Chapter 5

My parents finally showed up to visit me. It was obvious they were in emotional distress. Of course part of that distress was seeing me with no legs, but there was some “I told you not to do this” there, too. You can say, “I told you so,” and then feel guilty for speaking it. What can I say? Life is complicated. Anyway, I told them all about the miracles of modern peg legs and that the next time they saw me I’d look completely normal. That let them off the hook, in terms of visiting me again. I love my parents, but I sort of prefer to love them from afar, if you know what I mean.

Valerie passed her bar exam and started work for a big law firm in Philadelphia that specialized in corporate law. She came to see me on weekends. We could afford it now that she was getting paid. BAMC has apartments for family members to stay in while they visit patients, so she didn’t need a car while she was there.

I didn’t tell her about that boner I got when her mother gave me a sponge bath, or the boners I now routinely got whenever Eve came into the room. She was not the older carbon copy of her daughter, but she was a good looking woman in her own right. She was a little busty, compared to Val, who measured in around thirty four inches around her chest. Val now sported her “corporate hairdo” which was designed to make her look sexy when she wore business attire. Nobody would admit that out loud, of course, but that was why they wanted her hair that way. When she visited me, in jeans and a checkered long-sleeve shirt, she looked like a model who was slumming around between photo shoots.

She was effusive about her new job for the first three weeks. Then I could tell the sheen had worn off. She was eye candy for the CEOs and such who frequented the firm’s high-rise offices. She had plenty of work to do, but it was repetitious, standard stuff, for the most part. What was worse was that it became clear that the primary thing the firm did was find ways to short-change tax obligations, or maximize profits at the expense of other companies or individuals. To her, the firm started looking like a circling shark, willing to eat anything as long as it kept its belly full. A shark has to keep moving or it will die. And the rookies, like Val, were the fins that kept this shark moving. She worked 80 hours a week, and the only reason they let her off every weekend to come see me was because they could claim they were “supporting the troops” and get some good press out of it.

“It’s not what I thought it was going to be,” she sighed, one Saturday. She looked tired.

“Then quit,” I said.

“I can’t do that,” she said. “I spent a lot of money to move there. I have a lease on an apartment. I don’t have anything other than school to put on a résumé yet and won’t have for at least a year. If I quit now, my next potential employer will think I’m flaky.”

“You didn’t go through all those years of work to end up doing something you hate,” I said.

“Bob, I have over a hundred thousand dollars in student loan debt,” she said. “Let’s talk about something else. How is your rehab going?”

My rehab had progressed to the point that I was now going to an inpatient clinic where, in theory, I was learning to walk again. They had gotten me out of the wheel chair for the first time a week previously. All I did was stand there. Everything felt ‘wrong’ somehow. My right leg was two inches longer than my left one, so the prosthetics were different lengths, too. It was weird, not being able to feel the floor under me. Feeling the cup of the prosthetic with my stump wasn’t the same.

Walking on prosthetics is like walking on stilts, when you first begin. Everything is wobbly and when you take a step, you might go too far, or too little, to keep things in balance.

Then there was the pain. Eight operations, with all the associated tissue damage, reconstruction, and flayed nerves, made using any muscles in my legs agony. It wasn’t the sharp kind of pain that had, at one time, made me see stars. Rather it was like my whole leg was screaming, “Stop that! Don’t do that!” It didn’t matter if I was standing, between the parallel bars, trying to walk, or lying on my back while a therapist bent my knee and pushed on my stump. It was just awful.

Of course I didn’t tell her that. I said, “I’m getting there.”

She batted her lashes at me.

“I can’t wait until you come home.”

I knew her well enough to be able to read between the lines. I wanted to tell her I’d be able to satisfy her desire to have me in her again, but I couldn’t think of a way to say that without her knowing I’d been getting boners for women other than her.

“I can’t wait, either,” I said.

It never occurred to me that Eve might be giving her daughter information about my treatment ... about my reactions to my treatment. Of course, now that I think about it, a mother might be expected to reassure her daughter that “Everything will be fine once he’s finished his treatment.”

What I would not have expected a mother and daughter to do was collude to make sure everything was going to be fine.

They did, unknown to me, collude. And my wife asked her mother to “Please make sure he’s ready for a workout when he comes home.”

Eve made sure by giving me my last sponge bath. Even though I was up and “about” now, I still couldn’t take a shower. Eve said my stumps had finally healed enough that the last bandages were going to go for good.

She bathed me the same way she had the last time.

But this time, when she got to my already-erect member, she gently stroked me until I came.

“What are you doing?” I gasped, when I realized what she was, in fact, doing.

“That’s a stupid question,” she commented.

“Eve!” I gasped again.

“Calm down. You need this.”

“But Valerie,” I whimpered.

“She can’t do this while you’re a patient. Not until you can visit the family member apartments.”

“I’ll be able to do that?”

“Some day,” she said, still stroking. “But I think she’s looking forward to a lot more than this, so let’s just make sure all the plumbing is working the way it’s supposed to.”

“Do you do this for everybody?” I panted.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “Some of my girls do, once in a while. They don’t think I know. I don’t mind, as long as they’re discreet. The administration wouldn’t understand.”

“Gee,” I groaned. “You think?”

“Do you want me to stop?” she asked. Her hand came to a stop.

It is said that men have two brains, a big one and a little one. As a man, I can confirm that. I thought with my little one that day.

“No,” I blurted.

She re-commenced. “Is this causing any pain?”

“No,” I panted.

“Good. Just lie there and let it happen. Try not to get too excited.”

“Surely you’re joking,” I panted.

“No, and tell me when it’s time. I don’t want to have to clean up a mess.”

Roughly two minutes later I warned her. She caught my spend in the washcloth she’d been using to clean me. She brought the washcloth up and examined it.

“Good. No blood,” she said.

“Thank you,” I huffed.

She smiled at me.

“It’s the least I could do for my only son-in-law.”

I had a dream that night. I was at a party. It was loud and crowded. I was sitting on a couch and Eve was sitting right next to me, close, like we were together. Valerie approached with a tray of drinks, like she was a server, or something.

“Do you to need anything?” asked my wife.

Suddenly we were all naked. Not everybody at the party, just me and the two women in my life. Eve reached to grasp my erection and jacked it several times.

“I have what I need,” she said.

Val grinned happily and replied, “You just make sure you save some of that for me, Mom.”

When I saw Eve the next morning I waved her over.

“I had a dream about you last night,” I whispered. I don’t honestly know why I felt like I had to tell her. Maybe it was this new intimacy we had been sharing. I know I felt a lot better about the decisions Valerie and I had made, at least as far as Eve went. My parents were still freaked out by the whole “Our son almost got killed!“ thing. The hospital had a computer room where patients could Skype family members. Valerie (and her mother) insisted I have a video chat with them once a week. I kept telling them I was fine, but I hadn’t looked in a mirror since I got hurt, and wasn’t aware that I still looked like death, warmed over. Val and Eve didn’t notice that. Rather, I should say they noticed the improvement in my appearance from when I looked like fresh death, to death warmed over. My parents hadn’t seen me like that.

“I’ll see you at lunch,” said my mother-in-law. “You can tell me all about it, then.”

For lunch, she took me to the cafeteria for the first time. We sat at a table off in one corner, me in my wheelchair and patient robe, and her in her scrubs. I was a bit shy about things, but she prodded me to give it up. When I finished, I expected her to look angry, but she didn’t.

“Don’t feel guilty,” she said. “I’m not trying to take you away from my daughter. I don’t want a man. I still think most men are wasting perfectly good air just by breathing it, but you’re one of the very few exceptions. You are my daughter’s husband, after all.”

“You have other exceptions?” I was curious, I knew almost nothing about Eve’s personal life.

“All my wounded boys are exceptions,” she said. She frowned. “Most of them are exceptions.” She looked at me. “I cut some of them some slack.”

“You call that cutting me some slack?” I teased.

She stared at me with eyes that seemed to burn holes in me.

“Nobody was more surprised than I was, yesterday. I’ve never cut any of my boys that much slack, before.”

“I feel honored,” I said. I blinked. “Guilty, but honored.”

“You should,” she said. “Now, I have things to do. If you’re finished fantasizing about me, I need to go.”

“Um ... sure,” I said.

She left, and I kept wondering if her “You should” meant I should feel guilty ... or honored.

That was also the first time she left me alone in the chair, and that I had to get back to my room by myself.

I fell that afternoon while trying to walk. There were supposed to be two orderlies helping me, but one of them didn’t show. The other one could only help break my fall when I went down. I couldn’t get back up, of course. Not by myself. I’d learn how to do that some day, but at that point two nurses and a doctor helped and apologized profusely.

I was supposed to move into the outpatient dormitory, but they decided to keep me in bed for a day or two more.

That evening Head Nurse Aoibheann came into my room with supplies for a sponge bath in her hands.

“You ready to feel guilty again?” she asked.

I got an instant boner, but tried to ignore it.

“I fell today,” I complained.

“I know. Poor baby,” she said. “That’s why I’m here, doing this, instead of helping you take a shower. You’ll fall again. That’s why we make you lift weights. You’re going to need more upper body strength than you did in the past.”

I was still thinking about what “help me take a shower” meant when she lifted off my hospital gown and examined my stumps. Then she stared at the evidence that I was cheating on her daughter. At least mentally cheating.

“My, my,” she said.