Hello Stranger

Time for the ascent.

Logan set up her wheelchair from the trunk, and we helped her in, making sure her oxygen was fully charged and secure. I slung the backpack over my shoulders, and we were off. Along the track, climbing slowly along with the grind of the wheels, and every step was magic, the beautiful soul in that chair soaking in every breath like it was her world. Logan’s steps were steady and strong, and mine were a dance at his side, pointing out everything around us. Every wonder, every breeze, every tree rustling on the hillside. Jackie was singing on the same page, pointing out everything along with me, her smile bright enough to dwarf every smile I’d ever made.

The sky was bright, with a stunning haze of clouds. The grass was green and the path was solid enough to keep the chair moving, and Jackie was more alive than I’d ever known alive to be, even in the body that was fighting for every breath.

We passed people out with dogs, and families with tiny children skipping down the bank. We passed ramblers, and a woman zooming in the opposite direction on a bike with ribbons on the handlebars.

We climbed, we laughed, we lived. The path narrowed and wound its way higher, and my breath caught in my throat as the crest of the hill came into view. It was magnificent in a way I’d never appreciated, the strength of the land dwarfing us as nothing but tiny sparks on its plains.

“We’re going to damn well make it, you know, all the bloody way to the top,” Jackie said, and her words were caught with emotion.

The last few steps on any ladder are the hardest. The final chunk of the road was tough. The path wound and faded to nothing, and I took hold of the chair along with Logan and we pushed together, working hard. Push. Push. Push. Harder. Harder.

Jackie laughed over the bumps in the grass, gripping the arms of the chair as she cackled and bounced, and we were laughing with her, even though we were gasping for breath. And then we were there. At the very top. The wind whipping around us, wild and free, with the spread of the land sprawling right the way below for miles around.

It was beautiful. I couldn’t breathe, and it wasn’t from the exertion, it was from feeling the pure euphoria coming from Jackie. I’d have climbed Everest just to see her so happy. It was magic. Magic enough that I believed in fairytales all over again, looking at the world through the eyes of a child seeing their very first rainbow.

When Logan took my hand in his, I had no words, I just squeezed back harder, and I was higher than the hills we were stood on. As high as Jackie’s squeal of joy as her arms rose to the sky in celebration. As high as everything I’d ever dreamed of and ever wanted, all tied up in the now.

“I climbed a mountain!” she cried. “I’m on the top of a fucking mountain!”

Logan knelt at her side, and she wrapped her arm around his shoulders and held him tight. I’d have stepped aside and left them to their moment if she hadn’t beckoned me up to the other side of her chair. I knelt in the grass, and she held me too, pulling me close.

“Thank you,” she said. “Thank you both so fucking much.”

There was no thank you needed. Not in a million years. The thank you was all mine.

The colours of the land below were a patchwork. Greens meeting yellows, and gripping the greys of the town as life trundled on below, oblivious to the heights. People going about their business, so many of them taking day after day without realising the miracle of life itself, just as I’d done for so many days of my own. Days with Liam, sitting and staring on as he played his crappy games like they were life itself. Nights with my mind spinning in bed, trying to dream myself to sleep, knowing deep down that I was a square peg in a round hole.

We found a little nook, sheltered from the breeze and it was a joy all over again to see Jackie with her ham sandwich.

“Bloody lovely,” she said with a mouthful. “And tea never tasted better than it does up here.” She raised her plastic cup to us.

Logan grimaced when she dunked a custard cream and I couldn’t help laughing.

It was bliss. Crazy absolute bliss.

We stayed on the hill for as long as Jackie could manage, but she faded fast. Exhausted.

She was barely conscious as we made the descent, hardly able to move as we loaded her back into the car, but that didn’t matter. She was still flying high on the drive home, even if it was in dreamland.