Page 18 of Thrust into the Light

He walks over to the sink and moves the glass that is there that lets me see myself.

“In here are your toothbrush and toothpaste. There is also some deodorant for you to use. You take the top off like this and twist this little knob on the bottom until the white part comes up. Then you rub the white part in your armpit. It helps make it so when you get sweaty, you don’t smell. Why don’t you try it right now, so I can help you if you can’t figure it out?”

He hands the strange thing to me. I do what he says, and he stops me after the first time I rub it in.

“You don’t have to push so hard, sweetness. Here, let me see it. Hold your arm up.”

I didn’t think I was pushing hard. I couldn’t feel it at all. I hand it to him and hold my arm up like he is doing. He walks over and brushes it over my skin. I watch what he is doing but can’t feel it at all. He makes a motion for me to lift the other arm and I do. Again, he brushes it against me, but I can’t feel it.

“How much can you actually feel, Farlen? I know you are thinking about not being able to feel this. Are you able to feel it when I hold your hand?”

I can feel it when he gives my hand a hug, and the warmth from it, but not feeling his hand on my own. I don’t think I can say all that, so I try to think it at him. He puts a hand on my face.

“Can you feel this? Feel my hand brushing across your cheek?”

I shake my head at him. I stopped feeling anything except fear a long time ago. The pain HE gave me stopped hurting a long, long time ago.

“Alright sweetheart, I hope that once you’re fully healed, youwill feel this. Now, how about we get some food in you, then I have something for you, and I want to play a game with you.”

We go back out to the room with the big table, and Connor tells me to sit down while he goes to the strange restroom. Why is there food in the restroom? I hear Connor laugh from the other side of the door.

“This room is called the kitchen, Farlen. It’s the room you prepare food in for eating. Or where you can find snacks and things like that to eat. It’s not a restroom.”

I sit there in the dark while he gets food for me. I am learning so many new things from him. Kit-chen a room for food. Connor comes out with two plates with so much food on them that it looks like the food might fall off at any time. He sets them down in front of me.

“Eat what you want. I will eat whatever is left.”

Again he tells me everything I eat, and gets out more paper and writes down things on it that he notices I like, and don’t like. I can eat more than I have before. He notices I’ve stopped eating, takes one plate and starts eating. There is still so much food left on the plate. Is he going to really eat all of that? After he finishes a mouth of food, he sets his fork down.

“So I got you a cell phone so I can keep in touch with you while you are in class. It will also allow you to get a hold of me if you need help with something. Why don’t you come sit over here and I can show you how it works?”

I walk around the big table and sit in the chair next to him. He holds up a rectangle that I saw some nurses at the hospital using.

“Cell fone?”

“Yes, this is a cell phone. Here, let me show you how to use it.”

We spend a while at the table, Connor eating and showing me how to use it. He shows me how to call him. He also shows me how to text him. Connor gets his own out and presses the letter buttons on it. Then mine starts to move weirdly on the table. He has me open it and then touch the picture of him. Once I do, a strange voice comes from it. The voice says “Hi sweetheart.” Connor calls me sweetheart. Did the picture of him cause it totalk? But it doesn’t sound like him.

“I set up your phone so that whenever you get a text message, it reads them out to you, so you can see the words that are written down, and can hear them being spoken too. It will help you with reading. I, uh, also put my mother’s phone number on your phone, which is the other person on your contact list. Sharron is her name. She looks a lot like me, but she has red, curly hair. Here, this is her. She wanted to talk to you. I told her you weren’t big on talking yet, but she could text you.”

“Until we find your other matches, if you ever need help, text me or my Mom okay, and we will help you. Though as a warning she may send one of my dads to come help too, depending on what is wrong. They can be a little over the top, so hopefully she holds off on that for a while. So now when you want to send a message, press this button and then say what you want to say. It will convert whatever you say to words. When you have said what you need to press this button and it will send the message.”

He hands it to me. I remember the ladies from the big house, where there were a lot of kids like me always saying that if someone does something nice for you, you say thank you to them. I do what Connor told me to do. I press on his picture and click the little button like he said. I hold it up to my face and speak the words, then press the button. His phone rumbles on the table. He smiles at me.

“Once you learn to read, we can turn off text to speech, so that way everyone doesn’t hear your messages. Now let me take care of these plates and then onto the game I want to play with you.”

He stands up and grabs the empty plates. Where did all the food go? It would have taken me a lot of days to eat all of that. Did Connor eat it all? He comes back in from the kitchen and sits down next to me with a lot of stuff. He hands me one thing, and it is big and really heavy. My arms struggle to hold it, and I put it down on the table.

“The enormous book I just handed you is a dictionary. Every day we are going to open that up to a random page, and have you point at a word. That is going to be your word of the day. I wantyou to try to use it that day when you talk to me. I will read the word and what it means to you. Hopefully, soon you’ll be able to read them to me. Open it up somewhere. It doesn’t matter where you open the book. Once you have it open point at one word on the page, it’s okay if you don’t understand what it means or what it says.”

I open the book and look at all the words on the page. I have no clue what any of them mean and point at one like he said to do.

“Alright, your word for, well, I guess tomorrow is gravitate. It is a verb, which is an action word. It says that it means to move or tend to move under the influence of a gravitational force, or to tend toward the lowest level; sink; or fall, it can also mean to have a natural tendency or to be strongly attracted (usually followed by to or toward). As an example of it being used in a sentence for you; As soon as I saw you, my entire being began to gravitate toward you.”

Again, he points to each word as he speaks them. I try out the word in my head, gravitate. It is a little hard for me to get the hang of it in my head, but once I do, I try to say it.

“Gravytate.”

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