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The most distressing thing to learn, really (and more distressing still was that he’d gotten used to it) was that life went on. Edward didn’t like that he’d gotten used to it, but he couldn’t do anything about that. He couldn’t do anything about being short a leg, either, and he couldn’t do anything about the sharp jolt in his chest every time he tried to reconcile Life As It Had Been and Life As It Was.
It was the helplessness, he decided. He’d always been pretty athletic – he didn’t do team sports, but he’d been on the track team in high school, and he was all set to become a cop once he graduated university. Technically, you could be one without a degree, but his brother had insisted.
And then.
And then, and then, and then – It sounded so stupid, like it was the natural next part of the story, like there was anything natural or predictable about getting hit by a truck on the way to work, anything natural about getting dragged along for six minutes and thirty seconds (none of which Ed could remember – that was a good thing, he didn’t want to remember that) before the fucker had noticed, six minutes and thirty seconds which had been counted by the stopwatch on his phone that had gotten started when he’d hit the ground.
Six minutes and thirty seconds that he had no control over, and his life was over. Gone.
Well, his therapist kept telling him to focus on the things he could change. So Ed rallied, gripped the wheels of his chair, and focused on ramming it into the wall between his and his neighbour’s flat. There was no response. He tried again.
“What?” came the peeved reply from the other side.
“Turn your GODDAMN music down!”
“Or what?” shouted the neighbour over the pulsing sound of – Christ, was that Marilyn Manson? Who played Marilyn Manson at full volume in an apartment building? Edgy fuckers probably doing drugs, that was who.
Life went on. It hadn’t frozen at the moment the truck had hit him, or in the hospital, to give him time to adjust. Life went on, and life could get on its cranky, arthritic knees and suck his wheelchair-bound dick.
---
Eventually, the music stopped, which was some small mercy – Ed wasn’t sure how long he could listen to “ITS ARMA-GODDAMN-MOTHER-FUCKING-GEDDON” repeated over and over on full volume. He’d apparently drawn the short stick when it came to neighbours, but he couldn’t afford to be choosy on welfare.
Welfare. God. He wasn’t sure why it bugged him so much. It was a safety net. Everybody benefited from the net being in place. It was just… He’d never thought of himself as being somebody who needed it. Safety nets were for people who fell from the tightrope, who hadn’t been holding on tightly enough.
Six minutes. Thirty seconds.
Fucking hell.
He wasn’t going to sleep that night, he realized. That was okay. Instead, he wheeled his chair into the kitchen, picked up his crutches from the wall, and set about the careful, painstaking task of unpacking the groceries Al had dropped off for him. He’d expected it to take twice as long as normal; his physiotherapist had warned him about that. Instead, after he sat back down his chair, glaring at the stocked cupboard, he realized it’d taken him five times as long.
From the next apartment came the faint click and scratch of – was that a record player? – and then the beginning notes of the Clash’s ‘London Calling’. Still way too loud.
Ed picked up a can of Chef Boyardee ravioli, and threw it full force at the wall.
----
He’d been in the apartment for a week before he finally got up the nerve to go outside, even into the hallway. It was strange. He’d never realized before how easy it was to just…stay inside, and pretend the outside world didn’t exist. Life went on, but you could pretend it didn’t, for a little while.
Except for that goddamn neighbour. The music had cycled through a few old punk records, back to Manson for a while, and now seemed to be repeating David Bowie’s last album with a few interjections from M83. Ed wasn’t even sure if it was only one person next door, but he’d certainly never heard any conversations. Just the steady stream of slightly-too-loud music.
But the point was – the point was, well, he had to take out his recycling to the chute eventually, especially with the number of cans he was eating out of. (It turned out things like slicing onions and other things that were necessary for Actual Cooking took more energy now; he couldn’t figure out why, but he supposed there was just Less Of Him.) So he got onto his crutches, tried to balance the box on his hip, and opened the door.
Well, he managed that much, although he could feel his crutches wiggling uncertainly under him. His centre of gravity was totally different now – before, it had been solidly in his stomach, shifting under his abs that he’d maintained with a lot of care. Now it was – god, he wasn’t sure anymore. Somewhere else. Wiggling all over the place.
He made it out of the door, then stared down the hall with his mouth hanging open. He couldn’t be sure. Judging by appearance was a bad habit for a cop (not that he’d ever be a cop, not now) to fall into; but he couldn’t help it. Even though he’d never seen his neighbour in the flesh, he couldn’t see how the… apparition standing by the trash chute could be anybody else.
The resident of 141 was about five and a half feet tall, skinny as a rake, dressed in the same type of heavily-pocketed, black, distressed cargo pants that every teenager had bought from Hot Topic a decade beforehand. Judging from the state of them, they’d probably been made around then; instead of the usual chains, they were festooned with various different pins and brooches, all colourful and mismatched. It was all held up with a rainbow-coloured belt, cinched tight around an exposed stomach. Above it was a sleeveless crop top with… Ed really hoped it wasn’t actually Hello Kitty.
Oh, and bright, green hair. Waist-length, bright, green hair. Waist-length, bright, green hair with braids mixed into it enough to make it look like a birds-nest.
Ed wondered if it was too late to pretend he didn’t exist.
Apparently it was. The neighbour (who looked like exactly the kind of person to play frenetic remixes of Marilyn Manson, in all fairness) had already raised their head to look at him.
“Oh, you’re 140,” they mumbled, in a quieter voice than Ed had expected.
“Um. Yes. I’m Edward.” He felt pretty awkward, but he had to be polite, at least. They lived next to each other, and the neighbour looked a little too likely to put arsenic in the water system. Maybe LSD. Ed didn’t want to risk it either way.
“Uh, one sec.” The neighbour dug into one of his thousand deep pockets, and Ed tensed up despite himself. Then – “Ah, there’s the bugger.” He pressed it to his ear, and Ed caught a glimpse of something that looked like purple plasticine. “Okay, what was that?” he asked in a much clearer voice.
“Oh, I’m Edward, Edward Elric.” Then it clicked. “Is that a hearing-aid?”
“Yeah. Can’t find the other one right now.”
…
Oh.
“I take it that’s why your music’s so loud,” Ed replied, trying not to sound too pissy. The man laughed, and had the decency to look a little sheepish.
“It livens up the place, right? Right?”
“Uh. Right.” He wasn’t wrong. And Ed had gotten used to how it helped shape the rhythm of his days. It wasn’t like anything else did.
“I’m Envy.”
“That’s not a real name.”
“Neither is Edward. Only car salesmen are called that. Are you a car salesman?”
Ed rolled his eyes, and lifted his hand to point at Envy. It was a normal gesture, exaggerated and a bit funny, the kind of thing he used when he was making a point. It was simple. It was easy.
The floor came up to meet him, and both his crutches and his recycling clattered after him. He stared at the tattered carpet – stupid stupid stupid – and the phantom pain that always kicked in after he fell started up again. His leg hurt like he could feel it being shredded by the truck all over again, six thirty six thirty six minutes thirty seconds –
Envy knelt down next to him, and Ed tensed up, waiting for the inevitable moment of being helped up, treated like a fucking cripple… But instead, the punk started picking up the recycling. “Can’t have this all over the floor. Sounds like shit when people step on it.”
Ed exhaled. One of his arms was fucked, muscles still trying to heal and nerves torn. The other one was okay, and that was what he used to push himself up into a sitting position. It helped, when people just let him do it. It reminded him that the strength he’d had before wasn’t gone. It was just all poured into healing, knitting the ripped skin and sinew and bone back together.
“Can you…” He swallowed. “Can you pass me my crutches?”
“Yeah. You’re sitting on one of them.”
“Right.”
Envy handed him the other crutch, and slowly, painfully, Ed managed to stand up.
“You good?”
“Yeah.” Ed exhaled. Now that he was standing, the embarrassment was almost worse. He had rug burn on his knee, and a little on his cheek as well.
“All this new?”
“…Is it obvious?”
Envy shrugged. “Just a guess. Although, you know, I’ve been deaf for twenty-five years and I still lose my hearing-aids.”
Ed nodded again. “Thanks,” he mumbled.
“Want me to take the recycling over?”
Charity, growled Ed’s pride. Relief, begged Ed’s body. So he just nodded, and then before Envy turned away completely – “You don’t have to turn down your music. It’s fine. Maybe just, like, quieter stuff after eleven or something.”
“I can jive with that.”
“Were you born in the seventies?”
“Maybe,” Envy teased. Then he turned his back, and Ed escaped back into his apartment. Turns out, his neighbour wasn’t so bad.
A little while later, he knocked on the wall.
“Mm?”
Ed decided to try speak loudly and see if that worked. If Envy responded, that meant he had his hearing aids. “Got any songs that are like, six minutes long?” It was obsessive, he knew, bordering on the delusional. He couldn’t get that number out of his head.
Envy didn’t respond, and Ed snorted at himself. Of course communicating with the deaf man through the wall didn’t work. But then the music started. Hotel California, by the Eagles. Much more Ed’s kind of thing, and as insulted as he was by how accurately Envy had pegged him from five minutes of interaction (or had it been six?), he liked it.
How they dance in the courtyard, sweet summer sweat
Some dance to remember – some dance to forget –
He sat down in his chair – a chair that, he realized, was a lot more comfortable than the crutches. He’d been so angry with it. But if he balanced the recycling on his legs next time, and just wheeled out…
He’d make it work. The same way that the deaf guy next door managed to love music enough to play it 24/7.
There were weirder things in the world.