Chapter 1

I glanced at my watch for the hundredth time in the past thirty minutes as I lay here in my home-health-care hospital bed. I was waiting for the little nurse from the County Health Department to arrive for her morning visit. She comes each day to give me a bed bath, change the dressing on my left thigh where I have fifty six stitches, and then change my sheets.

I don’t know how a young woman as small as she is can move a man of my size around, but she manages. I try to help as much as I can, but I get fussed at when I try to do too much. I have these steel bars and rails overhead, with two trapeze swings on steel chains to pull myself up and turn on my good side.

I can hear kids playing in the trailer park, and I can hear the young mama’s hollering for kids to get off that car or that truck. I can’t see shit.

I always know when Nancy Jo Latterbee, the nurse gets here. I can hear the kids in the street holler at her as she gets out of her car. Hell, there’s no doubt about her having a fan club wherever she goes on her rounds. She’s cute. Kinda small for my personal tastes, but hell I’ve been lying here helpless for a week and they tell me I have another eight to ten weeks of this shit to look forward to. Then I’ll have rehab every day for two months, instead of just twice a week, like I’m doing now, with my one, half-ass good leg and one good arm.

I almost didn’t hire on for this job in the first place. If I’d listened to my friend Turell, I’d probably be out in Utah working on that geo-thermal generator construction site about now. Instead, here I am helpless with a compound fracture in my right femur as well as a compound fracture in my right ulna.

Just in case you’re wondering, the femur is the thigh bone that connects the knee to the hip. Remember all those ‘and the knee bone is connected to the hip bone’ lines we learned as kids?

The ulna is a bone in the lower arm, it connects your elbow with your wrist, alongside your radius, on the opposite side from your thumb - in case you ever want to look for it.

I don’t remember ever going up on a swinging scaffold, without first taking a look at the rigging myself. This time I learned a valuable lesson and it nearly cost me my life. The young OSHA inspector assigned to the job site had just stepped off the scaffolding with his clipboard in his hand, and a smirky smile on his face. They must learn to smile like that in the classes they take, because I’ve seen many of them smiling that same smug smile at one time or another. This turd must have been right out of college and the first day on the job after a week’s training.

There were three of us on this finishing crew going up to mortar the window frames into place, now that they were set. There were over two hundred windows in the sixteen story office building which we were about to close in from the elements.

John Henry is a big Black dude with arms that looks like those of The Incredible Hulk character. He’s as strong as he looks too. I saw him showing off his strength to the men in the ground crew by lifting one end of the scaffolding with one arm as he stood on the ground. He stands six foot seven and told us that he weighs 295.

I don’t doubt him either, he’s a big man - and he ain’t fat.

Buck Walters is the other man in our crew. This was his first time ever to be off the ground and he’s as white as John Henry is Black.

Buck is a short heavy-set young man, maybe twenty-two years old, five foot seven inches at most, weighing at least 190. He’s really heavy-set.

Me, I’m six foot four - 245 and I’m twenty six years old. I’m not a little man, but standing next to John Henry, I look little. This dude is big.

I’ve been in construction since high school and I’ve worked on just about everything except those high voltage, cross country transmission towers.

I was waiting for a job to start up in Utah, that I’d already been pre-hired for. I took this one to fill in, until that one opened in September.

I had pulled my twenty-seven foot goose-neck travel trailer here from Oklahoma City two days before and set up in a local trailer park near the construction site.

I noticed a few more trailers like mine with either a Ford or Dodge 1 ton dually diesel truck parked next to them, and figured there were more construction workers here. I had to park my travel trailer over in the section normally reserved for the full size, permanent mobile homes. This was the last vacant spot available. I just barely had room to park my F-350 Ford super-duty diesel.

The manager told me I’d have more kids playing over here, but they have an 11:00 pm curfew during the week.

Since I arrived Saturday afternoon and set my trailer up, I didn’t have a lot of time to meet anyone. Not that I’ve ever been accused of being a very sociable neighbor anyway.

I usually keep to myself and if I ever feel a hankering to get some local pussy, I check out the motel lounges, bars and dance halls that play boot scootin’ music.

Nancy Jo knocked and came in without waiting for an answer, her usual cheerful smile spread across her pretty face.

It wasn’t fake either, this little Barbie Doll, size nurse is as sincere and serious as she can be.

“Good morning Stoney. I hope you rested better last night,” she said cheerfully as she placed her huge tote bag on the couch near my bed.

My granddaddy had been a big fan of an old TV Show - Stoney Burke - about a modern day rodeo cowboy and all his cohorts as they rode the rodeo circuit trying to get enough points to ride in the championship rodeo finals and compete for the Gold Buckle at the end of the season.

When I was born in 1994, Gramps talked my mom and dad, who were both twenty-one at the time, into naming me Stoney since our last name is Burke anyway.

Most people don’t even remember the TV show now, but they do remember the man that played the lead role. Jack Lord, who later starred as Steve McGarrett, on the original Hawaii 5-0.

His most quoted line was Book’em Dano when he told detective Danny Williams to book the bad guy at the end of each episode. I just heard a few years ago that Dano had died. Damn, all my heroes are dying off.

“I did,” I told her. “I finally gave in and took some of the dope the Doc gave me when I left the hospital.”

“You should’ve been taking it all along. You’ll get the rest you need so you can regain your strength. You’re going to be awfully weak by the time ten weeks pass.” She frowned at me but I saw a smile sneak across her face.

“Nancy Jo, it says don’t drink alcohol if you’re taking these pills and I like to have a stiff drink or two at night - always have since high school.”

“It seems to me that you could lay off the alcohol for a month or so, until you’ve healed enough to get around.”

“Yeah, but when that happens I’ll never see you again.”

“Here, I brought you a bacon, egg and cheese biscuit for breakfast. I know you aren’t eating enough. I’ve spoken to my supervisor and she said if you could get someone local to cook and bring you meals, the insurance will pay for it, since you can’t get out of bed.”

“Well, did you tell your supervisor that I just moved here two days before that rigging fell with me and the other two men on it. I don’t know anyone here, and I sure can’t get out to go find someone.”

“Here, eat this while I get you cleaned up, with the dressing changed on that cut. I’ll go next door and see if there’s someone in the trailer park that can cook and bring your meals at least twice a day.”

She removed the bandage and started washing the deep wound on my leg. My cock gets hard every time she’s here and she just brushes it aside, if it gets in her way.

“If there was a way, I’d stop that from happening. I try to keep it from getting hard, but it does anyway when you clean that cut. Then when you wash me all over down there it’s almost more than I can stand.”

“I know Stoney, but it has to be done. I can get you a male nurse if you’re embarrassed by me seeing you and washing you like this.”

“As bad as I’m embarrassed by it, I’d hate to think of a man touching me - down there.”

I heard her laugh and I opened my eyes to see her just inches from my swollen cock, checking to see if any of the stitches were loosening. She said they’d come out on their own in a week or so. Its been three days now and I watched as she held my hard, angry looking cock to one side with one small hand as she looked me over.

“I’m going to bathe you while this bandage is off, then I’ll dry you and replace the bandage.”

“You do it your way Nancy Jo. For someone as young and pretty as you, you must be completely turned off by a man’s body after all you do for me and others, who can’t do for themselves.”

“I try not to think about it. It’s just a job to me and I love my job. I don’t mind that I have to touch you, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Well, I sure don’t mind that you have to touch me either, but if you squeeze me much harder, you’ll have another mess to clean up.”

“I was thinking the same thing. I’m sure you know - therapy can mean more than just having your leg and arm muscles exercised. I read a statement online that says it pretty well I think...

“A therapeutic effect is the consequence of a particular treatment which is judged to be desirable and beneficial.”

“Well, I’ll take your word for all that, because what you just said sounds like it’s describing more than a medical procedure.”

“It was ... Stoney, close your eyes. I’ve never done anything like this for a patient, in my career. Please don’t report me or think bad things about me,” Nancy Jo said as she gripped my raging hard, swollen cock and slid both her hands up and down.

“Oh Nancy Jo!”

“Want me to stop?”

“OH HELL NO!”

“Just let go Stoney, I have my Nitrile gloves on and I’ll catch it in my hand.”

“Get ready, I can’t hold it - that feels too good.”

“Let it go, Stoney.”

“I want to.”

“You’re big Stoney. When you swell to full erection, just before letting your semen go, you really are big ... Doesn’t that feel better?”

“Yes, but now I feel guilty that I let you do that. I feel selfish that I even wanted you to do that.”

“Don’t be. I wanted to give you some relief yesterday, but I was afraid of what you’d think.”

“I’ve never had anyone make me feel like that, and not be able to at least give something back.”

“I’m almost ashamed to tell you this, but I did get something out of it. Now, let’s get you cleaned up and your wound dressed so I can try to find you some nice little housewife to cook and feed you twice a day.”

Then - she’s my nurse again. When she had me cleaned and a fresh bandage on, with a wave and a smile, she left to try and find me a cook.

She’d told me once that she’d been married, but we never talked about that again, it just never came up. I thought of that now and wondered why she would want to give me relief like she just did if she was married. I’m not going to let it worry me too much, I needed that. My plumbing has been backing up in the solid pipe and the liquid pipe too.

It’s hell using a bedpan by myself with a cast on one arm from my knuckles up past my elbow, bent at ninety degrees, then another eight inches up my arm. Plus another cast on one leg from the arch of my foot to my crotch.

Then - a gaping cut that took over fifty stitches on my other thigh, just below my nut sack. Try it sometime and tell me how much fun it is.

Nancy Jo makes sure I have two rolls of toilet paper on my bedside table and two empty bed pans with three empty urinals on the other side before she leaves each day.

The insurance wouldn’t pay for full time care. They said I was ambulatory. Well, I did get out of bed one time to stand up for a minute. I got so damned dizzy, I didn’t want to try that again without someone here.

“Stoney, are you covered?” Nancy Jo asked as she walked in the door - good thing I was.