Change

Change



Change


I looked around and saw all my friends. I saw Scorne, Josh and Keith, all grinning at me and holding Walker. He was screaming, but I couldn’t hear him. I turned around in my seat, expecting to see the back of the classroom, but instead I saw the front of a bus. It was speeding towards me; the brakes screeching, then I yelled out and dived to the side. I was on the road now, and I was crawling to the pavement. I looked down and saw my legs were mashed.
“No…” I whispered, and then I woke up. I saw the grey ceiling of the boarding house, and saw the boys around me, all snoring.
“You okay, Seb?” said a tired voice. It was Mark Scorne, in the bed next to me. He preferred to be called by his last name.
“Yeah,” I said, and nodded my head. “I’m fine.”
He grunted and went back to sleep. I tried to follow his example, but I couldn’t. After a while I got up and showered.
I sat on the couch at the end of my dorm, thinking about the dream. I’d been having it ever since my parents had left me to go to the U.S, but it had come more regularly recently, and now I was having it every night. I groaned and munched my cereal.
“Hey, Seb.” Out of all my friends, Scorne was my best.
“Scorne,” I nodded. He went into the shower and one by one, all of the boarding kids progressed past me. By the time everyone was eating breakfast, I was staring at the tiny TV in the corner. Then the bell rang, and the boys marched down the main house for class.
I lived in the boarding house. When my parents left, they had decided it would be better for me to remain in England. They put me in Bollop House, a boarding school, and flew to America to work in a lab, trying to improve genetically modified food.
The first class I had was English. This was my favourite class, mainly because Walker sat in front of me. Walker was a skinny runt, a cry-baby, and a wuss, and it was my humble opinion he needed a good beating to get him going. So did Scorne, Josh and Keith, my three friends. When I joined the school, the three bullies were the only people who would talk to me, so I slowly moulded my personality to fit theirs.
It was a good lesson. After half an hour, Walker was sobbing gently, while Keith prodded him sharply with his pencil. There was juice all over the back of his shirt, and a large bruise on his arm, but we made sure nothing showed on the front. The English teacher was nearly sixty, deaf in one ear and bad eyesight, but we had to make sure. We could clean him up after class, but for now, we were just having some fun and teaching Walker a valuable lesson; life’s not fair. He wouldn’t tell anyone, because he was too much of a coward to stand up to us.
We washed Walker during break, and he looked a lot nicer for it, even though Scorne had decided it would be funny to use a combination of boot polish from a store cupboard and a mop. Once we let him go we went to hunt some more.
“Seb?” said Keith, looking at me oddly,
“Yeah?”
“Look at me.” I turned to him, just in time to get a wet mop in my face. I staggered back as everyone doubled over with laughter. I swung a fist at him, but he dodged it easily and my hand hit a locker.
“Wake up, Seb!” he shouted and raced off out into the car park. I hurriedly grabbed some kid, wiped my face on his shirt and ran after them.
I caught them up in the car park, where they were still laughing. This was what we often did in our breaks, just wandered around aimlessly.
“What now?” I asked.
“Where are the other runts?” said Josh. The runts were people like Walker. They spent their time doing homework in the corner of the concrete car park, but now they weren’t there.
“THERE!” shouted Scorne and sprinted towards the road. The runts were
running with what their life was worth towards the road that led out of the concrete square. The gang darted after them, with me in the lead. I was intent on the chase, focusing on a tiny redhead, determined to catch him and make a few bucks from his wallet. I heard some warnings shouted from behind me, but I thought they were directed as threats to the runts. Then I heard the screech of brakes. I whipped around and saw the front of a bus a few inches from my face. For a split second, I saw my mothers face, then it hit me. I felt the air rushing by as I was thrown into the air, then I landed with a crunch on the pavement. At first I couldn’t feel anything, and then a wall of extreme pain hit me. Again, I saw my mothers face drift across my vision, and then I blacked out.


“Sebastian Brown?” said a voice. I opened my eyes. At first, I saw just white, and then it came into focus. I saw the face of a doctor. I tried to sit, up, but I couldn’t move.
“Sorry, we had to sedate you. You’re emerging from the drug now. You’ll be able to move in about ten minutes.”
“What happened?”
“You were hit by a bus.” He said. I stared at him. There was a ten-second pause.
“How big?” I blurted out, having to say something.
“Excuse me?” said the doctor. A frown passed his face.
“How big was the bus?” I asked.
“It was more of a coach,” he said. I swore.
“When can I go back?” I asked him, but I already knew something was wrong. I was in a special private ward, not a recovery room, and I could see monitors out of the corner of my eye.
“There’s something we need to tell you.” He said. I tried to look around, but I couldn’t move my head.
“What?” I asked. There was an uncomfortable pause.
“I’m sorry. You see, when the bus hit you, you flew in the air and landed on your front. The bus didn’t stop in time and, well, it sort of…. squashed your legs.”
“What do you mean?” I said. I noticed the doctor was now sweating slightly.
“Well, the bus ran over your legs,” he explained, nonplussed as to how it could get any simpler than that.
“Oh.” I said. There was another highly uncomfortable pause. Then, “Can you fix them?” I asked. The doctor’s face fell.
“No.” he said. Neither of us said anything for a few minutes, and then a nurse walked in and gave me some injections. The doctor and the nurse left together, so I was alone. I lay still, staring at the wall. In my mind, a list of all the things I couldn’t do ran through my mind; walking, running, playing soccer, going up stairs, kicking Walker, and being able to go anywhere that wasn’t flat. And I couldn’t shake the list out of my head, no matter how much I tried, even if I tried the hardest I could. Slowly, the sedative wore off enough for me to move my head. I looked down to see a white cloth covering my hips. I couldn’t feel pain, but I still felt emptiness in my head, like it was trying to send signals to shrug off the blanket. After a while, I thought I could feel my toes, but that was probably just my brain’s way of coping with it. So I lay my head back, closed my eyes and felt my imaginary toes, until they almost became real. Then the doctor walked in to check on my legs, and the feeling faded.

Days passed. People came to see me, including my father. He didn’t seem to know what to say, so he ran off a practiced excuse to why my mum couldn’t come.
“I’m sorry your mother couldn’t come, Sebastian. She’s in the middle of an important project she can’t leave, and she’s already tied up with work, but she sends her love,» he had said. Those words hurt me more than the loss of my legs. My mother cared more for her project than she did for me. I knew I loved her, but sometimes I doubted that she loved me back, despite what my father said. He sat by my bed for a bit, squeezing my hand, and then he left.
I was lying down in my bed, waiting until I could feel my toes, when I heard someone walk in. My parents had paid for a private ward in the best hospital in the country.
“He’s in here?” I heard a voice say.
“Yes.” I recognized that one. That was the doctor I had seen when I woke up. He had later introduced himself as Dr. Brown.
“Can you tell me anything about him?”
“Well, often when I come in to see him, his eyes are closed and his heads back,” said Brown. I heard a laugh.
“Hah! Is he smiling?” said the mystery man.
“Yes, but only faintly, like he’s remembering a happy memory,” I heard the Doctor say.
“That, he is.” I heard the door open and I hurriedly lay back with my eyes closed. I counted five steps, and then opened them. I saw an old man in a blue jumper and jeans. His hair was white, and his skin was starting to wrinkle, but his eyes still seemed young and playful.
“Don’t give me an injection.” I told him. He laughed a low warm laugh.
“Don’t worry, I won’t. I’m Dr. Allen,” He said. “I’m a counsellor.”
“Oh dear,” I said patronizingly, and closed my eyes again. All I wanted was to feel my legs again.
“You’re imagining your legs are there, right? You can feel them, can’t you?” said Dr. Allen. I opened one eye.
“What if I am?” I asked, suspiciously. The stranger seemed friendly enough, but not enough for me to stop being rude. My temper had gradually gotten worse since I was stuck in bed, and whenever I slept, all I thought of was running, my mother and my friends. So far, not one of them had come to visit me. At first, I had put it down to homework and lack of time, but the holidays rolled in, and I hadn’t seen one of them.
“That’s phantom pains. Pain isn’t in the area that’s hurt; it’s in your head. Your brain is telling you that you don’t have legs and you need to do something about it,” he said.
“No, really? As if I didn’t notice I COULN’T WALK!” I screamed the last few words at him, suddenly furious. Allen seemed unaffected, but there was a strange look in his eyes. Instead, he held up his right hand. I saw nothing wrong with it.
“How many fingers?” he said.
“Five!” I told him, sulking.
“Look closely,” Allen waved his hand at me. This time, a counted each finger. I only counted four.
“I lost my index finger when I was twenty, in an accident with a pair of scissors. It’s been forty years, but when I close my eyes, my finger comes back. I can feel it again; I can feel that it hurts. You can’t really, because you’re under painkillers, but once you stop, your legs will hurt, even if they are being scraped of the road.”
“I think my legs are a bit more useful than one finger.” I told him. His eyes widened, and then started to water. His face looked so sad, even my bad mood lifted for a few seconds. “Sorry.”
“Do you know what I was before I was a counsellor? I was a professional pianist. I could play the guitar, saxophone, and trumpet, but my speciality was piano.” he flexed his fingers, and started to drum out a song on his leg, but the rhythm seemed wrong. “When I lost my finger, I couldn’t bare it. I tried playing with only nine digits, but I couldn’t. Every night, I would look at my piano, maybe play a little tune with my left hand, but I knew I could never play again,” he gestured to my legs. “What do you do best, Sebastian?” I was about to answer, then I frowned. What did I do best? The image of Walker cowering under my foot drifted to the front of my mind, and then I pushed it back, ashamed. My brain had just told me I’m best at beating up some sorry kid.
“I make things. Woodwork,” I said. He nodded. It was true enough. “You’re lucky it wasn’t your hands that got damaged. For me, my greatest love was music, and my injury took that away. I suffered for years, not being able to play music, and to hear the wonderful sounds of clapping hands. I missed the stage so much! You think your legs are more important than one finger? Think of it a different way: You’ve lost a useful tool. You can still move, but it will just be more difficult. Me, I lost my love, my passion, the thing I lived for. No, Sebastian, your legs are not as important as my finger. Not even close.”
“Sorry.” I repeated, feeling guilty for brining on this emotional outburst.
“Never mind.” There was another silence.
“Have your parents visited you?”
“My dad.” I said, shortly.
“You mother?” the counsellor.
“She’s in America.” I said, and then looked the other way. I didn’t want to talk about it.
“Why?” Allen frowned.
“According to my dad, she in the middle of a project she can’t leave.”
“And according to you?” he said. I looked down. “You don’t think she loves you, do you?” I still said nothing. “Sebastian?” Could this guy read minds?
I shook my head. He put his face in his hands and groaned.
“This is how parents screw up my job,” he looked up. “Your friends?” I shook my head again. “Have you got anybody who loves you?!?” he cried, frustrated. I snorted. Allen made a noise like an elephant. “Oh, dear…” he muttered. Then he did something crazy; he stood up and gave me a hug.
I knew it was just a kind gesture, something any normal person would do if they saw me like this, but the moment his arms folded around me, I felt a new feeling. I realized that ever since my parents had left, my emotions had been fading. Every day, I got a bit closer to being a psychopath, my heart hardened with every kick I delivered to Walker. My confidence had dimmed to the point where I could torment a child until he was just a weak shadow of what he was and not feel a thing, to the point where I had stopped loving my parents. I wondered if Scorne, Josh and Keith felt like this all the time. Dr. Allen’s hug had melted my heart, and suddenly, I felt… soft. I started to cry.
Dr. Allen stepped back and looked me in the eye.
“I guess I have a new job now,” he said, and then walked out of the ward, closing the door behind him. I wondered what that meant, but I was too tired to care. I lay back down, closed my eyes and fell asleep. My conversation with Dr. Allen had only been for about ten minutes, but somehow it had made me wearier than anything else I had ever done. I dreamt.

I was lying on the floor, blood streaming down my face. I stared up into a bright light, until a face obscured it from view. The face of my friend, Scorne. But he didn’t look like a friend… He looked like an enemy, like somebody who hated me, who I was terrified of.
“Scorne…” I gasped, but he stepped on my face. When the shoe was removed, I saw all my gang, all laughing at me. I backed away from them, but they started to throw stones at me. Suddenly, I was in the gang, looking down at Walker, who we were beating up, but it wasn’t Walkers face. It was mine.
I woke up feeling sick, the laughter of my gang echoing in my ears. I scrunched my eyes shut for a bit, then sleep took me again.

Weeks passed, and at last, I could go back to school. The holidays and come and gone since I was in hospital, and I could come back on the first day of the new term.
I had been given a wheelchair and taken out through the lobby. I was surrounded by various people I had become friends with in that ward. There was Dr. Brown, Dr. Allen, my father and the two nurses who gave me injections and occasionally came in to chat. I had hardly seen my father at all in the time I had been in hospital, and I had the feeling he and my mother had both wanted to stay in the U.S, had and argument and my dad lost. Whenever I did see him, if I went for a ride around the hospital, he was always at a coffee table, reading and signing documents and typing on his laptop. When I told Dr. Allen about this, he just sighed and told me that was most probably true. He then went on a spiel about how some parents couldn’t care less about their kids, which ended up in a rage that led him storming out the door in a huff.
As soon as I got out, I tried to stand up, but all that happened was I almost fell down. Dr. Brown and a nurse, Mrs. Rye, grabbed me under my arms and lifted me back up.
“I guess you’re going tae keep doing that, aye?” Said Rye. She had a Scottish accent.
“Yep.” I nodded.
“Then we’d be strappin’ ye in ‘til ye get used tae it,” she withdrew a kind of seat belt and clipped it on.
We got to the car and my dad opened it. Unfortunately, he’d taken the cheapest car, which was a Nissan Micra. The team of people around me looked at him. He looked surprised, and then his face slowly melted into an expression of disbelief as he made the connection. Everyone was silent for a few minutes, the medical staff trying their hardest to embarrass my father as much as they could. I started to laugh, and then remembered he was my dad, who I should side with. I was about to wheel over to him, and then I stopped and thought.
Who’s your real family? This loser who didn’t even want to come to see you, or these people, who’ve looked after you in your crisis far more than your biological father? Family’s more than just genetics. It’s the bond between the mother, father and child, the emotions that connect them. I’ve got more of a bond with Dr. Allen, Dr. Brown, Rye and Johnson than my dad. Hah! He hardly saw me at all when I was in the hospital. No, you can’t be a father if you don’t know your son. Not a real father.
I slowly lifted my hands of the grip and looked at him patronizingly.
“Did you even know what was wrong with Seb?” said a voice. I twisted in my chair to see Allen, wearing a contemptuous face. My dad looked helpless. Then I realized what Dr. Allen meant. “I guess I have a new job now.” He’d decided to take over as my father. He grabbed the handles on the back of my chair and wheeled me over to his own car, a big four-wheel drive. When we drove back to my school, my dad followed us half way, and then he turned of a side road.
“That’s the way to Heathrow,” said Dr. Allen. “He just wants to get back.”
When we got there, there were kids running around the school, doing various jobs. Suddenly, I felt nervous. All the time I was in hospital, not one of my friends had come to see me. As Dr. Allen helped me out my seat, I spotted Scorne.
“Hey, Scorne!” I shouted at him. He turned to look at me and I got a shock. He leered at me, gave me the finger, and continued. Dr. Allen hadn’t noticed, but I got a feeling that if he had, he would have gone and punched Scorne right then. He was passionate about prejudice, especially with disabled people. He’d told me that, after he’d lost his finger, people kept telling him to pull their finger. One day, he’d got so angry at one person, he thumped him and broke his nose, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he did the same to Scorne, so I kept silent. If Dr. Allen could beat up a kid when he was in university, he could probably do it when he was fifty
Dr. Allen wheeled me up to the boarding house, so I could get some sleep, but when we got there, Josh was waiting.
“Sebastian,” he said grimly.
“Hi, Josh.” I nodded at him. Allen wheeled me up to the door, and Josh stepped on the brake. The chair stopped suddenly and I was jolted forward, the seatbelt winding me.
“Oi!” I said, gasping.
“My bad,” said Josh, but he was grinning, his eyes bright. I was frightened; this was the look I’d seen in his eyes just before he punched up Walker. Dr. Allen twisted the handbrake, trying his hardest not to hurt Josh, and went to open the door. Immediately, Josh ran over and pulled the brake on the back of the chair. I felt myself rolling backwards, and I shouted for the counsellor. He spun around, and charged after me. The boarding house was at the top of a hill, and a path went down through the car park, to the school. I couldn’t use the pedal because I had no legs, and it was going to fast for the lever by the armrest to slow it down. I quickly rammed my hands in some rubber gloves and grabbed the wheels just before the end of the hill. All it did at first was rip the rubber of my gloves, then the chair went of the path and hit a rock. The cursed thing jumped up in the air and came down on its side, still sliding down. I stopped when the ground evened out before the car park.
Five minutes later, Dr. Allen turned up, holding Josh by his hair. His nose was bleeding badly, and his eye was bruised. The doctor whistled to a group of kids who had wandered over to see what was happening.
“Take this git to the nurse!” he shouted, and threw Josh towards them, then crouched down.
“Did you break his nose?” I asked him, smiling. I touched my face and saw my own nose was bleeding.
“My punch isn’t as good as it was, but believe me, I tried,” he chuckled, and then unstrapped me. I lay on the floor as he righted the wheelchair and put me on it. I strapped myself in, and then wheeled around a bit, to check it was still working. My gloves were burnt from the friction, and there was a hole in them. I threw them off, and then spotted my reflection in a car window. At first, I thought it was Dr. Allen, and then I realized it was me. Whereas before, my eyes had been cold and hard. My face was set in a frown and I just seemed… heartless. Now, I looked like Dr. Allen. My eyes, which had seemed grey before, were now a light green. My face had softened and I seemed warmer. Before, there were lines along my forehead and the corners of my mouth, making me look scarily blank. Now, my face was smooth, apart from laughter lines around my eyes from where I had spent hours chatting to the hospital staff. I noticed it was more mobile, like I wasn’t afraid to show my feelings.
“Sebastian?” said a small voice. I wheeled around and saw Dr. Allen with his arms around Walker.
“Dr. Allen? Walker?” I said, confused.
“My nephew,” said Dr. Allen. “My brother’s kid,” Walker stepped forward. Before, I had only seen a look of fear on his face, I saw him as a small, scared, crying kid. Now, he seemed confident, and taller. He was even smiling slightly. Before the accident, his hair was grey, his face was red and he was always sweating. Now he seemed blond, sure of himself and he strode towards me. Before I had loathed him, now I sort of… admired him.
“You look different,” he said. “Like Uncle.”
“That’s me,” commented Dr. Allen, smiling.
“I’ve changed,” I told him. He looked like Allen also. I got the same sense of warmness from Walker than I did from the counsellor. “And so have you.”
“I know. Grandpa’s taught me what he knows about people,” Said Walker, like he was proud. “What will you do now?” he asked me.
“What do you mean?” I questioned, still startled by Walkers apparent change.
“All your old friends don’t like you now. Now, you’re like me,” he said.
“I guess.” I shrugged, glancing at Dr. Allen. Before, I would’ve been furious with him for even suggesting it.
“Want to come with us?” he asked. I wondered what he meant, then realized. He wanted me to come sit with his and his fellow nerds. I started to tell him to do something rude to his friends, and then remembered; they had changed. I glanced over to the corner, where they sat. They seemed different now, like they were older, even older than me and my old friends.
“Ok.” I said. He flashed me a smile, and strolled back to his group. I wheeled overt to Dr. Allen.
“Well done,” he said. “You have changed.”
“I know. What you taught Walker…” I started.
“His name is Sam,” interrupted Allen.
“Yeah… well, you taught me that too, didn’t you?”
“That, I did,” he agreed. Although his mouth was straight, his eyes were laughing. Then he turned my chair around to face Walker and pushed it slightly. I kept going, towards my new friends, and my better life.