Chapter Text
About a month later Ilya was settled in at the rehab hospital in Ottawa. He’d expected the place to be depressing and boring. It was after all a hospital for people who’d gone through life altering injuries and illnesses.
The main groups of injuries amongst the patients were
SCI’s. spinal cord injuries, like his.
Amputations.
TBI’s, traumatic brain injuries.
Large second and third degree burns.
Multi-traumas, which varied all the way from multiple fractures or soft tissue injuries, simply muscular-skeletal but complex cases due to the number, to combining all of the other reasons for being admitted.
On the illness side, he’d heard talk about
Chronic respiratory illnesses (All the way from asthma, COPD to cystic fibrosis).
epilepsy,
MS,
ALS,
and a few rare diseases only a handful of people in the nation had.
There were multiple different wards. Specializing in one to three different groups of patients.
There was also a separate children’s ward, which took in patients under the age of 18, with both injuries and illnesses.
The place wasn’t depressing. It wasn’t boring.
HEATED*RIVALRY
The first week or so he’d been there, he’d only been at the SCI ward. He’d finally managed to sit up without passing out. It required an abdominal binder, pressure stockings and going painfully slow from a laying position to the seated one. But he was able to sit up, and able to get helped over in the wheelchair he borrowed until he was ready to be fitted for his own custom one.
Shane came by randomly the first time he had made it out of his hospital bed and into an actual active wheelchair. Not the massive reclining one he’d been helped over into with help of the ceiling mounted lift earlier in the week. He’d been up in that one every day since he got to the rehabilitation center, and he’d gotten to meet most of the other patients at his ward that way. It was nice to get out of his room, but he had a feeling he was going to enjoy actually managing to move himself around would be a lot nicer.
Shane had entered the room, seen Ilya upright and tossed himself to his knees beside the chair Ilya sat in. He’d wrapped his arms around Ilya, pulling him off the little balance he had.
“Whoa! Easy!” Ilya said as he gripped on to Shane’s shoulders like his life depended on it.
“Sorry, am I hurting you?” Shane eased back just enough to take a look at him.
“You are stealing my balance.” Ilya chuckled, “What is left of it.”
“Sorry.”
“It is fine. Just don’t let go before I’m leaned back again. I will flop forward.”
Shane nodded against him. “You’re sitting up.”
Ilya nodded back.
“How does it feel?”
“Feels weird. Like I am, I don’t know, about to either fall or pass out if I move too much.” Ilya admitted, “But it is better than earlier.”
“It’s good to see you out of that bed.”
“…There is a joke about you not wanting to have me in bed in there…” Ilya mumbled against Shane’s shoulder, “Not sure exactly what it is, but it is in there.”
Shane chuckled, “Not that bed, and not here.”
Ilya placed a kiss against Shane’s cheek, before he helped himself lean back with the help of holding onto Shane’s shoulders and gripping the rim of his wheel to pull himself back until his back was leaned against his backrest.
“Good?” Shane asked still sitting in front of Ilya, looking up at him.
“Good.” Ilya nodded. “We should go out to the living room area. It’s nicer there I’ve heard. You can push me part of the way?”
“Of course, I could push you the entire way if you want me to…”
“No, I want to do as much as I can by myself.” Ilya shrugged, “But I know I will get tired. -Fatigued.”
Shane nodded, “And you’ve been cleared to user your arm for pushing the wheelchair?”
“I have. It’s been six weeks total. If I didn’t need to load my arm with most of my body weight for transfers and stuff, the cast would’ve been off.” Ilya shrugged, “Could probably be taken off now too, but the doctor decided to leave it on for an other two weeks. You start walking if you break your leg by now. And it was a simple enough break.”
“Alright, then you push as far as you’re comfortable with, and I’ll take over when you’re at your limit.”
Ilya nodded, “Thank you.”
HEATED*RIVALRY
Shane watched as Ilya pushed himself over to the door and pressed the large wall mounted door opening button. Then after waiting for the door to fully open, he pushed himself into the hallway.
He veered a little every few pushes, causing him to press his hands against the push rims to slow his process. Before pushing once again.
“Is it hard to steer and push that wheelchair?”
Ilya shrugged a little. “I am not used to it… And maybe the cast is fucking with my grip on the push rims…”
Shane nodded and let out an acknowledging hum.
“It takes a lot less muscle than I thought.” Ilya paused and looked up at Shane, “It’s not like regular hospital wheelchairs, like if you mess up your leg badly during a game and go to the hospital for treatment and get placed in one of their wheelchairs. Better bearings I think, for the wheels.”
“That is good.” Shane offered up a small smile. Then seemed to notice that Ilya had stopped fully. “Do you want me to push you now?”
“I think I can make it all the way to the living room. Should be halfway down that next hallway.”
Shane nodded, “Yeah, it is. I pass it every time I come to visit you.”