Chapter 2

Terry breezed into his bedroom to help Dale dress for his morning workout.

She said cheerfully, “How is my hunky man today?”

Dale groaned. Terry had become his therapist four months before when they finally got him out of the casts and the external fixators. They had to operate to remove the pins, and his bones at least were healed.

He had scars in four places on his hips and two on each leg where they had bolted the external fixators to his femurs and hip bones. The fixator had been used to keep his hips in place and stop his legs from moving, due to a fracture in his left ischium bone. (The lower and back part of the hip bone.)

He also had scars front and back of his hips and on his left side, where they had opened him up to stabilise the fractured section of his iliac (the crest or wing of the hip bone). They had bolted in two titanium plates to hold the crest of the iliac in place, and they would be with him for life.

The doctors told him that the bones of his hips would fuse over time, but in the meantime, the plates kept everything where it belonged. His lower back above his hips (near the sacrum) often ached and often stabbed him with pain, so that he had to lie down to ease it.

His kidney had healed, so he didn’t piss blood anymore. His busted left arm had also healed, and he was thankful that he had full use of it again. Dale had a nice scar along his left jawline from opening his face up on one of the metal steps.

They’d shaved him after removing the stitches, and he had been delighted to be clean-faced. If he let his beard grow a bit, he now had a long, thin, streak of white hair either side of the scar. He thought it looked stupid, so it was just as well he didn’t like beards.

He hadn’t enjoyed learning how to use a wheelchair but learn he did. Dale wasn’t the sort of bloke who let things get him down for long. He was a problem solver and had never been shy about doing any job. He treated his rehabilitation as if it was a job that just had to be done, a problem he had to solve.

The physical therapy was murder when Terry had first started working with him. Trying to lift his fat arse off the bed and get into the wheelchair had exhausted him. Getting back into the bed had been a whole lot of other pain and frustration.

He couldn’t lie on his left hip without it aching and being flat on his back for extended periods was nearly as bad. He hadn’t been able to sit up until they took the fixators off and even then, he had to stay semi-reclined with a pillow in his lower back to ease the pain.

They had sent him home after four months and assigned him a live-in carer while he continued to heal.

The first bloke who had been assigned to Dale as a carer had left after four weeks saying that he had gotten a better offer.

Dale wasn’t that sad to see Wanker, as he had christened the carer, go. Wanker was forever asking for cash to go and do shopping. However, after a couple of weeks, Dale had stopped doling out the cash. Since he never got the change back and Wanker never bought as much food as he should have.

Dale had gotten suspicious, so he asked his neighbour Sally Hahn, who was also his part-time housekeeper, to go food shopping for him instead. The Wanker wasn’t happy when Dale told him that Sally was doing the shopping. She also cooked meals for him a couple of times a week, after she had copied his diet plan off his fridge.

Wanker had rarely followed the plan, and he had served up some piss-poor meals. It was just as well Dale didn’t have a lot of appetite at the time. At least he wasn’t paying for all the beer Wanker drank anymore. Dale had also hated the fact that the bloke had gone through every drawer and cupboard in the house searching for money.

Dale didn’t have a lot of valuables other than his computers in the house, so there wasn’t much for Wanker to steal. He got Bob, Sally’s husband, to put a hasp and lock on his office door and took to locking his office just to be safe. He kept his wallet and E-pad in there too.

He also made damn sure he never gave Wanker his PIN number for his debit card no matter how often he had asked. Workers Compensation had paid for Wanker’s wages, so he didn’t have to give him anything. Dale had complained about Wanker several times, but it always seemed to fall on deaf ears.

Workers Comp, his lawyers, his company and the Haul Company, were still arguing about just how much he was going to get paid, due to negligence. At least he still had a job. His company wasn’t game to sack him from what he could tell.

He couldn’t do the job exactly as he did before, but he was still employable. He was glad that Jake was still his immediate boss. Jake spent more time in town these days and made sure Dale had plenty of work to do.

At least working on the projects kept him sane.

Workers Comp had trouble locating him a replacement carer when Wanker had finally left.

He had tried three different people, but he had gotten rid of them within days of them being with him. He refused to have them in his house and sent them on their way. One bloke was a geriatric and spent the two days he was in the house drinking some disgusting wine that stank up the place up. He was even worse than the Wanker was.

The first woman wasn’t any better. She couldn’t lift him to help him in and out of things, other than to hold his chair while he tried to move himself. She bitched about everything, and she left her crap lying around so that it fouled up his wheelchair.

Dale had to give in when Terry had said that he was going to have to put up with her until they found someone with whom he could live with. Since he had left the hospital, Terry had been coming by twice a week to do special therapy sessions with him. He had dreaded those sessions as she took no crap from him and forced him to exercise.