Chapter Three – Cramps and Champagne
Pain seared up Alex’s leg like a distress flair that
vanishes into a velvet sky. It had careered from the arch of his foot, taking a
diversion around his knee, drifting like a boy-racer round a roundabout, before
heading up his thigh and hip where it revelled peevishly in his pelvis and lower
back before evaporating in a quivering wake. He gasped quietly, clutching a
trembling hand to his right thigh, rubbing it between the struts of his
KAFO’s. Well this is going to be damned attractive, he
thought bitterly, trying to keep the pain from his face, and from Sam, who sat
like some kind of goddess across the table from him.
It suddenly dawned on him that he’d not cathed for
over four and a half hours, and it was high time he got back to the apartment
which he shared with Will, before a nearly full bladder provoked spasms which
would definitely prevent him from ever getting home from the library. Slight
panic began to rise in his chest as he thought how helpless he’d be without his
chair if his legs began to spasm badly half way home. Reminding himself of the
concerned look that his older brother had given him that morning in the living
room before he’d left for the maths department, despite not even knowing Alex was
planning a hike to the library on his crutches, put Alex in an even fouler
mood, and it festered with the hovering fear that he wouldn’t make it
home. Time to leave.
He could see, even with his one blind eye and without
looking directly at her, that Sam was watching him subtly. She’d find
out about this sooner or later anyway, he sighed inwardly. Might as
well let her see now and give her the choice to back out. Two days should give
her plenty of time to come up with an inventive excuse to bail from a date with
a crip.
Getting out was painful and awkward in more ways than
one, but once he had hobbled free of the tangle of chairs, he risked a glance
back at Sam, masochistic as he had ever been, expecting to see horror or
revulsion on her face. When he saw the smile that she offered him, like he was
a life-long friend and not some crippled stranger who’d just asked her out for
coffee, his hopes rose, billowing upwards and forming themselves into a phoenix
of confidence, for a few moments at least. “See you,” he said, that new hope
suffusing his words. Please don’t trip, please don’t fall, please don’t
slip, he thought as he swung mechanically over the shiny lino floor
towards the doors, his feet dragging slightly in a way that clearly betrayed
his lack of movement.
What on earth possessed this girl to accept my
offer? he thought, full of wonder. He wasn’t about to
question it too deeply though; he was thrilled.
It was a long crutch back to the apartment on King’s
Parade. His family had owned it for generations, Cambridge academics the lot of
them, and it had passed to Will and Alex on the death of their mother six years
earlier. It overlooked the wedding-cake screen of King’s College, with the
great hulking chapel just a stone’s throw from their windows.
As Alex slid the key into the lock, his palms were
throbbing, his shoulders were burning, and his legs were really beginning to
complain. He knew he shouldn’t have been on his crutches for almost an entire
week now, and he thought crossly as he ditched his rucksack by the door that
he’d probably have to take a few days in his chair to recover. He balked at the
idea of turning up for his coffee date in the chair, but at this rate it was looking
more and more likely.
Then, as he crutched slowly across the room towards
his chair, he caught the tip of his toe on a beautiful Persian rug, and he went
sprawling, flying through the air towards a coffee table which seemed to come
careering up to meet him. Pain seared in his elbow as he collided with the
corner of the table, and he couldn’t untangle himself from his crutches in time
to break his fall properly. “Shit!” he swore as he landed on top of the
crutches like a set of pick-up sticks. The impact of the fall set his
legs spasming within their cage-like braces. He rolled himself round and
reached his strong fingers down his leg in an attempt to release the KAFO’s,
and, after the fourth or fifth try, he managed to unlock them so that he could
at least ease the tug-of-war going on between his legs and the braces. He sat
there for a good five minutes, nursing the cramping, burning muscles, willing
them to relax, until he finally felt a slight letting up in intensity. His compact,
rigid-frame chair was a foot or two out of reach from where he had fallen; it
was sleeping quietly and politely at the far end of the sofa, too far away even
to hook it with a crutch. He’d come crashing down between a heavy coffee table
and the sofa, and couldn’t manoeuvre or shuffle along the ground
to it either. If I can get onto the sofa, I can get into my
chair.
He was so acutely aware of the need to cath that he
was too hasty in arranging his legs so that he could heave his backside up onto
the sofa. Each time he got his feet together and his knees bent, his right leg
would spasm and send it slithering out in front of him.
At this rate, he couldn’t stand, he couldn’t take his
braces off, and he couldn’t get to his chair. Without being in that chair, he
would never make it to the bathroom where his small pharmacy of medicines were
arranged in a neat order in a cabinet without dislodging the contents of his
bladder everywhere. He snatched a glance at the Mondaine, Swiss station clock,
which proclaimed the time in its efficiently stylish way, sitting on a blank
buttress of wall between two groaning, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Will
should be home soon. Please God, let him come home soon, he thought
pleadingly.
By the time the frazzled-looking young man with
straw-coloured blond hair and piercing blue eyes practically fell through the
door twenty minutes later, Alex’s pain had increased, and both his legs were
still spasming riotously, the pain growing to more acidic levels as the
pressure built up in his bladder.
Will took one look at his brother’s ashen, slightly
sweat-sheened face, and dropped his laptop bag on the threshold, exclaiming,
“Alex!” darting forward. “Holy shit, what happened?”
Alex’s dark eyes looked imploringly up at him,
somewhat vague and unfocused. “Spasms,” he croaked.
“How long have you been like this?” Will asked, “Did
you take your meds?” He was frantic; he was a mathematician, not a doctor, and
seeing his little brother like this again, in this much distress, was a thing
of the past he’d thought. Alex mutely shook his head. “Why the hell not?” Will
snapped, looking down at his brother’s jittering legs.
“I… I tripped,” he said hoarsely, his face suddenly
flushing despite the pain. “Didn’t have time to cath before –” a single, sharp
jerk tore quickly at the bone and muscle of his thigh and he gulped down a gasp
laced with bile.
“You should have called me,” Will said gently.
Alex nodded at his rucksack and uttered gruffly,
“Phone’s over there, and I’ve not been back that long.”
The calm in his voice was deceptive, and the
frustration had been building in him until it had almost reached fever-pitch.
Will dashed for the bathroom, and he rifled manically through the various tubs
of pills, searching for the one that would ease those spasms. While Will was
gone, Alex bent forward again, hand on his thigh trying once more to make his
right leg stop quivering by stretching out his hamstring, and he felt a
creeping dampness in his jeans and smelled ammonia. “Oh for fuck’s sake,” he
fumed as his eyes rolled shut in shame.
When he brought the meds to his brother, who’s dark
eyes were brimming with emotion, Will noted the discolouration around the top
of Alex’s jeans, and the slight smell. Alex followed his gaze and rolled his
eyes feverishly. They were so full of shame that Will’s heart went out to him.
“Here,” he said, shuddering slightly as Alex dry-swallowed the pills.
With the meds in his system, the spasms quickly began
to recede, leaving behind joints and muscles which cringed like they’d been
soaked in a strong caustic. White and still shaking, he reached an unsteady
hand out in the vague direction of his chair, his heart plunging like a lead
rocket to the pit of his stomach. It galled him to need his brother to fetch it
from where it sat, only a step or two from the end of sofa, and set it up for
him to do a transfer.
From where he had slumped on the floor, he put his
hand around the cold metal of the vertical bar of his chair, gripped it grimly
and prepared to lift his body into seat of his chair. He had raised himself
from the ground no problem, but suddenly the elbow which he’d bashed as he’d
fallen began to stab and shake, and his arms folded in surprise beneath his
weight. He collapsed, slithering towards the floor, bashing his backside on the
footplate. Will found his feet lurching forward, darting to clutch Alex under
the arms, hauling him upwards like a sack of coal.
Alex’s shame only deepened. It reminded him of the
first time he’d attempted a transfer in rehab. He gritted his teeth in
resignation. I’m sitting in a puddle of my own urine, wiped out, and
only twenty four years old. Not quite what I’d seen for myself six years ago…
Will didn’t need to ask him if he wanted help
changing. He knew his brother well enough to spare him that. He just wheeled
him to his room, and when Alex had undone the button of his jeans, Will mechanically
slid his trousers off over his brother’s legs which were still dancing around uncooperatively,
before gently undoing the straps of his KAFO’s, which mercifully weren’t too damp,
and removing his soaked boxers while Alex pushed himself up on his hands to
help, finally sliding a towel beneath Alex’s cold buttocks before he set himself
down again.
Lifting his weight up a bit to help Will, Alex had cringed
as he’d caught the acrid smell, and, for the first time in months, cursed his
injury bitterly. His brother pushed him silently to the bathroom, using the low
bar along the back of his chair, and aligned him for a transfer to the shower
bench which straddled the bath, before locking the break and hooking an arm
under Alex’s own muscled arms, and seeing him safely into place. Once there, he
left him to it. At the doorway, Will called over his shoulder, “Call if you
need anything.”
Will would have been lying if he had said he wasn’t
straining his ears for any abnormal sounds. He knew the kind of noises which
jarred against the background tapestry of sound from the shower: a bottle
dropping; the soft flump of a body sliding from the shower stool; the skitter
of limbs on a tiled floor… He’d not had to listen for them in years, and the
thought made him uneasy now.
He pretended to sort the contents of his bag out,
absentmindedly drawing his phone out and checking his emails before making a
cup of tea and hovering aimlessly around the small kitchen area. Once, he did
catch the sound of a plastic bottle crashing to the floor and had almost darted
through the doorway, but he hung back and chided himself when he glimpsed Alex
leaning forward, with resignation writ large on his stern face, his great toned
biceps in stark contrast to the slightly withered and atrophied legs as he
picked up the shampoo bottle from where it lay in the bath by his soft, and unmoving
feet.
Still hanging around in the kitchen, Will heard Alex
transfer from the shower, heard the gasp of pain and the grunt of resignation,
and a moment later, his blue eyes were drawn to the door where his little
brother was slowly pushing the rims of his chair over the hardwood floor to his
bedroom. Without a word or a glance to Will, Alex disappeared into his room,
closing the door behind him with a flick of his left hand.
Alone in the immaculately tidy room, summer rays
gilding the white architrave, Alex sighed. He’d not had spasticity this bad in
years. He looked down at his legs; to his eyes they seemed thin, but not horribly emaciated.
They did look weak and pale to him as they lay there, inert, deceptively still
and quiet within the frame of the dark chair. He ran a hand over his thigh,
testing the sensation, knowing where it faded like a landscape into the fog and
where it remerged, even more sensitive than it had been before the accident.
Had he simply over-done lately and just forgotten to cath today or was he due
for his second ever major infection? He remembered the first time he’d got an infection,
probably from not cleaning the cath out properly or something – he’d been delirious
and ended up in hospital for a week. Not
this time, he thought, please, not
this time. Let it just be the fact that I’ve overdone it.
Trying to take his mind off his physical misery, he
thought of Sam, and wondered if she’d show. She probably thought he was only on
crutches; a temporary injury maybe. Tip of the iceberg, he thought
sourly, hoping this whole situation wasn’t about to do a Titanic on him. He
also wondered how quickly she’d bail if he turned up in a chair, and
endeavoured not to picture her face as he arrived on wheels at The Meadows,
guiding the chair between the gingham table cloths towards where she sat, eyes
wide, teacup forgotten half way between saucer and lips, mouth hanging slightly
open as she spluttered and forced her reeling brain to conjure wild excuses to
leave… Stop it. Just deal with that when you come to it, he
scolded himself. You never know, she might not be like Olivia. As
he sullenly pulled his t-shirt over his dripping, black hair, he snarled aloud,
“Who are you kidding, Alex Norwood? She’ll be just like all the others.”
***
Cold, sticky liquid exploded in her face. She tried to
scream, but it bubbled down her throat and made her cough and splutter. Dan
yelled something, but she couldn’t hear because she now had Sainsbury’s cava
pouring down her ear canal too. “I hate this stupid
tradition!” she finally yelled, ducking out of the way as Dan shook the bottle
and a fresh wave of cheap, imitation champagne flung itself recklessly at her
long plait.
Sam and the other archaeologists, as well as a few
students taking some other completely different paper like computer science,
were causing quite a spectacle for the summer tourists as they left their last
exam. Finally, when the whole display was over and she thought there could be
no more cava, she flung her arms around Dan’s tall, lanky frame and squealed,
“I’ve finished! I’ve finished my degree!” over and over in his ear until he had
to peel her off him in order to give her a reply.
Re-inflating his lungs after her vice-like grasp, he
spluttered, “Yes! Let’s go and get drunk!”
Her smile flickered and faded. “How about we just hang
out instead?”
Annie, the girl who had sat next to her in lectures
all year, and who fairly worshipped her, came up behind them and squeaked,
“Yes, let’s go and get drunk! We’ve finished our degrees!” before she’d
registered Sam’s response.
Unaware that she was being watched by dark eyes from a
distance, Sam backed away, preparing to spring like a gazelle down the tarmac
surface of King’s Parade. As Dan launched a second attack with the dregs of the
cava, seconded by Annie and a small knot of friends, she kicked her powerful
legs into action. That day those legs were hugged by close-fitting black
leggings, and she sprinted away in the opposite direction from the
stern-looking Senate House like an athlete on a track.
***
Alex remembered every overheard syllable of Sam’s
conversation with her friend Dan in the tea rooms the previous day, so he knew
that at half past four that day, that enchanting and intriguing girl would be
leaving the exam hall to face a soaking in cheap cava by a loitering squad of
friends. He smiled as the first few people came out, hanging back like
wildebeest at the edge of a surging river, no one wanting to be the first to
exit the perimeter of the Senate House fencing.
He was still feeling weak from the previous day’s
spasms, and because of the lingering fire in the joints of his legs he was
sitting in his sporty, black chair beside the large sash-windows of the
Georgian apartment. He’d been juggling the activities of reading a physics
paper with people-watching from the high apartment windows for an hour or so,
letting the sunlight wash over him, and almost imagining he was a plant that
could be revived with a bit of gentle light. His legs ached, and every now and
again his right leg would give a threatening pulse, like thunder running before
rain. He prayed there would be no storm.
Then there she was, walking confidently through the
milling people outside the big classical building, heading for the black gates
which guarded the perfect, emerald green Senate House lawn, and kept back the
throng of waiting friends, all armed with their beverages of choice. My
God! he thought as he saw the long, comfortable looking, pale blue
shirt she wore, belted casually at the waist, and the dark leggings. She looked
like Superwoman on her day off, dressed as her alter-ego who had just stepped from
her boyfriend’s apartment, wearing his shirt in the morning. Minus the
boyfriend, it was a perfect image.
He couldn’t keep the smirk from his lips at the scene
which then unfolded: her shock at the faceful of high-pressured liquid; her
laughter; her outcry; her joyous, crazy-fast sprint down the street, dodging
cyclists and tourists with all the agility of a cheetah. “How can this girl be
interested in me?” he wondered aloud, muttering under his breath.
“What?” Will’s voice disturbed his thoughts and Alex
jumped, forgetting that his brother had decided to work from home that day as ‘he
didn’t need to go into the department’, apparently. Alex knew why he’d
stayed, and the happy balloon inside his chest deflated a little. Nevertheless,
he was as grateful as he was horrified to know that if those spasms should
flare up again, Will would be there.
He’d always been there, Alex mused, looking at his
bookish brother sitting cross-legged on the sofa with a coffee table pulled
right up to the cushions’ edge, with pieces of white A4 paper spilling around
him so that he looked like a frog on a lily flower, the blue sofa becoming the
surface of a still pond. Thought processes rippled across Will’s face from time
to time, and spilled out over the paper surrounding him, leaving a wave of scribbled
symbols and letters behind it on their surfaces. For the past four hours, he
had hardly moved, except for the biro which had squiggled away furiously. Alex’s
eyesight wasn’t good enough to see what he was working on, but he knew that few
people had the brainpower to appreciate the pure, poetic, elegant beauty of
Will’s PhD thesis.
Then from seemingly nowhere, Alex was suddenly gripped
with a wild and masochistic urge to go outside and wheel around, perhaps to go
and find Sam, wherever she’d got to, and maybe let her see him from a distance
in his chair. He turned back to the window, trying to spot her, almost pressing
his scarred cheek against the cold glass. The sensation grew in him until he
could bear it no longer, and he said, “I’m heading out. You want anything from
town?”
“What?” Will repeated the same sound to a different
stimulus from his brother, returning only slowly to the normal plain of existence.
“You’re going out?”
“That’s what I said,” Alex said, just the hint of a
snarl tickling his white teeth.
Will’s frown was fleeting, but unconcealed. “Where are
you going?”
Dark locks of hair shuddered as Alex made a side-to-side
movement with his head. “Not sure. Might go down to the weir.”
“The river?” Will’s interest was piqued. “You want to
be alone?” He knew his brother’s moods, but he couldn’t seem to make this one
out.
Alex’s face was pensive for a moment, and then he said,
“No, I guess not. You want to come too?” Will was not the typically ‘outdoors’
type, and his interest in a walk puzzled him. He hoped Will wasn’t feeling the
need to play nursemaid.
Will nodded and said, “Give me a couple of minutes to
extract myself from this mess,” he waved a vague hand at the reams of paper
which hemmed him in. “I think my brain could use a change, and a breath of
oxygen.”
Alex barked a laugh and turned his eyes back to the
street, but Sam was nowhere to be seen. The larger girl who had trailed them
out from the exam hall was just disappearing out of sight past a dirty little
alleyway between King’s and St. Catharine’s, which was known locally,
charmingly, as ‘Piss Alley’. They were heading for the river.
The stair-lift was a godsend. It had been expensive to
install, but since the family owned the building outright, the little shop
below it had given enough income from rent money to pay for it after Alex’s
accident. After six years of trundling up and down, he’d become pretty
efficient, and developed a knack for carrying his chair whilst riding the
slow-moving lift. Reaching the bottom, and transferring neatly to the soft seat
of the chair, Alex readjusted his weight, then guided the wheels down the tiny
threshold step, leaning back slightly as he bumped down, the force of which
made his knees knock together. Out on the busy street, he tried his best to
ignore the six or seven sideways looks he immediately got, and the outright
stare of several unabashed children. That’s right, stare at the cripple
with the funny legs, he thought, his mood curdling a little in the
warmth of the day.
Will rested a hand on the back of Alex’s shoulder in
the briefest of gestures after he had pulled the door shut behind them, and the
two of them set off in the direction of the river.
The waters of the River Cam, normally so still and
green, gushed over the weir looking like twisted glass, tangled with strands of
green weed. Mallards dabbled their yellow feet in the cool water, and a pair of
swans promenaded along the towpath, giving condescending looks to humans, dogs
and ducks alike as they strolled past. Alex waited while Will held open the
heavy metal gate to the pasture which kept the cows in and the solo cripples
out, and then cruised smoothly over the asphalt surface of the towpath, letting
the roar of the water fill his ears and drown out the whispers of a group of
school children who could not help themselves. He sighed as the wind rustled
through the melancholic willows, testing their fingers in the water as though
keen to join the ducks. Darwin College library with its wooden planks looked
like a chandler’s store or a shipwright’s workshop, but its only output was
graduate degrees, sailing out in a fairly steady stream, only to be lost in a
vast ocean of other academics. Alex smiled as he thought of the brilliance of
the mind that was next to him, strolling along with his head lost in string
theory most likely.
A high shriek tore through the hazy summer air, and
both brothers looked over to the low, green meadow beyond the weir. Alex
recognised the blue shirt, the flailing plait, the bright laugh. What
am I doing? he suddenly thought. She’ll see me and then I won’t
stand a chance.
The cold hand of doubt clutched at his lungs and heart,
and the steady rhythm of bicep-hand-wheel faltered, fingers slowing the wheels
of his chair with their gentle friction. Will stopped a step or two ahead of
him and turned, seeing Alex’s head downcast and his face wracked with some
emotion. “You ok?” he asked sharply, noticing that Alex’s right knee was
bobbing up and down with a kind of rude impatience.
Alex clamped a hand on it to stop it, and he said
sadly, “Yeah, I’m fine. It’s just…”
“What?” Will was standing square in front of him, his
soft chinos and his checked shirt crumpled in a way particular to academics the
world over.
Alex afforded himself a smile at the observation,
despite his inner turmoil. Storm in a
teacup, he tried to convince himself. “Ach,” he exclaimed, making a face. “You know I said I was going for
coffee with that girl from the UL?” Will nodded slowly, glancing around,
beginning to catch on. “Well… she’s over there.”
Will followed the single nod of Alex’s handsome head,
and he squinted his eyes for a better look. “Wow,” he breathed, impressed.
Sam’s blue shirt – at least Alex hoped it was hers,
and not that boyfriend’s which he had imagined earlier – was now clinging to
her lithe body, soaked in cava. “Yeah,” he concurred. “The thing is… she
doesn’t know about this.” He gestured limply to the wheels of his
chair, not realising he’d just given away the fact that he’d crutched all the
way back from the UL, a distance of only half a mile, but further than Alex
should probably have crutched after four days of standing. Evidently so, after
the spasm and cath debacle.
“You weren’t in your chair on Wednesday?” Will asked
sharply. “Alex!” His tone was as admonishing and stern. “I thought… No wonder
you –”
“Will, I’ve gone that long before, and besides” he
said evenly, cutting through Will’s exclamation. “I need a brother right now –
a wingman – not a father, ok?”
Will inhaled deeply, as though trying to crush his
initial response with a ton of air. “Right. Sorry.” Then his face became as
much of a question as Alex’s, both reading “what’s the next move?” in
their soft, handsome yet very different features.
Alex made up his mind, set calloused palms to rims,
pushed forward, and made his way along the towpath, keeping her in his sights
as best he could, having to turn his head sharply towards her to allow his left
eye, his good eye, to drink in the scene.
She stopped in her game, dodging Dan’s reaching hand,
and coming to an abrupt halt, plait catching up with her and swinging like a
leather whip. Her legs were slightly apart, braced from her sudden stop, and
her hands rested in soft fists at her side. She was looking directly at him, and
she knew exactly who he was.
Please don't let us wait to long for the next chapter. I'm in the with Alex! I love that both characters are telling the story.
ReplyDeleteFantastic chapter! Can't wait for what happens next! Love your descriptive narrative.
ReplyDeleteThank you! I'll aim to post the next chapter sometime next week.
DeleteGreat emotional stuff!
ReplyDeleteLoving the longer post! More more more
ReplyDeleteBeautiful!!!
ReplyDeleteAre you posting this as you write it?
ReplyDeleteThe suspense is killing us.
Hope it's not too long between chapters!
Good stuff.
Thanks. I try to keep about 3 chapters ahead of where the post is, and I know where it's going, so don't worry. I'll try and post weekly updates more regularly, but this time I had to re-write a huge chunk after talking to someone with way more medical knowledge and SCI experience than me, and I am a technological neanderthal, so I had to wait a couple of days to get the "how to post an update" business sorted.
DeleteI don´t understand, He has a house inside a universite? How can he see her from his window?
ReplyDeletethanks
Adriana
The city of Cambridge is dotted with university buildings - ie there isn't a campus like most universities all over the world - and if you look at Google street view of King's Parade (one of the main streets in Cambridge) you'll probably see that there is a row of shops and houses which overlooks King's College. Hope that clears things up for you :)
Delete"This is terrific writing," she mused, as she realized she was left hanging at the precipice of another momentous bit of action, once again!
ReplyDeleteI'm really enjoying your story! ;) Thanks.
Thanks! I'm a fan of cliffhangers. That's all I'm saying for now... :)
DeleteVery good chapter. Many new words to me
ReplyDeleteOh my god! Cannot wait for the next one!
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff. Checked here 100 times throughout the weekend for your promised update. It was certainly worth the extra wait. Please keep it coming. I love the story.
ReplyDeleteGahhhhh. You. You are the chosen one! This is seriously bomb shit, keep it up, we really appreciate it!
ReplyDeleteWow, I'm genuinely shocked at how many comments there are here, and how much you guys seem to like it! I'll definitely have to see this one through now I think. If you have things you don't like, or stuff I've got wrong, please comment with that too!
ReplyDeleteRose
Another amazing chapter. I'm really enjoying this story - you are a very talented writer! Looking forward to the next chapter. :-)
ReplyDeleteI love this story! Please update soon!
ReplyDeleteWho is Olivia, was see a nurse a devotee? I can't wait to find out!
ReplyDeleteOK, I want to start off by saying I am enjoying this story; I was really excited when I saw a new update. It's always nice to see new crutch/brace guys :).
ReplyDeleteI also saw you wanted us to be honest in our comments, and there were a few things about this chapter that nagged at me the first time I read it, so I re-read it and they're still there, so I thought I'd mention them.
1- I didn't get why Alex didn't cath before he went home. If he has a regular cathing schedule (which I imagine he must), I would think he'd always carry supplies with him. I'd get it if he thought he wasn't going to be around long so he didn't pack one, or he thought he still had one in his bag but he didn't, but that just seemed odd to me.
2- I'm confused by the scene where Alex falls and gets "stuck." I get that he trips, I get that he's exhausted and spasming, but what I didn't understand is why he didn't try to use one of his crutches to snag his chair? I would have gotten that he might still not have been able to get into it, between having hit his elbow and sheer fatigue, but that just seemed odd, and it really stood out to me. I liked the drama of that whole scene, but that just kept eating at me. (Sorry, I'm a details girl, lol.)
3- My other issue is more general... I didn't remember this happening in the other two chapters, but maybe it did... But the head-hopping between the two brothers made it a little more confusing than necessary. I don't have any problem in seeing each of their POVs (in fact, I love that), but there are a few times where you switch within a sentence or two (and back again), and I'd find I'd have to re-read to make sure I wasn't confusing them. Then you'd go for a long stretch with just one brother's POV. Then it would happen again. My personal recommendation would be watch out for those little moments of overlap and try to keep a series of paragraphs (or a scene) in one character's POV.
I hope I didn't step on toes with these comments. Genuinely was not my intention. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens at Sam and Alex's date. Looking at Alex's luck so far, I'm not holding out hopes for it to go smoothly for him!
I think it´s a little bit confuse in brother POV, but I was thinking that it was becouse of the new words to me, but maybe not.
DeleteThe drama in this chapter is superb
Thanks Chie - always great to get advice from a more seasoned author. I didn't really think about why he wouldn't have cathed before leaving, he just wanted to get out and get home. Does seem a bit rushed now that you mention it. I might rework it, but it's not a major issue, so that'll be a bit further down the line.
DeleteHe fell between a coffee table and the sofa, and didn't have enough room to manoeuvre the crutches to help him get up, and I know I wrote that the chair was a few feet out of reach, but in my mind I saw it further away, so that was why he couldn't get up, but again, your eagle eyes did spot an incongruous moment!! Oops!
I'll keep an eye on the brotherly head-hopping, as I don't want to confuse anyone! Thanks for pointing that issue out, so hopefully I can nip it in the bud and prevent further confusion! Normally I want it to be just Alex and Sam's POV, but Will does sneak into Alex's scenes a bit, doesn't he?!
Thanks so much for your comments - this is my first real go at a proper story (previous 'episode' not counting...) so I do rely on people with more story-writing experience to help me out and keep me on my toes!
As for Alex's date, I can put your mind at ease a little on that one I think :)
Thank your for the great update!
ReplyDeleteohh please, don´t change the cathed scene
ReplyDeleteMore please! I really like this story.
ReplyDeleteI don't think you have to change the scenes necessarily, but it would be good to write in the motivation for some of his decisions or the conflict over them. I agreed that there is some confusion as to why he would get up and leave when he did- it could be explained as him getting caught up in the female protagonist and being gone longer than he expected, etc. because it is confusing. Him being an incomplete low level paraplegic and yet being so involved with his brother was a bit weird. I get them living together, I get his brother worrying, I even get you putting the protagonist in a situation where he feels helpless/needs help, but their relationship seems a little strange. His inner battle around going out in the chair and approaching her could be more clearly written as well.
ReplyDeleteI do like it-- I will be eagerly awaiting what comes next.