Laughter floated in through the window, bubbly and carefree. Often the case on a clement day of Summer like this, when children flock to the grassy flats below to share a day outside. Freed from their daily rehab, all their built up energy erupted into a tumult of playfulness and mischief. Of course, not without an escort in a set of scrubs, or white coat if the need arose for it. The latter meant that you weren't due for therapy that day.

None of that mattered to the less fortunate ones indoors. In fact, the idea of stepping outdoors by themselves existed only as a vague dream. Wheel-bound forever, or simply too shy of the Sun to leave because of the paleness of their skin. Granted, without the windows in their lonely rooms they might forget that an outside world even existed.

Sometimes, he thought, it might be better if that window were gone.

Aiden turned his eyes away from the brightness out there. Sure, he wanted to join them, at some point. That was a long time ago now. He's too old for that kind of thing anyway. Once there's a four year gap between you and the ten year-olds out there, you tend to think that way around here.

He raised his hand up, turning it around to examine it. It's getting harder to do every day, just like his legs. The doctors said it was a novel kind of Palsy. A rare case, they said.

Nothing strange happened until his fifth birthday. Every so often, his legs felt numb, especially so during the mornings and evenings. Then, the same time next year, he couldn't walk. By this point the family doctor couldn't offer any help other than to refer his worried parents to a specialist.

He wound up in Vanguard Children's Hospital at the age of ten after he lost complete control over his lower body. Everything fell apart then. Mother didn't say everything would be fine anymore. Father barely smiled the way he used to. They dragged themselves through his room's door, with barely an ounce of energy between them. Aiden pitied his parents, because while he lived like this, they suffered the most for his sake.

"You needn't worry, Mr. and Mrs. Bourough. The donations from our sponsors can cover most of it."

He overheard their conversation with a doctor outside his ward. Aiden didn't hear everything they said, but he was old enough to guess what that meant.

I wonder how long I can live like this. I'm just a burden to them.

Therapy didn't help. Drugs didn't work like the doctors said. I could probably tell which one's which just by the color at this point. A hapless, withering body. There might be a day soon where my heart stops. Should I look forward to it?

A month after his tenth birthday, the doctors proposed a radical surgery to stall further atrophy of his arms. A pyrrhic success at best. Their estimates gave him another five years or more of his current lifestyle.

Five more years. Five more... of just sitting in a bed or pushed around in a wheelchair. It's hard to use either on my own with these hands.

By then, Aiden had matured enough to grasp what his life meant to him. He realized just how much effort everyone around him put in to keep him in their world. I... want to be like them, to be strong and caring like that.

He tried to put a smile on his face whenever someone greeted him. Always a quiet appreciation of his family and caretakers. Even during the night, when tears roiled from his eyes, the freshly born survivor wanted to still hope. That was, until last year. A cure promised, but never came to be.

Needless to say, time and back-to-back disappointments tend to kill off a positive mindset in short order.

The closer I get to that five-year deadline, the worse I feel. Look at those noisy kids out there. They should be more aware of how we invalids feel. Cynically minded, Aiden attempted a feeble roll onto his side. He couldn't stand seeing those lucky kids, taking their lives for granted like that. I should just sleep. It'll make Ms. Carson mad, but I don't care.

It's not like it was his fault he is the way he is. Mother and Father sprung it on him last year that they were having a second child. After they did, most of the time it felt that they weren't paying him any attention when they came to visit. They were smiling again, which he was happy for, but they weren't smiling for him.

Apparently Father got promoted at his job, easing 'their' financial issues for the time being. Because of that they all of a sudden wanted another one. Do they think it won't turn out just like I did?

To do something so arbitrary and reckless... they were probably trying to move on without him. He couldn't bring himself to believe it entirely, yet...

I'm still not over it. Should I apologize for yelling at them?

He sighed, and adjusted his bed's inclination with a remote. No use thinking about that now. Miserable enough as it is.

There were some workbooks he had to go through before dinner, but they didn't matter. School didn't matter to him, so why should any kind of education. Sleep... it's about the only thing he could say he's good at.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

S S S

"Aiden... hello-o, Aiden?"

A snort answered the inquiry. The speaker doubled their efforts by lightly tapping the fitful sleeper's nose.

"You can't stay there all night and miss dinner."

"I'm awake, you don't have to touch me." He groused as he turned onto his back.

Around this time, before Ms. Carson brought the daily bread, a routine unbroken for nearly ten years had to be followed. It's the kind of mandatory task one has to complete numerous times on the daily, but without the use of limbs or even the lower half in it's entirety makes the sordid little activity nearly impossible without outside intervention. For him, rather than going out to pick flowers, it's more like they're handed to him by a florist, in bags attached to pairs of long tubes. With Ms. Carson's care, he'd long since become inured to the ordeal, but not the inconvenience of it.

"While you wait for dinner, why don't you watch some TV?" She suggested as she finished her work.

"There's never anything good on."

"That's because you never turned it on when there was!"

Aiden scowled a little in response to the nurse's baseless argument. Never a time where she didn't use some roundabout logic to blindside him like that. Maybe that's just her surefire strategy to win arguments against invalid teenagers. Shameful, really. "Whatever."

"I won't give your phone back until you finish those workbooks. Hope you realize that I know you haven't even opened them yet!" She retorted as she exited the ward.

Can't ever win against her... what's so good about television anyway when I can just stream the same exact thing on something easier to look at.

Thoroughly trounced, he took up his bedside remote to flip on the flat screen on the opposite wall. It's really been awhile since it's ever been on. It's not like what the weather's like, or whatever melodrama's happening at the White House is relevant information.

Geez. It's always the news by default on these things.

He let the reporter drone while he fiddled with the fringes of his bedsheets. I don't know which channel to switch to.

"...In other news, astronomers announced earlier this week that a meteor shower will fall over the northwestern United States, being visible over most of the Pacific islands and the mainland. If a straggler from the bunch shoots overhead, why not take that chance and make a wish come true?"

The idiotically goofy way he said that made Aiden shiver from cringe. Come on, you're not in elementary school anymore. If wishes made anything better for anyone, there wouldn't be people like him in the world.

"Tonight's your favorite Aiden." Ms. Carson beamed behind a teetering stack of trays. It's not that he considered the prim, perfectly rounded meatloaves his personal favorite, nor the piles of vegetables they graced. Rather, it had enough texture to pass as something more than Styrofoam.

Still, I guess it wouldn't hurt to at least see one. I probably won't see something like it ever again. When was it...?

He squinted at the screen to make out the rolling headlines. Any time between ten P.M and one A.M... today? Can't they be a little more exact? It's eleven already, I might've already slept through it.

Aiden skeptically eyed the window. From this angle, he couldn't see the sky very well.

"Ms. Carson?"

"Yes?" She replied, stopping at the door.

"Could you move the bed closer to the window before you go?"

The nurse cocked her head a little, "Of course I can, but why?"

"Could you open it too? It feels stuffy in here."

Ms Carson readily complied, and left after gently patting down his sheets, "Just don't catch cold, and keep under the sheets."

It's the middle of Summer, how's that going to happen? He thought that while he took a measured bite of one of the loaves. It's warm. Not even hot.

Although a few thin cloudy wisps drew a portrait of starlit white, Aiden could still see the night sky clearly. He'd heard that some people base their entire lives around them. Their futures, personalities, who they would wind up loving. What were they thinking when they came up with that crap?

A wish... such a silly thing to force onto an unsuspecting space rock. It's not like the debris cares about what people want. People do this and that, deciding their lives on a astronomical crap shoot without a care, not realizing that shooting stars can't save themselves from their own fate, estranged among the stars. Let alone fix anyone else's. I tried wishing a long time ago... it never helped.

But if I had to wish for one little thing... I don't need to walk again. All I want is...

A streak of light blazed from behind a patch of clouds.

What am I thinking? I thought I told myself that this kind of stuff was stupid. But hey, at least I got to see one before it ended.

It passed over, arcing across the night sky, before pelting over the edge of the world. Then another followed that one.

Oh, it's not alone. Good for it.

Then another.

Maybe I'm right underneath the shower. Lucky me.

Dozens more followed in their wake, shimmering brilliantly between the clouds above.

I could wish for a lot huh? A lot of disappointments too.

Aiden watched the show from his window with an impassive stare. The shower flew thick overhead. So many, that what was sky and what was star became a blur. Isn't this a little more than just a meteor shower?

It took a moment for him to register the next second.

Only a second, maybe it was less than that. Regardless, it crawled by in an instant. A life might've flashed before Aiden's eyes had he had one, but perhaps if he did he could still make it all the way to the present day before the flames engulfed his room, or the giant splinters of space rock pelted through the ceiling, returning humanity's closest desires tenfold. One wish at a time.