Chapter 7
seven
Jeremy
I’m going home today.
It took all week to convince my parents and sisters that they didn’t need to come down here to drive me home.
They lost over three weeks of their lives, spending every moment with me in the hospital. I didn’t need them to take more time out of their day to drive me from point A to point B.
“Hey, loser, you ready to go?” Becca raises her eyebrows, leaning against the door frame. “I’ve got a whole playlist made for this special occasion.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“So, I’ve been told.”
“Fuck,” Fletcher groans, resting his hands against his knees. “I thought I told you to wait for me at the front entrance while I waited to park?”
“Where’s the fun in that? I thought Jere would want to get the hell out of this room as quickly as possible, I mean, he’s only been in here for over a month.”
“I’ve only been awake, though, for a few weeks, so you know, it doesn’t feel that long.”
“You’re such a liar.” Becca grins.
She’s not wrong. I’ve been itching to get out of this hellhole since the moment I woke up.
“Alright,” Fletcher claps his hands together, “you ready?”
“More than you know.”
I adjust my body on the hospital bed to prepare myself to get into my wheelchair. I’ve been working on it a lot in PT, and it’s almost become second nature at this point. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever had upper-body strength like this.
Now if I could get the strength back in my legs… or at least the feeling.
“Look at you.” Becca grins. “Not that long ago, you didn’t even want to get into that chair, and now you’re a pro.”
“Kind of don’t have a choice, right?”
“So, when do you start with your new PT?” Fletcher grabs my bags off the floor and throws them over his shoulder.
“Monday. My parents wanted to pay someone to come to the house, but I felt more comfortable going to a place and working with people I already knew.”
I follow Becca and Fletcher out of my room and down the hall.
It feels surreal leaving. When I first woke up, they had no idea how long I’d be here.
There were so many things I needed to work on before they would even consider releasing me.
I’m leaving a lot earlier than they expected me to, but when you’re as stubborn as I am, that’s to be expected.
“Everyone’s so excited to see you. They all wanted to come pick you up, but we thought a room full of people might be a bit overwhelming while you’re preparing to leave.”
“And since it made the most sense to use my car,” Becca points at her chest, “I got dibs on coming to pick you up.”
“Even though she made me drive her car to get you.”
Becca is the one positive thing to come out of the past year. Fletcher met Becca through one of our friends, Marcus, at a party at the beginning of the last school year.
Marcus needed a wingman, and he thought Fletcher would be the perfect fit for Becca, but it never went anywhere.
Which, honestly, was a good thing for a few reasons. For starters, Fletcher dated another one of our best friends, Tate, for a while, which may have never happened if he had dated Becca.
And if he dated Becca, she might still not be around. She keeps the two of us quite grounded, which many hockey players need.
Becca’s the kind of friend you meet and know they’ll be around for a lifetime.
“Speaking of which, I need you to drop me off at the dorms on your way home. You can drop my car off later, but I have to,” her eyes dart to me, then back to Fletcher, “I have somewhere to be.”
“You realize I know your training schedule, Becks. You complained about it for the last three weeks of school.”
“The only positive about being stuck on campus for the summer to train is—”
“Coffee.” I finish.
“Exactly.”
Fletcher, Becca, and I started going to a coffee shop near campus early on in our friendship, and it quickly became a tradition.
Becca was originally supposed to go home for the summer and come back in mid-July to officially start new skills training with her team, but for a few reasons, she stayed here.
Even though she’s denied it, I think I was part of that decision. Not that Fletcher didn’t have the guys, I mean, they were all going through the same emotions after my accident, but she knew he didn’t have Tate.
She knew he needed her.
“Speaking of, I made Fletcher stop on the way here, so some is waiting for you in the car.”
By the time we get to the car, I realize this is something I haven’t had to do yet. Moving from my hospital bed into my wheelchair is one thing… and it’s something I’ve been working on for weeks.
“You okay?” Fletcher pops open the passenger door and rests against it.
“Yeah, of course. Just nervous about heading home.”
It’s not a total lie. I don’t know how I’m going to navigate our house now that I’m in this chair. The hallway to my room is quite narrow and—
“Jere.”
“Sorry. Just thinking.”
“It’s going to be great.” Becca bends down. “Promise. Now let’s get in the car, your coffee is getting cold.”
She winks, getting into the back seat.
I adjust my chair next to the car, locking the wheels, and then debate the best way to do this.
I appreciate them picking me up in Becca’s car, and now that I’m next to it, I fully understand why they used her car.
It’s the perfect height. If he had driven over here in his car, it would’ve been way too high to even try.
Fletcher doesn’t even try to help me in the car. He knows I wouldn’t want him to.
I take a deep breath and lift my leg closest to the car into the car, adjusting my body a bit more, and lifting my next leg in. I grab onto the top of the car and the handle and pull myself the rest of the way in.
All the nerves flow out of my body once I realize I’ve done it. I’m in the car, and I didn’t need any help.
I guess all of the videos I watched on social media of other people with spinal cord injuries really paid off.
“I’ll put your chair in the back.” Fletcher smiles and pats my back, allowing me to reach out and shut the door as he rounds the car to the trunk.
Fletcher jumps into the driver’s seat, starts the car, and backs out of the space.
We don’t talk on the drive back to our place. We soak in the silence… the peace.
It feels nice. It feels normal.
And with everything that’s happened, I could use a bit of normal.
Idon’t know why I felt like the house would look different. It looks exactly like I remember it looking when I left to train over a month ago.
“You ready?” Fletcher parks on the street and turns toward me.
I don’t know what’s waiting on the other side for me, or who. Part of me wants this not to be a big deal, but another part of me can’t wait to see everyone I love outside of that horrible hospital room.
“Yeah.”
Fletcher gets out of the car and grabs my chair from the back, locking the wheels as he sets it up next to the car. Then it hits me: I watched a ton of videos on how to get in the car. Not once did I look up how to get out.
I just have to do exactly what I did to get in, but in reverse… right? That makes sense.
Or should I go legs first again?
I squeeze my hands into tight fists, my knuckles turning white, to prevent them from shaking.
This happened a few times in the hospital. My whole body got warm, my heart felt like it was about to explode out of my chest, and I got rigid and shaky.
I was told by several people it was probably a panic attack, or the stress, or both. It was something I’d never experienced before, and I’ve been in a competitive sport my entire life.
I slide closer to the edge of the seat and lift one leg at a time out and over my wheelchair, just as I did to get in the car. I pull my body up, and before I know it, I’m seated comfortably in my chair.
I know I’ll have to get Fletcher’s help to get up the stairs to our front door and get me over the door hump, but I’m happy I was able to do that by myself.
I don’t want to rely on them. I don’t want them to feel like I’m a charity case they need to take care of.
I roll toward the front door, and that’s when I see it.
“What the hell?”
I guess the house is different after all.
“How did?”
“You’ve got a lot of people who care about you, Jere.”
There’s a newly built ramp. A ramp that lets me get in and out of the front door without bothering anyone.
“You guys did this?” I feel the tears in my eyes as I look at Fletcher.
“Yeah. After we found out about the accident and that you’d be in a wheelchair, we knew we wanted to do everything we could to make the transition home easier. So, we called your dad and got to work.”
He points around the back of the house, even though we can’t see it from where we are.
“There’s a ramp in the backyard, too.”
“Thank you.”
“Of course.”
I roll up to the front door, press down on the handle, and push it open.
A wave of emotion runs over me as I see all of my friends standing in front of me, a Welcome Home banner above them, and—
The house.
I roll in and turn to look down the hall that leads to my room. The hall that I wasn’t sure if my chair would even fit down, and it’s different.
I mean, in a lot of ways, it’s the same, but the walls are wider. The hall closet is gone, which I’m assuming is where the width is from.
No one rushes toward me; they let me take it all in.
I roll down to my room, where a new, wider door has replaced my old one.
My room, in many ways, is the same, but small changes were made to make it more functional.
My bed sits at a more reasonable height.
There are things I wouldn’t have even thought needed changing that have been adjusted to better suit me.
And by the time I make it to the bathroom, I can’t even believe they all spent their time doing this for me. Not only were they always with me at the hospital, but then they spent their limited free time here, moving furniture, knocking down walls, making the house more accessible.
Not just my room and the hall to my room, but the rest of the house. Small adjustments were made in the kitchen, nothing too crazy since it was pretty open to begin with, but the island gap is a little larger, so I can wheel myself around.
“I can’t believe you guys did all of this.” It’s the first thing I say to them when I make it back in front of them. “How did you find the time? How did you get this done? How—”
“I told you, Jere, we love you. We would do anything for you. Anything to make this house more comfortable for you.” Fletcher pats my shoulder.
“And I’m glad you appreciate it, I almost broke my ribs, so—” Brinley runs a hand over her ribs, and I laugh.
“That’s what you guys were doing when you fell?” I remember Declan showing me pictures in the hospital, but I never thought it was because she was making the house more comfortable for me.
“Brin would’ve found another way to hurt her ribs, even if we weren’t doing this,” Declan begins. “You know her, she’s clumsy.”
“Okay, that’s rude,” Brinley argues. “I had a bad navigator while moving some of your new furniture out of a U-Haul, which led to me missing the ramp completely and walking right out of the truck.”
“She landed right on the step.” Ember grimaces. “I don’t know how she kept moving. I would’ve been done for the foreseeable future.”
“It was all worth it to get this all set up before you got home.” Brinley grins. “Even if I almost broke a couple of ribs.”
“Alright, Brin made an amazing dinner that I’ve been smelling for the last hour, so if you’re hungry, which I assume you are because hospital food fucking sucks,” Zeke drops a hand on my shoulder, “can we eat?”
“Absolutely.”
“Actually, not yet. We’re missing someone.” Brinley grabs Zeke’s arm as he starts to head into the kitchen.
Jaxon’s face falls. I’m sure I see a subtle roll of his eyes. He’s sure Brin’s talking about Alex. They’ve been seeing each other for a while now, but in meeting Alex, Brin slowly started to close Jax out of her life.
It’s not entirely her fault, though. As smart as Jax is, he’s not always the brightest and has always been oblivious to Brinley’s feelings. I noticed it the first time I saw them together, and we were just kids then; the way she looks at him still hasn’t changed.
I don’t know if it ever will.
When I see Brin with Alex, I can tell she loves him.
She has a sparkle in her eye again, one she had lost for a while, and I was so thankful Alex gave that back to her.
But there’s something about your first love that’s special, even if she thought those feelings were one-sided…
even if he’s always wanted her to believe the feelings were one-sided.
Jax likes to act as if it doesn’t bother him that Brinley’s moved on, but I can see it in his eyes whenever he sees the two of them together, which isn’t often. He typically has an excuse to avoid being in the same room as them.
“Did I miss it?” The front door swings open, and I spin my wheelchair around and see Tate dropping a couple of bags by the front door. “Shit, I missed it.”
Tate’s shoulders fall when she sees me a few feet in front of her.
“Tate?” My eyes widen. “What are you doing here? What about the tour?”
“We have a few days off before the next tour date, so I was able to catch the first plane out of New York and get here. There was a shit ton of traffic though, so a drive that I thought would only take thirty minutes took nearly two hours, and I wanted to be waiting here when you arrived and—” Tate freezes, then walks toward me, and wraps her arms around me. “Welcome home, Jere.”
“I can’t believe you came all the way out here just for this.” I squeeze her harder.
Tate pulls back, placing a hand on my cheek and smiling.
“I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
“How’d you keep this secret?” I look at Fletcher, and he shakes his head before hugging Tate himself.
“I didn’t know.”
“She didn’t want the secret to get out,” Avalon begins. “And you know these guys and their big mouths.”
“So, does this mean we can eat now?” Zeke whispers, and Brin pats him on the back.
“We can eat.”
Our group has grown quite a bit in the past year, and soon we’ll need a bigger table. But each person here is family.
And I wouldn’t have it any other way.