//------------------------------// // Prologue // Story: The crippling secret // by Jonny Bench //------------------------------// Late one day, a young girl was riding her scooter home from her friend sweetie bell’s house, thinking about how awesome her life is. She had fun at her freind’s, she has no home work, and she finally pulled off a really hard trick that she had been practicing for months. It was her best day ever, nothing could ruin it! She’s crossing the street in front of her house, when all of a sudden, a loud screech is heard followed by a *CRUNCH* and a scream of pain like no other. In her hurry to get back home, she hadn’t noticed a car going much faster than it should have been, and the car hit her as it went by. The driver quickly stopped and turned around to try and see if he could get help for the kid he hit, as the people who heard the scream open their doors to see what happened. Suddenly everyone started shouting at once “This is terrible!” “Somebody call an ambulance!” “I just don’t know what went wrong.” But everyone was silenced by the shout of a woman standing in front of her home “My baby! Scootaloo, I’m coming!” The woman was Scootaloo’s mother, Graceful Charity, or grace for short. By the time she got down to where scootaloo was though, an ambulance was already there, and the paramedics were getting a stretcher ready to transport the young girl. “Mom, am I going to be okay?” The girl asked her mother “Yes dear, everything will be alright. I’ll be with you soon, I promise.” The woman calmly said to her daughter as she left in the ambulance. Then grace walked over to her car and was about to get in it to drive to the hospital to be with her daughter before she heard the voice of a man speak to her “Ma’m, I am so sorry about hitting your kid. I was going too fast and didn’t see her coming. I will cover the medical bills for you, it’s the least I can do after what I did. Here’s my number, please call me when the bill comes.” As he hands her a business card and then walks back to his car, gets in it, and drives away. Grace stands there stunned at the fact that the man had decided to come back and try to help. She shakes off the feeling and hops into the car, and starts driving towards the nearest hospital, hoping she can get there to see her daughter. After an hour of looking around, and countless hospital visits, she finally finds where her daughter is located. When she walks in, she immediately notices one of the paramedics from the ambulance and walks over to talk to her. “Hello, but I believe that my daughter is here, and I wish to go see her.” “What is the name of the person, and how do you know him/her” “Her name is Scootaloo and as I said before, she is my daughter. She was hit by a car earlier this evening.” The paramedic looks at grace in shock and says “She is currently being operated on, but I can call in the Doctor who diagnosed what needed to be done. Of course you two would be talking in private though.” “That would be lovely miss..” “Red Cross, ma’m” “Thank you Red Cross, you have no idea how stressful this ordeal has been.” “No problem ma’m. Could Dr.fracture please report to the front desk, Dr.Fracture to the front desk!” Minutes later, the doctor has arrived and taken grace down to an empty patient's room, before starting to talk with Grace “Hello, allow me to introduce myself, I am Dr.Fracture.” “Graceful Charity, but please call me Grace.” “Alright then Grace, I have some good news and some terrible news. I’ll start with some of the good news first, your daughter is alive and will be relatively fine. Any higher up, and she might have lost an organ or two.” “What do you mean by relatively fine?” “The terrible news is that both of her knee caps, as well as part of the bones surrounding them, were shattered, and her legs are being amputated to prevent any further damage.” “but that means she’ll never walk again! She’ll be heartbroken.” “Well, here’s the rest of the good news, the hospital will give you a pair of prosthetic legs she can use, rehab to help her get used to them and we’ll give you a replacement set every six months. She may, however, start to suffer from depression so, she needs to feel loved more than she ever has.” “Thank you Doctor. When will she get out of surgery though, I want to see her.” “She should actually be getting wrapped up right about now. We’ll give her this room, and wheel her in within a couple of minutes okay.” “That would be wonderful. I can’t thank you or your staff enough.” “Don’t worry about it Grace, it’s our job to do our best to help others when they’re sick or hurt.” The doctor says as he walks out of the room to make the proper arrangements. Within a couple minutes, scootaloo is wheeled into the room on her bed, still asleep from the painkillers and sleeping gas used on her during the operation. Grace walks up to her unconscious daughter’s body and holds her hand while saying “We’re going to get through, this together!” While tears start to appear in her eyes as the severity of the situation finally hits her. Grace pulls up a chair and sits down next to her daughter, letting her tears fall freely, and cries. She cries for ten minutes until she can cry no more, due to the stress the day has put on her catches up to her and she falls asleep. Scootaloo spent two weeks in rehab, and learned how to use her new legs with ease. On the day that scootaloo was released from the hospital, she picked out a pair of purple, knee high socks to hide her disability from the world, not wanting anyone to know about what happened. The man who hit her payed for her entire stay at the hospital and for future prosthetic’s and in return Grace didn’t take him to court, knowing that he learned his lesson.