She was pretty much back to normal a week ago now but noooo… she had to go to ALL her sessions. Doesn’t matter that it was a waste of her time in a room that smelt like sweat, piss and vinegar. Not to mention a few other bodily byproducts from time to time. At least this was her last day having to deal with these quacks. To be fair though, she’d recovered a lot faster than she had last time and they’d just booked as much time as it had taken before. And last time she'd recovered faster than the time before that.
What surprised her though was Bon-bon. She’d been here for the past four days now and she seemed… normal. Most, in fact all, the patients who had come here before her were here with spinal or leg injuries and practically had to learn to walk all over again. Bon-bon though, she could walk, even if it was slowly she could certainly walk. She’d tripped over at one point, lay there for like ten seconds, then got right back up without any help. What she was here for were her arms. Well, her legs too but primarily her arms.
Something, presumably a stroke, had caused nerve damage making her lose most of her fine motor function. Walking, turning her head, point her arms she could do, but simple movements like placing her foot in an exact spot, or moving individual fingers was difficult for her. But the fact that she could do them at all made Lyra dismiss it as nothing more than a minor ailment. She was wasting this limited space for someone who needed it more than her. As much as she disliked McJerkhole, she could at least see that he needed this treatment.
Bon-bon was off in the other side of the gym, sitting at a table, holding a giant, and I mean GIANT pen, scribbling away on some paper. They hadn’t really talked much past that first day. The most Lyra had said to her was ‘Hey, could you help me get this thing off?’ talking about undoing a clip on the back of her prosthetic arm. Other than that she’d heard a few laughs from from Bon-bon and Bon-bon had probably heard a few arguments from Lyra with her doctor about still being here.
By this point in the day Lyra was just chilling, trying to burn the remainder of the time sitting on a large exercise ball. She had taken her fake arm off, it usually just annoyed her while doing this pointless exercise. Even a few weeks back when they weren’t pointless. The thing itched, it chafed, it did everything shy of work. “Just another ten minutes…” she muttered to herself as she looked at the clock and seeing it was almost five. A mandatory two hours here everyday was totally killing her mood. But once she was out of here today she knew she’d be over the moon.
A small clatter followed by “Damn it!” shouted suddenly interrupted her thoughts. It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence in this place. But to hear it coming from Bon-bon over at what Lyra had been mockingly calling the ‘kiddy’s colouring table’ certainly was. It was the closest thing to profanity that Lyra had heard from the girl in couple of days. “Damn it…” she said aloud again but nowhere near as loud as before.
Leaning down from her chair, Bon-bon’s hand went for the giant pen she’d been drawing with. Lyra had looked in her direction a few times but didn’t quite know what the girl had been drawing. Whatever it was it didn’t look too bad. Better than anything she could draw, that’s for sure. As Bon-bon’s hand reached the pen, she grabbed it. Or at least tried too. Her fingers around it, she lifted, only to have it slip out like some crappy prize grabbing machine. She tried twice more but failed both times before her doctor eventually just picked it up for her.
Back up facing the table, her therapist placed it in her hands. “I’m afraid we only have a couple of minutes left. You’ve made great progress today and I’m sure we’ll get even further tomorrow. Why don’t you keep going and I’ll go prepare your exercise for tonight. Okay?” he told her. “It’ll be okay.”
“Okay.” she said back to him but uncharacteristically looking away from him as she spoke. Before he left though, she turned to look at the doctor “Thank you for all the help.” she said with what anyone would call a forced smile. The doctor stayed silent, only nodding in acknowledgement. Anyone could tell she hadn’t meant it but bless her heart for trying. Before he went off, Bon-bon returned to the paper in front of her and continued to draw.
Figuring she’d kill some of the time she had left in this dump, Lyra walked over to Bon-bon’s table, deciding to take a look at whatever it was she’d been drawing for the last hour. She wasn’t drawing at the time when Lyra approached though. Yep, definitely better than anything Lyra could dr- she was crying? A quiet gasp every couple of seconds, small twitches of her shoulders and the biggest give away, the tears running down her face.
Instant uncertainty filled Lyra’s mind but she’d come over here already, she couldn’t just leave after walking right up next to her. “He-hey. Nice drawing, what’s it meant to be?” she asked sheepishly, forcing a smile of her own.
“I’m not drawing anything. It’s… it’s meant to be my name!” she said before her light sobbing turned to all out bawling. She dropped the pen and her head onto her the table and covered her face with her hands.
“So… that’s NOT a pony then?” Lyra joked. It was at that moment she realised that Bon-bon needed this place more than she’d originally thought.
“I can’t do this… I can’t-I can’t even write my own name… I’m pathetic…” she cried.
“Hey, hey…” Lyra said, dropping down to her level and throwing her good arm over Bon-bon’s shoulder. She didn’t know what she was doing, she just knew that she couldn’t exactly walk away now after walking right up to her and saying all of that. Lyra may not’ve been the most sociable person here but she doubted anyone else could do any better. “You’re not pathetic. I mean, you’re here right? This place is for pathetic people to get better. Wait, that came out wrong.” or do any worse...
“I know, I just, I just…” was all Bon-bon managed to say back. Lyra managed much more with her actions than she did with her words though as bon-bon slowly began to raise herself off the table with her right arm while her other hand came away from her face and landed on top of Lyra’s hand on her shoulder.
“Hey, don’t worry about it.” Lyra added. Once Bon-bon was fully upright again she removed her hand. Bon-bon's left hand remained on her shoulder though as she looked to her left where Lyra had been only to find her no longer there. Bon-bon’s hand fell off of her shoulder as Lyra came from her right and knelt down beside her. “Let me give you a hand, kay?”
“Thank you… but my physical therapist's been helping me all day… and… well…” she said as she looked away from the girl kneeling down beside her and back towards where she’d ‘written’ her name.
“Trust me.” Lyra said as she grabbed the over-sized pen and handed it to Bon-bon. “Those bulk billing robots have so many hang-ups it’s unbelievable.” she finished as by placing her hand on the back of Bon-bon's with the pen in grasp.
“Wh-what do you mean?”
“I mean you’re under eighteen for starters. And you’re a girl. There’s like a jajillion regulations and red tape about EVERYTHING you would not believe. I doubt they’d even be allowed to touch your hand like this.”
“Really?” Bon-bon asked as she finally stopped crying.
“Uhhh, totally…” Lyra groaned. “I asked to get a woman doc once hoping she’d have more balls about it than the men and would actually touch my thighs where I needed them to a couple years back and my old doc got thrown under a bus with all the board meetings. It’s like I accused him of some bad stuff or something. It was ridiculous.”
“He didn’t did he?” Bon-bon asked.
“Na, he’s cool. Turns out the woman had just as many strings attached too and couldn’t touch more and a few fingers above my knee. But let’s see what you’ve got. What’s it? B-O-N-B-O-N right? Go ahead, I’ll help guide your hand.”
“Well, there’s a dash in there as well, but alright.” and with that Lyra felt Bon-bon's hand twitch underneath hers. She thought for a moment she’d put too much weight on it. But before Lyra could lift her own hand some, Bon-bon’s began to move. It was simply taking her that much effort to control her own limb. Already on the paper in a reasonably clear spot, she pressed the tip of the pen down and began to draw the first downwards line of the B. It ended up going down and sideways as if it was instead the first stroke of and X nearly the length of their hands.
Not giving up from there though, Bon-bon attempted the first loop. It started off well, though blocky as she draw straight out sideways. She then began to drift down from there. She was about to stop and give up when Lyra began to put a small bit of pressure on her hand. Not moving it for her, but just stopping it from moving in the wrong direction. A curve started to form and she almost made it connect back to the first line. And it did… but it ended up going a good couple of centimeters beyond it still.
From there, she managed to go in the right direction upwards with minimal help from Lyra’s hand on her own. She drew upwards and over but less than she had intended before curving back towards the top of the first line. She stopped early this time, not wanting to go too far past the line again but instead just left the top loop unconnected. It was a B, but only just with the second circle being razor thin.
“Nnnot bad.” Lyra said, lying of course. But whatever. “Let’s try do a bit better with the next. I mean, how hard’s an O right?” with that Lyra lightly gripped Bon-bon’s hand with her thumb and pulled it a couple of centimetres to the right. Releasing her hand in place with the pen touching down right where the top of where the O would start, Bon-bon began to write. Like Lyra had said, an O was far easier and it was all fine until the end when she’d reconnected the line too low, leading it half down the other side of the circle and through it slightly.
Moving once again, the N turned out pretty good. Though it was meant to be lower case it came out as upper and looking more like a Z turned sideways and compressed. Next was the dash, a simple straight line. It came out fine, though it too was angled upwards ever so slightly. The second lowercase B was horrible. Still recognisable as a B if you knew it was one but otherwise it looked more like a P. The next O was all but flawless except for a tiny squiggle where she’d came too close to the P… I mean B, and had over compensated before recompensating then having to compensate again. Finally came the last letter N. Not moving far enough down on the first line, it ended up looking like the number 7 with a curved top and a little line at it’s start. All in all, it looked awful.
As Lyra removed her hand from Bon-bon’s, the sitting girl was crying. She’d failed. Lyra thought she could help but despite her best effort she only ended up making it worse. Kneeling beside Bon-bon’s seat, Lyra turned to face the girl. She’d tried… she really had. “I’m sorr-” she was interrupted by Bon-bon.
“I did it…” she said softly.
“I’m sorry?” Lyra raised an eyebrow and said again but with completely different meaning, wanting Bon-bon to repeat what she’d just said. There was no way she’d heard what she thought she’d heard. Without warning Bon-bon turned to her and threw her arms out.
At first Lyra thought she was about to be hit by Bon-bon. But no, she was being hugged. But, why? “Thank you… thank you so much.”
“Sure… don’t mention it.” Lyra replied, not quite knowing what to say to it. She half-heartedly put her own arm up around the girl and returned the hug about as tight as Bon-bon was doing to her, which wasn’t very. Thank her? What had she done to be thanked?
“How can’t I mention it? Thank you so much! I never… I thought I’d never be able to write my name again. Thank you. Thank you!” she continued to cry and hug to the point where Lyra was probably holding more of Bon-bon’s weight than the chair. And yet she still had no idea what was going on. Her face almost looked aghast and afraid more than confused as she turned and stared at the sheet of paper still on the table.
It was crappy, it was barely legible, she was ashamed that she was involved in writing... no, drawing that scribble. And yet something so small, so… so nothing! meant everything to the girl Lyra held in her arm.