For The Greater Good

Twenty-Five Years. Twenty-Five long years waiting, and finally, today was the day I would receive my new legs.

Ever since I could string a sentence together, I had been desperately waiting for today. Ever since I was small, I had spent my life in a wheelchair. This moment didn’t feel real.

Lying with wide open eyes. I could be anyone. I glanced around my room. White as far as my eyes could see, then a smallish window that opens out into the city. Our city of tomorrow, the city that gave us hope.

When I was a child, this technology hadn’t existed. To think, thirty plus years ago, medical professionals advised their patients to take pills for pain. Gone are those days, replaced by more civilianised means.

Life in my wheelchair is normal for me, I go along everyday fully independent. With the click of a button, I am whizzed around my apartment, whizzed into the bathroom and into the kitchen, where I’m fully capable of making tea and toast.

However, as I gaze out of the tinted glass windows, and the mirror reflecting buildings outside, I am reminded that today is the last day I will be bound to a chair. In a few days I will walking around, as if I had had working legs all my life.

The elevator out of my apartment block soon arrives. I drive myself into the mirrored box. I’m scared. I know that this procedure will be long and tedious, but thankfully I will be asleep for hours, while they tinker away, but it’s the thought of what the surgeons will do once I’m under that worries me.

At my last appointment the doctors talked about the operation in detail, the idea that my legs would be hacked off and replaced by new ones seems daunting, although once I’m fully awake and have come round, it will be all over.

Why has it taken this day so long to come? The technology didn’t even exist under ten years ago, and there is a high demand for a procedure like this, much of the population is disabled, and wanting relief from their pain.

As I zoom up the tram ramp, and take my seat by the large, tinted windows, I gaze at the world going by. As I move closer towards the hospital, there is a disturbance and whatever it was, didn’t sound good. The muffled shouting grew louder as soon as I disembarked.

“Rather you than me.” The huffed voice from the tram driver said.

I turned my head to look back at him, but as soon as I did, the automatic swinging doors closed in front of me. I wheeled towards the entrance. Commotion from inside and out of the hospital, swirled around my ears. Nurses in light blue, skin suits, rushed around the pavement, as I dodged to stop them from walking into my chair. Whatever incident had just occurred, the doctors and nurses looked worried, all with ghostly, white faces, they ran franticly.

Open sesame. The entrance doors swung open, sensing my movement. As I stepped into the main hospital entrance, all white, the same colour of my apartment. Everywhere was decorated like a clinical setting these days, it was seen as more hygienic that way. The design even came from hospital interiors.

The entrance was vast. High ceilings with glass roof tiles. The entire place felt cool and relaxing, ideal for patients. I knew exactly where I was going, to the same department as all my other many appointments. This time however, I wasn’t going into one of the side pods they used for constatations, I would be whisked off into the back, where I would be eventually operated on.

After I had signed my name into the holographic book, which floated slightly above a white pedestal, I positioned myself next to the rows of pristine white chairs and waited. Waiting for what felt like hours, I felt a mixture of nerves and excitement bubbling inside my stomach.

“Evelyn Braddock.” A soft, spoken voice called out from a side room.

Turning my head, I moved towards a nurse, dressed the same light blue, skin suit. She smiled, but I sensed an uneasy feeling about her. Into another side room, she pointed to an open door with a white curtain and floating sheet.

“If you wouldn’t mind changing into the gown laid out on the bed, ready for preparations, then we will call you.”

Nodding, I entered the tiny room, as the door closed behind me all on its own. It wasn’t long before I had quickly changed, dumping my clothes on the bed, and slipping into the gown, a flimsy piece of fabric that covered every part of me until my knees. Here, I waited some more.

Resting my naked toes upon the chair footstool, I stared at the almost sterile flooring, apart from one minuscule black piece of fluff in the corner of the room, which stood out like a sore thumb.

I must have zoned out, because the faint sound of screaming brought me back into the room. Curiosity got the better of me. I turned my wheelchair power on and silently zoomed around the corridors, every turn exactly like the last. Thankful that I still know my way back.

The deeper down I went, the screaming got louder. Apart from this, the bright lights dimmed, making it more difficult to drive.

I was hit with belting vibrations, coming from the open door in front of me. I was certain now that the screams were those of a young woman, and being careful not to make a sound, I peered inside, one of my blue eyes visible.

What I witnessed was like something from a horror film. The person making the scream was in fact a young woman, similar in age to me. Her long, black hair knotted in a mess, as she lay upon a metal table, more suited to a butcher’s shop. She punched and kicked both her feet and legs, even though her feet were bound with some kind of wire. Nurses held her limbs tightly, while the girl waved them wildly.

This room was a direct opposite aesthetic to the rest of the hospital. Like I’d stepped back in time, the lightbulbs were dimly lit. One faint spotlight shone directly on the metal table. The walls were a rough and jagged rusty tin, brown that looked as if it was rotting away. Instruments with sharp teeth lined the room.

The only doctor in the room walked over to the back, ruffled around for a moment or two, and pulled out the largest saw I had ever seen in all my life. Striding over, it seemed the woman had no energy to scream anymore, or perhaps they’d given her sedation. Whatever it was, she now lay lifeless, her glassed eyes wide, she looked in my direction and mumbled something almost inaudible that I could just understand.

“I am your legs.”

The nurse that had led me into the changing room, caught a glimpse of my wheelchair in the doorway, and rushed over, snapping the doorframe away from my hand. I was practically being pushed back when the door shut in an instant.

“What was that?” I stumbled, pointing with a shaking finger.

“Now, now, you don’t need to fret about that, let’s take you back shall we.” There was a dubious tone to her voice, as she practically took the back of my chair and pushed me down the corridors.

“I can do it myself.” I said flatly.

I’d arrived back at the changing room where the nurse loomed over me, there I noticed a red and purple bruise on her left cheek.

“Won’t be long now, We’ll call you when we’re ready, and please, don’t go wandering off again.”

I was left alone once more, however now I had time to think. Whatever I had just witnessed unnerved me. I wanted to forget the images I had just seen but felt I shouldn’t. I knew this was important, and perhaps I was the first everyday person to see what had gone on.

“I am your legs.” Her weak voice rang in my head repeatedly.

Everything I had known was a lie. Everything society knew was a lie. How could I go through with such an operation, when I now knew what had to be done to get my new legs.

I stared at the black fluff in the corner of the room, feeling myself twitch. I wanted to leave, never return.

I must have zoned out once more because the next thing I remember is waking up in my own glass room, with flowers by my side, resting upon a hospital bed. Gingerly, I lifted the covers up, to find my new, working legs attached. They wiggled, they bent at the knee, they were perfect and hairless. Now however, I knew the pain the person who they belonged to first, had had to endure for me to have them.