There is always someone worse off

A smartly dressed couple came into the bar. They ordered three drinks and told me “Peter” would be in soon. They left one drink on the bar and took theirs over towards the dartboard area.

From the lobby I heard “Thanks a bloody lot … leave me to struggle here with the door!”

Eventually a middle aged man came to the bar door on crutches and one leg. Where his other leg had been a flap of spare trouser leg lolloped around in rhythm with his triangulated gate. He sat at the bar where the third drink had been waiting for him.

“Mine I presume?’ he asked me and then offered me his right hand ‘Peter, Peter Simpkins and you are, you’re new here.”

“Alan…it’s my first morning” I replied.

“Welcome aboard Alan” Peter answered before taking the first taste of his pint.

The bar was quiet with only Peter and his two friends on the other side of the room playing darts.

We started talking. I asked how he had lost his leg. It happened when he was felling some trees and a heavy branch came down and broke his leg in several places. It wasn’t the breaks that led directly to the amputation but gangrene.

“Bloody painful it was and I still get what they call phantom pains. Mostly at night. Painkillers and penicillin hardly touch them so I have a bottle of sherry on the go at night. Just to get some sleep. What harm can I do?”

“Pete! Shall we put you on the board for a game of darts?” one of his friends called across the room.

“You’ve got to be joking” Peter replied “Lovely couple. He was with me when the accident happened. They looked after me ever since. I don’t know what I would have done without them. They don’t give me much sympathy as you can see but that’s what keeps me going.”

“Got sent to Stoke Mandeville for rehab after the amputation. Rehab? How’s that going to work? I’ll tell you what it was the best kick up me backside I ever had since the army. Got there feeling really low. Do you know what? There were people there who were a lot worse off than me. Made me think how lucky I was. I’m sure that’s why they sent me there you know, to see others worse off than me.”

I didn’t see Peter or his friends for a few weeks until one Saturday morning the friends came into the bar. They ordered three drinks.

“Where’s Peter?” I asked.

“Oh, he’ll be here in a minute.”

A minute later I heard Peter’s voice in the lobby followed by the sound of something crashing into the doors.

“Thanks, a bloody lot … leave me to struggle with the door!”

Peter was in a wheelchair. His other leg had succumbed to the gangrene. He reached up to the bar for his pint.

“First one since I got back from Stoke Mandeville yesterday … do you know what? There were some really poor buggers…much worse off than me.”

There is a back story to this feature and many more short stories with their own ack stories in "Shorts" available on KDP Amazon in paperback and eBook formats.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0FG1GXTCY