As Lozo passed through the hall, his body reacted to the environment very sensitively. The ice-cold floor under his feet the moment he first touched the floor, the unseen noises coming from the other rooms and halls that the diluted sunlight refracting through the glass windows. Everything felt like an entirely new and different sensation from what he remembered. Which was little given his last sensation was a thousand cuts echoing through his body. The thought alone made his body twitch and retract the memory back. He currently had other things to worry about.
And one of them was to remember how to walk.
Lozo's knees ached as he looked from corner to corner. The halls of what seemed to be a hospital were large and every sound echoed. He had gotten used to the smell of the disinfectant but a bit of fresh air was more than welcomed. As he looked around, he noticed a bunch of nurses walk about entering the doors and leaving with trolleys then take them out the hall. They would then return with another trolley but this had disinfectant and cleaning tools. Another common thing was their faces.
They hated their job.
He could feel it down his back. Lozo wasn't walking through the halls. He was being pushed through them. The one pushing him was none other than his favorite nurse, the sting from her eyes was always different every time she looked at him. And now she was being forced to push him on a wheel chair, anymore hate and the stings would turn into laser burns.
Earlier when his answer finally arrived Lozo attempted to walk but came crashing down.
Unexpected? Yes.
Of all things to forget Lozo had never once thought he would forget to walk. Thus, his nurse was assigned with the duty to carry him to the outside. But his wish came with a warning too.
"You should understand that this area is under serious surveillance. Erase any ideas of running away." He remembered Dok saying. But how was he when he could even walk.
The feeling of direct sun rays landing on his skin had never felt better. He felt like a plant that had finally being exposed to sun light after days of derivation and he was ready to grow. He pulled in a relieving gasp of air and the woody smell with it then let it out in a calming exhale. The air was dusty but beggars can't be choosers. He slowly opened his eyes; bracing through the sudden pain flaring in them. His eyes finally adjusted as the pain dulled. He was finally going to see what the window view had teased on.
The hospitals compound stretched to a relatively small perimeter wall that span around wherever they were. There was a large gate that poured visitors and leavers in and out of the small villager into the compound. From the gate a tiled path ran before splitting into a roundabout that circled the small fountain by the path. The path from the gate stopped at the front of a large building that had sparked Lozo's curiosity ever since he started gazing out his window.
The building was large, like the common room they used to have back at the orphanage. It might have as well been the largest building in the whole plot with a corridor from it branching into the hospital building he was held captive in.
Lozo would have continued to admire the beautiful buildings all day but wasn't allowed to. Even on the small patch his chair standing on he could feel unsettling glares around him.
"Serious surveillance,"
The nurse after achieving her mission of taking Lozo to touch grass, hurriedly left him by himself and took a seat on a bench by a tree and pulled up a book and started reading. Maybe she was trying to make him feel like had some privacy or just didn't want to look after a temporary immobile boy. Whatever it was he couldn't care less, he needed to remember how to walk.
As his feet rose and met the grass his nerves had never screamed louder. Leaf blades was the term to describe the sensation currently flaring in his foot. He quickly retracted his foot back to its hold, rubbing it to relieve the pain. He looked towards the nurse. Her book covered her eyes, meaning she didn't care what he was doing.
Lozo tried again. He had to. he remembered the Dok's words, 'For you to open up you should not see this place as a prison, so once a week you should be able to feel the grass under your feet.' That meant each week he had only one shot to get this done. Lazing about wouldn't give him back his mobility.
He rose again, trembling like leaf in a hurricane. Any who could see him would think he had cooked spaghetti for hands as to how they wobbled while he tried to stand up. This time to the pain was still unbearable forcing him back to his chair. He sighed and looked to the sky.
This was going to be a long day.
…
Hours passed and his attempts had gotten better. Whatever pain he was feeling in the begin had completely gone and was back to normal. Now the only thing left was to maintain his balance. This was rather hard and it was clear how much had he had tried by the brown marks, from falling down, on his soft blue hospital attire. The uniform was the hospitals and he didn't need to worry about it. What he feared was the reaction from the nurse since she is the one who does his laundry… that would be something.
The sun was well past its zenith and its orange shade hang over the west horizon. The nurse was done with her book and it was about time her tall toddler got back to his cell.
"It's time go back," she said as she watched Lozo try to balance his way across the grass part of the compound. His clothes were covered all over by dirt marks, like some child playing with mud. At least he can walk again, she thought.
'At least he can do something right'
Lozo heard her call and knew his day with the grass had come to an end. He turned back to the nurse and something odd struck him. He could swear the nurse had pushed back the wheelchair a few steps from where he had left it. He looked into her eyes and they were as demeaning as usual. More than that, they pleaded innocent.
He knew he didn't have the right complain, looking at his shirt. So, he took up the challenge.
One wobble at a time he stretched his legs towards the wheelchair. His ankles ached, his knees cried. But he didn't relent. This challenge was excruciating but he had a point to prove.
He was not as weak as he led others to think.
The challenge ended with Lozo barely on the chair. He was wheeled back to room and dropped off some new pair of clothes.
As she left him there, Lozo went back to his hobby. He listened to her hair-pin chime and jingle. He looked at it glimmer in the late sun rays as she walked out the room. In his mind he had a hope in mind.
He hoped that he had made a good impression in the nurse's eyes.