We stick with the truth about all three of us being BFF’s, and how Jamie and Charlene know me so well they can talk for me, or write what I say on their whiteboards at least. I confirm with just a few blinks if they are saying the right things or not. Obviously, they are communicating to others what I tell them over our mind channel. They intentionally get it wrong every so often just for a laugh and so I can say ‘no’ to them in front of others.

When she was brought in to our room her positive attitude was infectious. She was about six years old and as cute as can be. Apparently she had been scheduled on that special morning to have her endotracheal tube switched out for a more long term tracheostomy, but her sudden recovery from paralysis stopped that from happening. Like the nurse had mentioned, both of her legs were in casts, one bright yellow and the other bright green, from her toes to her hips, but she proudly wiggled her toes for us.

“I couldn’t do that last week,” she said with a grin.

Her left arm was also in a cast from her hand to her armpit and was bright pink. She informed us that the car had hit her on the left side while she was crossing the street and broke both of her legs and arm in several places. Her back had also been broken and she lifted up her gown to show us her plastic brace she had to wear. It was decorated with ducks and bunnies that she had gotten to pick out when they made the brace for her.

Of course the little girl had to ask what happened when she saw all three of us, especially me.

One of the nurses spoke up.

“Jamie here hurt her left arm and leg bad enough to need the cast she is in. And Charlene there did the same thing but to her right side. Since it was around the holidays they chose Christmas colors for their casts.”

“Wow. Really?”

Yep, it’s true. Jamie wrote on her board.

“You’re twins, but red and green. Neat. Why can’t you talk?”

That question got the truth as far as the nurses and doctors were concerned.

“Unfortunately, having a cast covering their chest like it is, both girls experienced a complication that made it so they couldn’t breathe properly. It got bad enough that we had to put a tube in their necks and hook them up to a machine to help them breathe again. Because the tube is in the way they can’t make any sounds at all right now.”

“Oh. Well they’ll be able to talk again when the cast comes off so they can breathe normal again, right?”

Yes, that is what we hope for. Charlie wrote.

Asking to turn around so she could see me, the little girls eyes got big.

“You’re a Christmas mummy,” she whispered.

‘Tell her I was hurt in the same accident as you two, but I was in front and got hurt worse. And tell her that I think her blue gown is pretty and matches her eyes.’

Jamie motioned to the nurses to turn the girl back around. Writing on their whiteboards both Jamie and Charlie showed the messages to her.

Lynn got hurt at the same time we did. She was in front and got hurt worse than the two of us.

Lynn thinks that your gown is very pretty and matches your beautiful blue eyes.

“She does? How do you know?”

Lynn is our BFF and we know her so well that we can tell what she is thinking just from how she looks at us.

Getting turned around again the child looks up at me with wonder in her eyes.

“Really?”

I blink slowly twice.

“That means yes,” the nurse tells her.

“Neat.”

We had a pleasant visit with the girl and she came back to visit quite often while she was still a patient on the floor.

She seemed to become quite attached to me, and would visit several times a day to make sure that I was doing okay in my mummy cast. Once she was released to go home we continued to see her when she would come in for a check up and then when she started some physical therapy which went very well for her. She made sure that she got to come up and visit us each time she was at the hospital.

Day 382: Is It Time

“You know, this cast of yours is looking a bit grungy and worn around the edges,” the day nurse says to Jamie. “Let’s take a look at yours here too Charlie.

“It looks similar, there’s even a small frayed part of the stockinette here under your arm.”

Oh wow. Do you think it’s finally time this cast can be cut off?

“Well, I won’t say for certain, that’s for the doctor to say, but in my personal opinion I’d say there’s a really good chance of it,” the nurse tells Jamie with a wink.

She comes over and inspects my mummy cast for several minutes.

“Yours is harder to tell, but I think it may be ready to go too, Lynn. I’ll get the doctor in here to check on it and make sure.”

She leaves with a smile to get the doctor.

‘Oh please please please let it finally be time. I am so sick of being stuck in this cast.’

‘I am very ready to get out of my mummiform here too Jamie. It’s been nine months on the hormones, and a full year stuck in this thing. I want to see the new me.’

‘Well, I can’t say that I am sick and tired of my cast, because I’m not. I’m even used to the trach and ventilator. But, I am more than ready and willing to get out of it if that means you get out of yours Jamie. And we finally get to see our bestie LYNNETTE!!!’

I am laying down flat on my back and rotated on my side so that I am looking at the door to our room.

‘Here they come. Cross your fingers for good news girls!’

The nurse returns with our primary doctor in tow. Starting with Jamie the doctor inspects her cast closely and runs a scalpel across it. Moving on to Charlie he does the same thing, then moves over and repeats his inspection once again with me. Going back to Jamie he checks the spot where he cut the cast with the scalpel then checks Charlie’s and my cast as well.

“The casts are definitely showing signs of wear and deterioration. The cuts I have made do not appear to be repairing either. With the unusual circumstances involving how your casts formed, I am going to wait until tomorrow morning to see if anything changes. If no repairs or changes are apparent then we will see about cutting off your casts.”

Charlene waves her hand to get the doctor’s attention then writes on her whiteboard.

Please start with Jamie’s cast when you cut us free.

“That is very nice of you Charlene.”

Looking down at my eyes he asks, “How about you Lynn. Your cast is certainly the biggest and I would think the hardest to have dealt with. Do you want to let Jamie go first?”

I very carefully blink my response as my computer is off to one side.

YES

“Very well. Tomorrow morning I and a few others will return with some cast saws. If everything stays the same as it is now then the three of you will have your casts removed.

“Please be aware that once these casts come off, you will not be jumping or hopping about like little children. It has been a year that you’ve been immobilized and it is going to take some time and a good deal of therapy to get your limbs moving normally and regain their strength again.

“We will most likely need to prescribe some splints and braces for you to wear for a little while to support your weak limbs, at least until the additional support is not needed.

“But, you will be free of these casts and the braces can be removed for bathing and while resting in bed or doing PT.

“Congratulations girls, if all goes well then tomorrow you will be out of these casts and start the next phase in your recovery,” the doctor says with a genuine smile.

Thank you!

Thank you! Lynn says thanks too!

“You are all welcome, and I will see you early tomorrow morning.”

The doctor leaves while the nurses finish up with our caretaking necessities.

Day 383: Freedom And Revelations

By the time the sun rises high enough to send its light into our room all three of us are awake.

‘It’s finally cast off day! I’m so excited I can’t wait!’

‘I bet you are Jams, but you’ll just have to lay there all the same until they come in to cut us out. At least you’ll be first.’

‘Oooh, you’re so mean Lynn! Making me wait like this! * giggle * I bet you can’t wait to see the new you!’

‘I know I want to see the new Lynnette! I bet you’re cute as a button!’

‘Thanks Charlie. I have no idea what I’m going to look like. I’ve never really tried to imagine the female me. I’ll just be happy with being whole for once, more or less.’

‘You seem to be less than enthused Lynn. Aren’t you excited to get out of that cast and see yourself?’

‘* sigh * I am Jamie, but there’s still something that is not so good about all of this too. I had a price to pay. Confined in my mummy cast like this, I have been able to mostly ignore it. Now that I’m about to be freed, I’m going to have no choice but to deal with it.’

‘Oh, yea, I guess there is that. That could be a bit of a damper on getting to be free again. You’ve been pretty quiet about that, but since we’re all about to get out ... could you tell us? Let us know what to expect in advance?’

‘Charlie I ... Yea, I guess I can.

‘My price, which I’ve already paid in full, is -’

“Hi Lynn! Guess who!”

Looking towards the door I am surprised to see our little six year old friend be pushed into the room in a wheelchair. Both of her legs and arm are back in their brightly colored casts again, and she even has a bright red cast around her chest and belly.

‘What the hell?!? Why is Suzy here and back in her casts again!?!? Jamie, Charlie, find out what happened!’

Both of my friends get to writing on their whiteboards immediately.

SUZY WHAT HAPPENED

Why are you here?

Suzy laughs out loud for a full minute before she is able to get it down to just giggles.

“I heard you guys were going to be cut out of your casts today! It’s so exciting that I had to be here too! And to celebrate I got them to put my casts back on again so I can be cut out with you!”

‘Good god, that girl almost gave me a heart attack! I though she was in another accident again. She is just too sweet. Tell her to never scare us like that again and thank her for being here.’

“Good morning ladies!” the doctor exclaims as he walks into the room with several other nurses and doctors. Three of them are pushing or carrying cast saws with portable vacuums attached.

“I see that we have one extra patient to be set free this morning,” he says with a wink at Suzy.

“Let’s take a quick look around the room here and see ...

“Nope, no changes. Still cut. Good.

“Same things here on Charlene.

“And Lynn’s cast too. Excellent.

“Okay people, per their agreement last night we are going to start with Jamie’s cast. Don’t get in each others way, but get all three of those saws going and let’s find out if we can get her free.”

As they are finding wall sockets to plug into, Jamie is writing a new message on her board. When the three cast saws and vacuums are powered up they create a loud racket in the relatively small room. Jamie holds up her whiteboard for them to see.

Start with Suzy instead. Make sure she can be cut free and not stuck in those casts for months again.

The doctor’s eyes get a little bigger reading the message and he nods to the people with the saws. Suzy is wheeled over and they each take a limb and begin to cut.

At first it looks like they are not going to be able to even make a dent in Suzy’s casts, the saw blades are barely even able to penetrate the fiberglass before the casts begin to self-repair. Seeing this Suzy’s smile disappears and she whimpers in fright.

‘No, please work.’

‘Oh no, it’s got to work. Come on, cut.’

‘Please. Please cut through. They were put on specifically so they could be cut off again with us. They can’t stay.’

“Okay. Switch up. Two of you go over to Jamie and Charlene and start working on their casts. As soon as they show the casts can be cut start cutting on Suzy’s again,” the doctor orders.

Two of the saws are moved as ordered and in moments both Jamie’s and Charlie’s casts are being cut into. The cuts start at the toes and move up the side of the leg. Reaching the knee, the cuts remain separate and are not sealing back together. The orderly with Suzy starts to cut into the cast on her left leg and is able to continue cutting on up her leg without a problem.

Everyone breathes a sigh of relief, and the cutting of three casts at once continues. With only one cast saw per body, the process takes a bit longer, but both Jamie and Charlene eventually have the casts encasing their bodies cut through from top to bottom. Little Suzy’s leg and arm casts are also cut through and removed, but her body cast stubbornly remains in one piece.

“Hmmm, it seems that we will need to cut Lynnette free from her cast before we can get this last cast off of you I believe. Do you think that will work Suzy?”

“Yep. We have to get Lynn free too,” Suzy agrees while rubbing her arm and legs.

“Alright. We will get to that in a moment.

“As for the two of you, we are going to remove the top portion of your casts and cut the padding and stockinette. Do not try to move yet. You’ve been immobilized for a long time and are going to be very stiff and weak. Let us do all the moving around. We’ll be as gentle as we can, but there is probably going to be some pain involved.”

Both Jamie and Charlie nod to indicate they understand. The casts have been cut so the top portions can be removed in sections. Starting with their legs the fiberglass is pulled free and the soft under layers are cut to expose the limb underneath. Moving up to their arms the same thing is done leaving the bottom half to support the limbs in a half shell. Finally the top of the torso cast is pulled free and the padding cut through.

Their arms and legs are very noticeably thin and atrophied. Their hips, shoulders, and torsos also show notable signs of having suffered the effects from their long term of immobilization as well. Despite the warnings from the doctor, both girls attempt to see if they can move again only to find that they still are barely able to do much more than twitch an arm or leg.

Multiple pillows are brought over and with as much care as they can, the nurses and doctors gently lift an arm or leg up out of the remains of the cast and place it back down on a pile of pillows so the limb is in a similar position as it was held in the cast. The little movement that causes in unused joints is enough for both Jamie and Charlene to grimace from the discomfort and mild pain even small moves cause.

‘Oww. Crap. Okay, I get it. That hurt. No big moves.’

‘You can say that again Charlie. Dang this sucks. Finally out of the cast and I can barely even get my fingers to twitch.’

‘Oh you poor babies. Boo hoo. You’ll just have to suck it up, buttercup. At least you’ve been able to move your head and opposite arm and leg the whole time.’

‘Oh, bugger off you snot. Yea, we get it. You’ve got your whole body to get moving again once they cut you out, we just have one arm and leg each plus our torso. It still hurts.’

‘When are they going to get these tubes out of our necks? I am so sick of having to get the damn thing suctioned out every day and not being able to talk to other people normally.’

‘Good question Jamie. I wouldn’t mind getting this thing out too. But I am guessing it’s going to take a little bit longer for the tube to go away.’

‘You’re probably right Charlie. You two have been vent-dependant for nine months now, and I’ve been on mine for a full year. I have a feeling that you’ll have to be slowly weaned off of them over a period of time. Depending on how your bodies adjust will determine just how long it is going to take for each of you is my guess.’

“Alright, that’s two of you out. Now Jamie and Charlene, I want you to take it easy and just rest.

“I’ve no doubt that you’ll want to start moving your arm and leg, and I’m not going to tell you don’t, but I do want you to listen to your body. As soon as you feel the slightest discomfort or stress trying to move then stop. Don’t go any further and rest your limb again. We’ll get you started with physical therapy in just a few days where you will get to push your limits and work at regaining strength and range of motion again. For now I want you to simply rest.”

Turning to look at me the doctor frowns.

“Now for Lynnette. Getting you out of there is going to be a bit of work and a bit tricky. I think we’ll take you on down to the cast room and work on it there. That will be best. But first, I want to do one thing. Hand me a saw.”

Taking the cast saw the doctor powers it on and after releasing the strap over my thighs he cuts a long line down the front of my cast between my legs then turns off the saw.

“Suzy, I want you to come over here and see this.”

Little Suzy gets brought over and is helped to stand beside the doctor.

“See how the cut I made is still there?”

She nods and feels the cut.

“So that means that Lynnette’s cast can be cut off too. We just need to work on her cast down where there is better equipment because her cast is holding her arms and legs differently.

“So, do you think it would be okay to get your cast cut off now, where Lynnette can see it? I think that would make her very happy.”

“Um, maybe?” Suzy looks up at my eyes. “Would that make you happy Lynn?”

I make sure to give her two very clear blinks.

YES

“Okay. I guess it is okay to cut it off.”

The doctor turns the saw back on and begins to cut into the cast around Suzy’s torso. In a few minutes the cast is cut and they pull it free from her body. A t-shirt and shorts are pulled out of the small bag that was hanging on the back of the wheelchair Suzy rode in and she quickly gets dressed. Putting on some braces for her feet and lower legs she gets her shoes on over them and is able to stand on her own.

“Okay Lynn! I’m all out of my casts! Now you have to get out of yours!”

“Yes she does, and we will do that right away as soon as we get her down to the cast room. I promise.”

They remove the rest of the straps holding me to the frame then lift me up and transfer me to a gurney. My ventilator is switched to battery mode and most of the people leave as I am wheeled out.

‘Not sure how long this is going to take, so I’ll see you guys in a little bit.’

Day 383: Later In The Cast Room

The noise level and vibrations from several cast saws digging away at my huge cast are incredibly loud to my ears.

‘Oh good lord, I think I’m going to be deaf for a month by the time they finish cutting me out of this thing. They haven’t even started on my head yet and I can’t hear anything besides the saws and my ears are ringing like the bells of Notre Dame.’

‘Just how do you know what those bells sound like? Have you ever been there?’

* giggle * ‘Well, no Jams, I haven’t. But I bet if I were to stand up in the belfry while they were ringing then it would sound like the ringing in my ears right now. At least the noise isn’t affecting our mind channel. I’m going to switch off while they are still cutting so you guys don’t have to hear me whine.’

‘Alright Lynn. Jamie and me will be here waiting. Let us know when you get out!’

It takes a while because of how all four of my limbs and my torso are all still contained in separate casts while being combined into the one big mummy cast. They are able to cut down the side of both legs on the outsides, and then using a larger saw with a blade that can cut deeper they manage to cut through the casts between my legs and feet at an angle. Making a cut from one hip to the other across my lower belly they are able to pull free that section of the cast and expose my legs.

Taping that section back down temporarily they turn me over and using a small narrow cast saw blade they work around the catheter tubes so the cast can be pulled free then continue the long cut going up the side of my legs all the way up to my shoulder, turn and cut across the back of my shoulder blades just below my neck, and go back down the other side to join the long cut on the other leg. The entire back portion of the cast is pulled free and set aside exposing the back of both my legs, my butt, and my back although the padding on the back of my legs is left in place to help keep my legs still at the moment. The final cuts they make while I am face down is two short cuts around the base of my neck going towards my front.

I am turned over so I am face up again and the front of the cast over my legs is removed again and put over with the back of my cast. The padding is cut open and the nurses make a comment on how thin my legs look.

The two cuts around the sides of my neck are extended around my neck and below the trachea opening. Using the small saw they carefully cut the cast around the IV line and my trachea tube so the cast can be removed without yanking on those tubes.

The doctors stop for a moment and one of them leans over where I can see him. I see his mouth moving but the ringing in my ears is so bad that I can not hear a single thing he is trying to say to me.

‘Gods, they are not done yet but they stopped for a minute. One of the doctors is trying to talk to me but my ears are ringing so loudly right now I can’t hear anything he is saying.’

‘Where have they been working on cutting the cast?’

‘They just got done with making cuts around my trach-tube and the IV line in my neck.’

‘I bet they are about to go up around your head and he’s probably trying to warn you this will be really bad.’

‘Good guess. In fact I think you’re right. Switching off.’

It takes them a moment to realize that I can’t hear a single thing they are saying, and with a little bit of pantomiming we get across to each other that I can’t hear a dang thing anymore, and they are about to cut through the cast around my head. Cutting through the cast around my head is most definitely worse than anything they have done so far. The vibrations are so bad that it rattles my teeth and I have to squeeze my eyes shut as tightly as I can because I can’t see straight while they are cutting. But when the vibrations stop and the cast over my face gets pulled off is the most wonderful feeling ever.

The fresh air blowing on my face is pure bliss. They leave the back half in place since it is still well padded and move down to get the final part of my mummy chrysalis off of me.

Taking the larger saw again the cast for my right arm is opened up since that one is on top of the left arm. Once my right arm is free they very carefully move it out of the way so the cast on my left arm can be reached and cut open. With both arms free two nurses carefully hold my arms up and out of the way. They are not able to move my arms far at all, only holding them up and to the sides enough that a cast saw can be used to make a cut down the center of the body cast so it can be pulled off in two smaller pieces and my arms don’t have to be forced to spread out too far.

I don’t notice it, but the cool air of the cast room makes my nipples harden which gets a chuckle from the cast techs and a comment that my breasts are reacting nicely now that they are out of the snug warmth of the fiberglass shell they have been contained within for the last several months. If I was able to gasp in shock I would have.

The doctors and nurses cut through all of the padding they left in place and pull everything away leaving me lying there naked and I am finally free from the cast for the first time in a year.

‘FREEEEEDOOOMMMMMM!!!!’

* giggle * ‘Okay, William Wallace, we hear you!’

‘You’re not actually being eviscerated down there are you?’

‘Ha ha! * giggle * No, I still have all my internal organs inside me. Or, I think I do in any case, I can’t really tell. At least I’m pretty sure I do since there is no blood spraying around anywhere.’

‘What do you mean you can’t tell?’ Jamie sounds worried as she asks.

‘Um, well, I can’t really feel anything down there.’

‘Lynn, why can’t you feel anything?’ Charlie demands to know.

‘Wellll ... We kinda got interrupted by Suzy earlier. Um, girls, I’m paralyzed from the neck down. That’s my price for being a woman now.’

While I am giving the news to my besties, the nurses gently and slowly work on giving me an initial wipe down to get rid of a little bit of the dead skin. At the same time the ringing in my ears is subsiding and I am beginning to hear them again if they talk really loudly. They have noticed that my arms and legs are flopping around willy nilly as they are cleaning them, and I don’t appear to be reacting to any of the sensations of discomfort or pain from my body when things are moved around like my friends did when they had their limbs moved around.

Raising her voice one of the nurses addresses me.

“Lynn. Lynn, can you hear me yet?”

YES

‘Oh my god! Lynn! No!!!’ Charlene yells. All Jamie can get out is s shocked gasp.

“Good. Lynn, I have to ask you something. Can you feel your leg being washed right now?”

‘Lynnette!? How could they do this to you? Why this?’

NO

“Can you try to wiggle your toes for us? Both feet.”

NO

‘Lynn, please talk to us. Tell us what is going on.’ Jamie finally manages to get out.

“Can you move your legs Lynnette? Or feel us washing your belly?”

‘Guys, the nurses are just starting to figure it out and I’m sure the doctors are going to be all over it in a moment too. I need to concentrate on what’s going on down here. I promise you that I will talk to you just as soon as things calm down.’ And with that I totally switch off my end of the mind channel.

NO

NO

“How about up here around your chest? Can you feel this?”

NO

With a couple more tests and questions the nurse establishes that I have no feeling from my chin down, everything is completely numb. Any requests they make for me to try and move anything below that line is met with a negative answer indicating that I can not move below that line either.

“Doctors, there is a problem here! I believe Lynnette is completely paralyzed from about C-three down!”

The silence that follows after that statement is almost as deafening as when all the cast saws were cutting through the fiberglass. A moment later the room seems to explode in chaos as people start yelling, asking questions, and seeming to run around in utter confusion. The head doctor manages to get the chaos semi-organized and for the next several hours I am subjected to more questions, tests, and scans of my body than I can remember.

The end result is the tests confirm that I am a C-three complete quadriplegic with no sensation or movement below that level. Since I can not talk, they have my computer board brought down and through that I answer most of their questions as long as they are in relation to how my body is or is not working now. When it comes to how this possibly happened I am less forth-coming and do not let on that I knew it was going to happen in any way. The official reason that gets entered into my records initially is idiopathic paralysis. Somewhere during all of the confusion I am also sized and fitted with multiple rigid braces to support my newly freed and still very weak body.

By the time I am finally brought up to our room again the day is done and it is night time. I ask the doctors for a sedative so that I can sleep the whole night, and with a little arguing they agree.

‘In the morning, I swear,’ is the only thing I give Charlene and Jamie.

In minutes I am asleep.

Day 384: Mondays Suck

‘Lynn? Are you there? Please, you need to answer us.’

‘Come on Lynnette, wake up and talk to us.’

I lay there for a few minutes not responding. I realize that with the bombshell I dropped on them yesterday, then watching me get brought back up to our room last night that my two friends are probably scared and quite worried for me.

‘I’m here. * sigh * I’m sorry for not telling you guys sooner.’

‘What the hell is going on Lynn? Were you joking with us yesterday? It’s not funny at all.’

‘Jamie, I’m pretty sure she’s not joking. You saw how Lynn didn’t move at all when she was back up last night.’

‘Charlene’s right Jamie. It’s not a joke. I’m a complete C-three quadriplegic now. I have no feeling or movement below my neck.’

‘Oh god Lynn, how did this happen?’

Jamie starts crying and can’t even talk over our mind-channel.

‘This is the price I chose to pay. Well, almost. I said that I would accept being paralyzed from the chest or ribs down in exchange for becoming a true woman.’

‘That’s a good bit lower down than your neck, Lynn. What gives?’

‘Yes Charlie, it is. I had a late night talk with our werebear nurse a few months back because nothing seemed to be happening in that direction. It turned out that while it was a foregone conclusion that I would indeed become paralyzed, the when had not really been set.’

‘Oh, I see. So, you got to choose when it happened then? But what about how high it is now? Where does that come in to it?’

‘Yes, I did get to choose the timing. I could have waited until the cast was going to be cut off and it would have happened right then, or I could make it happen slowly in stages over a period of time, or I could make it happen all at once at any time before the cast was removed. I chose to do it all at once and just a few days later after our talk.’

‘S-so, y-you h-have b-been p-p-paralyzed for a-a c-couple of m-months?’

‘I have Jamie.’

‘No wonder you got quiet for a while.’

‘Yea, sorry about that guys.

‘I mean, think about it. I lost all feeling in my entire body. The only thing I could feel was my head. Let me tell you that was one hell of a shock. I couldn’t really move anyways, immobilized in that mummy cast like I was, but I could still press against the cast padding and mini wiggle like that. Then it was all gone. I couldn’t move at all, and couldn’t feel anything at all. I got really depressed for a bit there.’

‘So what brought you out of it?’

‘It was something else that happened at the same time, outside of our little room. What big brouhaha happened a few months ago?’

‘Y-you mean little Suzy?’

‘There you go, Jams. And what was the big deal with her?’

‘She was supposed to be ...’

I could almost see the light bulb go on over Charlie’s head.

‘Suzy was miraculously cured from a broken neck that left her completely paralyzed from the neck down. The same symptoms that you now have.’

‘The silver lining. The good that can be found from the bad.’

‘Oh wow.’

‘Once I figured out that I had taken Suzy’s injury onto myself instead I was able to realize why the level of paralysis I was experiencing was so much higher. And I was also able to start coming to terms with it a bit easier too. To give that precious child a normal life was my turning point. I may be totally dependant on someone else taking care of me for the rest of my life now, but Suzy will not. I can and have accepted that.’

‘But Lynn, it’s not like you’re old or anything. You’ll still live for quite some time like this. Decades.’

“Yes, she will,” our bruin related nurse says as she walks into our room. “With proper care she will be able to live for another good five or even six decades barring complications.”

‘Only fifty or sixty years? Why? The average human tends to live into their eighties or nineties these days.’

“Yes Jamie, the average human does. But Lynn is not an average human anymore. With her rather severe disability the average life expectancy is much shorter I’m afraid. The chances of those complications I mentioned tend to increase and occur more frequently the longer a person is paralyzed as high as Lynn now is.”

‘Can’t you do something about it? That Fox woman said that you perform miracles with patients. You can fix Lynn. Right?’

“Not this time. Lynn chose this as her form of payment for becoming a woman inside and out. There is nothing that I can do about it. The magic that binds the three of you is beyond my ability to alter it alone.”

‘But, Lynn didn’t want this. She only accepted to be paralyzed from the chest down. Not from the neck down.’

“That may have been her original bargain, but since then she has accepted her current status in lieu of what has transpired.”

‘Girls, SUZY is whole and healthy. That is worth the price to me.’

‘But Lynn, you could still regain something. I mean, we’ll be getting therapy to loosens up our stiff joints and strengthen our arms and legs again. You’ll recover too.’

* sigh * ‘We are all still held in various braces as it is right now because our bodies are weak and need protection. And yes, we all are going to be going to PT here soon. I’m just not going to benefit from it as much as you two will. I’m never going to regain any sensation below my neck, or learn how to move anything more than my head around ever again. I’m going to require this ventilator and tracheotomy to keep me breathing until the day my body finally gives up.’

“I’m afraid Lynn is correct. She is going to be this way permanently, I cannot change what you have set in motion.”

Charlene blinks and looks at the nurse hard for a minute.

“I also have a little bit of bad news for you Lynnette.

“You are scheduled for another intensive scan this morning. I can tell you that the results will be such that your diagnosis is going to be updated in your records. They are going to find what they believe to be a previously undiagnosed cervical instability and will attribute your condition to that.

“You will be going though some additional treatments in relation to the new diagnosis and it will result in the therapy you partake in being more passive for a time to simply work on regaining flexibility.”

‘When will that happen?’

“Soon. I believe they will be here to take you out within the next hour.”

Day 384: Later in the Afternoon

The rest of my morning was filled with being shoved up into a narrow and loud machine to run a detailed scan of my head neck and shoulders. Twice. After that I was kept waiting while more doctors reviewed the results of those scans and then argued about it. Eventually they came to a consensus and just like our nurse friend said I got told I apparently had a defect in my neck that was not detected so when I had my accident there was undue pressure placed on my spinal cord at the C-three level. With the unusual circumstances with my cast enveloping me like it did they failed to catch the problem.

What ever floats their boat I suppose. It was going into my permanent medical records that way in any case.

“So, that brings us to how we need to treat this instability, now that we are aware of it. We have a couple of choices here. Both will include some time immobilizing your cervical spine. However the length of time the immobilization is applied differs depending on the treatment used.

“One option is to insert some plates into your neck and fuse the vertebrates together followed by a period of immobilization to allow the surgery to heal and the fusion to stabilize. This is considered to be a more aggressive course, but it is not unusual and is performed successfully often enough.

“The other option is to be a bit more conservative and just apply the cervical immobilization only. This provides a rigid external stabilization to eliminate movement and allow the body a chance to heal itself. The amount of time that your neck would have to remain immobilized is a good deal longer, and if it fails to work in the end could still result in the surgical option in the long run.”

Using my computer board I asked about the differences in time.

So let me see if I get this straight. I can let you cut me open, stick metal plates and screws in my neck, and immobilize my neck afterwards. For how long?

“The normal course of immobilization depends on how well your body heals, but tends to be from three to four months.”

Okay. And that includes any potential risks of complications and or infections from the surgery.

“Well, yes, but they are minimal. The surgery is nothing new or highly technical.”

But the risks are still there with any operation.

“Yes.”

Right. My other choice is to just let you immobilize my neck for a while to see if my body can take over and heal the instability on it’s own as long as I can’t move my neck around. How long does that usually take?

“Again, depending on your own body’s ability to heal itself, it can take anywhere from four months up to nine or ten months. Occasionally it will be continued longer if there is a clear albeit slow progress seen.”

And no surgical risks to be worried about, unless it fails and an operation becomes the only option.

“Essentially correct.”

And just how soon can you make either of these options happen?

“The surgery would have to be scheduled. It would probably be a couple of days from now. Or, we can take you down to have the conservative approach done right now as long as the necessary materials are available, which they should be.”

I don’t particularly like the idea of having to be cut open and getting metal bits implanted in my neck. Removing the risks of surgery is greatly preferred, and having the procedure taken care of now rather than making me wait and worry for two more days sound much better as well. Let’s do the conservative approach.

“Very well. I’ll have someone take you down to the appropriate room and we’ll get you taken care of.”

‘Lynn, how are you doing? Are you okay?’

‘Not so good apparently, Jams. Like Miss Bear said, they think I have a defect in my neck leaving me with a serious cervical instability. I have a choice of waiting two days so they can cut me open and screw metal plates into my neck, or they can roll me down to a room right now and put me in some kind of immobilization for my neck. I’m waiting for them to come and roll me down to the room today.’

‘Sounds like a good choice to me. Jamie and I are here for you Lynn. Let us know what they are doing, and we’ll get to see you when you come back up to the room.’

“Will do. They just showed up and are taking me over to where ever it is they are going to do this thing.’

I get rolled in my little transport bed along with my ventilator down the hall and into the elevator. We go down a couple of floors and get out on the ground floor. They take me around to the same area as the cast rooms, and for a moment I think they are going to take me into one but we go on past a bit further and turn into a different one.

‘Well, that’s interesting. I’m down on the cast room floor and we rolled right past all of the cast rooms and into a different room a little further down the hallway.’

‘Well if they are not going to put you in a cast then what are they going to do?’

‘Good question. From the way the doctor was talking he made it sound like they have to immobilize my head and neck really tightly. I kinda figured they’d put me into one of those big Minerva casts for it. I figure those are pretty darn immobilizing. The cast around my head for the past year was really tight as a mummy.’

‘Lynn, what are they doing right now?’

I look around the best I can with the neck brace they’ve got me in and the rest of my body unable to move.

‘I can’t really tell for sure. It’s hard to get a good look you know. But, it looks like they are gathering a moderately large box and something in a plastic bag from cabinets in the room.’

I hear the items get placed on a table behind me. The next thing that happens is I get picked up and moved onto a table. They lay me on my back and arrange my arms and legs down straight then pull a strap up over my chest so it holds my arms down. I can’t tell, but I think they are pulling another one or two more straps over my waist and maybe thighs too.

‘Okay, this is different. I just got moved over onto some kind of exam table and strapped down to it. I guess they don’t want me falling off since I’m paralyzed. Oh, hey, now the neck brace they’ve had me in all day is being taken off. I hate it when they do that, my air hose has to get disconnected and I can’t breathe for a moment.’

‘Lynn, I don’t think you’re going to like what is about to happen if I’m guessing right.’

‘What are you talking about Jams?’

‘I really hope I’m wrong Lynn, but if they’re not going to put you in a cast, then there’s only one thing that I can think of that is better at immobilizing the cervical spine than a Minerva. If I’m right, the next thing they’ll probably do is to put a harness under your chin and the back of your head and attach it to a winch.’

As Jamie is saying that the people in the room do precisely what she describes. A soft padded harness is carefully pulled around my head with thick pads that go under my chin and on the base of my skull in the back. They are connected by nylon cords and come together at the top of my head. I hear something rattle slightly as something gets connected then there is a clicking sound as the harness begins to pull tight then pull my head straight towards the end of the table I’m on.

‘Jams, how did you know what they were doing? What’s going on here? I’m starting to get scared.’

‘Oh damn. Jamie, are they doing what I think they are?’

‘What? What have you two figured out? What are they doing to me?’

‘Lynn, just try to stay calm and ride it out. It’s not like there’s anything you can do to stop them. You’re being put into a Halo.’

The ratchet sound stop and the doctor steps up above me where I can see him. He wraps a paper measuring tape around my forehead just above my eyebrows and marks the size of my head. A moment later a Halo ring is slipped over the top of my head and checked for size.

‘Oh shit, you’re right. I’m being put in a Halo. They’re checking how it fits on my head right now! I didn’t know they were going to SCREW PINS INTO MY HEAD! I change my mind! Cut me open and fuse my neck! Jamie, make them stop!’

‘Lynn! Lynnette! Stop! Think Lynn! What did the doctor tell you about your treatment options. I bet he said that they had to immobilize your neck for a time either way, right?’

The ring is removed for a moment then it is brought back but this time it has some little suction cup looking things in it. One cup is placed in the middle of my forehead just above and between my eyes. The ring wiggles a bit as I watch the screw holding the cup get turned by hand then I feel the cups on either side of my head slowly press in until the ring is held in place by all three positioning cups.

‘Yea. Yea he did. He said they had to immobilize my neck either way, just this way it would take longer. Oh damn Jams, they’re getting it in place. They have it screwed down onto my head with these little rubber suction cups.’

‘I’m pretty sure that you’d wind up in that Halo with either option Lynn. A Halo brace is the only way to completely immobilize your neck to the extent they want it I bet.’

The doctor checks the position of the Halo ring on my head. He seems to like what he sees and takes a felt tip pen and marks a spot over my left eyebrow followed by a second one over the right. He leans down out of sight and I feel my hair get moved out of the way behind my ear and the pen marks the side of my head. He goes around to the other side and does the same thing, marking a fourth spot on my head.

‘Oh god Jamie, he just marked the spots where the screws are going to go into my skull! Help me!’

‘Lynn, there’s nothing you nor I can do about this. I’d tell you to take a deep breath and relax, except that you’re dependant on a ventilator to breathe now. Just try to relax the best you can.’

“Doctor,” I hear a woman’s voice say, “the patient looks like she is getting a bit stressed by the procedure. Her eyes are moving around rapidly and showing a good bit of the whites and her heart rate is definitely increasing.”

“I see. Alright, let’s add in a bit of nitrous oxide into her air supply to help calm her down.”

They stop doing anything, leaving the Halo ring still clamped to my head, and in a few minutes I start to feel a little groggy. I don’t particularly want to go to sleep, I’m just really relaxed.

‘Oh wow. I think they just gassed me. The doc said something about nitrous oxide and now I’m feeling pretty good.’

‘They just gave you laughing gas Lynn. That should help some.’

The clamps are loosened and the ring is pulled off. I hear something buzzing click on then it comes really close to my ear and I feel the cold air on a bare spot on the side of my head a moment later. A couple of minutes and both sides of my head have been shaved clean of any hair just above and behind each ear. Something sharp pokes the side of my head and it feels like my skin is being stretched out. The doctor walks around to the other side and I get stabbed again followed by the odd skin stretching sensation. Leaning over top of me I see a syringe in his hand with a needle attached. He pokes the needle into my skin over an eyebrow and I can just barely see my skin swell up as he presses the plunger down on the syringe. He pulls the needle out and a minute later I have a second large bump over my other eye.

‘Hey, they shaved my head and now they’re injecting something into my skin at all four places they marked. It’s really weird. I can feel my skin get stretched out and see a big bump swell up on my forehead where he stabs me with the needle.’

‘I bet that’s an anesthetic of some type to prepare you for when they have to screw the pins into your head. You’ll probably lose feeling in those spots in a minute.’

‘Yea, you’re right. That tight stretchy feeling is fading away.’

The doctor waits a few minutes then pokes me on the forehead again.

“Can you feel this?” he asks.

‘NO’ I blink at him.

He pokes me a couple more times and I tell him no each time. I can’t feel a thing.

‘Ooh, what’s he doing now? Hey, wait a second, that’s a scalpel. Oh man, he’s about to cut me open anyways.’

The doctor carefully slices my skin open over one eye where I can’t feel it then cuts deeper a couple more times in the same place. When he seems to be satisfied a nurse presses a bunch of gauze pads against the wound to stop me from bleeding. He repeats the cuts making a deep opening over my other eye and more gauze and pressure stops the blood. Two more small incisions, one on each side, are made into my skin and the bleeding is quickly controlled.

‘Well heck, that wasn’t all that bad. I didn’t feel a thing. He cut me open four times with short little cuts that looked like they went pretty deep.’

‘Are the cuts in the same spots that they marked for the Halo pins?’

‘Yea, I think you’re right. They are. Oh, here comes the Halo ring again.’

The Halo ring is fit back onto my head and the doctor checks several times that it is placed in exactly the same position over the holes he just made in my skin and the suction cup clamps are tightened down again. A couple of hands appear in front of my head and I watch as two silver colored pins are screwed into the ring and down close to my head. The ends that are pointing down at me have a really sharp looking point on them with a smooth curved bit swelling out and up before the threads start. I feel a bit of wiggling and I guess that the other two pins are being screwed in place.

‘Oh boy, they’ve got the pins screwed in through the ring now. The tips look really sharp and pointy and are really close to my head.’

‘Hang in there Lynn, I think the hard part is about to start. We’re sending all of our good thoughts out to you.’

‘Thanks Charlie. They are starting to screw the pins down in again.’

The doctor and another person grab the outer ends of the pins and slowly screw them down. I watch as the two points I can see disappear down into my flesh. They apparently slid right down into the cuts that were made and keep going until they hit something solid and can’t be turned by hand anymore. A bit more wiggling and the other two pins are screwed into my head as well.

‘Well that was disappointing.’

‘What?’

‘They screwed the pins in by hand all the way down through the cuts in my head until they couldn’t turn them anymore. I didn’t feel a thing. I thought this was going to hurt or something. Oh, hold on. Now they’re doing something else. I don’t think it’s done yet.’

I watch as these red plastic caps are slid onto the ends of the screws. They have two little wings on opposite sides.

“Okay, time to begin the initial tightening,” the doctor announces. “Five turns per pin at the same time on opposing pins. Then we switch to the other two. Keep the pressure even and we’ll work back and forth until the limiter caps break off.”

The doctor take hold of the red cap over my left eye and I assume that someone else is grabbing another one on the opposite side in back from where he is looking. Using the little wings he turns the pin tighter five times. By the fifth turn I am starting to feel it pressing into my skull over my eye and the one behind my right ear is also. They switch over to the other two pins and turn those five times and the pressure starts to build.

‘Help me. Make this stop. I don’t want to go any more.’

‘What’s happening Lynn?’

‘They have these red caps on the ends of the pins and are using them to tighten them down. They are doing two at a time then doing the other two before going back again. I’m starting to feel the pins pressing down into my head really tightly and they are still going.

‘Owww! It’s really starting to hurt! Ow ow ow! Stop! No more!’

They keep turning the pins two at a time, making them tighter and tighter in stages. The pressure on my head increases to the point where if I could make a sound I’d be screaming out loud. But all I can do is scream in my head, so Jamie and Charlie are the only ones who get to hear me express my pain.

‘OWWWW! OWWWW!! AHHHH!!!!’

It quickly gets to the point where it’s nothing but an animalistic howling in my mind that my friends are subjected to. And then something happens that makes the pain seem to spike even higher. One of the red caps breaks off in the doctor’s hand.

‘HOLY SHIT! They just broke one of the cap things! My entire head jumped from the shock! GHAHHH!!!’

In just a couple more turns a second one brakes, sending another shock through my head. A minute later and the third one brakes followed by the fourth and last one just one turn later.

“There, that’s all four of them tightened down to the proper limit,” the doctor says as he is working on pulling the broken end of the red things off the pins. “I’m sorry Lynnette, that is a hard thing to have to take. Those red limiter caps are designed to break off when the pins have been screwed down to the correct pressure. That’s the worst part of it at least. Now we just have to lock the pins down and get the rest of the Halo structure in place.”

‘Sweet Jesus, they’re done screwing the pins in. I’m in agony from how tight these things are. Apparently those stupid red caps are supposed to break at some preset amount of pressure, that way they know the pins are tight enough. It feels like they are trying to crush my skull from four spots. They’re putting little lock nuts on to the outside ends of the pins and screwing them down tight against the ring to lock the pins in place.’

Something is added onto the Halo ring where I can’t see and I feel even more pulling on the pins embedded into my skull as I hear a few more clicks from the winch. The head harness is cut off but the pulling on my head and neck don’t stop.

‘Dammit. They just cut off the soft head harness but I’m still being pulled up. It’s just being done through the Halo screwed into my head now, so even more pressure on my poor abused head.’

‘Oh geez Lynn, I’m so sorry. But that probably means that they are keeping the traction they want on your neck to get the vest for the Halo in place. It shouldn’t be too much longer now.’

‘Yea, I hope you’re right Charlie. I am so done with this. The only part of me that I can move or feel and now it’s in incredible pain and about to be completely immobilized. This sucks. I’m sorry you two had to hear me screaming like a little girly.’

‘I feel so bad for you Lynn. But look on the bright side, you are a girly now so the screaming is kinda appropriate.’

‘Go to hell Jams. You try having one of these things screwed into your head. What are they doing to me now?’

The doctor and nurses have unstrapped my arms and chest and are cutting off the hospital gown I’ve been wearing. With that removed I hear some clanking and suddenly I feel a lot less stable laying where I am. It takes a moment for me to realize that a section of the table under my back has been dropped or removed. A length of cloth is pulled down over my head from above and carefully worked over the Halo and down onto my torso where my arms get pulled up through it too.

My arms are spread out as straight as they are capable of going so that my hands are more or less pointing away to either side of me. They seem to fuss around with it for a few minutes and I wonder what they are doing. A nurse steps up where I can see her and she has several rolls of something white in her hands. When they start to wrap the rolls around me I figure out what is happening.

‘Oh damn, you’ve got to be kidding me.’

‘What’s going on now Lynn?’

‘Looks like I’m getting a cast anyways. They pulled stockinet down over my torso and now they’re working on wrapping me up in cast padding. I’m not going to just be in a Halo Brace, they’re putting me into a Halo Cast! I won’t be able to take this thing off at all until they are done with me.’

‘Wow, they are really serious about this. With the living casts we have now you will be stuck in that cast and Halo for as long as it takes for your neck to heal properly. Once the cast is done and the Halo connected to it there’s no taking it off again until the cast dies.’

The padding continues to envelop my body. They appear to be going pretty low down on me. I am guessing it is going all the way down to my hips, and the top is right up against my armpits. They don’t seed a simple body band onto me and then let it grow either. Apparently they want to control the cast as much as they can and are making it all the way. As they padding is still going on at least the doctor tells them to make it extra thick because I’m paralyzed and he doesn’t want any chances of a pressure sore anywhere.

When they are satisfied with the padding the outer shell is started. I hear water dripping as the first couple of rolls are wrung out then I see dripping white rolls of cast tape come into view to begin encircling me.

‘Crap, they are getting old school on me now.’

‘Why? What are they doing now?’

‘Not only are they doing the entire cast themselves and not seeding it so the cast can grow on its own, they are using plaster to make the cast too.’

‘Wow, they really want to make a good tight mold of the cast on your body, don’t they.’

‘Yea. At lest they used a lot of padding on me first to make it comfortable. Not like I’ll ever feel it, but at least I won’t have to worry about a sore.’

The wet plaster continues to be slopped around my body in an increasingly thick shell to contain my torso and support the Halo. At some point they add in what ever it is that has to be embedded into the cast so that the vertical bars for the Halo can be attached in place then even more plaster continues to wind around me. Eventually they get the cast as thick and solid as they want it to be and work on smoothing it down, pulling the ends of the stockinet up over the cast and fixing them in place with even more plaster rolls. Eventually they stop rubbing the cast and leave me there.

“We have to give the plaster some time to dry a bit and set up before we can add in the bars for your Halo. If we put them in too soon the stress on the cast could cause it to deform if it hasn’t set up enough.”

I am left there on the table for a good hour. Finally the doctor comes back and starts tapping on the cast with his knuckles.

“Alright, this looks good,” he says with a nod.

Finally the last bits of the Halo structure are added on. The four vertical uprights are connected into the adapters on the front and back of my cast. Some kind of connector is attached to the sides of my Halo with a shorter horizontal rod held in place. More connectors are bolted on tying the vertical and horizontal rods together. Standing above me the doctor looks almost straight down at me as he carefully adjusts how my head is turned. Getting it just where he wants it he has a couple others quickly tighten down all the various bolts and the Halo Cast is completed. The only part of me that I can move is now completely immobilized. I hear the winch get released and I hope to at least get some relief from the constant pulling the traction was putting on my neck.

I am woefully disappointed when nothing happens. I watch as the traction bar is disconnected from the Halo and nothing gets better. The pressure pulling up on my neck and the pressure from all four pins squeezing in does not change in the slightest. The Halo is now maintaining the same amount of traction they put me in at the start of this.

“Doctor, look, the cast is shifting,” someone says.

“Yes, it is. Interesting. It’s pulling in and narrowing around her waist. Let me ... Yes, I think I can feel additional padding up over her hip bones too. Ah, and look there. The cast is extending upwards over top of both shoulders now and creating a better opening around her arms. It looks like the gap is enough to keep her armpits from rubbing on the edge of the cast.”

Suddenly my line of sight shifts slightly, pulling just a bit down and to the right. At the same time I wince in pain as the pins in my head all feel like they twist even tighter and the pressure on my head gets even worse.

“Well then, her head just adjusted position. I guess I didn’t get her looking quite as straight forwards as I thought I did. Get me a torque wrench. I’m going to check the tension on her skull pins.”

The doctor takes a tool from someone and with a special wrench loosens the lock nut on one pin. Taking the torque wrench he connects it to the pin and twists it while he watches the gauge on it. I see his eyes widen a bit but he doesn’t say anything. Tightening down the lock nut he goes around my head testing all four pins one at a time.

“Well now. It looks like the pins are all set to their maximum tension already. I wasn’t planning on getting them to this level for a few days yet, but the cast has done it for me. They are all now set to ten pounds per square inch. We’ll keep a regular eye on the pins like we should, but I have a feeling that none of these pins will require any additional tightening for as long as the patient is in the Halo Cast.”

‘Damn, this sucks.’

‘What now Lynn?’

‘The doctor just checked the torque on my skull pins and found them to be set to the maximum amount already. Apparently when the cast made corrections and adjustments to fit me better the Halo got adjusted at the same time because it’s now part of the cast. He said something about how they probably won’t have to worry about how the Halo pins will probably not work loose or something for as long as I remain in this cast.

‘It really hurts. I could actually feel the damn pins get tighter. The only part of my body that I can feel and I’m in a lot of pain right now.’

‘Oh Lynn. I wish I could take some of that pain away for you. You’ve had to endure so much, and go through all that you have to gain your one true wish, and even that’s been tarnished. I wish I could do anything to make this whole thing easier on you, but I don’t see how.’

‘I’m with Jamie, Lynn. It’s just not fair. But, maybe, there is something that we can do. Maybe.’

Day 414: Can This Happen?

Charlene reaches up and idly fingers her tracheotomy. She woke up in the early morning hours and has not been able to get back to sleep again. Listening carefully she hears the constant rhythm of Lynn’s ventilator and the less frequent sounds from Jamie’s and her own ventilators when they kick in briefly to provide a little extra air to help them through the night.

Her arm and leg are getting better, stronger, from all of the physical therapy she’s been doing for the past month. She still requires significant bracing for both limbs yet, but at least she can move her limbs now without too much pain. Looking across the room Charlie gazes at the unnaturally still form of her friend. Lynn has shown exactly zero improvements as far as her paralysis goes. The therapists have been able to get her joints to loosen up a lot and her body is fairly limber considering how long she was completely immobilized in that mummy cast, but there have been no signs that Lynn will ever feel or move anything below her chin again. She can’t even try to move her head due to the Halo that still holds her neck in place to protect it from any incidental harm.

‘Lynn? Are you awake?’ Charlie asks softly.

She waits a minute and there is no response.

‘Maxine? Are you there?’

‘I am here, Charlene.’

‘Can I talk to you about Lynn? Please?’

‘Of course. Do you want me to come up to your room?’

‘Would you please?’

‘I’ll be right there.’

Their friend and nurse walks into the room a few minutes later.

“What is on your mind dear?”

Charlie grabs the air hose leading to her trach tube and gently pulls on it.

“Do you want to try your speaking valve again?”

Charlie nods with a smile.

Checking the oxygen monitor on the ventilator the nurse locates Charlene’s speaking valve and gets it ready. Adjusting the settings on the machine they wait several minutes as it gives Charlie and extra boost of oxygen. Removing the air hose from the tube in Charlie’s neck the cuff is deflated and the valve is connected in place then she spends another couple minutes just breathing on her own.

Clearing her throat Charlie nods.

“Okay, I’ve got it,” she says softly.

“Um, if, if you want to,” Charlie starts hesitantly, “you could, like, if it would be more comfortable for you, be in your more furry form. If you want to. And, and you can sit on my bed with me too. You don’t have to stand all the time.”

The large woman smiles down at her patient.

“You have been much more accepting of the new things that have been happening to you, child. Thank you.”

Her body shifts, growing larger and filling out with muscles as it becomes covered in soft brown fur. She gently picks up Charlie who gives a little squeak and settles down onto the bed with the frail girl safely held on her lap. Charlene briefly snuggles up into the soft warm embrace of the thick fur.

“So, you wanted to talk,” the deep voice of Maxine rumbles.

“It’s not fair Max.”

“What’s not fair?”

“Lynn. Look at her. She’s finally, well, her. But she can’t really enjoy it. Lynn’s life has been so hard.”

She pauses to take a few deep breathes.

“Orphaned so young and no family to go to. Nobody wanted to adopt her. And born into the wrong body which was finally changed, magically, to reflect the real person inside.”

* breathe *

“But she can’t even enjoy that. She can’t feel her body, or even move it. She is going to be dependant on a machine just to breathe for the rest of her life.”

* breathe *

“She can’t even get to talk almost normally like Jamie and I have been. She has to have a ventilator running on full support twenty-four-seven just to keep her alive.”

* breathe *

“It’s not right.”

“I suppose if you look at all of the negatives,” Maxine says, “then it seems rather bad. But Lynn is a pretty special person. She survived at a young age in a situation that can and does break many others. In fact she managed to thrive and excel, taking charge of her life and becoming legally emancipated at the age of sixteen. That’s pretty impressive.

“And now she’s gone through a pretty major change in her life. For the past year she has had to deal with the results of what you all did to each other, Lynn getting both the best and the worst of it from what, at the time, seemed to be innocent playful words. That girl spent an entire year confined within a tight form-fitting shell that nobody could alter or remove. She is who she was meant to be now, a woman.

“And she accepted a heavy price for that gift as well. While she was not aware of it at the time, it was a two-fold price, and resulted in not only confirming her new outer appearance but giving a lasting gift to a stranger so they would not have to suffer a life time of difficulty. Instead this new woman has taken another person’s injuries onto her own person. Lynn has accepted that and is learning to live her life, such as it will be.”

“I know. She’s better than anyone I’ve ever known. But that doesn’t mean she has to bear it alone.”

“She isn’t dear. She has the two of you who are here with her. Your love and support of her help to keep her going, even in this very difficult time in her life.”

“That’s just it. I want to do more.”

“How so, little one? What would you do?”

“I have been thinking a lot about something you kept saying a month ago.”

A small smile curls the lips of the muzzle that rests atop of Charlene’s head.

“And what is that?”

Charlie stops to breathe for a few minutes, leaning into the strong, comfortable embrace of fur covered arms that hold her.

“You know, before all of this happened I used to think that I’d probably hate to be stuck in a cast. Of course I was curious as a younger child, but the thought of having to wear a cast until it decided to come off did not sound like a good thing.”

* breathe *

“And then I dropped that box and hurt my foot. It didn’t quite break anything, but they still put that little slipper cast on me for two weeks. It was the strangest thing. I watched them closely as the different layers went on then the fiberglass heated up and got hard and I knew it wasn’t coming off. It didn’t scare me like I thought it would. Of course then Jamie called and we got to talking and ran off into a fantasy tangent so I didn’t really get to sit back and think about how I really felt about it.”

* breathe *

“And then things got bad. I still can’t remember much of that next week or so while my concussion took over my life for a bit. By the time I came around and can remember things clearly again I already had tubes stuck into me and I was encased in a half body cast from my shoulder to the toes of one foot. It took a few more days before the cast finally finished growing, and I did a lot of sleeping during that time so it’s still more like quick snapshots of being awake for a bit.”

* breathe *

“But things stabilized and I finally got a chance to experience what it was like to be helplessly immobilized, not just in a basic little cast but a really big one. I was conflicted for a bit. I had my childhood fears and guesses about what it would be like compared to the actual reality and I found that it was not nearly so bad as I thought it would be. In fact, I found that I liked it.”

* breathe *

“I can’t really explain why though. It, well, it just appeals to me. I guess I’m one of those cast fetishists who enjoys the bondage or what ever it is about a cast. But that’s kinda my point here. I don’t hate it, and I enjoy being in a cast. And now these braces. Even this tube in my neck is not so bad. I’ve come to accept it.”

* breathe *

“Sure, being stuck in a cast or brace has its problems, and having to deal with keeping this hole in my neck clean and getting mucus suctioned out of my trachea every day is not the easiest thing to deal with. But, I can do this.”

* breathe *

“And more importantly, I’m getting better. Lynn doesn’t get that chance. She is stuck where she is at.”

Charlene stops for several minutes to just breathe, the long speech having taken a toll on her and leaving her feeling short of breath.

“You kept emphasizing that you could not change things that we had done,” she says as she looks up into the face of the bear that holds her safe. “I got the distinct impression that you were trying to tell us something. I’ve been thinking about that ever since, and I have a question or two for you.

“Is it possible, with your help, that I can do something to take some of Lynn’s disabilities away from her?”

The gaze of the eyes that look into her own softens.

“Yes dear, you can. But it will take both of you. While including Lynn and having her agreement would make it even better, I have the feeling that she will not want to participate this time. Even so, there is a way that you can help your friend. It will not be easy for you, and will have a permanent effect on your life.

“Is that something that you think you can do, Jamie?” Maxine asks, looking over to the bed beside them.

Charlie looks over and sees Jamie is watching her.

“How long have you been listening?”

Long enough Jamie writes on her whiteboard.

‘I don’t like these things like you do. I don’t want to be stuck in some cast or brace. And I definitely am counting the days until I can permanently get this damn tube out of my neck.’ she tells Charlie through their necklaces.

‘But, I also love Lynnette like she is my own sister. You too. We have all grown so close over the past year. I want to do whatever I can to help Lynnette get better. However much that will be for her. And what ever disability remains that she has to deal with I am damn well going to be right there by her side every step of the way. I will learn everything I have to so that I can be her life long primary care giver.’

The intensity of the iron hard determination that Jamie portrays is absolute and leaves no doubt as to her sincerity.

“And you Charlene, do you feel just as strongly as your friend?”

“Of course I do. Jamie and I have talked about it a few times. What ever happens, we are both going to take the necessary classes and get what ever certifications it takes so that we can be Lynn’s round the clock assistants. She is not going to be alone ever again.”

* breathe *

“And if there is some way that I can take some of her pain from her then I will do it without even blinking.”

The massive werebear nods.

“It can be done. I can, make some alterations, so that the two of you will receive a portion of Lynnette’s disabilities. It will allow her to begin to recover some functionality in her body again. This will mean that your own recovery will slow down some, and depending on how much you are willing to take into yourselves will leave you with a level of permanent disability of your own. Is this something that you both agree to of your own free will?”

The two girls look at each other for a minute.

“Yes.”

‘Yes.’

“Then sleep. I will do what is needed, and the course of things will change as they can.”

Maxine stands up and carefully places Charlene back into her bed. With a gesture and a few words that neither patient understands she weaves an enchantment of rest to help them fall asleep again.

Day 597: Did It Work?

   --- Jamie ---  

“Don’t pick at it, Jamie. It’s still healing,” the orthotic specialist says.

“I know, but it itches.”

“Well if you scratch it then the scar tissue will just get thicker.”

“Maybe that’s not so bad. It feels like I have a huge dent in my neck. A bit more scar tissue will fill it in more.”

“Jamie, that’s not how it usually works. More scar tissue will just make the skin around your stoma scar tighter, and could potentially increase the thickness of the scar on the inside which would reduce the amount of room in your trachea and restrict your airway more than necessary. You don’t want to have to get another tracheotomy again do you?”

“No, I don’t, but my neck really itches.”

“Well sit still and leave it alone for now. We’ll see about getting you some anti itch cream after the fitting.”

“Oh alright.”

“Now, this brace is just a strong neoprene sleeve that will go up over your shoulder. We’ll figure out the best placement for a couple of elastic straps to help support your arm and will also add a bit of extra pull to let you lift it up easier. The same with your elbow. The sleeve will extend on down to your forearm and have a couple of cross straps to assist with bending and keep you from hyper extending the elbow.”

“What about my wrist and hand?”

“How do you feel that you’ve been doing in therapy?”

“Well, I think I’m doing okay I guess. I’m learning how to use what wrist abductors I have left to grip small or light weight items in my fingers. Once I have a hold of them then I can usually hang on. It’s just getting my hand to listen initially that’s the problem. And my wrist is so weak I can’t lift much more than a pen. Even a regular spoon is a problem when I try to pick up food with it.”

“That’s not a bad description from what the therapists have reported. Your wrist brace is going to be a bit more solid. It will have some custom molded rigid stays in a stiffer leather fingerless glove. Depending on how you feel about it, I can also include some cloth or spandex fingers in it with longitudinal elastics to help increase your grip strength. I’ll be making a negative cast mold of your entire left arm and hand so we can make the braces as form fitting as possible to make them comfortable.”

“I guess you can add in the fingers too. It’s hard enough as it is having to relearn how to do everything with my right hand. With my once dominant left arm now mostly paralyzed and only a third the strength as it used to have at best, anything to give me a bit of an edge will help I guess,” Jamie tells him dejectedly.

“Hey,” he tells her, “it’s not so bad. Look at the good things. You got that trach tube out and the stoma is closing up nicely. You may be left with a bit of a noticeable scar but at least you don’t need it or a vent anymore. And your leg is doing just as well. You barely need that cane and a couple of off the shelf elastic supports for your knee and ankle are a small thing.”

“Yea, that’s true. I really only need the cane to maintain my balance, and I’m doing good enough that I don’t even need it all that much. I still like to wear a full leg compression stocking though to keep the swelling down. The ones you gave me with the added elastics in the knee and ankle are great.”

“Right. You’re recovering quite well. And I hear that you’re doing quite well in your studies to become Lynnette’s part time assistant too. You and Charlie both, despite your own handicaps. The two of you will pass your classes soon enough so you can register and get paid to be her appointed care givers.”

“Well, having to deal with one or two similar issues that Lynnette has to deal with makes it more personal for us. We understand the issues from first hand experience.”

“That you do. And that is why I believe that the two of you will be even better at the job than anyone else.

“Now, go undress and let’s get this mold made.”

“How much of me is going to get included?” Jamie asks ash she strips off her clothing.

“I’m going to put you in a relatively thin plaster cast, with no padding, that is going to include your entire left arm out past your fingertips, your entire left shoulder, and your body.”

“Guess I better take off my bra too then. Why so much?”

“We always go beyond the limits of what needs to be braced or supported so that as we make the final product we have room to make it larger then trim it back to just what is needed. It’s easier to cut away than it is to add on if the brace isn’t right. Since we are making a support that needs to include your shoulder, then I want to get at least the left side of your torso included in the mold. That means wrapping plaster bandages all the way around your body to get what I want for a negative mold. When I pour the positive mold I’ll angle it so I don’t have to fill up the entire thing and only get your left side and arm.”

“Makes sense,” Jamie replies as she comes back out with her whole upper body exposed.

They work together to get a stockinet shirt on over her torso with Jamie reaching over with her right hand to lift up her lame left arm as needed. Then a long tube is pulled up the left arm and cut so the top end over laps on her shoulder and the bottom end is left to extend out past her fingers. The orthotist wets a black grease pencil and makes marks around her wrist, elbow, and shoulder where bony prominences show up.

“Okay, try to hold your arm out here to the side like this the best you can. I’ll work fast getting the plaster on, but it’s still going to take a few minutes and then we have to wait for it to set up.”

The wet bandages go on quickly, and a fast setting plaster is used to reduce the amount of time it will take for the mold cast to hold its shape. The first couple of layers are smoothed on and pressed in firmly to get a good mould of Jamie’s arm, hand, and shoulder then another couple of layers are wrapped over that before the plaster really starts to heat up and set. When the warmth begins to fade several more layers of plaster are added on and a couple of wooden support bars get included.

“Hey, what’s up with the extra layers and the bars? I thought you said this would be thinner?”

“It is thinner than a regular shoulder spica cast would be. And it you pay attention you’ll notice that these bars are being put on so one goes across your belly and the front of your arm while the other one goes across your back and the back of your arm. I’m leaving plenty of room between them so I can cut this off in about an hour once the cast is solid enough.”

“Hey, wait a minute. An hour? You never said I’d have to be in this thing that long! You did that on purpose.”

“Heh. Yea, I did. I usually wait until I’ve got the patient in the cast before I tell them how long it will take with the bigger ones. By the time they figure it out it’s too late to protest or get out of it. They just have to grin and bear it. Sorry.”

“Turkey,” Jamie tells him with a smirk.

   --- Charlene ---  

Charlie coughs several times as her trachea tube is pulled out of her stoma. The respiratory therapist checks the skin around the opening and nods in satisfaction when she finds her patients flesh is doing well. Wiping a dry clean gauze pad across the hole she turns and disposes of the old tube. Charlie’s breaths whistle slightly in and out of the opening as she patiently waits while the new tube is prepped with a light dab of lubricant then the new trach tube is pushed through and seated in place. The cuff on the tube is inflated briefly to check that it does not have a leak and closes off the space around the tube in her trachea then it is deflated again.

“I hate tube change day,” Charlie says with a grimace as the trach tie is secured to the new tube and around the back of her neck.

“It’s not a favorite day for anyone I work with,” the woman says as she carefully slides the fenestrated gauze pad between the flange on the tube and Charlene’s skin.

“There, it’s all done at least,” she says sitting back up.

Charlie reaches up and feels the tube and tie then adjusts them slightly to make it a bit more comfortable which makes her cough several times again. Hearing a small wet rattle in the coughing the therapist reaches over and picks up the suction catheter.

“Sounds like I didn’t get enough of the mucus out before changing your tube.”

Charlie nods and with a quick twist pulls out the inner cannula from the trach tube and takes several deep breathes which causes a more pronounced rattle. With a practiced hand the excess mucus is suctioned out with two swift passes and Charlie is able to reinsert the inner sleeve a minute later.

“You need to start working on doing that yourself,” she is told. “We’ll setup a mirror for you to see how it’s done and then practice with it today before you leave.”

“Oh joy, I’m looking forward to it,” she responds snarkily. “I enjoy sucking snot out of my throat almost as much as I like having my tube changed.”

“Well, your stoma is doing well and you’re adjusting adequately to having a permanent tracheotomy. Next time you get to change out your tube on your own too.”

The announcement gets a short frown then a sigh out of Charlene.

“Oh alright. I suppose I do need to learn how to take care of my own trach since it’s looking like I’m going to have to live with it.”

“Yes, you are. I hate to give that news to my patients, but sometimes it has to be done. Not everyone is able to recover fully enough to have a trach permanently removed. I’m still disappointed that I had to tell you that though. You were doing so well and progressing towards getting yours out right along with Jamie. Then your recovery just stopped. I still don’t quite understand how.”

“It’s ... it’s not all that bad. I’m not fully vent dependant all the time at least. I just need to keep a portable unit with me so I can give myself extra oxygen every few hours for a bit.”

* breathe *

“I’m getting used to having to pause to take a few deeper breaths every few sentences even if it is annoying. Doing that helps to extend my time off my vent a little bit.”

“Speaking of which, how are you doing at the moment? Do you feel like you need to go on the ventilator for a bit?”

“I’m okay for the moment. But I may hook it up for a bit when I get ready to leave your office. I have a PT session to go to next and that always leaves me short of breath.”

“Okay. How are you doing at night?”

“I still need the vent during the nights for the most part. I seem to slow down too much and don’t get enough air while I sleep. The last time I woke up unable to breathe and had to hit my alarm was enough.”

* breathe *

“I just hook up my vent all the time and let it run all night. It’s easy enough to pause and disconnect it when I have to get up and cath then hook it back up again.”

“That’s not all that unusual to use a ventilator through the night with how you’re doing during the days,” is said with a nod. “How are your arm and leg doing?”

Charlie waves her hand in the air showing off the small wrist brace.

“I really don’t think I need this thing, but they still want me to wear it for a little bit longer. My whole arm is fine as far as I’m concerned. I have almost no problems with my range of motion in my shoulder elbow or wrist, just a small tightness when I go to fully extend or straighten my arm.”

* breathe *

“My hand and fingers are good for grabbing anything and holding on or writing with it again. Of course since I was forced to use just my left hand for so long I’m practically ambidextrous now.”

* breathe *

“My leg on the other hand, well, you can see how that’s going,” Charlie indicates with a pat on the HKAFO brace that encompasses her right leg from her waist to her toes.

“I just got this big old brace last week and I’ll be keeping it for a long time. It definitely helps and I can actually walk now with it. Although I’m still learning how and need a walker frame to keep my balance.”

* breathe *

“But I’m getting better with it.”

“How about sensation in the leg? Is that getting better?”

“Not really. I have to be careful and check myself regularly to make sure I don’t have any new cuts or bruises. I do have feeling, but it’s so muted I miss a lot.”

* breathe *

“Movement is pretty much only from my hip and a little bit of my upper thigh. From my knee down is just dead weight.”

“You mentioned having to cath at night still. So your bladder is still flaccid and unable to empty on its own then?”

Charlie nods.

“I have to remember to cath every three hours at the most. At least my bowels are easier to deal with. I get the feeling of needing to go so I don’t have to stick to a rigid routine for my bowel management.”

* breathe *

“But I do need to use a suppository and digital evacuation to get things moving.”

“I hear that you’re still doing well in your studies. Do all the things we just talked about help with the classes?”

“They definitely are helping. I have to deal with a lot of the things they are teaching just for myself, so turning it around to support someone else is almost a no brainer.”

* breathe *

“I guess learning to do my own trach changes and suctioning is going to be a good thing in that regard as well. I’ll need to know how to do those too so I can assist Lynnette with hers.”

“Yes it will. And when you’re ready for that class I’ll be the one teaching it, so pay attention here today. I won’t let you get away with any shortcuts. You’re going to be taking care of someone else’s life besides your own, so you need to learn how to do it right.

“Now, let’s get a mirror over here and I’ll show you how to suction your trach.”

   --- Lynnette ---  

I watch as the last vertical black bar is taken away. The two rear rods were removed first then the right front, and now finally the left front one. The stiff plastic collar around my neck presses up again the back of my head and chin uncomfortably but maintains my head in the same position the Halo has enforced for the past six months.

“Okay, we’re going to cut off the body jacket now and get that out of the way,” I hear from behind.

The Halo Cast I had been put into has remained tight and solid the entire time. The plaster steadfastly remained white and clean of any scuff marks until about a week ago. Drawing on the cast with markers was still possible though and I have collected numerous signatures and pictures, but the cast finally began to turn a bit dingy and grey in places. A few days later and they actually had to tighten one of the skull pins in my head for the first time.

Dust from the cut plaster drifts in the air as two long openings are made down the sides of my body cast. A pair of bandage shears cut through the padding and stockinet on one side and my torso finally gets to see the light of day once again. The cool air of the cast room makes my nipples stand up and causes a small shiver to go up my neck. Two nurses carefully use warm damp cloths to wipe flesh that has gotten dry and flaky as well as dirty from months of accumulated dead skin, oils, and sweat. They gently clean me and take care to keep from pulling on the air hose connected to my trach tube.

“Time to remove the Halo ring. This will be a bit uncomfortable, you’ve had this in place for a long time and gotten used to its presence. But it’s finally ready to come off.”

One at a time, the locking nuts are loosened on the screws holding the ring to my head. The left rear pin is carefully turned with a small screwdriver until it is able to move freely then using two fingers to keep twisting the tip slowly emerges from the hole in my flesh and the pin is backed all the way out until it is completely removed from the ring. A doctor takes hold of the ring to hold it steady as the front right pin is carefully loosened and I am able to look up to watch as the point exits my head and disappears through the front of the Halo and removed. I wince a bit as the right rear pin is loosened due to the skin sticking to it some. Finally only the front left pin is left still in my head. The doctor holding the ring slowly pulls the Halo forward which brings the last skull pin out then carefully tilts the ring up so the still sharp tip of the pin does not scratch my delicate flesh and the Halo is off.

“How does that feel? A bit of weight off your head, isn’t it?”

I smile and blink a YES as the still open wounds are treated and covered by small bandages. Reaching up with one hand I kind of paw at my head, reveling in the lack of obstructions. My hand is still pretty useless for the most part, but I can finally get it up to my face and head without running into bars, a ring, or screws. I feel the oversized round band-aids that have been put on to cover up the holes in my head.

‘Guys, it’s off. I’m not surrounded by a construction scaffold anymore.’

‘Hooray! No more trying to figure out how to work around the Halo bars when I want to cuddle my Lynnette!’

‘Congratulations Lynn. How does it feel?’

‘The constant pressure on my head is gone which is a relief. I still have some mild pain at the moment from the four pin sites, but that’s not too bad. One of the doctors asked if it was a weight off my head, but I can’t really say yes to that. The Halo was completely supporting my head for me, so I never felt like it was an extra weight. Now that it’s gone, my head feels heavier with my weakened muscles having to bear the weight now.’

‘I can see that. So, putting aside the physical sensations, how do you feel about it being off?’

‘I’m not entirely sure Jams. It’s strange. I’m glad it’s finally gone. It means I’ll be able to start therapy on getting my neck and head moving. But at the same time I’m kinda already missing it. The thing has literally been a part of me for half a year. I got used to it always being there, always framing everything I looked at, always stopping me from turning my head without moving my whole body, and now it’s just ... gone. I’m going to have to get used to the loss of having it in my life.’

‘Well we will be here to help you get over it. We will always be there for you, won’t we Jamie.’

‘Why else would I have been taking all of these classes and convinced my parents to let me live in Texas with the two of you? We’re a team now and nothing is going to break us up.’

I smile as a new clamshell body brace is tightened around me and the neck brace gets connected to it. I try to help as they transfer me back into my power chair, but I’m still pretty weak from not being able to do much PT while the Halo was still on. That’s going to change now though and I will hopefully be able to graduate to a manual wheelchair in time. They take me back up to our room where I am greeted by Jamie and Charlene with hugs that I gladly return.

I look up at Charlie and reach up to tap my air hose.

“You sure?”

I frown at her and use both hands to tug on it.

“Okay, okay, don’t pull your trach out. Hey Jamie, give me a hand here with putting Lynn’s inline speaking valve in.”

I know I still have issues with not getting enough air when I’m not on full AC vent support, but I want to talk normally. With a bit of work they get the valve added in between the air hose and my trach tube and switch the ventilator over to a high level of PRVC support that I need to use while still letting me get air through my vocal cords so I can speak. The trach cuff is deflated and I take a moment to cough.

“Thanks.    I’ll be okay for a little ... time off full vent support.”

“Alright, but we’ll be watching you,” Jamie tells me.

“You look better without the Halo.”

“I am glad ... it’s finally off,” I say as I run my hand over my forehead once again.

“I still can’t believe ... you two did ... what you did,” I tell them.

Jamie adjusts her arm in her sling a bit and Charlie feels her own trach while she maintains her balance on her walker with her other hand. Both of them smile at me.

“Well, it was the right thing to do. I still feel bad about how it all happened. If you hadn’t been hit by that cart which broke your ankle, and tried to catch yourself and broke your wrist when you fell, then all you would have been dealing with was just the broken nose and jaw. There wouldn’t have been any casts on you for our stupid games to have influenced.”

“It’s been a pain ... but in the end ... it’s alright Charlie.     If none of that ... had happened ... then I’d still be ... the old me ... depressed and unhappy.     It may not be ... the way I would ... have chosen to ... realize my true self ... but I can live with it.    I’m happy now ... to have the body ... that I do.     How are ... the two of you ... handling things?”

“I admit that I got to liking having that cast on me for as long as I did so this brace is sorta like that, and the trach is alright too.”

* breathe *

“Having to use this dumb walker right now though is really annoying, but I’m not stable enough with my new brace yet to go with just crutches or a cane.”

* breathe *

“I’ll get there soon,” Charlie states with conviction.

“I’m okay with the weakness in my arm, I guess. I’m going to invest in a bunch of turtle neck tops and scarves though. This trach scar bothers me.”

“Still didn’t have ... to give up what ... you did.”

Jamie helps Charlie to unlock the hinges on her HKAFO and sit down before taking a seat herself then she turns back to me.

“Yes we did. You are finally the girl on the outside that you’ve always been on the inside, and to not get to experience anything at all just wasn’t right. We get that you made your choice to be paralyzed in exchange for becoming a girl physically inside and out, and that you were trying to accept the increased disabilities so Suzy could live an almost normal life.”

“She will live ... a normal life now.    Maxine said ... she will.”

“Well, mostly normal,” Charlie corrects me. “I mean, she’s still going to need some basic AFO’s from now on.”

“Other than that, but yea she will,” Jamie agrees. “And that’s because of you taking her spinal cord injury in her place. That can’t be changed. But we did make the decision to take some of your paralysis away from you and onto ourselves. That is our choice and our own deal after yours. According to Maxine we didn’t alter or change the results of your choices. Essentially we made a new deal to make things easier on you. We may not have been able to get you entirely back to your original price of just being paralyzed up to the bottom of your ribs; you’ll always be a quad instead of a para. But we did manage to reduce it from a complete C-three injury to an incomplete one that gives you feeling and movement again down to your lower chest.”

“Right. You’ve already been able to regain mostly normal sensation in your arms and hands and down to your belly button.”

* breathe *

“And you can move your arms and hands around pretty well even if they are really weak. PT is going to be working with you to get more use out of your fingers as you get stronger, and you should be able to use a manual wheelchair eventually.”

* breathe *

“Maxine said you’d be able to do a lot of your own care in time. Including cathing for yourself and you will get better with your trach in time too.”

* breathe *

“I’m hoping that you can get up to the same level I’m at now with mine.”

“It would be ... nice to finish a ... whole sentence without ... having to pause ... for air.”

“Well according to our big furry friend you’ll get there. In time. And the both of us will also get better too, but only a little bit more than we are now. Our improvements will mostly be centered around making things easier for Charlie and me to take care of you. And assist you with taking care of yourself as you get better of course. You’re always going to need some level of assistance, and we are going to be the one to do it. We’re tied together through too many special circumstances, so don’t try to tell us no.”

“Tell you no?    You two got me ... into this position.    I’m not about ... to send my two ... worst enemies and ... closest BFF’s away.   I have to keep ... you around to ... make sure you don’t ... cause any more ... trouble.”

I am getting short of breath again so I tap my air hose to let them know I want the speaking valve out and point at the couch in our shared room. Several minutes of giggling and a good bit of effort go by and the three of us are eventually snuggled up together under a covering of warm blankets. As many of our braces and supports as possible are lying on the floor at our feet and we simply enjoy each others company.