Chapter 21 - Falling

— Tris

Do I feel trapped?

Yes.

I don't reply.

"I'm not sitting here attacking you. I studied psychology so much when I was younger, honestly it's why I was so inhumane when you had first met me, what, nine or so years ago."

I still don't reply.

Am I trapped?

"Tris, I think you're in denial."

What is that suppose to mean?

"And I get why you are. I mean, you don't remember a lot of what had happened before Caleb and I showed up in those cells in that hell. I understand, it's easier to shut it out and pretend it didn't happen. Hell, it's easy to shut out that stuff you remember even happened."

She stops and waits for me to answer.

Denial?

"You don't look at your leg. When you take your cast off to change, you do it blindly without looking at the injury below. Getting in the shower tonight, you didn't look to your left leg once. Tris, PT is never going to help if you don't accept that there is a weakness below that cast."

I feel a stab in my chest.

"Please, Tris, say something."

"I'm trapped in this cast. I'm trapped in this body. I'm in denial that I'm even alive," I cannot stop the tears as my eyes meet hers. "How am I even alive?"

"Because someone knew you could handle it."

"I can't."

"There's your denial, Tris. No, I don't expect you to be positive, hell, even asking me to be positive about anything is bullshit. Denial and negativity are two different things."

"What do I do?" I barely whisper.

"Look at your leg, Tris. Take off your cast."

"I— I just,"

"I will help you if you'd like—"

"Don't touch it!" I snap in a whisper tone.

"Then I'm here for moral support. Tris, the thing with denial is you have to face it head on."

"I don't have denial. There is an injury under there, and I know that it's there. I feel it every time I move, each time I breathe, each pulse, I know it's there."

"Then look at it."

I don't reply.

I don't want to.

"Molly is going to have to feel the muscles in your leg to strengthen them, Tris. You can't deny that, unless you deny that you're going to ever walk again."

"How can you sit here and say you don't mean to attack me when that's all that you're doing. Sitting here and attacking me about how I should view everything and that I'm a caged animal who is caged in her life with her crutches and cast? How can you say you don't mean to attack me?!"

"Because I love you. I never had a sister, and hell I love you more than one, and I'm not a dumbass. Look at your damn leg, Tris. Look at it before you have no choice but to give up. Don't put yourself though this. You're stronger than what lies under that fabric, and you can face it. Caleb knows it, Bea knows it, Tobias knows it, your parents do, and I know it too. Beatrice Prior, you're better than this."

"That's the thing: I'm not. People change Cara—"

"And do you like this change?" She cuts me off.

No.

My hands uncontrollably tremble as they move towards the black fabric Velcro straps on my calf.

The noise they make when they're peeled make my hair stand on end.

The straps are undone and I freeze.

I can't do this.

"You're doing great, Tris." Cara sits next to me in a black tank top and grey sleep shorts.

It's the middle of October and it has been unusually warm during the fall season. The air conditioning leads me to wear blankets, but she is use to it.

The Dauntless stones hold the heat of whatever season, making spring, summer and fall hot, brutally hot, and just as hot, but then freezing in the winter.

Erudite has one season: air conditioning.

"I— I can't..."

"Will you let me take off the straps?"

I let her, for I can't stop shaking.

"Take it off," I say, not wanting to bend my leg and injure myself taking it off.

"No, you can." She says, surprising me.

"No," I sob, shaking.

"Yes, you can," she says sternly, insistently, like a mother teaching a bird to fly despite how it keeps falling to the ground.

"Deep breath, okay?" She says, wrapping her arm around my shoulders.

I hold my breath.

Why does this matter so much?
It's a small cast.
I've seen what's below it four years ago.

I take it off.
And I feel nothing.
I am numb.

Cara had turned on the lights in the room when she came in, and there is no hiding the fact.

There's lines from stitches everywhere. Tissue makes it lumpy in some places, leaving indents where it is lacking.

It's not mine.

"Tris, it's yours. Stop denying it."

Guess that wasn't said in my head.

The tears don't stop. My shoulders heave over as I scream but no sound come out.

"What do you see, Tris."

It's too much.

"Tris, when you look at your leg, what do you see?"

"It's not mine."

"But what do you see?"

I DON'T KNOW.

I look through my tears.

I see the six bullets that were visible, one in my ankle, one in my heel, the other four in the fleshy part that is now uneven.

I only feel the other three bullets on the backside of my calf. The one below my knee hurts the worst, but pain from the bullet in my ankle pierces between itself and its sister bullet a little ways above the back of my heel.

"The bullets. I point to each spot on the top; each of the six that I can reach. I feel three more. And— a- the knife," I gasp, my hand shakily drawing the line where there is a carved indent in the middle of my calf."

Cara says nothing.

"It hurts," I whisper, my head hitting Cara's shoulder.

"Will you let me touch it?"

I shrug my shoulders, shaking from the ghost pains of unwanted metal in my body.

She lightly drags her index finger where the knife once had lay, it had stayed in that spot for over nine hours before I ripped it out in a moment of fear.

I almost bled out.
I injured myself more.
I'm still as scared now as I was then.

"You remember each bullet?" She asks in awe.

"It's like they never left."

"They were in there for so long, I guess that makes sense."

"They always hurt."

"Really?"

"They hurt. Cara, it hurts." I double over in panic.

"Tris, don't move your leg." She says calmly. I know she's panicking internally. She is the kind of person who stays calm even when the worst happens.

"Shhh you're okay. Tris, you're safe. It's just me."

I feel her put the removable cast back on, but I'm numb.

I feel myself slipping again.

I cannot grasp the reality I have been thrown into.

I fall through it like water slipping through someone's fingers.

I'm falling.
No one can catch me.