The moment I stood up, I vomited and collapsed onto the floor. The nurses huddled around me with concerned looks on their faces, asking if I was okay. I wasn't, but I said I was, and was assisted back to my bed. I would need to use a wheelchair for the foreseeable future, the nurses had said. But I wanted to walk. Of course I did, any sane person would. And my legs still worked, it just hurt like hell to use them. But I had tried anyway, every day for the last year. Every morning the nurses would find me lying on the floor, covered in vomit, urine, or blood on my really bad days. They would scold me, sometimes yelling, but the next morning they came into the same sight. Even if they put a nurse in my room to watch me overnight, I would still try to walk when she wasn't looking. My legs worked, I demanded, they just needed exercise. I'd been bedridden for over a year, anyone would have atrophied legs after a year in bed. I guess my excuses just go to show that doctors make the worst patients.

As a virologist studying extraplanetary diseases, I was in no place to make excuses for myself, given that whatever had begun to ail me over the past year was most likely not of terrestrial origin. I was, however, as the world's leading expert in my field, in a unique position to act as my own physician, giving the nurses instruction on how to treat my curious ailment while running tests remotely from my bed, dictating cocktails of antibiotics and drugs for my lab team to mix up.

My initial excitement over discovering a new disease soon subsided, however, turning into despair and extreme boredom. The testing soon stopped and I gave up entirely but for my vain morning ambulatory attempts. I grew to resent everyone around me who could still walk, the nurses, the doctors, the friends who came to visit me, who I slowly pushed away out of depression, shame, and pride. I secluded myself behind a wall of feigned apathy, too hurt to reach out to those who would help.

But now I was finally leaving, my condition having been determined untreatable but non life threatening. I was not relieved, however, and as the nurse wheeled me out into my newly purchased wheelchair accessible van, a deep and profound sense of despair sunk my heart into my stomach.

To my further humiliation, I found out I'd been provided a caretaker, Daniel. He would drive me around to my appointments and aid me in completing everyday tasks. Daniel was a young man of about twenty-one and he could walk. I envied him from the moment he slid into the driver's seat of the van to take me home from the hospital with that cursed empathetic smile on his face. How dare he pity me! No, I didn't envy him, I hated him.

"So, Mr. Weathers," Daniel began as he pulled out of the hospital parking garage, "I bet you're excited to be going home."

I turned my head towards him and laughed flatly and bitterly.

We rode on in silence until we reached my home. Daniel wheeled me out of the van and lifted my chair up the steps to the house, "We'll need to get you a ramp soon." He noted breathily, wiping a few beads of sweat from his blond head. He continued, "I'll be staying with you for the time being until we can figure out if you can live independently or not, or until your condition improves."

I stayed silent, rage building up inside of me.

"I have some stuff of mine for tonight in the van. I'm going to go bring it in, then we can figure out sleeping arrangements."

"Sleep outside," My words came out as a rasping noise, at first, so I repeated myself, much to the young man's discomfort, "Sleep outside."

Daniel stared at me, obviously having never encountered this type of hostility from anyone he had been a caregiver to before. Or, perhaps I was his first ever patient. "I- I can't sleep outside, Mr. Weathers, I have to be able to attend to you if you need something in the night."

"You heard what I said," I rasped louder, "Sleep outside! Or you can leave if you'd like. I'd actually prefer that."

Daniel laughed awkwardly, "That's a joke, right, Mr. Weathers?"

In a blind rage I rose from my wheelchair, which rolled backwards, and losing my balance I toppled backwards, hitting my head against the hardwood floor. Darkness, like a curtain, was drawn over my sight, and my mind was snuffed out in an instant.

When I came to, my entire body hurt like hell. I was in the hospital again, but this time I couldn't move anything. A whirlwind of panic stirred inside of me. I was paralyzed. I tried to move my head, and that was the only thing that I was able to move. I noticed a doctor next to me, who had begun to explain what had happened, but I had already figured it out by then, my fall had caused an acute subdural hematoma and Daniel, being inexperienced, had failed to get me to the hospital in time.

For the first time in over a year, I blamed myself.