The Chair 4

By abbacor

 

This story is based on a trilogy that I found decades ago which was written by a Catherine A. It was quite simply titled, The Chair 1, 2, & 3.

This is my take on that concept.

 

Chapter One

 

Andrew was sure he had finally done it, this time. All of those false starts, dead-end alley’s, and years of research. Consulting of pretty much any kind of mystic charts, astrological signs, and omens and portends from the past to the future. Uncounted lost finances from consultations with hucksters, shysters, con-men and women, psychics, and diviners. Prayers, supposed deals with every type of devil and demon, and plain, simple, blood sweat and tears. It just had to be his turn and tomorrow he would find out if it had all been worth it.

 

Looking at himself one last time in the mirror Andrew pops the last two sleeping pills he had into his mouth and quickly swallows them with a glass of water. These were the last of the prescription he had gotten from that doctor he saw three months and two states ago, so he was kinda hoping he would not have to start all over yet again. He needs what liquid funds he still has available so he can take care of what he needs to when things pan out in his favor. At least that’s what Andrew keeps telling himself while crossing his fingers and toes.

 

Lying down in bead he verifies the address he printed out on paper earlier that day just before turning off the bedside lamp and drifting off to sleep.

 

 

=== *** ===

 

 

There it was. he was sure of it. Andrew pulled to the curb and parked his second-hand vehicle a couple of doors down in the first spot he could find. The problem was, even despite how early he had arrived at the yard sale this morning, there was someone else already looking at it. Locking up his fully renovated and restored full-size lift van Andrew hurried down the sidewalk and up the driveway. Slowing down so he would not be out of breath he steps up beside the man giving the power chair the stink-eye.

 

“Kinda beat up lookin’, ain’t it?” he say conversationally.

 

“Sure is. Bet I could get it for a song,” the man comments.

 

“Not much good if’n it don’ work tho’,” Andrew returns as he bends down to check the main battery compartment at the rear of the base. Having planned for some potential competition, he unscrews the hatch and carefully pulls a length of dirty red, plastic coated wire out of his jacket sleeve as if he had just pulled it from the inside of the compartment.

 

“Well that’s not promising,” the guy states.

 

Andrew doesn’t bother looking up as he ‘checks’ the batteries that sit inside, dropping a battery terminal down into his other hand that looks like it’s been chewed through while disconnecting one battery so the chair won’t get power.

 

“Neither is this,” he point out as he stands up and presses the power which had the desired effect of doing nothing and holding up the ‘bad’ terminal. “And do those drive wheels look like they’ve go a bit of dry rot in them?” Andrew suggests. “Heck, it’d take a week o’ Sunday’s ta jus’ clean the old thing.”

 

“You ain’t kiddin’ about that, friend,” his now dejected opponent agrees as he turns to look at some of the other offerings in the yard.

 

Andrew waits until he is certain that the guy has driven off before returning to the chair and plugging the battery back in again. Pressing the power button he is delighted when it turns on with only the slightest of hesitations.

 

“You sure you want that dirty decrepit old has-been there young man?” the woman running the yard sale asks him with a smirk.

 

“Why, I do believe I do ma’am. Now just how much will this delightful bit of technology cost me this fine morning?”

 

“Heh. Thought so. It was going to go to one of the two of you after all. Now, there’s just one thing to settle up with here. You’re not going to be picking this thing up for anyone else other than yourself, right?”

 

“That’s right, ma’am. This beauty is all for me. Nobody else.”

 

Then in that case, take it away and it’s yours. I’d say you’ve earned it with that performance.”

 

Happily taking charge of his new (new to him at least) power chair Andrew rolls it across the street and over to his van where he drops down the lift and loads it up inside.

 

 

=== *** ===

 

 

Another month and a half goes by while he works on getting his chair cleaned and refurbished. Thankfully nothing actually needs to be replaced, although he still swaps out a few parts with newer ones all the same. Other parts that are not present at the time he took possession of his chair take a little longer to replace. For example, the attendant controller takes the longest to get replaced; and that’s only because he has to find a dealer who is willing to do a one for one swap for the incorrect one that he already has.

 

Other things, like the tires for the two main drive wheels, are easy to find and swap out for new ones. Or the bracket mounted to the back of the seat starts out empty, but once he has the unit cleaned up the portable ventilator fits right in place without a problem. And the upholstery, while in good repair, is changed for a more custom seat with additional positioning options.

 

Slowly but surely the chair comes together and, eventually, it sits in Andrew’s bedroom quietly gleaming under the overhead lights. The anticipation of everything coming together and being finally ready for him to use is sweet torture, but he makes darn sure that he does not sit in the chair for even one second. Andrew has wanted this so badly, and he knows what it is going to mean once he does take that seat. But he is going to have to force himself to wait a bit longer, first. He has to be sure that he is going to get what he wants out of this. And he knows just exactly what he is willing and ready to give up to get it. Waiting a little while longer will all be worth it in the end.

 

So Andrew settles in, and he waits. A day. A week. Two weeks. Then three. A month goes by and still the chair sits untouched. Andrew keeps it charged, polished, and dusted, but he will not sit in it.

 

Finally the day comes when an unsolicited phone call rings on his private phone.

 

 

Chapter Two

 

“Hello?” Andrew answers the phone.

 

“Um, what are you waiting for?” the voice on the other end of the line wants to know. “The point of you getting that power chair is for you to use it.”

 

“Yes, I know.”

 

“Well?”

 

“What?” he questions.

 

“Are you going to go sit in your chair or not?”

 

“Getting a little antsy, don’t you think?” he pokes at them. “Or are you having a problem with putting off a little child’s fantasy wish after this long?”

 

“Hm. So you do know the score. Alright, what is it you want?”

 

“Are you opening up negotiations then?”

 

“You don’t get to make bar- ”

 

“Oh but I think I do get to do just that here,” Andrew interrupts. “You said it yourself, I know the score. So let’s bargain.

 

“There’s a child out there who is just waiting for me to plop my butt down into that chair sitting in my bedroom. It doesn’t matter how old they are. Be it five, ten, twelve, whatever. They’ve had a hard go of it in this life. Once I take my seat in my power wheelchair, that child is going to wake up the next morning suddenly cured while I wind up disabled. And I’ll tell you something, I want it to happen.”

 

“So what in the hell are you waiting for? Sit your arse in that chair and get it over with! Please!”

 

“I intend to. BUT, I do want some concessions first. And I don’t think they are all that hard to grant to be honest.”

 

“Oh you don’t, do you?” Andrew can practically hear their eyes narrow. “And just what would these ... concessions ... happen to be?” they say with more than a little derision.

 

‘Here we go, time to put up or shut up,’ Andrew thinks to himself.

 

“First, I don’t care if the swap of disabilities from them to me is more than a little one-sided in favor of the kid. I’m more than willing to wind up more severely disable than the kid starts out as. In fact, I kinda expect it.”

 

“Interesting.” The tone of their voice is starting to open up with Andrew’s very first item. “Just how disabled are we talking about? For you that is.”

 

“Well, I leave the final choice of severity up to you, or the powers that make the choices, but I want to be quadriplegic if it’s all the same with you. And on that note, I’d like to point out that I have obtained a portable ventilator to go with my shiny new power chair. Just sayin’. Although, being able to control my power chair at some level for myself would be nice.”

 

“Go on. Anything else?”

 

“Yes. Second, and this one I most definitely want to have take place, is I want to become female. Maybe, the child in question wants to go from female to male on their end, even? Think that’s in the cards?”

 

“We ... can come back around to that one. Next?”

 

“I’d really like to need a full time attendant, or an attendant team really, with included supporting resources and documentation. It’s not a must have, but that can’t be all that hard to arrange, can it?”

 

“Hm.”

 

Andrew hopes they aren’t starting to close down again, so he throws in his next sweetener to the pot.

 

“I’ll do all of this un-tested. No sitting down in my chair, no going slowly disabled over an hour or so. Nothing. If we come to an accord then I wake up the next morning and it’s a done deal, sight unseen so to speak. The kid wakes up whole and I wake up disabled.”

 

“Will you now?”

 

“I will.”

 

“Alright, then I -”

 

“There’s one more thing,” Andrew jumps in with.

 

“Yes?”

 

They sound to be receptive, even bemused at this point.

 

“You said we’d come back around to the female angle. I want to be able to give birth to my own children, and enough time to enjoy them. Even just one. Although if I get just one then I’d like to have a little girl to raise.”

 

“I see.”

 

“I hope so.”

 

“So, here’s what you want and are willing to give up, in no certain order.

 

“Tomorrow a child will wake up for the first time in their young life miraculously cured of their disability. You on the other hand are willing to wake up tomorrow morning fully disabled, with no trial period of even one day, and the severity level at which to be left up to ‘fate’. The child who is cured will probably have started out less disabled than you will wind up being, and if they want it they can also switch from girl to boy. In return for giving said child the chance to lead a ‘normal’ life and becoming disabled yourself, you want to also go from male to female, give birth to at least one little girl of your own, become younger so you can have time to bring said progeny up, and be provided a permanent care team with necessary resources to – I am assuming – live in your own home I suppose.”

 

“Hmm, yes, I think that just about covers things and will do quite nicely.”

 

“Would you like to include your own well maintained and fully functional iron lung machine to go along with it?” they say facetiously.

 

 

Chapter Three

 

The next morning ...

 

“Mommy! Daddy!”

 

Hilary Blevins nudged her husband, Arthur.

 

“It’s your turn this morning,” she groaned.

 

“Can’t they wait one more minute?” he mumbled.

 

It was always the same thing every morning. A little girl would call out for help each morning needing to be taken to the bathroom, or get some water, or just put in her manual wheelchair. It was just so unfair to expect a child to have to grow up paralyzed. From the day their progeny had been born they’d had to rearrange their lives to support the life of a disabled child.

 

And with twins no less! One would have been difficult, but both girls were similarly affected. How could they be expected to grow up in a world where they’d be looked down upon and treated as lesser citizens. That alone would be hard enough with their disabilities. Pile on top of it the fact that their beautiful children had been born into the wrong bodies and having to deal with being female when inside they are two little boys, it just wasn’t fair at all.

 

Imagine their astonishment then, when the unexpected sound of multiple feet running into the room is immediately followed by two energetic, squealing boys launching into their bed and clambering up between them!

 

“Wait? What ... ? How are ... ? David? Aaron?”

 

“It’s me, Mommy! It’s really me!”

 

“I’m a boy Daddy! Look!”

 

“It’s a miracle! A Miracle!” the parents cried as the little family clung to each other with great joy.

 

Two-thousand, three-hundred miles away and ten years later ...

 

Carroll lies quietly in her iron lung letting the machine do its job and breathe for her. She thinks back to that morning when she had woken up ten years ago this very day. It was her anniversary day for when her life had finally gone right. She had been surprised that day to wake up in a hospital. It took her only a few seconds to realize that she was on life support, but with an ET tube down her throat. The next thing she quickly found out was that she had absolutely zero sensation and movement from her chin down.

 

Carroll could only lay in her hospital bed and wait until someone came into either visit or take care of her. Those few minutes seemed like years at the time. Eventually a nurse came in and checked up on her and Carroll began to learn what her new situation was to be. Over the next few days she learned that she was in the body of a twelve year old girl who had just been in an accident and suffered a C-two cervical fracture. At the time she was completely paralyzed from the chin down, and was due to have surgery to fix her damaged spine.

 

That surgery put metal rods and screws in her neck from the base of her skull down to her T-one vertebrate along with a metal cage replacing two vertebrate at the C-two and C-three levels. The cage was filled with donor bone and completely fused those two vertebrate over time as her body absorbed and replaced the donor grafts with her own. She was also placed in a pediatric Halo Brace at the end of that surgery which she wore for just over five months. About two weeks after the surgery a second procedure replaced the ET tube with a proper tracheostomy, and when that was stable she got transferred to a rehab unit to continue healing from her other injuries while starting to learn how to deal with and use what was left to her.

 

Carroll is now a ventilator dependent quadriplegic with limited sensation down to her shoulders and elbows, and limited movement in her arms down to the mid-forearms. Her hands and fingers are essentially useless, but with wrist splints and adapted eating utensils she can feed herself with minor assistance. Her torso from the armpits down is totally dead, no sensation or movement ever returned. The available movement in her arms does allow her to guide her power chair using a U-shaped joystick, or she can use the sip-n-puff controller for when she is feeling too tired for the joystick.

 

Her doctors had found early on as a young teen that as a method of therapy treatment, spending time inside of an iron lung actually improved her stamina as she would get more oxygen into her lungs. A still operational unit had been found and procured then gone over with a fine tooth comb to refurbish and restore the device to as close to new as possible. It is still in fantastic shape and she continues to use it every night as she sleeps.

 

Another surprise was finding out she was going to be going back to school again, and living with her parents once more as well. Her mother and father had split up and divorced when she was still Andrew and thirteen years old. This go around they worked out their differences following the traffic accident which they were all involved in and they remain a loving family to this day.

 

It has taken ten years, and Carroll is now twenty-two years old. Still a good deal younger than she had been when the deal was made ten years ago; Andrew had been in his mid forties at the time of that deal. She was happily married a year ago to a wonderful man who takes great care of Carroll. And despite not being able to feel the new life growing in her belly, she loves to look down and gently rub her lifeless hands over the large round bulge that currently holds her daughter who is due to join the world soon.