Capítulo 1

Jake was not having a very good day. Well, he was not having that much of a week either, or month, or year, or life really.

He sighed. The asphalt-lined streets, the pouring rain and the waves of hurried crowds moving along the smog-filled streets were hard enough to navigate when one could walk but it was a straight-up nightmare to his wheelchair-bound ass.

Hard raindrops were hammering on his head and falling into his eyes. His hands were numb from gripping his wheels, trying his best not to slip down the busy, unforgiving road. He hated this city. He really did. It was cold and gloomy. A handbag slammed into his face, the metal buckle dangling from it catching the back of his head. The person to whom it belonged kept walking, seemingly not noticing that they’d violently hit him in the head. He shook it off, his soaked hair sticking to his temples. What a way to celebrate his last day of physical therapy.

He had been transferred to the VA hospital in this particular city because they were the most qualified to treat him, or so he’d been told. He didn’t quite believe that. Understaffed and full of disfigured and mangled veterans, it seemed more like a place where vets were sent to be forgotten. He had undergone three surgeries in four months, and been bedridden for another two, then had to suffer through painstaking and inefficient physical rehabilitation for another three and a half months. Within this time, he had had to find his own place to rent because, quite frankly, the hospital walls were driving him insane. They were closing in on him, the indifferent staff staring down without a care in the world, the beeping of the machines, the wailing of people in pain in the other rooms, the memory of his own screams in the middle of the cold, unwavering night. And the nightmares.

he gladly completed the hour-long commute in his newly acquired wheelchair than stay in that hospital for a second longer.

Truth be told, he would have needed so much more than just the couple of months of rehabilitation he was given at the hospital. But his pension cheque was never going to have enough zeros on it to cover the full and proper treatment he needed. And his insurance sure as hell was not going to pay for it. He huffed. what the hell was the point of being insured at all then…

He painstakingly halted to a stop at a crossing. A pair of legs slammed into his right wheel and he heard muffled swearing. He lifted his eyes to see nothing but a respiratory mask towering above him. Huh, someone was worried about the smog. The doctors had adamantly tried to convince him to purchase one but, a) they were expensive, and b) he wasn’t particularly interested in living. He hadn’t really been for a while now.

The light changed and the sea of people crossed the road, taking Jake with them. several crossing, two bag hits to his head and one run-over pair of green boots later, he had finally made it to one of the enormous concrete towers in which his apartment was.

Well, the apartment was too big a word. It was more of a room, or rather, an elongated corridor with a small kitchenette and bathroom on one end and a single bed lined against the longest wall, leaving barely enough space for his chair to go through.

he was exhausted. More than he had been in a while. He transferred to his bed. It was barely six P.M. but it didn’t matter, if he slept now, it would spare him a dinner. And he wouldn’t spiral in his thoughts and be forced to drown them out.

He lay down flat on his bed. His lower back was aching. He could feel the exact outline of the jagged scar that sat right in the small of his back, smack dab in the middle. All feelings stopped after that. Or so one would think. Phantom pain, the doctors had called it. For something that was a ghost, it sure hurt like hell.

He sighed and picked a box off the shelf above his bed. He swallowed two pills from it. That oughta knock him out long enough for him to sleep. And it did. The painkillers worked their magic and he was out cold soon enough.