She'd have preferred the electric chair, at least that one bloody moved. She could get up a good speed on that one, maybe she could get out of it, escape their sympathetic looks. It was bad enough losing the power in your legs without their condescending looks. Idiots.

Apparently it was a "power chair", but, frankly, bollocks to that. Jokingt that she was living out a death sentence was one of her few pleasures left - that terror in their eyes, the "oh god how do we respond to that" was what she was living for right now.

Actually, that wasn't true. Her counsellor kept telling her how many things she had to live for, and she did know, deep down. She knew that she had a future, that there was therapy, that there may even be hope to wake up those nerve-endings that were currently slacking off.

But she'd been a cynic when she was walking, and she'd sure as hell be a cynic when she was...wheeling (driving?).

Maybe it was the escape attempts that meant she was in the manual chair (it hurt her hands, wheeling it, and she hadn't found the right gloves yet). Maybe it was the jokes about finding the nearest motorway. Maybe it was the proposal that they try to re-enact the scene from "The Great Escape".

They had told her it was funding. Hah. She'd seen the staff room. They had more than enough funding.

Her counsellor told her she used humour to deflect. That she hid in her cynicism. That she was afraid to feel.

Well. Now she couldn't feel - not below the waist, anyway.

Maybe that was just who she was.

Maybe it was who she'd always been.