Chapter 6

I talked to Val a lot about her work. That was for two reasons. One, I didn’t want to talk about me. The only things I could talk about were my trials and tribulations, and I didn’t want to dwell on them. And she needed to vent about her own trials and tribulations, at work. Just as Vlad and physical therapy and learning to walk consumed all of my days, her job consumed all of her days. If she wasn’t working (or visiting me) she was asleep. She didn’t even have my old TV hooked up and plugged in. When she moved, she got rid of most of the furniture. She put my stuff in storage and took only a minimal amount of her stuff with her to her new apartment. She figured we’d decorate when I got there.

So I got to learn a lot about her job.

Valerie’s new employer, or at least certain of the cogs in the gears of her new situation, weren’t shy about telling her the truth about why she got hired.

They were aware of the situation with her spouse, and hoped to use that to their advantage. She was, in fact, hired as eye candy. There had to be someone to do the drudge work. Why not make her nice to look at? At the same time, it was obvious that she was of value to the organization. The drudge work was the basis upon which much legal action was eventually successful. So Valerie had value to them in her own right.

Everybody knew she was married, but she still got hit on. She told me she stared into a mirror and cultivated a look she hoped would make a man’s balls suck up into his body for protection. Her simple and direct, “No,” was punctuated by that look. She never said, “No, thank you,” even to one of the partners who approached her. She made it an unequivocal non-negotiable, “No.”

By the time her first month had passed, the horndogs had given up and her value as an attorney was beginning to be recognized. She worked the long hours and didn’t complain. Her work was complete, and without mistakes. Her evaluation of reams of material cut to the chase and was reliable, according to her supervisor.

So, when she asked to go visit her recovering husband in Texas, her request was usually granted. She didn’t have any vacation built up, of course, but every so often one day was advanced, so she could have a three day weekend with her wounded warrior. It was good press to allow her to go.

So it was, on the day I could finally walk out of the hospital, using only one cane, Valerie was there to walk out with me. We didn’t go out to eat. We went, instead, directly to her room in the Fisher House.

Making love was difficult. With me on top, the strain on my muscles of keeping my weight off of her was unfamiliar and painful. When she tried to straddle me, the pressure on my thighs was untenable. Fortunately, one of our favorite ways to make love had always been with me fully inserted in her and lying on top of her, as if she was a big air mattress. She could rock me with her hands on my butt, and I could use my own hands on the bed to pull and push. It only moved me in her a couple of inches, at most, but it crushed her clit and made my foreskin massage the sensitive head of my prick.

In any case, it had been over a year since I was in her at all, so just that much was an incredible delight.

As I rocked, we played the “I missed you more” game, and then settled for long, warm kisses. When I jetted into her depths, she hadn’t had an orgasm, yet, but she didn’t care. She said just being with me like this was enough.

“Mom said you were fine, but I didn’t know whether to believe her or not,” she said, at one point.

“You saw me lots of times. You know I was healing well,” I said.

“I mean this,” she said. Her internal muscles squeezed. Unfortunately, my penis, which had deflated, got pushed out of her in the process. “Ooooo,” she complained. “Anyway, she said it still worked and now I know she wasn’t fibbing, to make me feel better.”

“She said it still worked?” I felt cold.

“When she gave you sponge baths,” said Valerie.

“She told you?”

“Don’t be mad. I asked her to. I was afraid you might have ... problems. Lots of guys who get hurt like you get erectile dysfunction because they get depressed or whatever.”

“Wait,” I said. “You asked your mother to jerk me off?!”

“Don’t be mad, Bob. I had to know!”

“I’m not mad. I’m confused. Okay, I’m a little mad. I’ve been feeling guilty as hell about that. I felt like I’d cheated on you, and now I find out I had... permission?“

“Well, sort of,” she murmured. I was still lying on top of her. I didn’t weigh as much as I used to, and her breathing wasn’t labored. Call it a silver lining to the cloud of losing your legs.

“It would have been nice to know that before it happened,” I complained.

“I couldn’t do that,” she snorted. “You can’t just tell your husband you asked your mom to check out if his penis works or not.”

“Point taken,” I said. “So you’re not mad?”

“Why would I be mad? I want things to work,” she said.

“But I got a boner ... for your mother,” I finished weakly.

“You just got a boner for me, too. Besides, she’s beautiful,” pointed out my wife.

“I still felt guilty,” I said.

“Okay, I get that. Maybe I should have told you. But it did more than just to allay my fears. Bob, she hasn’t done something like that with a man since I was born! I’ve told her a thousand times to move on and start dating again. She’s always ignored me. But she did this for me, Bob. There’s no way she’d have done it if she didn’t like you. And maybe liking you will help her learn to like other men.”

“So while she’s involved in my rehab, I’m involved in hers, too?” I joked.

“Exactly!” said my naked wife, taking me seriously. I couldn’t believe it. But because she took me seriously, I had to respond seriously.

“Honey, I have enough on my plate as it is. Doing sex therapy with your mother is way more than I can tackle.”

“Okay, I get that, but she’s made so much progress. Please encourage her, at least.”

“I’ll try to set her up with one of my buddies,” I said.

“Don’t joke about this!” she snapped. “This is my mother I’m talking about!”

“I have to joke a little,” I said. “Think about it. My wife is asking me to do things... sexual things ... with her mother. You have to admit that’s kind of odd.”

“Maybe for everybody else, but this is us. I’m not threatened by this. I’m happy about it, Bob! I’ve read all about the PTSD and depression wounded vets go through, and erectile dysfunction is common among them! My mother helped make sure that didn’t happen to you! So I don’t care about everybody else. I just want you to be as normal as you can be, and for her to stop feeling sorry for herself and have a better life. She needs to know she can be a little intimate with a man and it won’t turn out like the last time.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. “As long as I keep getting to do this.” I rocked on her a little. It didn’t do anything except crush her breasts, because I was still soft, but she got the message.

“We’re going to do this a lot,” she said, kissing me. “You have no idea how relieved I am right now.”

“Even if you didn’t have an orgasm?”

“I can have orgasms later,” she said. “All I care about is you, being all hard inside me. Want me to suck it and get it hard again?”

“Do you really have to ask?” I said, rolling off of her.

She could only stay two days, but we spent the majority of those days in bed. It wasn’t an orgy, or second honeymoon. My stumps still flailed around and more than once they hit each other. They might be healed, but they were still tender. I lost my erection twice because of that. I lost it again one time when I tried to give her an orgasm and just couldn’t. That’s a complicated situation, though. An orgasm takes two people, and if either one of them is distracted or off balance for some reason, then things don’t work well.

Long story short, her concerns about ED were not assuaged, even though we made love successfully several times.

I got my first car ride since I got injured. We left the current set of prosthetics in the room and took the wheel chair. It was faster, at that point. Getting from the chair into the passenger seat was interesting, but there was a grab handle on the door frame that helped. When we got to Hardees, we went through the drive through and then parked to eat. It was delicious.

It wasn’t as delicious as being hard and inside Valerie, though. I could eat anytime. I could not make love three times a day. Not when she was back in the world of corporate law.

My report about all this to the doctor resulted in me being moved to the outpatient dorm. Now I was surrounded by other guys just like me. They understood what I was going through, and I knew what they were having to deal with. The real problem was boredom. Between appointments, all you could do was watch TV, or read. There was a basketball court designed for wheel chair play, but that was kind of advanced for me. Plus they didn’t want me in the chair unless I was taking a shower.

That was another thing. I no longer had my mother-in-law for a nurse.

No more sponge baths.

I had permission to get a boner for my mother-in-law, but didn’t get to see her.

Or at least I didn’t think I’d see her. Three days later she showed up on the wing and said we were going for a field trip.

She had just finished her shift and told me to strap on my legs, and that we were going shopping. I had no idea that Vlad and the doctors had put her up to this. Actually, she suggested it happen and volunteered to be the person to do it.

I arrived at the hospital naked, with no luggage. I had been issued standard Army T shirts and running shorts. Think about that for a second. There you are, in a wheel chair, with half your legs missing, and some bored clerk hands you a pile of gray clothing including running shorts.

It sounds ridiculous, but I would eventually use those running shorts for what they were designed for. I don’t want to get ahead, though, so be patient. We’ll get there eventually.

Anyway, that’s all I had to wear, but it was no problem. I was a little shy about walking around in public in my prosthetics, but I also wanted to get out of the hospital. So I put on my legs and slowly walked to her car.

The first stop was at WalMart, where I got three shirts, two pairs of pants, and a belt. In theory, I was the same height I’d always been, and my inseam hadn’t changed, so I got pants with the same length legs I’d always gotten. Eve got a tape measure from the woman who worked there and measured my waist. Then we went to her house, which was one end of a duplex in a nice neighborhood.

“You try on your new clothes,” she said. “I’m going to take a shower. Then we’ll go get something to eat.”

“You da boss,” I said.

Getting dressed was interesting. The shirt was no problem. Putting pants on when you have mechanical legs is different. I hadn’t been wearing underwear when we left, so I went commando with the pants. I was used to doing things while sitting, instead of standing. I could bend my knees, but it still felt weird pulling the pants over my prosthetics. And the mechanics of it was different, too. Crossing your legs works entirely differently when you have a BTK (below the knee) amputation. In fact, I couldn’t remember quite how to put pants on. I know. It sounds crazy. But my legs were different, and it threw me off.

I stopped, at one point, and decided it might work better if I took the legs off, put the pants on, and then put the legs back on. I had just set my legs aside and was reaching for the pants when Eve came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a towel.