Chapter 3: Doggy Training

Confusion was one way to describe the first moments after he woke up on Sunday. First of all, this was definitely not his own bed, it was way too comfy for that, and he certainly didn't use to wake up next to a beautiful girl?

Now it came all back, the conversations with his parents and Bernd, the celebration and the subsequent crying of Andrea. At the moment she was sleeping peacefully, her head resting in the crook of his shoulder and that made him aware of a slight problem. First, his arm was tingling and a bit numb, but not numb enough to prevent him from noticing that he gently held her in place – by her bum.

Slightly ashamed of his touching her so intimately, he carefully removed his hand and put it palm down on the bed a few inches away from her. To his surprise Andrea stirred, grabbed his wrist and put his hand back where it had been until moments ago. She mumbled something that not even an indigenous tribe in the Brazilian rainforest could have made sense of, and snuggled back against him. Soon her breathing evened out and she was sound asleep again.

The good news was that she had shifted enough to allow the blood flow to and from his arm to resume, the not so good news was, that due to her shifting the ribbon that closed the small cut-out at the front of her night gown had opened, and when he looked down he had a straight top-down view at what was inside her nightgown, namely the most amazing little pair of breasts he'd ever seen.

Not that he considered that bad news, but the problem was that it immediately caused a rather predictable male reaction, and he doubted that it would be considered particularly polite if Andrea woke up next to him for the first time and be greeted by a raging hard-on. He started doing some complex calculations and started thinking up complex CONNECT BY PRIOR SQL statements to force his erection into submission. He finally succeeded, at least somewhat, and as carefully as he could, he tied the ribbon again.

He was well familiar with the female anatomy, but that was mainly because, like all straight teenage boys, he'd seen well known picture collections of ladies without a complete understanding for the concept of clothing on the internet. Since seeing such a more than beautiful specimen so close and for real was threatening to scramble his hormonal system beyond all hope of repair, he released a little sigh of relief when he'd managed to restore modesty.

It wasn't like he hadn't enjoyed the sight, but not only felt it dirty, looking at her while she slept and therefore couldn't 'defend' her modesty, there was also the lingering fear of embarrassment should she wake up before he could restore the treacherous organ to a less solid state. Trying to imagine the execution plans of the complex CONNECT BY PRIOR SQL statements finally did the trick

Oracle 8i, brilliant way to deal with morning wood, he thought to himself with a healthy dose of sarcasm.

Andrea meanwhile was completely oblivious to Martin's conundrum as she slept peacefully in his arms.

Apparently he'd dozed off again after the big ribbon crisis, because Martin was roused from his slumber by small soft fingers tracing his lips. He carefully parted his lips and sucked in one of her digits. Her happy giggle made him smile.

"How have you slept, beautiful?" he asked.

"Better than ever before," she said with a smile. "Do you really think that? Do you really think I'm beautiful, despite my eyes?"

"Of course you're beautiful, and I don't only think so, it's a universal fact."

She snuggled up to him and gave him a shy kiss on the cheek, making him blush.

"As for your eyes, well, I've never seen them, you always keep them closed."

She sat up. "Carefully push up the eyelids, then you can see them."

He did and he forced himself not to gasp in a mixture of amazement and shock. Her eyes were the most beautiful deep ocean blue he'd ever seen, but it was spoiled by the fact that they were empty, a dead unseeing stare. He carefully lowered her eyelids again.

"Okay, the stare is a bit strange at first," he admitted. "But they're such a beautiful blue. Is that why you keep them closed all the time? To avoid that people get startled by the stare?"

She shook her head. "I can't really open my eyelids. I'm getting an injection of muscle relaxing agent each week to keep them from opening. Since my optical nerves are severed, I could be looking straight into the sun and not notice. That would damage my retina and then I would really have no chance for maybe seeing again in the future."

"Strange, it's 2002 and they still can't reconnect a severed nerve?" he asked, shaking his head in frustration.

"They succeeded in repairing the optical nerve of a rat last year, but our school doctor says it could be ten to twenty years until it works for humans, if at all. We tend to be a bit more complex than rats."

"Maybe I should go into medicine instead of computer science," he wondered aloud.

She giggled. "What time is it?"

"Half past nine."

"Right, time to get going," she decided and swung her legs out of the bed. She felt along the edge of the bed and once she had found something, she repositioned herself to where it was. She stood up and with surprising certitude she found the door and left towards the bathroom without bumping into anything.

He looked what it was and saw a large notch in the edge of the bed. Then it started make sense. She used that notch to have a reference point, a known position from where she could navigate her room and the house. He looked on the other side and found a similar notch – pretty clever.

"Morning sir," Martin mumbled, still a bit sleepy as he shuffled into the kitchen, wearing the slightly too big slippers Andrea's father had given him the night before.

"Anything to report, Soldier?" Bernd asked back, mocking him for the use of 'sir'.

"Sorry, Bernd, I hadn't had coffee so far. I'm not firing on all cylinders yet."

"Coming up," Bernd said with a snicker and poured him a cup of hot brew.

"Thanks," Martin said and slurped some of the hot liquid. "It's getting better. As for the reporting, I told you there would be nothing happening. I don't think Andrea is ready for that, heck I'm not ready yet, and I'm a guy. We've been speeding through things up to now; we don't really need to push the hyperspace button on top of it."

"Martin, joking aside, I trust you on that, but you must be prepared that Andrea will probably be a bit clingy for a while, until she's really convinced that you won't abandon her. Do you think that nightgown is a coincidence? I wouldn't put it past her that, in a moment of panic, she would offer herself to you. I trust that you know how to handle such a situation?"

"She's got abandonment issues, doesn't she?"

"Big ones," Bernd sighed, and his voice got shaky. "Her school's psychotherapist is working with her, but you need to remember, she was lying in the wreckage of the car, blind, horribly injured and in terrible pain. She was crying for her mother, but her mum never answered, because she couldn't anymore.

"She had many friends, or what she thought would be friends, but after the accident, all but two never spoke to her again. And then there was this boy with whom she'd gone on a few dates. He never once visited her in the hospital."

Martin snorted indisgust over the people who'd abandoned her.

"Well, the clinginess, that suits me right down to the ground. Cuddling is my favourite hobby. I just never managed to find an interested partner until now. And about Andrea offering herself – I tend to think I can tell if she really wants it, and it takes two to tango, doesn't it. I've never kissed a girl so far. I subscribe to the logic of learning to walk before trying to run."

"No wonder you go to the same school as my brother. You're way too level-headed for a sixteen-year-old," Bernd said sincerely.

They heard the bathroom door open. "Martin?"

"I'm in the kitchen, my fair lady," Martin called out theatrically. He enjoyed the happy giggle from the corridor.

He went to get cleaned up.

Martin thought that having his dad drive him and Andrea to Cologne in his taxi was beating the purpose of her learning to be more autonomous, but Bernd had made it clear that the issue was non-negotiable. He was afraid that Andrea would have flash-backs if she were to return to Hannover station so shortly after the events of one week ago. In his eyes it was a win-win. He wouldn't need to worry about Andrea and my dad made a killing at nearly seven-hundred Euros per round-trip. That was more than he normally made in three days. And seven-hundred quid apparently didn't even put a dent into Bernd's budget.