Chapter 8: A Latent Talent

Luke felt he'd found a good friend in Steve Markowitz, the doctor who had taken care of him in the hospital, then got him hired on as an orderly. He may not have had much money in his pocket, but he didn't have to worry about where he was going to sleep every night or where his next meal was coming from. Lately, the sleeping arrangements had been a choice between his room or Jennette's house, and unless she was busy with something else, that was no choice at all.

On his third sleepover, he finally felt adventurous enough to try the threesome with Jen-Jen and C.J. If there had been any question about his dominant sexual orientation before, that had been long since dispelled. Wrestling around on a bed between two hot and horny women had been the experience of a lifetime! He'd even sent Errol a long e-mail describing it in fairly graphic detail. Errol fired back an answer teasing him about sending pornography over the Internet, and suggested he should consider a career as an author of erotic tales because the account was so well and vividly written. And stimulating.

At first, Luke laughed at the idea, pretty sure Errol was just busting his balls. But in the next two exchanges, Errol kept encouraging him to write some short stories, even if they weren't of the erotic sort. So now, he'd written a couple of fictional tales and asked Jennette to read them. She thought they were really well done, and pushed him to keep going. C.J. sneaked a peek at the stories and wanted him to use his imagination to write a script for their next threesome.

To encourage him even further, Jennette talked the head librarian into letting him use an old computer they had in storage. The lady said it was slated for recycling because it was old and slow, so she just wrote it off the inventory and gave it to him. All he had to do was format the hard drive and reload the basic software. Fortunately, that included a word processor. The hospital-owned house where Luke stayed was already wired for Internet, so just like that, he was connected.

In the meantime, Dr. Markowitz presented him with yet another offer. The hospital had only two operating suites, and there usually weren't more than a half dozen surgeries scheduled throughout the week. The only operating room technician put in her notice because she was going to get married and move to another town. The hospital was going to have to train an OR tech anyway, so Markowitz asked Luke if he'd have any interest in learning the surgical tech business. He jumped at the chance.

The next day, he was introduced to Bobbie Redding, the head nurse in the OR. She set up some time in the afternoons when Luke got off shift from his orderly duties to teach him the instruments, sterile technique, how to scrub for surgery, how to set up the instrument trays, and how to not only pass instruments to the surgeon, but how to anticipate what was going to be needed next.

Again, Luke's innate intelligence shined. Within a week, he'd memorized all the instruments. In another week, he was scrubbing in on relatively simple operations, learning the ropes and gaining confidence. He wasn't really bothered by the sight of blood, but actually seeing the surgeon's knife cut into a human body took some getting used to.

He still worked as a floor orderly when there were no surgeries scheduled, but he got a substantial pay raise because he was officially on call as a scrub technician.

He took the work very seriously and began haunting the hospital library, perusing books on medical terminology, human anatomy and physiology, and various surgical procedures. The two surgeons that scheduled almost all the procedures appreciated his interest and enthusiasm, and went out of their way to explain in great detail what they were doing as they were doing it. The more he learned, the more he wanted to learn. It wasn't very long before the surgeons would ask specifically for him scrub for their cases when they called to schedule.

As far as his other interest was concerned, Luke enjoyed writing fictional stories, especially the erotic ones, but he wanted to get an unbiased opinion on the quality of his efforts. Errol, Jennette and C.J. were encouraging, but he couldn't be absolutely certain they'd hand him a negative critique if he deserved it. Searching around on the web, he discovered some sites where he could publish his stories online and have them rated on a scale of one to ten by the readers. He figured that would be the best way to get an honest evaluation of his talent, if he had any.

When he signed up, he had to create a pen name and set up some account information, like whether or not he wanted to get e-mails from the readers critiquing his stories. He decided that was a must; otherwise, why bother publishing at all? For a pen name, he chose Newbie Dabbler, hoping critics might cut the new writer a little slack if they were inclined to trash his writing.

He went back and rewrote his first story, the one where he did the threesome. Of course he used fictional names and he cleaned up some of the actual dialogue, but overall, it was close to a true account. He edited, re-edited, then edited one last time before he converted the file to html and posted it.

He had no idea how long it would take for the story to appear on the site, so he was on pins and needles, checking the site about every half hour. In less than two hours, it was up. The format gave it a different look, and to his embarrassment, he found three typos when he read through it. When he looked on the page where the story was posted originally, it gave him the option of reposting it. He quickly made some corrections on his original and submitted it again, hoping not too many readers had seen his screw-ups.

He would have fretted and stewed and returned to the web page over and over, had he not been called to the hospital to scrub for an emergency appendectomy. He counted it a welcomed distraction. By the time he got home four hours later, he was beat and didn't even think about firing up the computer. He crashed and slept like the dead until he had to get up for his shift as an orderly.

That afternoon when he got back to his room, he checked the site and saw that so far, he'd scored 7.64, which had to be pretty darned good, compared to the other scores he saw. If that wasn't encouraging enough, he checked his e-mail and found six comments from readers around the world! Five were enthusiastic kudos, and one was a little snarky and rude, but generally in favor of seeing more of his work.

Wow!

He fired off an e-mail to Errol, telling him all about it, and asking him to log onto the site and give it a read.

A hard-luck case like Luke should have known everything was going too well to last, and it didn't. Jennette dumped him. No warning, no hints, no nothing. One day he called her at the library when he got home from work to ask if she'd mind if he came over to her house later to watch some TV, followed by some bedroom gymnastics.

There was a pregnant pause in the conversation, then she just came right out and said, "Um, we won't be doing that any more, Luke. I have a new boyfriend now. I'm like five years older than your are, Luke, and I can't see that going anywhere."

At first, he was stunned because he absolutely didn't see it coming. But he was quick to recover, because he'd long since learned to take disappointments in stride. Rather than beg her to reconsider or lash out at her, he took a deep breath and said in his calmest voice, "Oh, well congratulations, Jennette. I'm sure he's a very nice guy. See you around, and say bye to C.J. for me, okay?" He ended the call before she could say anything more.

Well, he thought, Isn't that just a kick in the ass? Whimsey, thy name is woman.

He chuckled out loud, thinking how easily he'd fallen into her web. Once again, life demonstrated how shallow and untrustworthy people were, at least that was true of the women in his life, starting with his own mother. It was when she told him she was planning to get married again for the fourth time, that he packed a few of his belongings and walked out the door. They hadn't seen each other or spoken a word since.

So since he was no longer spending time with Jennette and C.J., he used it for other pursuits like writing stories and prepping for his GED test. The academic stuff was no problem for him. He made poor grades in high school because he just didn't give a damn, not because he wasn't up to the work. Judging by what he saw in the GED prep manual, he had no concerns about passing their tests.

On the writing front, he tried to emulate some of his favorite authors in the way they constructed their sentences and how they developed ideas. He worked especially hard on learning to create good dialogue, figuring out how to misspell words intentionally to create accents and dialects.

Over a period of two weeks, Luke created a story of over a hundred pages about a teenager traveling around the country and selling himself to pay his way. He didn't dwell on the gay sex, rather he focused the story on how the kid taught himself how to emotionally detach himself from what he had to do to earn a buck. There was only one relatively graphic scene in the entire story.