down the street from the univercity, when suddenly the car appeared from the corner. As young man was crossing the road, it hit him, throwing few meters away. Later the doctors said that it was a pure luck that Jack survived.
– The bad luck, – he replied, concidering that his backbone was fractured in several places.
His lover half of the body was paralised and his arms were not as responsive now as before. In other words he would spend in the wheel-chair his entire life – as long as he would go on, before the succesful atempt of suicide. So it was hard to call his survival and such living a good luck. What could have been called that, however, was the fact, that a driver, responsible for Jack’s current state, died that very night, falling from the bridge and drowning with his car.
So now Jack was left alone in his flat, definetly unsuitable for his current condition, but at least it was situated on the first floor. His parents have died few years prior to this accident and now all his friends turned away from him. Jack didn’t blame them: if he was such a burden for himself, what could he say about the others?
One day Jack decided to walk (yes, in his mind he kept using this word, despite his condition) to the local park. It would require him to overcome plenty of the obstacles on the first floor of his house. Previously this was the main reason he would go no further then to his kitchen. But the feeling that he was slowly going crazy, being locked here, turned out to be a good motivator.
Finally Jack made it to the park nearby. As usual there weren’t many people, and those present paid no attention to him. The guy was more then fine with it. All in all overcoming obstacles of the porch turned out to be completely worth it: fresh air, sounds of birds and the view of green trees were absolutely pleasant to experience. Jack decided to come here more often and for now walk to one end of the park, and then to the other. He started moving, when somebody behind called him:
– Hey!
Well this was doing no honor to this place. Jack had no intention to speaking with anybody not now, and perhaps never again. But when he was called again, young man turned his wheel-chair back to explain the person, that he doesn’t want to talk with them.
The voice belonged to the woman of the same age as Jack, with long blonde hair, large green eyes and pretty smiling face. But any of it was the first thing that got Jack’s attention in her: just like him, she was sitting on the wheel-chair.
– Can’t say that I’ve seen you here before, – she said, approaching.
Jack, unknowing what to reply on this, just quetly mumbled something.
– I’m Lily, – the woman streched out her hand towards Jack, who in return shook it, telling his name. – Now say no more and let me guess, – she looked closely in his eyes. – You’ve got yourself in trouble recently, which led you here in this condition. Right now you feel miserable and disgust yourself no less then you hate and despise the world or the god, depending on your beliefs and certain that it’s mutually. And no, I can’t read minds, don’t you worry about that. It’s just all of it is written on your face.
– Oh, – said Jack. He wasn’t sure that this exchange will have continuation and so was going to stick to his original plan. But Lily stopped him, putting something in his hand:
– Wait, here. We meet every Saturday evening. Me and a couple of… crippled, as we are called, people, – it seemed that personally Lily didn’t like this word. – We speak, do stuff and so on. I rarely wrong about other people’s thoughts, and if now is not the case I think you should come. At least once.
With that said, she turned back and started moving to the exit of the park, immitating sounds of car and “signalling” to people arround. Meawhile Jack took a look on the thing Lily gave to him. It was a small white card with the day, time and the adress, not far from here. Jack looked where his new acquaintance left. Despite the same condition they seemed complete opposites. Saturday was tomorrow. Maybe Jack should go there. It wouldn’t do him any harm for sure.
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