She had to use her hands to lift her feet over the door. Then she gripped each side of the doorframe and pulled herself out.
I didnât help her unless she was really tired. It only made her angry.
I turned off the engine and grabbed Willaâs coffee cup. It was still half-full. I met her around the back of the car.
âI meant your new legs,â I said.
âI know what you meant.â
âSo, are you?â
âNervous?â
âNervous, yeah.â
âNo, Louis, Iâm not nervous about my new legs.â
âSo youâre nervous about something else?â
Willa stopped walking. She turned her face up to the sky and closed her eyes behind her sunglasses.
âWhy are you being so nosy?â she asked.
âIâm just trying to help.â
âI donât know. I guess Iâm tired. I donât think I got enough sleep.â
In the waiting room, the receptionist asked her to fill out a new emergency contact form.
âI do one of these every time Iâm here,â Willa argued. âLiterally nothing has changed. Itâs still my brother. Somehow, in eighteen years, Iâve managed to not make any better friends.â
âItâs policy, love,â the receptionist said. She knew Willa. She winked at me. âSix months between visits, you gotta fill out a new form.â
âHow come you donât have iPads yet? I could do all this on an iPad. Itâs greener,â Willa complained.
âOkay, love, Iâll be sure to give the doctors your feedback:
Willa Johar is tired of paper forms
. Iâve made a note of it here on my space pad.â
âItâs not a space pad,â Willa mumbled, taking the clipboard the receptionist was wagging at her. âItâs an iPad.â She grabbed a pen from a black plastic holder and sat down next to me.
âHey, cranky,â I said.
âThis is asinine,â she retorted. âYour phone number hasnât changed. Our address hasnât changed. This is a waste of paper.â
Definitely nervous. I watched Willa fill out the form, noting her severely shaking hands and shitty penmanship. At the bottom of the paper, she wrote,
Go green
. Then a nurse came and called her name and she dumped the clipboard on my lap. I set it on the chair next to me.
I watched her disappear behind the waiting room doors, and I wondered what theyâd do with her old legs. I couldnât remember what had happened to the ones before these. Maybe they donated them to people who couldnât afford their own?
I pulled out my phone and opened up the TILTgroup app, which was terribly designed and had zero functionality besides checking times for different support groups and reading your messages (if you were lucky, and it didnât make your phone crash).
I had a message from Nib, a quick one about taking a road trip to find Wallace Green.
I pressed Reply.
Willa had asked me once why I liked talking to someone Iâd never met. At first I hadnât known what to say, but it felt like I knew enough about Nib. She told me about her family. I told her all my secrets.
And it was safe too. I couldnât find her. She couldnât find me. She was just a screen name.
NibâIâm sitting in the waiting room of the doctorâs office, waiting for my sister to get her new legs. She got fitted a few months ago, but they take a long time to make. Theyâre state of the art, supposedly, and theyâre setting us back an absurd amount of money. But my parentsâ store is doing really well, I guess. They were featured on that reality show about making clothes? I donât know. Iwasnât allowed to be in the episode because I âdidnât promote the brand.â Thatâs what my mom said. Thatâs kind of harsh, but I also didnât really want to be on TV anyway. I left my coffee on the roof of my car and then drove away. That is my tragedy for the day. Do you ever
Suzanne Weyn
Steven Savile
Sherryl Woods
Hallie Swanson
Patrice Michelle
Craig Johnson
Aneesa Price
Mary Marks
Kate McMullan
Yenthu Wentz