Chapter 2

As she hung up the last of her clothes, Emily couldn’t believe that she had been living such a Spartan life-style. All she had was four pairs of jeans, two pairs of dress slacks, one slinky black dress and a pair of black heels, a dozen shirts and blouses, two pairs of athletic shoes, a pair of sandals, plus half a dozen bras, and a dozen underwear in various colors and styles. Her makeup and other toiletries barely covered the shelves in the medicine cabinet, and her gym bag contained all of her gym clothes.

“Emily, we’re the same size; please feel free to take anything you need from my closet. I’m a bit of a clothes hound and I usually buy more than one of everything I fancy. You’ll probably find quite a few things in there that still have the tags on them. Gene spoiled me rotten and I let him.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, but I doubt I’ll be needed much of anything for a while at least. I think I’ll turn in early tonight; it’s been an eventful day.”

“Please, go ahead, I completely understand. I’ll look in on Gene before I turn in. If you’d like, you can join me tomorrow in the gym at 6:00 for an early morning workout. The gym is on the other side of the kitchen. Good night.”

“Good night, see you tomorrow at six.”

Emily woke promptly at 5:30; after taking care of her morning business she quickly dressed in a sports bra, an Army T-shirt, a pair of shorts, and socks and running shoes. After checking that everything was OK with Gene, making especially sure that the sensors for his EEG machine were properly affixed to his scalp and transmitting to the machine, she made her way down to the gym. Lisa was already there, in a sports bra and shorts, running at a steady pace on one of the two treadmills that stood side by side, facing out of a wall of windows

“I already programmed the other treadmill. The adjustments are on the handles; just press the green button and you’re off and running.”

As Emily began her workout, she couldn’t help glancing over at Lisa’s machine. Lisa was already on her second mile and both her pace and incline were greater than Emily’s.

“Don’t try to be a hero just to impress me, adjust it to your fitness level. After all, it’s only your first day here; I’ve been doing this for ten years. When I first married Gene, I had never broken a sweat before, let alone be able to keep up with him. It took a long time before I could keep up with him. It was even worse on the strength machines and free weights, but after a while I managed to at least make a good show of it.”

Emily looked her over and was very impressed. Lisa’s arms and shoulders appeared to be, if not packed with muscles, sculpted and well-defined. Her legs were long and solidly-formed, gliding her easily through her workout.

After fifteen minutes, Lisa’s machine began her cool down; Emily’s continued for another five minutes and then began its cool down. Emily was a little winded, but it felt good. After a minute, she joined Lisa at the first of a circuit of training machines. There were five machines in all; four were designed for the upper body, the last for the body’s core.

Here they worked out together, Lisa setting the weights and Emily working in at the same level. Emily more than held her own in their friendly competition; her upper body strength had developed over eight years of lugging equipment around and carrying men wounded in battle. That and, when things were slow, competing with the young, macho soldiers on the base in their makeshift gym. On each piece of equipment, she was able to out lift Lisa by at least twenty pounds.

On the free weights it was no contest; Lisa had to acknowledge that she just could not keep up with Emily and concentrated more on form than on amount of weight. In the end they were laughing and shaking hands; a powerful bond was beginning to form between the two women.

“Gene will really like you when he finally meets you,” Lisa said with just a touch of sadness.

They left the gym and headed upstairs to their rooms and a much-needed shower. Emily felt a touch of sadness as well, thinking that Lisa was maybe being overly optimistic in her assessment of Gene’s eventual recovery. She had been taught that most of the time the longer these things went on the less likely they ended well.

She hoped in this case her instructors were wrong.

After her shower, she dressed and checked on Gene. Finding his feeding bag nearly empty, she removed it, got a new one from the refrigerator in his room, and hung it on the its frame re-connecting the feeding tube. When she was satisfied with the flow, she went down to the kitchen for breakfast.

During breakfast Lisa asked, “How’s Gene, everything normal?” Without waiting for a reply she continued, “I want you to give him a bath after breakfast. Then we’ll get together to go over his treatment. Be sure to document everything you do on the daily sheet. It’s for your own protection as well as Gene’s. We don’t want anybody coming back to us accusing us of malpractice or patient abuse.”

After breakfast, Emily returned to Gene’s room and noted the approximate time that the feeding bag was changed and the rate of flow, which she should have done earlier. She chastised herself for her lack of discipline, vowing to improve. Then she gathered the items she would need for his sponge bath: a metal bowl of warm sudsy water, a washcloth, and a towel. She had done this dozens of times before during her training. She began with his head. With a damp soapy washcloth, she cleaned his face and his neck and then started on his left arm, taking note of the two surgical scars one on his shoulder and the other on his forearm.

‘Those must have been the result of his accident,’ she thought as she began to scan the rest of his body. He had a scar on his right thigh as well; but none of the scars seemed serious enough to have caused his coma. What intrigued her most was the round scar about the size of a quarter, on his chest. Her suspicions were confirmed a short time later when she rolled him on his side to clean his back and discovered a corresponding larger scar there.

‘That’s an exit wound; this man was shot, and by the size of both wounds it wasn’t by a twenty-two.’

She finished his legs and was just about to empty the bowl and leave, when she realized that she had skipped something. Emily wasn’t sure if it was due to her distraction from the discovery of the bullet wounds, or if it was her subconscious response to his nakedness.

‘You’re acting like a first year student. Just do it, it’s just another part of his body.’

After rinsing out the washcloth, she took his cock in her left hand and gently lifted it to give her better access to his balls. As she carefully washed him, she became aware of the rhythmic pulsing of blood surging into it. Shocked, her eyes quickly focused on his elongating member still firmly in her grasp and just as quickly refocused on his face. He still appeared to be sleeping just as he always was. Her gaze shifted to the EEG monitor next to his bed; there was a marked increase in the electrical activity in his brain.

“Oh my God,” she yelled as she practically ran out the door and down to the kitchen.

Lisa was just finishing the breakfast dishes when Emily entered the kitchen.

“Lisa come quickly, he’s coming to, he’s...”

“Got an erection? I figured it would happen. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before, I guess I just wanted to see your reaction.”

“This has happened before?”

“All the time, I’m afraid. You stay here, I’ll see to him. I’ll be back in a few minutes and we can talk.”

When Lisa left the kitchen Emily walked over to the coffee machine, poured herself a cup, and brought it to the kitchen table. Fifteen minutes later Lisa returned, still buttoning the last of buttons of her shirt.

“That was good,” Lisa said as she poured herself a cup and joined Emily at the table.

“I’m sorry; I shouldn’t be so cavalier about it. But you see that’s the main reason why I pulled Gene out of that facility and brought him home. They were too straight-laced over there to try anything new. They told me that the best thing for Gene’s recovery was to talk to him, to read to him; that that would help stimulate his brain. They didn’t know Gene like I know him. Gene loved sex; he thrived on it. For him it wasn’t just a part of our love for each other, it was a release valve from the pressures of living the life he did.

“When I told the doctors that I felt that having sex with him would be the best treatment for his recovery, they laughed. When they realized that I was serious they scoffed and said there was no way that they could have their staff do such a thing. When I offered to come there at night a couple times a week, they just shook their heads and said that they couldn’t have a patient’s treatment turn the facility into a whorehouse.

“That’s when I had them begin their search for a qualified caregiver. That’s when I chose you.”

Shocked even more, Emily exclaimed, “And you want me to make love with your comatose husband, under your roof, while you’re here?”

“Don’t make it sound like a full-blown ‘ménage a trois’ for heaven’s sake. You can start out slowly if you want; just a hand job at first and then you can progress from there. We can take turns, if you like. Please, I’m begging you, do it for Gene’s sake. I’ve got to get him to regain consciousness.”

Emily sat quietly, thinking of all the reasons why she should refuse. This went against everything she had ever been taught at home, in school, and her understanding of her faith. Before she answered Lisa’s question she had one of her own.

“Gene didn’t have an ‘accident,’ did he?”

Startled at the change in direction that the conversation was taking, it was Lisa that remained quiet, deciding just how far she should go with her explanation.

“No, Gene didn’t have an accident; he was the victim of an assassination attempt.”

“ASSASSINATION!”

“Yes. Gene worked for the Government. He was part of a multi-bureau task force investigating the ‘El Jefe’ drug cartel. It was his assignment to infiltrate the organization, become integral to the financial part of their enterprise, and pass along information to his contacts in the D.E.A. and F.B.I. My husband is an international money manager by profession. His job for the cartel was to make the mountains of cash that flowed through the organization first appear, and then disappear without a trace. From what I understand he was very good at his job.”

“Wait, why would they want the cash to ‘first appear and then disappear’; why not just make it disappear in the first place?”

“Believe it or not, it’s very difficult to spend cash, especially in the vast amounts that we are talking about. In order to make it disappear, you first have to get it into the banking system. In this country, cash transactions are monitored closely. Anything over $10,000 is reported automatically to the authorities. Gene had ways of getting the cash into the banking system without bringing it to anyone’s attention.”

“Couldn’t they just make deposits under $10,000?”

“No. First of all, individual banks track that as well; a pattern would be easily discovered. Besides, I’m sure you’ve been to the bank; how long does it take to make a single deposit? Now multiply that by a thousand, every day. Gene could somehow get it done on a daily basis.

“Once in the system, the funds were transferred into various businesses. From what little he told me, one of his favorite moves involved real estate and fictitious mortgages. The end result was that the money ended up in numbered bank accounts all over the world. Gene’s fee was 1 percent of the gross, which was a great deal more than he was getting from the government, believe me.