By Chance: Day 5

Word Count: 30,014

Summary of Events:

Steele's rodeo photographer friend Shai and her dad Alder came by Steele's place with an offer to drive him out to his workplace to get his truck and fill out paperwork required to report the accident to the worker's compensation board and other people who needed to know for official or insurance reasons. In addition, since his foster father still had the stuff he'd bought to bathe sitting down while he'd recovered from his leg injury, Alder and Shai offered to take Steele there to pick up the stuff since he needed to bathe sitting down in order to keep his knee immobile, during which time Alder and Steele discussed the logistics surrounding Steele's injury…

Excerpt of the Day:

“You think you’re going to get a list of people?” Alder asked.

“I don’t see why not,” Steele replied. “Everybody seems so worried about me, and the further the news spreads, the more people will be worried, to the point that nobody might have the chance to drive me twice, and some might even miss out on the chance to drive me once.”

“Hm,” Alder said. “I don’t quite know about that.”
“After all the fuss about me they made over the weekend?” Steele asked.

“True,” Alder conceded. “But you don’t strike me as the sort who’d accept rides from just anybody.”
“Even still, there’s enough people around here I would take rides from that I might have more than enough rides to where I need to go,” Steele replied. “Especially since I don’t anticipate that I’ll be going a lot of places.”

Alder nodded. “Not that you’ve answered my question though; is it worth the risk of pushing yourself going wrong to push yourself to be good to go at least a week early?”

“I don’t know that I am going to be able to push myself that much at all,” Steele replied. “And I certainly don’t want to go too hard until I’ve got through my prescriptions, because so long as I’m taking them I can’t feel my knee, or, at least, how sore it actually is, so I’m not able to feel if I’m overdoing anything.”

“So then should you even go to the physiotherapist on Tuesday?” Alder asked.

“I want to at least consult with somebody,” Steele replied. “Like I said.”

“There are things that you can’t hurry along though,” Alder said.

“And if I can’t hurry it, I can’t hurry it,” Steele said, letting a little irritation into his voice. “I just want to be able to keep myself from possibly, in any way, physically regressing. I want to be able, once I’m given the green light, to go back to doing exactly what I was doing before I got hurt, as opposed to having to build myself back up to that point before I could even think of maybe going past it.”

Alder nodded. “Okay, sorry to get under your skin like that, I just don’t want you to get any unrealistic ideas, as those could just make things worse.”

Steele nodded, grateful for Alder’s apology, as Alder had been starting to annoy him with his pressing the issue as if he believed that Steele was obsessed with getting to the CFR or something. He certainly didn’t really want to miss it despite his virtually nonexistent chances of winning any money at all — forget the championship — as it was the first time he’d ever had the chance, and he felt that going and competing would at least give him some valuable experience that would allow him to be better prepared for the time when he was able to compete for the money.

Pronunciation:

Shai: shay