Chapter 6

“Panic will kill you—and make you look like an asshole in the process.”
—David Pedreira, Gunpowder Moon

PHYSICAL THERAPY with Nurse Molly was simultaneous pain and pleasure. Everything she had me do hurt somewhere. She’d get me standing up and help me keep my balance while I did toe-rises on my left leg. Then she’d have me sit on a chair and lift my cast-encumbered leg horizontal so she could put a stool under it. This was the position she wanted me in to work on keeping my shoulders limber as she raised and worked each arm in the socket. She rotated my torso in this position as well and while I was being tortured, have me do leg lifts and stomach crunches.

The pleasure part was that after the first week, Molly started dressing more casually. She talked it over with my parents one morning to make sure they didn’t expect her to be there in a nurse’s uniform every day. They were fine with casual clothes. I liked Molly and that went a long way with my parents accepting any eccentricities she might have. After all, if she was wiping my butt and giving me baths, they didn’t have to be inconvenienced. Her casual clothes weren’t risqué by any stretch of the imagination. It wasn’t like she was wearing miniskirts and tank tops. But despite keeping her breasts well-armored in a bra, her T-shirts and sweatpants were ... softer and I appreciated her shape. I didn’t mind the fact that she often brushed those breasts against me as she was maneuvering my limbs, or how her ass looked in those sweats when she bent over to lift my leg.

I was in a perpetual state of being horny, but she worked me so hard each day that I was often just ready to sleep when Em got home from school. I was hoping that the weekend rest would be a time when Em would want to play again.

Friday finally came and Molly was out the door a minute after Emily walked in.

“J, this is my friend Francine.” Francine? Hadn’t Em told me a few weeks ago that Francine got knocked up? I tried not to be too conspicuous checking her out to see if she was showing. She was a little heavy anyway and was at that awkward point when a guy would keep his mouth shut for fear that suggesting she was pregnant would get him knocked out because she was just fat. And I couldn’t get more than fleeting glances from V2’s memories. She hadn’t done anything for him, so was just a shadow that followed his sister on occasion.

“Nice to see you again, Francine,” I said.

“That’s fine from your sister but I’d prefer you just call me Francie like everyone else does.”

“Oh. Sorry, Francie. I didn’t think.”

“Yeah, well I understand you got your rocks kicked in, so I forgive you. How are you doing on your schoolwork?” She wanted to talk about school? Was Em bringing me a tutor?

“The reading’s not bad. I managed to get the texts online from this company that has material for disabled students so I can read them on my Kindle. Unless I get some speech to text software, I’m not going to get any writing done, so I’ll have a boatload of paperwork to catch up on when I get my hands back.”

“Wow! Do they make speech to text? That would be so cool. Or maybe you could just have Siri type it up for you.”

“Hey, I never thought about that. Do I have an iPhone, Em?”

“Had. You lived. It died. Poor Siri, killed by a bus.”

“Um...”

“J, don’t go there. You’ve got to learn to joke about this stuff. It was all just a bad dream.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Em used that line a lot. Of course, it was usually when I was waking up from a nightmare, but it seemed like her answer to everything bad was to treat it like a bad dream and wake yourself up. I guess that wasn’t too bad a way to look at something. My memories of V2’s life were a lot like a dream that kept flitting away when I tried to focus on them. I didn’t want that to happen with my V1 life. My biggest advantage in this world would be my V1 memories. It’s the only reason I wasn’t too worried about the battery of algebra tests I’d have to take when I finally went back to school. I’d become a mechanical engineer in V1 and had a lot of math behind me. Not that I could just sit down and reconstruct it without some review, but the knowledge was there.

“Why don’t you show me how you can get around in that magic carpet chair of yours. Em says your room has some savage art in it. Show me.”

“Em?”

“You know the ‘rents. If I don’t get my stupid SS homework done, I won’t have time to get ready for my date. Entertain Francie for a bit so I can concentrate. ‘KK?”

“Oh. Yeah. Sure.” Well, if Em brought Francie home for me to entertain, I guessed I’d better do it. And she bragged to someone about that monstrosity on my wall? Shit. I wheeled down the hall and almost ran into Francie when I backed into my room.

“Hey! You need a beeper on that thing to let people know you’re backing up!”

“Sorry about that. You’re the first person to visit here that doesn’t know how I get into my room. I can’t turn the corner facing forward.”

“Yeah. Remember to tell the next girl who comes to visit you so she doesn’t get her toes flattened. Hey! That wall is tox. You did this?”

“I guess so.”

“Maybe you can come over and paint my baby room. That’ll make him psycho for sure.” I was getting lost in Francie’s slang. Some words sounded familiar but I kept trying to apply definitions that were forty or fifty years old.

“I ... uh ... don’t know if I can paint like that anymore. It’s like ... maybe I lost something.”

“Hey, I get it,” she said. She sat on the edge of my bed and looked at me. I noticed she’d pushed the door closed. In my current condition, closing the door was as good as locking me in. I quelled my panic and felt for my bell strapped around my chest in reach of my fingers. “You reached an abyss. The art was getting you there and then you tumbled in. You’d be surprised how well I understand. When I found out I was brooding I almost went out to find a bus myself.”

“Why didn’t you,” I whispered. I wasn’t trying to be mean, but I kind of wanted to know. She took it positively.

“Hey, it isn’t the brat’s fault. I got drunk. I got laid. I got pregnant. Colin claimed I’d had sex with everybody at the party so he couldn’t be the father and my reputation is trashed. And ... it’s kinda awesome sauce being pregnant. I can feel my body changing. My folks aren’t thrilled, but they don’t want me to abort and I figure that means they’ll support me. Everybody wins. At least the peapod and I do.”

“That’s pretty ... Wow! I never would have thought of it like that.”

“And that’s what brings me here.”

“Huh?”

“Emily says you can’t whack off. Just knowing how much time I spend with my fingers in the stink, that’s got to be miserable for you. If you want, I’ll do you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I like cocks. I didn’t do everyone at that party, but if I’d had the opportunity, I might have.”

“I’m always horny and most of the time, I’m hard.” In fact, I’d been hard ever since Francie sat on my bed. There was something about the way she lounged there that ... What am I saying? She was female and I was fourteen. “I’d like it.”

“There’s one thing. It’s why I know Colin was the only guy I fucked at that party. I like to kiss a guy when I’m holding his cock. There was only one guy there I was willing to kiss.”

“You ... um ... want to kiss me?”

“Yeah. Then I’ll take my pants off so you can see my mommy tube cream while I stroke you to a good one. You cool?”

“So cool.” Em sometimes kissed the top of my head, but a real kiss on the lips. Maybe with a little tongue? Fuck, yes.

It wasn’t easy. I couldn’t help. I couldn’t put my arms around her. I couldn’t move into her, hold her, feel her tatas against my chest. I thought she’d give up before she finally managed a position where she could lean over my chair and my casts and get her mouth up next to mine.

But, oh God, could she kiss! I let sixty years of experience exploring mouths I loved take control of me and even though I couldn’t use my hands, I could shift my head, drink with my lips, and snake my tongue around her mouth. And somewhere while we were kissing, I felt her hand in my lap. We had to stop kissing to get the next phase arranged.