Excerpt#1 from Short Story- The Relished Touch

Good morning, I think for the next foreseeable Sundays I am going to post continuous excerpts to a short story I wrote based off a criteria challenge my friend and I gave one another. I find some hilarity in it, then again I am the one who wrote it. I will post links to copy and paste as well, in chronological order, so you can follow along with the story as it develops in case you happen to miss a sunday. It's a similar idea as to the Six Sentence Sunday I was part taking in several years ago with the exception I'll most likely post 2-3 paragraphs as opposed to six sentences. Enjoy the read, this is one of my favorites!

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The Relished Touch

Every day starts the same. He wakes up from his long slumber and watches life move forward as his simply stays still. Sure there are some that scurry away from him, who wants to talk to the immobile mute? Life is agony for him. There are days he even wishes for death; sure he cherishes all the fond memories of the life he once had. Those were the best days of his life until his incident.

It has been many years since the incident. He now resides in the care of others; primarily people who don’t care whether he lives or dies. He is just a room number to them, a burden to their workload and the heftiness in their day. Everything must be done for him. Catheter changes, colostomy bag changes, showers, he must be flipped every few hours to prevent bed sores, all while being restrained to the bed railings. What is it that they still feared after so many years, that his mobility would return? That his spine would simply heal?

He often craves to stand up and walk to the window. To just see how the world has changed, evolved. He yearns to speak and yell. Flex his now motionless muscles. The mere things he took for granted like his morning jogs he used to loathe; he now wishes for. The chit chat of idle conversation that he tried to avoid at all costs he now wishes he could join in on. So much of life he has taken for granted. He longed to take a mid day stroll in the spring, smell the freshly cut grass, gaze at all the life that sprouts from the ground and makes life colorful.