Anja’s New Life
Copyright© 2026 by Heel
Chapter 4
Anja’s condition eventually became stable, but stability was not the same thing as recovery. The doctors no longer feared an immediate complication from the repaired tendons or the damaged vertebrae, and the swelling in her legs gradually diminished, yet almost everything else moved with painful slowness. Weeks seemed to pass without producing any dramatic improvement, and every morning she woke to the same rigid brace around her torso, the same elevated supports beneath her thighs, the same white cast on her left leg, and the same involuntary little movements of her right foot that sometimes appeared without warning.
The greatest frustration was that she could not simply decide to become stronger. Her body had its own timetable, and it seemed determined to ignore her impatience. The repaired tendons needed protection, her spine needed immobilization, and her muscles had become weak from prolonged inactivity, so even the simplest movements required planning, assistance, and considerable effort.
Her finances began to frighten her almost as much as her physical condition.
She had been earning a good salary before the accident, but hospital treatment was expensive, and now she had been away from work for far longer than she had imagined possible. The money in her account was disappearing steadily beneath the costs of treatment, medication, equipment, and the growing list of things she could no longer do for herself.
One afternoon she looked at the figures on her laptop and sat motionless for several minutes.
“This can’t continue,” she whispered.
But there was no simple answer.
The doctors assured her that recovery was progressing, but they spoke in terms of months rather than weeks. Eventually the hospital team decided that she was medically stable enough to continue her recovery at home.
The news should have made her happy.
Instead, Anja felt a cold knot forming in her stomach.
“Home?” she asked.
The doctor nodded. “You no longer need acute hospital care. But you’ll need considerable assistance, and your home will have to be adapted to your current restrictions.”
Anja looked down at herself.
Her legs were still held apart and elevated, her left foot remained enclosed in the white cast, and the spinal brace prevented her from bending or twisting normally. The idea of getting from the hospital bed into an ordinary car seemed almost absurd.
“I don’t see how I’m going to get there.”
“We’ll arrange appropriate transportation.”
Appropriate transportation turned out to be much more complicated than the phrase suggested.
A specialized medical transport vehicle arrived several days later. Its crew had clearly dealt with difficult orthopedic patients before, but even they stopped for a moment when they examined the positioning required for Anja’s legs.
She could not simply sit in a wheelchair.
Her thighs could not be brought together, her knees could not be bent, and her left casted foot had to remain supported in its prescribed position. Her back also needed to remain stabilized, which meant that ordinary transfer techniques were unsuitable.
“We’ll take this very slowly,” one of the attendants told her.
Anja nodded, already nervous.
The first transfer from the hospital bed to the transport stretcher was exhausting. Several people coordinated the movement, carefully supporting her shoulders, torso, hips, and legs while ensuring that neither thigh was suddenly forced inward. Every small adjustment produced a sensation of pressure and tension that made Anja instinctively hold her breath.
“Wait,” she said suddenly.
Everyone stopped.
Her right foot had begun twitching.
The small movement was almost ridiculous compared with the seriousness of everything else, but because her leg was restricted by the orthopedic supports, even that involuntary twitch made her anxious.
“It’s all right,” one of the attendants said calmly. “Nothing has moved out of position.”
Anja closed her eyes and waited until the trembling subsided.
Eventually they managed to move her onto the special stretcher. It was wider than an ordinary ambulance stretcher and equipped with adjustable supports that allowed her legs to remain separated rather than forcing them into a natural resting position.
The journey downstairs was another ordeal.
The hospital elevator was large enough, but getting the stretcher through the doors required careful maneuvering. Every turn had to be calculated, because the width of the leg supports made the whole arrangement considerably wider than Anja’s body would normally have been.
She stared at the ceiling while the attendants worked around her.
“I’ve never imagined going home could be this difficult.”
One of them smiled gently. “Most people don’t have to think about how wide a doorway is until something like this happens.”
Anja gave a weak laugh.
Outside, the transport vehicle presented another problem. The stretcher had to be positioned at a carefully controlled angle, and the equipment inside the vehicle had to accommodate the unusual spread of her legs without placing pressure on either repaired thigh.
The attendants secured the stretcher and checked every support twice.
Anja watched their movements nervously.
“Are my legs all right?”
“They’re exactly where they need to be.”
She looked down.
The answer did not make the sight less strange.
Her legs remained held apart on either side of her, supported by padded structures that prevented them from falling inward. Her left foot projected slightly beyond its support, the familiar white cast bright against the darker interior of the vehicle.
For the first time since the explosion, Anja was being taken home not as an independent woman returning from work but as a patient whose entire body had to be accommodated by a team of strangers.
The journey was slow. Every turn of the vehicle caused her to tense, and whenever the road became uneven she felt the movement travel through the stretcher and into her back. Her right foot twitched several times, and once she became so frightened that she called for the attendant.
“Nothing has shifted,” he assured her after checking the supports.
Anja stared out through the window.
The city passed by in fragments.
People walked along sidewalks carrying shopping bags. Cars stopped at intersections. A woman stood outside a café talking on her phone. A man hurried across the street with a briefcase beneath his arm.
Ordinary life continued everywhere. Anja watched it with an almost painful longing. She wanted to step out of the vehicle and walk home. She wanted to climb the stairs, unlock her own door, put away her coat, make coffee, and complain about something as meaningless as a broken elevator. Instead, she lay strapped to a medical stretcher with both legs held apart and elevated.
When they finally reached her building, she felt more exhausted than she had expected. The entrance itself presented a problem.
The stretcher could not easily be maneuvered through the narrow interior, and the building’s corridors were not designed for equipment of this width. The transport crew had to angle the stretcher carefully and negotiate every turn while keeping her legs clear of the walls.
Anja watched helplessly.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“You don’t have anything to apologize for.”
“I feel as if I’m taking up the whole building.”
The attendant smiled. “Right now, you need the space.”
That simple sentence stayed with her.
She had spent her entire adult life trying not to inconvenience anyone. She had been proud of being self-sufficient, proud of paying her own bills, proud of solving her own problems. Now her body occupied more physical space than ever, while her independence seemed to have shrunk to almost nothing.
Her apartment had been prepared before her arrival. Three men lifted her and carried her in, turning her aside when needed.
The transport team had already measured the doorway and the bedroom, but even so, the ordinary furniture had to be moved aside to create enough room for the specialized bed that would replace her normal one.
The technicians arrived that afternoon.
They were quiet, methodical people who carried tools, measuring equipment, and several sections of an adjustable medical bed. They examined the room and discussed the requirements with the nurse who had accompanied Anja.
The bed had to accommodate the spinal brace.