Chapter 4

“On the surface, I was calm: in secret, without really admitting it, I was waiting for something.”
—Stanislaw Lem, Solaris

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2018 was a red-letter day. Hmm. I guessed I shouldn’t use that term. I doubted if anyone I knew had ever seen a paper calendar with Sundays and holidays marked in red. For me, though, it was the day I got out of the hospital.

Dad pulled up to the front of the hospital in a van I didn’t recognize. Of course, I wasn’t going to recognize any of the cars my parents owned. They were driving cars from this century. We had a 1947 Studebaker Champion in V1’s timeframe.

This was a fairly late-model van on a Chevy truck frame. Dad used it for hauling his tools around. He always had a lot of tools with him. He’d cleared one side of the front half of the van and attached a ramp that he could let down from behind the door. I was a little nervous about him pulling me up the ramp backwards and narrowly missed clipping my extended right leg on the door, but once I was inside, I felt fairly secure. I figured I’d only have a few rides in this thing. I didn’t think I wanted to try going to school or to church with this much plaster on me. I sure wasn’t going to any school dances.

Dad had been busy at home, too. There was a wooden ramp, just about the same width as my chair, that led from the driveway to the front porch. We lived in a ranch-style house, so at least I didn’t have to worry about stairs once I was inside.

That strange feeling of things being familiar but different hit me once I was inside. I’d look at a chair and almost be able to remember seeing my father sitting there sixty years ago, but not being quite the same color or shape. I could see my mother in the kitchen, but the appliances were different and a computer sat on one end of the counter with a movie playing on it. The whole place was just ... a little off. Strange.

Peyton ran right over to me and did her best to give me a hug and kiss my cheek without getting hung up on my casts. Cute kid. I needed to make sure I spent some time with her while I was recovering. I thought I could hold cards in my hand now and maybe we could play a game or two. I hardly knew my little sister in V1. I was off to college before she hit high school. I guess I didn’t pay that much attention to her.

Mom was putting dinner on the table and called us to sit down. Well, I was already sitting. We almost never used the dining room table in my memory, taking all our meals in the kitchen. One look told me there was no way I was going to be maneuvering my wheel chair into the kitchen. It was just too crowded. Dad helped me position the chair at the end of the table so that my leg stuck out the side. It didn’t make too much difference since I couldn’t feed myself.

“Let me sit over there so I can feed you,” Mom said.

“It’s okay, Mom,” Em said. “I’ve got it. There’s lots of things J can’t do without hands. We just need to pitch in.” I almost choked on the bite of mashed potatoes she shoved in my mouth just then. Of course, my parents were oblivious to the underlying meaning.

“That’s very mature of you, Emily. I’m so glad you’re willing to help. The home nurse will be here during the day Monday but weekends are all up to the family. I’m sure we can share the burden so no one is inconvenienced too much.” That was nice of Mom, in a backhanded way. She’d just made it very clear that I was inconveniencing the entire family. Mom had always had a way of taking responsibility for things and making sure that you felt guilty about it.

“I’ll help,” Pey said cheerfully. “I might be too little to do some of the grownup things, but I can help get things for J. Like if he needs a drink. I think I could feed him, too.”

“Thank you, Pey. You’re the best little sister a guy could have. We’ll do some fun things together.”

“You need to keep up with your school,” Dad said. I nodded. It was about the most Dad ever said and that was all the response he expected. It was funny that he hardly said a word the whole time he was picking me up from the hospital and driving me home. It was just the way Dad was. It might have been the most familiar thing about coming home.

Home. After dinner, Dad took charge of seeing that I could maneuver my chair down the hall to my room. Our house was as modest as I remembered, though more modern. There were three bedrooms. The difference with this one was that there was a private bath for the master bedroom. The girls and I all shared the bath in the hall—not that I’d be going in there any time in the next few weeks.

Going down the hall wasn’t bad, but there was no way I could make a right turn with my right leg sticking straight out. Dad was analytical.

“Try going past the door and backing in,” he said. After I got the hang of backing and turning at the same time, it actually worked. It didn’t take long to realize that Dad was the only one who could get me in and out of the chair. With the added weight of all the plaster, there was no way that either Mom or Em could lift me. Dad took the training that everyone else in the family had, but even with that it took us a couple of tries before we got it right. After sitting up in the chair for the past few hours and then all the jockeying around to get to my room and into bed, I was exhausted.

“Everyone out. Let me get Jake ready for bed,” Mom directed. “You don’t have to go to sleep now, but let’s get you out of your traveling clothes and ready for bed.” It was like seven o’clock in the evening and obvious that everyone was getting tired of carting me around. They wanted me in bed so they could have their evening.

Having Mom get me ready for bed could have had unfortunate repercussions if my cock had betrayed me and gotten hard. I was in no way hot for my Mom, but she had to handle me in order for me to shit and piss and get cleaned up. Afterward, I got a fresh diaper and a giant-size T-shirt pulled over my head, arms and all. I needed to figure out something to protect my stomach from the plaster.

“Could I get a towel across my stomach so the plaster isn’t rubbing?” I asked. “Please.”

“Oh, I never thought about that. Is that what they did in the hospital?”

“They had some stretchy sleeve kind of thing they pulled over the casts. I should have asked them for some,” I said.

“I wonder if it would work to cut the toes out of a pair of tube socks. We’ll experiment tomorrow.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

I distracted myself while Mom was taking care of my toiletry by examining my room. I had a feeling it had been cleaned up for my arrival. I couldn’t imagine that I kept things so tidy. The room was typical off-white, but the wall at the head of my bed was garishly painted in the style of graffiti I’d seen on walls in the city. There were garish colors with dark outlines and an abundance of skulls. One had a cartoon balloon over it that said “Die Fucker!” A sword was stuck through another skull. If my kid had painted up his room like this, I’d have laced his hide.

I painted it. V2. Looking at it from that perspective, I had to admit I had some talent. A guitar leaned against the wall on the other side of my bed. A desk I recognized as being from IKEA had my computer on it. Dark. My dresser had a bunch of crap on it that looked like hell. I couldn’t even identify what the cards, dice, figures, and oddball junk were. I wondered if any of it was valuable. My closet door was closed so I had no idea if I owned any decent clothes. I’d worn a one-legged pair of sweatpants and a heavy pair of socks home with a hoody sweatshirt pulled around me and zipped up, trapping my arms inside. I’d find out later.

I sat propped up in my bed with my Kindle and read while the rest of the family went about their business. For Em, that included going out on a date. I really needed to talk to her.

I dozed. Can’t say I fully slept that night. I got Dad to remove the pillows from behind me and let me lie down about nine o’clock. I was bored of reading with a perpetual hard-on. I had plenty of books on my Kindle that weren’t porn, but I wasn’t interested in reading the history of World War II and the rise of the Third Reich. That was ancient history for V3 and the schools hardly touched on anything before the first Gulf War. That was pretty much the beginning of the modern age according to my history text book. What a bunch of crap.

I felt her presence at my door before I saw her.

“You awake?” she whispered.

“Yeah. Have a nice date?”

“Oh, you know. The usual. Get ice cream and a movie and pay for it with a hand job. Boys are jerks.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” Shit. I was planning to be a jerk. She apparently sensed my discomfort.

“Spill it. What’s on your mind? A nightmare?”

“Not since last night. I just ... It’s nothing.”

“Right. You were going to ask for a hand job and I called my date a jerk for wanting one. Geez, didn’t we just do that?”

“Em, how many times did you jill off this week?” I whined.

“That’s none ... Oh. And I was about to go to my room and do it again. And you haven’t had one for a week, have you?”

“I can do without.”

“Right. I’m not going to torture you. Just sit tight for a few minutes. I need the bathroom.”