Chapter 15: Recuperation

Monday, September 26, 2022

Monday was a busy day. I bundled the kids off to school and then called Matucket State. While I didn’t go into details, I had to let her Department Vice-Chair know she was going to be away from work for a week or two. I didn’t know who to call at DARPA or the NSA, but Kelly didn’t talk to them daily anyway; she could handle that chore. Then I drove over to the hospital. By all accounts, I would be able to bring her home that day.

First, though, she needed to be cleared by her doctor. Pawlensky was supposed to come in and examine her and give her the green light to go home. That occurred about an hour after I got there, and I was kicked out of the room. Eventually I was allowed back.

“It’s good to see you, Grim. How are the kids handling Kelly being away?” she asked.

I shrugged and smiled. “They’re good. We brought them over yesterday afternoon, so they know Mommy’s getting better, but we haven’t told them anything more than she had a tummy ache. Knowing them, Seamus will want something similar the next time he wants to get out of school.”

Kelly’s eyes popped open at that, but she didn’t argue; she knew our son. Pawlensky said, “Just let him know what’s going to have to be removed.”

“Can Kelly come home today?” I asked.

“Yes, but we need to discuss her care and recuperation.”

“Okay.”

The doctor pulled some papers and brochures from a file. “First, Kelly is on bedrest and light duty for the next two weeks. No work. No going over to the college. I’ll write her a note if needed. She can move around the house, but no heavy lifting or heavy chores. I’m serious, too! Movement is beneficial, but we need to limit it!” she said.

I nodded. “Two weeks, got it.”

“No driving, for two weeks either, at least not as the driver. As the passenger, she’s fine. And no fooling around, either!”

I glanced at Kelly, who was looking back curiously at me. “Uh...”

“Yeah, that’s what I mean. No sex, not until I give you the okay. That’s probably four to six weeks.”

I nodded slowly and said, “Understood.”

“Good. Now, Kelly needs to see me later this week at my office, so you’ll have to drive her over. Before you leave, I’ll have one of the nurses make an appointment. That’s part of the follow-up and I’ll remove her IUD at that time. I’ll also be prescribing some new drugs at that time. The ovaries produce most of a woman’s hormones, so we’re going to be starting a hormone replacement therapy. I’ll need to see Kelly every two weeks after that, until I say otherwise. Once she can drive, though, you won’t have to be there.”

“Okay.”

She went on for a bit longer, and then I asked, “Doctor, Kelly didn’t take the news all that well the other day. I was wondering, well, I see a local psychiatrist every few months myself. Would that help her?”

“Perhaps. Who do you see?”

“Myron Shemel, over at the Matucket WellCare Center.”

“I don’t know him. What do you see him for? If you don’t mind me asking.”

“I have some issues with PTSD from Iraq. I did a couple of tours over there at the beginning of the war. He helped a lot, and I simply check in every two or three months,” I explained.

She said, “Well, I do think seeing a mental health professional would be a good idea. We have both a patient group at the clinic and some professionals, psychiatrists and whatnot, to help. It’s a more specialized field if you will.” She turned to face Kelly directly. “I will give you some more information when you come over for your appointment, but I want you to seriously consider getting some help. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if you had some level of depression regarding this. Between that and the hormone changes, you’ll probably have some mood swings. Don’t let the problem fester. Let us know so we can help. There’re a lot of things we can do to help.”

With that, we were cut loose. Some paperwork was signed, and a nurse came in to remove the IV lines. Kelly had some clothes that my mother had brought over, and I stepped out while she dressed. Then she was wheeled down to the entrance in a wheelchair, and I was sent off to drive her car over. We helped her in, and she buckled up, wincing at the effort. Then we drove home.

Kelly changed into some sweatpants and a t-shirt and climbed into bed, falling asleep almost immediately. I made some soup for lunch, and she came out for that, but then it was back to bed, with Boxie curled up next to her. That was how the kids found her when they got off the school bus. Busses, actually. Seamus was in fourth grade at John F. Kennedy Elementary, but Riley was now in seventh grade at East Matucket Middle School. They greeted her enthusiastically and Kelly got out of bed to freshen up and putter around a bit. Seamus wanted to see her scars and Kelly shot down that idea right away. Kids! Our parents came over that evening to welcome her home as well.

The good part, and the bad part, of my status as a consultant was that I had a lot of time at home to take care of Kelly. I spent the week polishing up a report for Brian Conway and sent it to him at the end of the week. Likewise, I was able to continue working on the book, which was now in final edits. The schedule was that it would be ready for publishing after the New Year, at which time Simon & Schuster would set me up for a book tour. Hopefully the money would pour in, making the publishing company happy and establishing me as an expert on American police forces. Otherwise, it was back to purgatory for me. Friday, I drove Kelly over to the Harriman Clinic with a paperback in my pocket to read while she did what she had to do.

That Friday evening, after dinner, I made us a couple of drinks and then pulled Kelly onto my lap in my recliner. Kelly said, “Grim, you know we can’t do that.”

“I know. I also know I like it when you sit in my lap,” I replied.

Kelly blushed and kissed me on the cheek. That was when Riley came through and asked, “Are you two planning to start kissing?”

I looked at my wife and then over at my daughter. “And if we were?”

“You two need to get a room!”

Kelly bit her lip to keep from laughing. I just gave Riley a very dry look. “We did get a room. It’s called a house. It’s all ours. Would you like to leave?”

“Dad! I’m just saying, you should act your age!”

Kelly rolled her eyes and looked at Riley. “Would you like to do a barnacle inspection down at the lake?”

Our daughter grinned. “I know I can outrun both of you!”

She probably could, too. She ran on the track and cross-country teams at school. I growled and said, “You really want to find out?” She giggled and laughed and ran off to her room. I put my arms around my wife and said, “Act our age? Get a room? Where is she coming up with this stuff?”

“Grim, your daughter is growing up. She’ll be twelve in February. One of these days I’ll be taking her to Doctor Pawlensky for a checkup of her own.”

“Shit!” I muttered.

“You’d better hope I live long enough to teach her about tampons and training bras.”

My eyes popped at the thought of that, and I gulped loudly. “Jesus, no! No way!”

“Uh, huh!”

I looked down at Kelly’s chest. She had developed early herself, wearing a C-cup by the time she was fifteen, and was now a very healthy D- or DD-cup depending on the manufacturer of the bra. I looked away. If Kelly disappeared before then, one of our mothers was going to have to do those chores. I’d run away from home first!

Kelly just laughed at me. I looked back at her and said, “Training bras?” She grinned and nodded. “Just what are you training them to do?”

“We train them to make boys do what we want them to.”

I groaned at that. “Okay, so much for that. Now, how are you feeling? What did you tell Doctor Pawlensky that you haven’t told me?”

“Grim, it’s nothing you don’t already know.” She squirmed around on my lap and elbowed me in the side. “Like she said, I’m on lockdown for another month or so.”

“Not even...” I licked my lips lewdly.

That earned me another elbow, this one harder. “You pig!”

I hugged her against me. “Okay, okay. I kind of prefer when you’re having fun, too. Worse comes to worst, I can always run over to the Gaiety Lounge on Catamount if I need to. Now that I’m off the force, I don’t have a conflict of interest any longer.” The Gaiety was a strip joint in a very seedy part of downtown Matucket.

“I think you’d have a conflict of interest right here on Lake Matucket. Your children aren’t the only ones who can do barnacle inspections.”

I chuckled at that. “Seriously, how are you feeling?”

“Odd, in a way. Doctor Pawlensky removed my IUD today. The only other times it’s been out was when we were trying to conceive those two. I feel, I don’t know, empty, I guess.”

“Can you actually feel it missing?”

“No. You can’t feel it, not if everything goes right with it. I think it’s just the knowledge that it’s gone and that I don’t need it any longer,” she said. “I mean, I know I needed the operation, but something is missing now.”

“You need to see a doctor about that.”

“I will, I promise.”

“How about physically? Everything healing?” Kelly had on some bandages, but they were smaller than when she came home. She was still wearing stretchy pants and sweat suits.

“Everything is healing up nicely, I’m told. The stitches are going to be absorbed into me or just fall off, and I’m going to be left with a few small red marks that are supposed to fade away.” She looked at me. “How are you doing with this?”

I hugged her some more. “This was the scariest thing I’ve ever gone through. Don’t ever scare me like this again!”

“Grim!”

“Kelly, I’m serious. I just kept wondering how I was going to handle you not being around. Everything I’ve ever been through, the combat, the shootings, none of it was as scary to me as you in the hospital. I just kept wondering how I was going to raise the kids and whether I would start going insane and there was nothing I could do about it.”

“Really?” She looked at me with surprise.

“Kelly, you are the rock around this house, not me. I keep going because you’re here to tell me to keep going.”

“Grim, you’re nuts, but I guess I like you that way.” She hugged me and kissed me on the cheek again, and then lay against me. I reached down and adjusted the recliner and just held her. Then she whispered, “I am going to have to think about that first night when we can fool around again. I wonder what I’ll want you to wear, the black silk boxers or the Speedo.”

I gave her a light smack on the rear. “I don’t remember any stitches on your backside, so a good spanking won’t have to be delayed!”

Kelly just giggled and lay back against me, eventually falling asleep.

I stayed in touch with Brian Conway, checking to see if I needed to do any follow-up, which I didn’t. As expected, the county council took one look at the numbers involved in a SWAT team and ran as fast as they could in the opposite direction. I didn’t even need to come in to make an appearance at a council meeting. He did decide to go with the SuperLite alternative I had laid out, but he didn’t need me to plan it. The council coughed up enough money to cover some additional training and equipment purchases and he would roll it out over the next budget cycle. He thanked me and promised to say good things if he had the chance.

I continued networking, taking some of the money I had made and registering as a vendor with various police organizations throughout Georgia. There was POAG, the Peace Officers Association of Georgia, and the GACP, the Georgia Association of Chiefs of Police. The Georgia Sheriffs’ Association was another such organization. You could join these groups as a sponsor and attend conferences and training events. That got your name out there and you could even rent a booth and try to sell yourself to the attendees. I wasn’t quite at that level yet, but by joining you often got listed on their websites. I did get picked by a department down by Valdosta that was setting up a SWAT team to review the proposals they had been given and weigh in on them. That was interesting, and since it was so far away, they had to pay for several days of travel.

I worked it out that if I could do a single decent paying job a month, even after taxes and expenses I would be able to more than make up for what I lost leaving the MPD. I wasn’t there yet, but the trend looked positive.

Kelly’s lockdown ended Friday, November 4. I came home from a training session at the POAG fall conference in Atlanta, where I had given a speech on recruitment and training and then had met with several chiefs and assistant chiefs about possibly working with their departments. I got home mid-afternoon to find my children mysteriously missing, along with the dog. What wasn’t missing was Kelly, who greeted me at the door in a very nice halter-topped dress. It dipped low in the front, was mostly backless, and was very short. She also had on some three-inch stilettos and some nylons or stockings. She gave me a very hot kiss and led me into the living room, where a tray was on the coffee table with the makings of whiskey sours. Her perfume was a witch’s brew that went straight from my nose to a location about three feet lower.

“You should welcome me home like this more often,” I said. “I could really learn to like it!”

“Care to make drinks?” she asked.

“Absolutely.” I sat down on the couch and glanced at Kelly as she sat down next to me, catching a glimpse of lace at the hem of her dress. Definitely stockings, not pantyhose. Yowza! I made a pair of whiskey sours on the rocks and handed her one. “From the quiet in the house, I take it our children are off terrorizing somebody else tonight?”

“Your parents, and it’s not just tonight.”

“Oh?”

“They’re gone until Sunday night.”

I smiled at that. “Really? I’m guessing Boxie is with them?” Boxie mostly slept in one of the kids’ rooms, but if they were away, he jumped into bed with us.

“That’s right.”

“So, the plan for the weekend is...” I left that a question.

Kelly sipped her sour and placed a hand on my leg. “Remember that trip we took back when we were kids, when we took your parents’ boat down to LaGrange? Remember how we tried to set a certain record while we were down there?” I nodded, smiling. It was a week before I had to go join the army and we spent a week holed up on that boat committing every perversion and debauchery known to mankind, or at least known to a pair of horny teenagers. I was eighteen and she was seventeen, but by the time we came home, certain parts of us had aged considerably!

“I am thinking we can beat the old record,” she said. She began moving her hand northwards.

I smiled and looked down the front of her dress. No bra, and I could see everything, including all her special jewelry. “I don’t know, babe. We’re older now. I think I’m going to need a lot of motivation to make the attempt.”

“You just leave the motivation to me. Doctor Pawlensky says my testosterone and progesterone and estrogen are all nice and balanced and everything is all healed up, and I even bought a large tube of K-Y in case we need that.” She sipped her drink and reached out to untie my tie. “Of course, there’s some other hormones that need to be released, but only with your help. I need a lot of hormones to make me feel better, Grim, a lot!”

“And that’s the plan, huh?”

Kelly took my glass and set it on the tray, and then she pushed me back on the couch. “You ask too many questions!”

I didn’t ask any more questions until mid-morning, when the question was whether Kelly wanted bacon or sausage with her eggs. She was wearing high heels and a tiny satin robe, and she answered, “Sausage, as long as it’s long and hot and spicy.” I gave her a dry look at that, and she laughed at me. Then it was back to record breaking until late in the afternoon. I was informed I was taking her to dinner at Morton’s, which would at least allow me to take a break and replenish my vital bodily fluids. Then it would be back home, to work on the record some more. It had been a long six weeks.

Well, a man has to die of something, and this seemed a perfectly reasonable excuse. I wondered if this was how my father had his heart attack. Did Mom need some hormones released and she pushed him too far? What a way to go!