It's been a while since I posted a new chapter, so here it is.


Chapter 20

In the morning, we left the legbraces in the bedroom and I transferred into the wheelchair, lifting my legs to place them on the footpads. Robert had to get the bowls from the cupboard while I carried the jug of milk on my lap. Then he had to rub my legs to warm them up again, something that we both enjoyed.

After breakfast was cleaned up, he sat on the couch and I transferred so that I was sitting between his legs, resting against his chest. Together, we worked on the story, putting in the details from our research the night before. It took a little longer than normal, because he insisted that he follow some of the things described on the screen, just so that I had something to compare being in legbraces and not having them on. It was actually a good idea, because there were some significant differences that I hadn't taken into account. That led to adding the morning-after to the story.

Just before lunch, I told him that he had to leave, but I didn't let him go until he kissed me properly. I did tell him that he would be coming back very soon so that we could record the latest chapters and post them to the storage site.

After he left, I had a shower and attended to a little bit of grooming of a few patches of stubble. It was just a quick shower so that I was clean, not one that was used to relieve my frustration, Chuckee had well and truly satisfied those the night before. Even though my body was satisfied, my mind wasn't, and I dressed in an underwire bra with a little padding, stockings and garterbelt, then added a pair of medium-height slim heels.

Then I spent the afternoon in and out of my wheelchair, starting to make my place wheelchair-friendly. The first place I worked on was the kitchen. Starting with the cupboards, I moved half of my dishes from above the counter to below the counter where I could easily reach them, then did the same with the pre-packaged food and cans. I would make a change, then get into the wheelchair and check to make sure that it was convenient to access what I had done. It didn't take very long to do the kitchen, and there were a few changes that would be done after I did some shopping.

Then I started to rearrange the furniture so that I didn't have to maneuver around things as much. The couch, coffee table and tv-stereo stayed where they were, but smaller tables were moved to places that were more convenient. I spent plenty of time in and out of the wheelchair, and found that the short dress that I was wearing was comfortable and didn't bunch up around my legs the way that the skirt had.

In the evening, it was time for me to test out if my work rearranging the apartment was adequate. I transferred from the wheelchair onto the bed and strapped on the legbraces, then transferred back into the wheelchair. There were a few things that I would have to learn to do while standing in the legbraces, like cooking and washing the dishes, but that would come with practice, and I intended to get advice from HotWheels on how to manage. I had moved the microwave to the front of the counter so that I could reach it and planned to get a stand so that it would be at a more convenient height, so I heated some leftover pizza for supper.

It had been a busy and productive day, so I transferred from the wheelchair to the couch and worked on my stories, adding details based on the research that Chuckee and I had done the night before. Some of the descriptions were very detailed, and more than once I had to stop and run my hands over my legs and along the metal struts supporting them. I had learnt something from how Chuckee had teased me, and my hands stayed away from the bare skin below my waist, just touching where the stockings covered my legs.

I went to bed gloriously frustrated, not allowing myself to have a shower to relieve the built-up feelings, mainly because I couldn't figure out how to have a shower without getting the legbraces and wheelchair wet. Having a shower while disabled went onto the list of things that I needed to research.

For the rest of the week, when I got home from work, I had a shower or bath to clean up, then dressed in a different outfit each day so that I could learn what worked and what didn't while wearing legbraces and using a wheelchair. I also bought some things to make life easier. The microwave went onto a stand that was wheelchair accessible and I bought some rods for the closets so that I could hang my clothes within reach. I rearranged my drawers so that all my lingerie was easy to get at.

The most significant thing that I did was practice using the crutches. I started by learning how to maneuver around my apartment with just the crutches, and learnt that rugs were a problem, so I rolled up the loose ones and stored them away. I started out wearing shoes with no heels and worked my way to wearing medium-height heels. Learning how to go from sitting on the couch to standing using the crutches took a bit of research, but Google helped with that. Getting out of and into the wheelchair took more time to learn, but I managed that too.

Then came the real challenge, learning how to do it wearing legbraces. After changing to the metal shoe insert, I tried the legbraces with a pair of shoes with no heel. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get up from the couch using just the crutches. The wheelchair was no better. Sitting down on the couch was more of a controlled crash, and I didn't bother trying to do it into the wheelchair.

I realized that I needed some professional help learning how to do it. HotWheels and I had been chatting online every day and I had sent her a few samples of the story that I was working on for her. I had told her that I had rearranged my apartment so that it was more wheelchair-friendly, but I had kept my learning how to walk in the legbraces a secret…. I wanted to surprise her with how good I had become.

Finally, I had to admit defeat. So I invited her over, telling her that I needed her help with some research I was doing for the story. I had expected her to say that she could come over in a day or two, but she surprised me by saying she would be right over. What I didn't know was that she had her own van with hand controls and drove wherever she needed to go.

I was still trying to figure out how to get up from the couch while wearing legbraces when my phone buzzed. She was at the front door, so I buzzed her in and told her just to open the door to my apartment and come in. As soon as she saw what I was trying to do, she laughed and said, "You're doing it all wrong, you can't use your legs the way that you're used to, you have to coordinate your whole body to get you up." Then she took my crutches and demonstrated what I was supposed to do, standing up and crutching in place until she was lined up with the couch, then bent over until it looked as if she was going to fall over, released the locks behind her knees and sat down.

She smiled at me, and I saw that she was wearing her retainers again. "You're not the only one that has been practicing. I realized that I needed to work on it too after how clumsy I was at the hospital." She looked around at my apartment and said, "How about you show me around. I'd like to see what changes you made to accommodate using a wheelchair. I can probably give you a few suggestions to make it easier to live this way."

I still hadn't tried walking while wearing the legbraces, so I transferred into my wheelchair and waited for her to do the same. Then we started the tour in the kitchen. She made a few suggestions about how to make cooking in my kitchen easier while wearing legbraces, but my kitchen wasn't really that wheelchair-usable for cooking. She liked what I had done in the bedroom with the extra rods in the closet and rearranging my drawers. As she looked through my drawers, she picked up a few pieces and said that she wouldn't mind seeing me in them sometime.

When we went through the bathrooms, I finally got the answers to many of my questions about how she showered and used the bathtub. Her place had been modified to accommodate her limitations with a longer hose on the shower and a water-powered hydraulic seat in the tub, which she invited me to use sometime.

We sat and talked for a while, discussing what I needed to adjust to make my place more 'handicapped-accessible' so that I could experience some of what she did every day. She frowned at the terms I was using and said that she wasn't handicapped, she was capable of doing everything that I could, she just had to do some things differently.

She took me into the kitchen and said, "Make us a pot of coffee and I will show you what I mean." I tried to reach over the counter to grab the coffee pot so that I could fill it to make the coffee, but the counter was too high. "Let me show you how I do it. Move back and watch me." After I rolled back, she took her crutches from behind her chair and, leaning forwards until she looked like she would fall over, stood up. She positioned herself between the sink and the coffee pot, set one crutch to the side, and used her free hand to fill the pot, pour it into the coffeemaker and start it running. "I just did something that you can't do right now. I just did it differently than you usually do."

While we sipped our cups of coffee at the table, she asked me, "Have you gone outside of your apartment in the wheelchair or the leg-braces yet?" When I shook my head, she asked, "Why not? How do you expect to write about things that you don't know about? The stuff that you have been writing lately seems so realistic and I have been really enjoying it."

When I explained that 'Chuckee' and I had actually done the things that I described, she smiled and said, "Then I think that it is time we had a girls-day-out. Let's get you ready to go out." I rolled behind her as we went to my bedroom. She began going through my closet and dresser, selecting things for me to wear. She seemed to have more than one change of clothes when she finished.

My curiosity got the better of me and I asked, "What are all those for?"

She just smiled, the wires across her teeth shining, and said, "We are going to make more than one stop, and you are going to have to change your clothes at least twice. Now, get over here and change." When I looked at her questioningly, she said, "You can either do it in the chair or on the bed, the choice is yours. I recommend the bed, it's much easier to move around on."

I followed her suggestion and changed on the bed, then transferred to the chair again. While I was changing, she packed the rest of her clothing selections in my backpack.

By the time I was done, she was laughing at me. "Stop trying to act like a cripple, it looks fake. Use the muscles you have to do what you want to do. All you have to do is relearn how to move using the devices you have. Let the wheelchair, leg-braces and crutches become a part of you. I'm still learning how to use mine, and that changes as I recover from my injuries." Placing the backpack on my lap, she said, "Now, let's get out of here."

She stopped me before we could leave, telling me that I needed to take the crutches with me and showing me how to stow them in the clips behind me on the chair. When we got to her van, she explained how to transfer into it from the wheelchair and how to use the crutches to transfer instead. Her explanation included how she found it easier to get in and out of the van with her leg-braces and that it made it easier to load and unload the wheelchairs with the power sliding doors.

It turned out that our first stop wasn't a store or restaurant, it was a building that looked like a warehouse, except that the interior had been turned into a gym. She had me use my wheelchair to give me a tour of the building and introduce me to the staff on duty. The owners were a group of disabled veterans who had wanted a place to regain and maintain their health away from the eyes of the general public. The place was by referral only by members of the gym. She told me that she was a member and that I should watch how the different people used their bodies as they exercised. She also told me that I would be coming back to exercise with her.

Then she took me to the mall. As soon as we started rolling through the mall, I became aware of the different ways that people were looking at us. Some would glance at us, then it would seem as if we became invisible to them. Others would turn and stare at us as we rolled by them. To many of them, we were just a couple of females out shopping. I noticed that guys tended to pay more attention to us than the women. It shouldn't have surprised me that much, since we were both wearing knee-length skirts, blouses that showed a bit of cleavage and heels. The fact that we were also wearing leg-braces and in wheelchairs definitely drew a lot of attention as well.

By the end of the afternoon, I had a better idea of what she was talking about when she said that I needed to 'stop pretending to be crippled' and to learn how to use my body differently to accomplish what I wanted to do.

Before she took me back to my place, we stopped at a restaurant for something to eat and to just sit and talk. Other than eating in the hospital cafeteria, this was the first time that I had been in a public environment in the wheelchair to eat, and it was an eye-opener for me. It felt as if everyone was watching us, yet when I looked around, there were only a couple of guys our age looking in our direction, and it wasn’t really the wheelchairs they seemed interested in. When HotWheels saw where I was looking, she glanced at them, smiled and then turned her attention back to me.

“You’ll have to get used to that if you're with me. Being a good-looking female in a wheelchair isn’t much different than without the chair, it just takes a while to get used to the attention you draw.” Then we went back to chatting.

The conversation moved to the latest chapters of the stories I was working on. She hadn't seen the last few chapters of the story that I was writing for her, so I transferred them to her phone and she read them. When I commented that the one female character had a lisp and I didn't know how I was going to record it convincingly, she asked, "How did you do it when you recorded the other story?"

I explained that I had used the whitening tray and that I was a bit drunk when I did it, so I was slurring the words more than lisping. My accent had also been stronger and that added to the impression of the lisp. "While it was kind of fun to do it that way, especially with who it was for, I don't want to make it a habit of getting drunk while working on my stories."

HotWheels looked at me for a while, then began to grin. "Let me think about it for a while. I may have a solution to your problem, and I think you will enjoy what I come up with." She took a couple more sips of her coffee, then asked, "How would you like to go to the gym with me? I haven't been going enough and need to work on building strength in my legs. You can sit at the side and watch the other people there and see how each person uses different methods to accommodate their injuries."

I probably could have said 'no', but the opportunity to be able to gain information for my stories was too good to pass up, so I agreed.

Chapter 22

For the next week, I practiced what I had learnt at the gym and improved to the point that I felt pretty confident in my ability to walk in the legbraces. I worked on both of the current stories, adding a couple of chapters to each story. Sarge had given me an idea for a new story and I had started on an outline for it.

HotWheels and I had talked about the story that I was working on for her, among other things, and one of the things she had asked was if I would be available on Friday afternoon to go with her to an appointment. She wouldn't tell me where we were going, though she said that I needed to use the wheelchair. The leg-braces were optional, but I would enjoy it more if I wore them, and heels would be appropriate. I was to dress comfortably in a knee-length or longer dress or skirt, though pants would be fine.

When she picked me up in her van on Friday, I chose to wear the leg-braces, and after a bit of experimentation with pants, decided that a dress was more comfortable. I chose dark-grey stockings, without a garterbelt, and mid-height heels that I had practiced wearing while crutching around my apartment. As long as I didn't have far to go, I was comfortable wearing them, and I thought they looked good with my outfit.

All during the drive, we talked about the progress I was making on the stories, though she avoided any mention of my recording them for the storage site. Before I realized where we were, she had parked at the hospital, in a disabled parking stall near the entrance doors. I surprised her by using my crutches to support myself while I unloaded my wheelchair, then stowing the crutches behind me after I had seated myself.

It was still a mystery as to where we were going, but at least the building was a little familiar. The time spent practicing in the wheelchair paid off as I was able to keep up with her as she set a brisk pace through the hospital. Some of the corridors we took looked familiar and then she turned a corner and we were outside her orthodontist's office.

As soon as we rolled inside, I knew that I was in for an interesting afternoon. The assistant at the front desk greeted me by name and said, “You’re a bit early for your appointment, Miss Molly, but that’s okay. It gives me a chance to tell you that I have been enjoying listening to your stories and I think that I have read most of the others. HotWheels said that you write about things that you have experienced and that you were having a bit of an issue with recording what you wrote, and that she hoped we could help you.”

When I turned to look at Hotwheels, she had her finger against her lips, trying to get the assistant to not say anything more. “Miss Molly has no idea about what I asked for, and I want to keep it that way a little longer.” The smile on the assistant's face got bigger as she realized just how much fun I was in for. “Why don’t I take you in and get you ready. I see that you have your crutches with you. Do you want to leave the wheelchairs here so that the room isn’t quite so crowded?”

Now I knew why Hotwheels had been so specific in what I should wear and what options I had. All the practice wearing the leg-braces and learning how to use them properly paid off as I parked my chair out of the way, leaned forward and stood up using the crutches. I used the swing-through gait to move down the hall and into the treatment room, then sat down in the treatment chair when she directed me to it and adjusted the level for me. Instead of being a controlled crash, I was actually pretty graceful as I sat down.

The assistant left to get the doctor, and she must have said something to him, because he had a broad smile on his face when he walked in. “So, Miss Molly, this is your second appointment with me. I don’t usually have patients that are in as good shape as you, but I was asked if I could help you out a little. I told HotWheels that I would have to think about what she asked, but she said that you would be okay with being my patient. Now I was told that you have no idea about what is going on, so I have to ask you. Are you okay with being here today? What I am doing is a bit unusual, to say the least.”

Before I had a chance to reply, HotWheels said, “She’ll be fine. I told her that I had an appointment. I didn’t tell her that the appointment was for her. She’s been fine with everything that I have done to her so far and this is going to be the easiest experience yet.”

He looked at me for confirmation and I just shrugged and nodded. He took that to mean that I was agreeing to what was happening and said, “Let’s get started then. I want to have one more look at your teeth before I do anything, just to be sure that everything is okay.”

HotWheels pulled a sleep mask out of her pocket and said, “I don’t want her to be able to see what is going on. It would have been so much more fun if she could have worn her contacts, but this will have to do.”

Just as he was about to ask what she meant, his assistant leaned over and whispered something in his ear. His smile got bigger when she turned to Hotwheels and took the mask, then slipped it over my eyes. The chair reclined and I opened my mouth as he adjusted the light to shine onto my teeth. The check didn’t take long and then I heard things being placed on the tray beside me.

I wasn’t really surprised when the doctor said, “I don’t exactly know what is going on here, but I suspect that some of my employees are involved in it. I know that you have no idea, so before I do anything else, I think that I need proof that you are agreeing to what is going on, so I'm going to have HotWheels record you saying that you agree. I’ve always been able to trust her and she’s always been honest with me, and I think that you trust her as well. If you agree to let whatever is going on continue, I’ll still let you stop me at any time that you want.” He paused until I heard Hotwheels say, “Okay, ready to record.” Then he asked me, “Do you agree to become my patient and let me treat you?”

I wasn’t too sure about how he was phrasing the question, but I responded, “Yes, I consent to being your patient.”

With a chuckle, he said, “Now that the formalities are over, I’ll get started. I’m going to be describing what I am going to do so that you know what is happening. You can ask any questions you want and I’ll stop any time you want me to. Most of what my assistant has scheduled you for won’t be visible and almost everything can be removed by you whenever you want. I have a feeling that HotWheels has spent quite a bit of time talking to her about what is happening, because almost everything can be used separately and will still fit together with many of the other pieces.”

I heard some chuckling coming from both of them, and the assistant said, “I felt that it was my responsibility to provide professional advice in the matter. If I didn’t have an answer to a question, I asked someone who did. When I explained why I was asking and who it was for, almost everyone was happy to help. I may have made a few suggestions along the way as well. Miss Molly has quite a few fans around the hospital.”

I could hear the amusement in his voice as the doctor replied, "That would explain some of what is on the tray." Then he directed his next comments to me. "Okay, Miss Molly, we're going to start on your molars. You’re going to taste a sour chemical as we get them ready to put bands on them. You won’t need spacers, since there are already small gaps. Nobody will see them because they are at the back. They will be used to anchor some of the other things that are on the list for you to wear. Any questions about the molar bands?”

I had about a thousand questions that I could ask, but not about the bands. He had been thorough enough in his explanation of what would happen. I knew people that had worn braces and they told me that they didn’t have a problem with their molar bands, except for the spacers that were used at the start. I just shrugged, opened my mouth and waited for them to start working. It felt strange to have my lips spread so far apart and not be able to close my mouth when they stuck the retractor in place. I felt them brush something along my gums in the back, and a little while later, my gums went numb.

His warning had been accurate. The chemical smell was kind of strong, but it didn't last long and the suction hose did a good job of removing the water that was used to rinse the chemical off. The next part felt even stranger. They put a ring around a molar, then they took it out, did something to it and put it in again. Then they took it out and did it all over again. I could feel the pressure change when they moved from one side to the other and top to bottom, but the back of my mouth was numb.

I didn't realize that I hadn't been listening to them until Sheila tapped my shoulder to get my attention and asked me to bite down. When I bit down, I felt something between my jaws that felt like the handle of a toothbrush and that it was pushing something around my molar. She had me do it several times on each side, and then there was a buzzing noise for a while. When the buzzing stopped, the retractor was removed.

Without being able to see what was going on, I was using my other senses to try to compensate. My imagination was in overdrive as I listened to the noises around me, inhaled the scents around me and felt the air moving around me. The noises were the most fascinating. Every time HotWheels shifted her position, I could hear the joints on her leg-braces creak a little. I could also hear things being moved around on the tray, and in the background, just loud enough to recognize, was a recording of my first story. I hadn't used any real names and the locations had been left vague, and very few people knew how much of it had actually happened. Whoever had put it on had started at the beginning and it was still about shoes, clothes and coloured hair, and about the coffee-dates.

I felt the back of the chair moving upright and Sheila asked, "Would you like to rinse before we continue? It's always nice to get rid of that chemical taste. A little mouthwash will clear it out." When I nodded, she placed a paper cup against my fingers and held it until I grasped it. "There's a hospital pan in front of your mouth, just lean forward and spit gently." It seemed as if she had thought ahead about how to make things as convenient as possible, but then working in a hospital probably meant doing things a little different than in a normal orthodontist's office. After I swished the mouthwash around a little, then spit, she wiped my lips with a damp cloth.

After I settled into the chair again, Sheila said, “We’re going to test fit a few things that you can put in and remove by yourself. You may need a little practice with some of them, and I am sure that HotWheels will be glad to help with that. Some of them she had herself, so she is familiar with them. For the devices that are a little more complicated, I am more than willing to teach you how to use them. I’ll tell you what each device is and if you need information about what it does, just ask. Is that okay?”

I nodded and smiled, then waited for her to continue. Whatever they had used to numb my gums had gotten onto my tongue and numbed it as well. It had acted very fast, but it didn’t seem as if it lasted long, because the feeling was starting to return to the tip. I ran my tongue around the inside of my mouth, but didn't have enough sensation yet to feel what they had done.

Gweat thtowy tho faw! Love the detailed dethcwitionth and chawactew development. Pleath continue when you have time! Thank you tho much!

I am still working on more chapters of this story. I haven't had much urge to write lately, and don't like to post stuff that I am not happy with. I will add more to this story, just be patient. I am also working on a few other stories that I feel a need to continue adding to.

I go through periods where my creative juices decrease and my stories suffer as a consequence.

Chapter 24

Since they were not interested in my opinion, I stayed silent and let them discuss my fate. I still had the face-bow in my hand, and with my tongue not being numb anymore, I wanted to explore my mouth in greater detail. While they kept discussing the various options of what they could use on me, I used my tongue to explore the bands on my molars. All of the bands had tubes on them on the inside and outside of my teeth, with the bands nearer to the front having them closer to my gums. I already knew that the face-bow was supposed to go into the tubes on the top rear molars, but the reason for the rest of the tubes was a bit of a mystery to me, especially why I had so many of them.

I probably should have been paying more attention to what they were talking about, but I was more interested in what they had already done to me. There was only so much I could do with my tongue, so I used my fingertips to add to the picture that was forming in my mind of what my mouth probably looked like now. As that picture developed more, I found that it seemed to include the face-bow, so rather than just try and picture it in my mind, I slipped it back into my mouth.

Just like the glasses, contacts, and the legbraces and other accessories, I was finding that there was something fascinating about the molar bands and face-bow. Even though I had just been given the face-bow, and it wasn’t attached to the neck-strap yet, it felt comfortable having it in my mouth. That changed as soon as the strap started to pull against my neck. The joints on the ankles and knees of my legbraces creaked as I tried to rub my legs together. I was enjoying the feeling of the slight pressure on my molars from the face-bow and the changes to the pressure as I moved my head around, when I was interrupted by a hand on my shoulder.

"Open your mouth for me, it's time for us to fit the next device into your mouth." I realized just how distracted I had been as I opened my mouth so that Sheila could insert a plastic object that spread my lips in all directions, preventing me from closing my mouth. All I could do was sit there as her fingers went into my mouth and placed things around my lower canines, removed them and put them back into my mouth again, this time pressing them firmly into place, then scraping something from around them. I could feel her doing things inside my mouth, I just couldn't tell what she was doing. My lips weren't close to touching my teeth, and her fingers were in the way of my tongue. I felt her press something down over my lower teeth, then a similar item over my top teeth and something was resting behind my teeth when she was done.

When she removed the plastic device that had been holding my lips open, from my mouth, then said, "Close your mouth slowly and tell me if anything pinches," I found out that she had put more in than I had thought. The first thing my lips encountered were two rods fastened to my lower canines, running upwards to my top front molars. That was followed by my bottom lip slipping over what felt like a fairly thick wire with bends that matched the contours of my teeth. My top lip came to rest against the wire of my face-bow. My mouth felt strange as my teeth came together, as if something was restricting the side-to-side movement of my lower jaw. I was finally able to use my tongue again, and quickly discovered that there were thin pieces of what felt like smooth acrylic pressed against my gums on the back of my upper and lower teeth. As I ran my tongue along the bottom piece, it encountered two metal bands, one on each of my lower canines.

When I explored what had been placed on my upper jaw, I found that the upper device had something that the lower one didn’t, a piece of wire with bends that projected into my mouth, that ran from canine tooth to canine tooth behind my teeth. There was almost enough space between my upper palate and the wire to just about fit my tongue into it. When I tried, the acrylic stopped my tongue from slipping into the gap.

Both the top and bottom acrylic pieces stopped just in front of the forward molars and a heavy wire emerged from the back, wrapped around the back molars, becoming the contoured wires that ran along my front teeth. When I opened my mouth and ran my tongue behind my face-bow, I found a wire running along my upper teeth, matching the wire on my bottom teeth. I discovered that I had considerably more metal in my mouth than I had first thought.

After thoroughly running my tongue over everything on the outside of my teeth, paying special attention to the rods running between my lower canines and my upper molars, and feeling how the outer rods slid over the inner rods, a big smile spread over my face. I still didn’t know what I looked like with everything that had been added to my mouth, but the picture in my mind was probably more extreme than what it actually was. I needed more information about what had been done, so I brought my hands to my lips and used my fingertips to explore as much of my mouth as I could. The most fascinating parts were how the pistons moved on and out while restricting the side-to-side movement of my lower jaw, and how the face-bow just barely cleared the pistons as I opened and closed my mouth.

Without even being asked, I tried to tell Sheila that everything felt fine. As I tried to talk, I found that it wasn’t going to be quite as easy to speak as I thought. As soon as I opened my mouth and tried to say, “Other than feeling a bit weird, everything feels fine,” my tongue kept bouncing off of the wire behind my top teeth, distorting my speech. That, combined with the face-bow between my lips, caused the T’s in my speech to be distorted to ‘TH’ and the S’s to “SH’, so that it sounded more like, “Other than feeling a bith wierth, eferything feelth fife.” They both laughed as I added, “I hafe eden more of a lithf now.”

 I reached up to take off the blindfold covering my eyes, but HotWheels stopped me before I could loosen it. “Leave it on a while longer. We don’t want you to see what else we have on the tray just yet.” Then she spoke to Sheila. “That is the effect I was hoping for. Just enough to give her a lisp and still be able to understand her when she is reading her stories. How about we save the rest of the devices for another time.”

I could hear things being moved around on the tray beside me, then things became quiet again. The back of my chair began to move to an upright position and, when I was sitting upright, a pair of hands moved my head forward enough to remove the blindfold from my eyes. I blinked a few times, getting used to the light in the room. When I was able to focus clearly, I looked to my right, then my left. Both of them were grinning at me and Sheila was holding a mirror in her lap with it facing down.

Sheila asked me, "Are you ready to see what we did to you? Keep in mind that other than the bands on your molars, everything is easily removable." When I nodded that I was, she turned the reflective surface of the mirror towards me and held it so that I could see myself in it. After letting me look briefly, she said, "Let me explain how everything works, and then you can ask me any questions that you have."

Again I nodded, then waited as she started. "The most visible item is the face-bow. If you want to remove it for me now, I'll show you how the clips work." Removing it was relatively easy, though the additional hardware in my mouth gave me more to get my fingers around. It would have been easier if I had unfastened the strap first, but it didn't occur to me. As soon as the face-bow came loose and I tried to get it out, the strap around my neck tightened and I had to use one hand to hold the face-bow while I unfastened the strap. When I pulled it out of my mouth and looked at it, the wire of the face-bow didn't look as thick as it had felt between my lips, and the clips were much smaller than they had felt against my fingers.

Sheila waited as I examined the face-bow before saying, "You are already reasonably familiar with how to install and remove the face-bow. Just make sure that the clips are facing down and that you use the bottom tubes on the back molars."

"The next thing visible are the pistons connecting your jaws. The whole device is called a Herbst. Normally they would be connected to the bands on your molars on top and to bands cemented to your canines on the bottom. The bands on your canines are held in place by denture adhesive and will just slip off with a bit of pressure, and the residue will come off when you brush your teeth. The bottom of the pistons are connected directly to the bands and you don't have to worry about disconnecting them. The other end of the pistons are connected to heavy wires that fit into the top tubes on the bands on your front molars and are held in place with clips, just the same as the face-bow. Leave it in for now, you can experiment with it a little later. The Herbst can be worn by itself or with the face-bow, and can also be worn in combination with the next items."

“The wires running along your teeth are retainers. The acrylic has been moulded to match the back of your teeth as closely as possible so that they are providing support to stop your teeth from moving. The little bends in the wire against your teeth are doing the same thing. Normally the acrylic would extend to the molars, but these are designed so that other items can be added to the inside of your mouth without the retainers interfering. If you are wearing the Herbst appliance, the retainers go in after you install the Herbst. The retainers can be worn alone or in combination with the Herbst and headgear.”

“The top retainer has a tongue crib attached to it. The tongue crib is a totally unnecessary device, but I had it added just for the fun of it. Normally it would be used to stop you from pushing against your front teeth if you had teeth that were protruding, and it will serve the same purpose now, just that it will stop you from pushing against them and moving them when you are playing with the toys in your mouth.”

“You should be able to put in and remove everything by yourself, though installing the Herbst bands on your canines might be easier if you have some help. I’ll give you a couple of tubes of denture adhesive. This is stuff we use in the hospital and is stronger than what is sold in stores. Any questions so far?”

It seemed to me that she had covered everything so far, but I did have one question, so I asked her, “How long will I have thith lithp? Will it go away or ith it a permanent thing?” Without the face-bow between my lips, my pronunciation was much better.

They both grinned at me and HotWheels said, “That will depend on how much you wear the retainers. The more you wear them, the better your speech will become. Don’t worry about the lisp going away. We have other things that we can use to affect your speech. I remembered what you said about wishing that you had something to give you a lisp for when you are recording some of your stories and how you used a whitening tray before. When I asked Sheila about what could be done, she suggested giving you retainers."

Sheila handed me the mirror so that I could take a closer look at my mouth. While I examined what had been put into my mouth without my consent, they took turns explaining how they had come up with the idea to do this to me.

They had gone out for a drink and something to eat on the weekend, and HotWheels had played the latest chapter that I had sent her. As they had listened, a comment had been made about how different it would sound if it had been read with a lisp. They didn’t remember who made the original comment, but Sheila said that a simple retainer would do nicely to create the right amount of lisp. After a bit more conversation, HotWheels had said that she could probably do something about adding the lisp to the recording because she knew who was recording the stories. They had both had a couple of drinks before their food came and were feeling pretty relaxed, and they had begun to talk about other ways to create a lisp.

Sheila had been playing one of the stories over the office speakers at work the next week, and she remembered what they had talked about. The idea of making a retainer for the person reading the story kept coming back every time that she tried to dismiss it, until finally she had called HotWheels and asked what she thought about the idea of making a retainer.

After getting together for a meal after work, and a drink for both of them, they decided to give it a try. When Sheila asked how they were going to get a model of my teeth to make it, HotWheels said that they already had one. They had it at the hospital from when I had visited her orthodontist for her retainer check-up. The idea to make the rest of the appliances had happened as a result of too much to drink and Hotwheels letting slip that I had done some of the things described in the stories. By then, my audio recordings had already started to circulate among the hospital staff and were popular listening material.

Chapter 25

I kept looking at everything that had been placed in my mouth. It all looked so real. And I liked how I looked with everything. When they got to the part about deciding to have more than just a retainer made, I stopped them and said, "Is there a bigger mirror around, I want to have a better look at what you did to me."

Sheila just handed me my crutches and said, "Follow us, we'll show you where to go."

I still had the face-bow in my hand, so I slipped it back into my mouth, locking the clips in place and fastened the strap again. I moved my legs to the edge of the chair, unlocked the knee joints on my legbraces and lowered my feet to the floor, then stood up using the crutches that Sheila handed to me. HotWheels had lent them to me, after telling me that I could borrow them until I decided to get a pair of my own. As I adjusted my balance, I found that the legbraces felt different, that they were supporting more of my weight than I was used to and that my legs were a bit wobbly. I giggled a little as I realized just how much of an effect the whole experience was having on me.

I found that my swing-through gait was slightly different as I relied on the legbraces a little more to support me as I followed Sheila. HotWheels had been here many times before, so she already knew where to go and had crutched off ahead of us and was waiting for us by the sinks. Even though it was an orthodontist's office, it was still in a hospital and had been designed for patients with a variety of levels of mobility. One sink was at wheelchair level, one was at normal counter height, and a third was at the level for someone using crutches so that they wouldn’t have to bend over as far to rinse.

Beside each sink was a container holding single-use toothbrushes in a wide variety of colours. When Sheila saw me looking at them, she said, “Go ahead and brush your teeth. I know that you’re wondering what it is like and just can’t wait to try it.”

I’d done it before while wearing the legbraces, a couple of times while in the wheelchair, which didn’t work very well because I couldn’t get close enough to the sink and the counter was too high. Brushing while wearing crutches was easier, though it required a little accommodation to account for having an altered stance. The easiest way was to use one crutch for balance and lean against the counter with my legs for better stability. The counter in my bathroom came to about halfway between my knees and my thighs while wearing heels.

I positioned myself in front of the sink, rested one crutch against the wall and selected a pale-pink-handled toothbrush. As soon as I began to brush, I knew that I was in trouble. The counter was higher than the one in my bathroom and my upper thighs were resting against it. In order to maintain my balance while brushing, I had to spread my feet a bit to create a tripod stance. Every time that my arm moved to brush my teeth, my hips moved too, and they were pressed against the counter. I tried to ignore the movement of my hips against the counter by concentrating on watching the brush try to navigate around everything in my mouth.

They hadn't said anything to me about removing my face-bow first and it hadn't occurred to me, so by the time that I realized it, my mouth was full of toothpaste. What I was really having trouble getting around were the pistons of the Herbst. No matter what angle I tried, they were in the way. I found that opening my mouth fairly wide and moving my lips off of my teeth was the best way to get at my teeth to brush them. They were both laughing at me as I was attempting to brush my teeth. I knew how funny I looked because I was looking at myself in the mirror.

The more I tried to brush, the harder it became. The problem wasn't trying to get around all the metal in my mouth, it was the height of the counter and the way my hips were pressed against it. It was a good thing that I was wearing the legbraces, because the muscles in my upper thighs had been twitching for quite a while and the legbraces had taken more and more of my weight. I finally had to give up trying to brush my teeth, set the toothbrush on the edge of the sink, and tried to ride out the spasms enveloping my body, which was a problem in itself, because the spasms were part of what was causing my hips to rub against the counter.

I did my best to not show what was going on, but it was evident that I didn't do a good job from the looks on their faces. They just left me there, propped up against the counter, until I was able to regain enough control to push myself away from the counter.

HotWheels waited until I was rinsing the toothpaste from my mouth before she asked, "Do you want your wheelchair or do you think that you can make it back into the treatment room under your own power?" Her timing was perfect, and they laughed as I spat toothpaste all over the sink. I tried to give her a dirty look after I wiped my face, but I couldn't manage it.

I did make it back to the treatment chair, though I had to take my time because of how the legbraces rubbed against my stocking-clad thighs. As I settled myself into the chair, Sheila said, "I think that we've done enough to you for today. We'll save the rest for next time, because I assume there is going to be a next time. Now, if you lay back, I'll show you how to take everything out and clean it."

I just looked at her and tried to say, "Don't you dare. You can tell me what to do to clean everything, but I have other plans for later on." The tongue crib and face-bow got in the way and distorted my speech.

They both laughed, and then Sheila had me hold the mirror while she used one of the picks to point to the various parts in my mouth and explain what had to be done. When she was convinced that I had been paying attention to what she had told me and not just looking at all the metal in my mouth, she said, "We're all done here. There is nothing else on the schedule for today, so why don't we go for coffee. If there is an emergency, my beeper will go off and I'll have to leave, so it'll have to be at one of the places in the hospital."

HotWheels didn't give me a chance to respond, and it wouldn't have mattered anyway. It seemed that we had both agreed to spend some more time at the hospital. She was my ride home unless I wanted to have to deal with trying to arrange alternate transportation. It seemed that my plan to go home and enjoy my new toys had been altered.

Sheila took my crutches, clipped them to the back of my wheelchair and positioned the chair beside me, then lowered the treatment chair to the same height as the wheelchair for me to transfer. HotWheels was already in her chair by the time that I was settled in mine and they were both waiting for me. Sheila guided us through the halls, but not to where I expected.

The place we arrived at looked more like the food court in a mall than a cafeteria in a hospital. It even felt like one, right down to the smells and variety of places to buy food. I saw a Starbucks, a Subway, and several other big-name restaurants. We came out on the second level and most of the places on the level were dine-in, with the places on the main level being walk-up service. To one side was a glass-walled elevator.

I was the first one into the elevator, and as I rolled in, I felt as if everyone was looking at me. I realized that my hands were in front of my face, trying to hide the face-bow protruding from my lips when they both started laughing at me. It was HotWheels that said, “Relax, nobody cares that you are wearing it. This is part of the rehab building. Everything here is designed to get the patients ready to return to life outside the hospital. For some patients, it is to get them used to people seeing them with their injuries. Look around you.”

She was right. Quite a few of the people around me were in wheelchairs or on crutches. Others had visible injuries. Something else that I noticed was that many of the people working in the place had some form of injury.

HotWheels pointed to one of the upstairs restaurants and said, “I spent quite a lot of time there. At first, all I could do was welcome people to the restaurant, but as I got more mobility, I was able to guide them to their table, and eventually learnt how to waitress while using a wheelchair.” She pointed to one of the counters on the main floor. “I worked there for a while as well. Once I was able to stand using the legbraces, I took orders and worked the register.” She pointed to a guy with one arm clearing dishes and wiping down the tables on the main floor. “Sometimes it is just about teaching people how to do things differently than they are used to, other times it is about teaching people how to do things with the tools available to them now,” and she pointed to a young woman with prosthetic arms carrying a tray of food. Both had uniforms on for the restaurants they were working for.

Sheila added, “We also use this area to train our staff and volunteers how to work with patients. Sometimes the hardest thing is to learn when a patient needs to be left on their own to adapt to their injury. Not all injuries are outwardly visible.” She pointed to an older lady wearing wrap-around sunglasses working at a counter. “She lost her sight in an accident. Most people can’t tell that she is blind except that she doesn’t look at what she is doing. She teaches other people with vision difficulties how to adapt.”

I looked around at all the people. Nobody was looking at me. I forced myself to lower my hands. I felt my face warm up as I pushed my wheelchair towards a table sheltered by a plant where I could try and hide. HotWheels let me get settled before she said, “If you want something to drink, you’ll have to get it yourself. We aren’t your servants and there aren't any waiters and waitresses on the main floor. It is strictly self-serve.”

I reached up to remove the strap holding my face-bow, but Hotwheels said, “Leave it in, you need to learn how to talk with it in so that your lisp isn’t so bad, and it will be good for you to experience what it is like having to deal with a speech impediment. I didn’t have the option of just removing whatever was in my mouth after my accident. Besides, it will be a training opportunity for whoever takes your order.”

As much as I wanted to take the face-bow out, I had to agree with her. It was a good opportunity to get some experience that I could use in one of my stories, and it would be in an environment that I hoped I could feel safe in. I left the strap attached to my face-bow and rolled towards my first encounter with a stranger while learning how to talk and make myself understood with my new toys.

I haven't forgotten about this story. It's just taken me a while to finish the next chapter. I needed to give myself a break from this one and get a few other stories out of my head.

Enjoy reading this chapter. Comments are always welcome and encouraged, even if it is just to say that you read it.