Chapter 1

Robert Eric Washington’s life was fucked up. This was because Robert, called Bobby by his friends and mother was eighteen years old and had something called symptomatic epilepsy.

Symptomatic Epilepsy is diagnosed when there is a known cause for seizures, such as a head injury, brain infection, stroke, or because of scar tissue on the brain. In Bobby’s case the head injury resulted from being hit by a car while he was riding his bike in a cul-de-sac in a suburb of Lawrence, Kansas. It was supposed to be safe because it was a nice area and it was a cul-de-sac. Nobody thought a drunk driver would be going forty-five miles an hour on a street that led to a cul-de-sac. Jessica French, however, was three times over the legal limit, both in speed and blood alcohol level. She had just gotten drunk at a weekly bridge party and had lost. She was angry and her driving showed it.

Bobby never had a chance to avoid the collision. He did not, in fact, even see it coming. He had used a three-foot-long piece of plywood and a milk crate to make a ramp and was trying to get some air on his bike. He did hear the car, just before it struck him, but he didn’t have time to even turn his head and look. He did also get some air, but it wasn’t the kind he had in mind. He was thrown fifteen feet before he impacted the short brick stand his family’s mailbox was in. All the houses on the street had mail boxes like that. The part of his body that stopped his flight by hitting the mailbox stand was his head.

Jessica went on, crushing the bike, and then running into the corner of the house next door to the Washington home. Her airbag prevented any serious injury to her, but she was passed out when the paramedics got there.

Those same paramedics thought Bobby was dead, at first. His respiration rate, once they detected it, was eight breaths per minute. His pupils were fixed and dilated. His head was visibly misshapen.

At the hospital, surgeons decided to hold off operating to repair his broken skull because his brain was already swollen. Instead, they put him into a medically induced coma to let the swelling go down ... assuming he didn’t die. There were four doctors present during his evaluation. Three of them didn’t think he’d live through the night. The fourth one was just an uncompromising optimist.

He did live through that night, and then the next one and the next one, but his prognosis didn’t change, much. His tearful mother and stone-faced father were informed that their son would likely not survive, but that doctors were doing everything they could. Actually, the doctors weren’t doing much at all, except covering his shaved head to try to keep bacteria out of his brain. The best bandage they had was his skin, which was holding things together and only actually split in one small place. That had been stitched up and was covered by a sterile dressing.

While Bobby slept, litigation took place. Roger Washington, Bobby’s father, sued with a vengeance and was partially successful. The “partial” nature of the civil action will be explained later. The negotiations were long and hard core, involving projections of Bobby’s estimated future earnings, the medical costs of his care, both in the hospital and out, and mental pain and suffering and on and on. Mrs. French’s insurance company eventually settled by putting 18.2 million dollars into a trust fund for the injured youth. Funds could be accessed through an independent fund manager for his medical care, including any required medical services once he left the hospital – assuming he ever did – but the rest would remain untouched until he was twenty-one. The insurance company’s lawyers believed the boy would die, which would give them a chance to ask the court to return the money to the company. The family would resist that, but there was a chance. The insurance company had nothing to lose and 18.2 million dollars to gain, less the cut that the lawyers would get. Roger and his wife Vicky took the deal because it would pay for his medical care, which had already created a bill in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Meanwhile Jessica was charged, criminally, with Aggravated Battery while Driving Under the Influence and for causing property damage while driving drunk. It was her third DUI and the judge threw the book at her. Her attorney tried to get the photographs of Bobby’s mangled body suppressed, but since it was a judge-only trial, there was no jury to posture in front of.

It took six months, but eventually the surgeons were able to do surgery to address brain damage caused by the impact and repair Bobby’s skull. No one was surprised that he had begun having seizures, but medication seemed to minimize them. A month later they removed the ventilator and waited to see if he’d breathe on his own.

He did.

But he did not wake up.

He remained in a coma for two and a half more years, during which his parents fought and the marriage died. That’s not unusual. Family trauma of this sort often leads to that outcome. Vicky Washington, his mother, hung in there, believing that her son would wake up and eventually come home, while his father took more long-haul trucking gigs, primarily to be away from home. Eventually he said he wanted a divorce and, since Roger Washington was the only parent who was employed, Vicky was awarded both alimony and child support. Roger felt that the child support the court ordered was unfair, since all Bobby’s medical bills were being covered and his wife actually had no “child-related expenses.” He therefore felt justified in making no payments whatsoever. As far as he was concerned, his ex-wife could get a job and support herself. After all, she had nothing to do all day because his broken son was sleeping in an extended care facility. One of the reasons they fought was because during the litigation that ended up creating a trust fund for Bobby, Roger’s intent had been to get the money for himself, hence the “partial” success of the suit. Roger kept trying to figure out a way to get to some of those millions of dollars in his son’s trust fund. One of the reasons he left was because it became clear to him he wouldn’t see any of that money until Bobby was twenty-one and he wasn’t willing to wait that long. By the time Bobby woke up, his mother had no idea where his father was and had not heard from him in over two years.

The house they were living in when Bobby got injured had mortgage payments of $1,700.00 per month. Vicky could no longer afford that. She had to move to a rental that was half the size and which would be considered “opulent” only in a third world country where the annual income was in the neighborhood of $1,700.00 per year. She got two part time jobs and spent as much time by her son’s side as she could.

To be honest, everyone, medical staff and Vicky, were all astonished when Bobby opened his eyes one day and said, “I’m thirsty” in a voice that cracked and was so soft that the LPN who heard him had to ask him to repeat himself.

“I’m thirsty,” he whispered again.

A flurry of activity ensued, but nobody brought him anything to drink, primarily because they weren’t sure they should. It took another hour (during which Bobby said he was thirsty several more times) before a doctor ordered some apple juice for him. The patient hadn’t had solid food for two and a half years, so his initial diet was all liquid. Two weeks later they gave him some soft food and got him sit up on the edge of the bed. During this time he had roughly seven to twelve seizures per day. His medication was adjusted and his seizures dropped to three or four a day.

During the next month he endured painful physical therapy until he could stand and walk twenty feet on his own. Only then was there talk of letting him go home. He was pale and thin, but was eating solid food again. He would need continued physical therapy to work on his atrophied muscles, but that could be done at home. His trust fund would cover the costs of in-home specialized care. When Vicky asked them what his prognosis was, in the extended future, the doctors shrugged and were honest.

“We don’t know,” they said. “If his epilepsy can be controlled, he might be able to live a fairly normal life. We’ll know more in six months or so.”

Red tape is pervasive and everywhere, and during the next two weeks some of it determined that Bobby was no longer entitled to stay in long term care. He could go home, where others could see to his medical needs. And so it was that Bobby Washington was put in a wheel chair and moved to his mother’s fifteen-year-old sedan, where he slowly folded himself into the back seat and strapped himself in.

Nobody thought about how Vicky would get him out of the car and into her house, which would be a trip of some fifty feet. The paperwork to get the “in-home care” was still being shuffled by some minor bureaucrat, somewhere. Bobby could make it twenty feet across a tiled floor, but his hundred and ten pound body was much more difficult to move around if the surface was uneven, or if he had to go uphill or climb stairs. He had hated the physical therapy they tried to get him to engage in, in the long term care facility. He let them move his limbs, but he didn’t try to build any strength. Now he paid for that.

Bobby’s brain was scarred, but there was nothing wrong with his cognitive abilities. It’s possible that, during his extended coma, his damaged sentience was restored, and his brain re-routed important brain functions around the damaged areas. Scientists think that’s possible, but so little is known about the brain that almost everything is merely speculation. In any case, Bobby’s IQ was still a solid 125. Ironic as it sounds, other than the physical damage to his brain, there was nothing wrong with his mental faculties. His body was emaciated and his muscles atrophied, but the coma hadn’t stopped his physical development in some areas. His bones had continued to grow and his genes produced a body that, if it could stand up straight, would be measured at almost an inch over six feet.

Bobby’s main problem wasn’t that his brain got hurt. Bobby’s issues mostly circulated around the fact that his spirit got smashed as a result of that accident, too.

That started when he woke up and the only person he recognized was his mother. Nobody he knew came to see him. His friends had moved on, both figuratively and literally. He was a stranger in a strange land. He had the education – both socially and academically - of a fifteen-year-old in an adult’s body. He couldn’t walk well, his speech was slurred (something his brain hadn’t yet re-routed), he looked like a skeleton wearing a bag of loose, pale skin, and he couldn’t even eat unless he was careful. The first few times he tried to have a decent meal his stomach rebelled and he threw up. He had to take small bites, chew them to a ridiculous mush, and then stop long before he felt full. Initially, for example, he could eat one quarter of a grilled cheese sandwich and maybe five or six fries.

Then, when he got home, it was to a strange house and a neighbor he’d never met before, who had witnessed how pitiful his body was when he helped carry Bobby into the house and drape him on the couch. His days were filled with nothingness. He couldn’t go out. He had no friends to invite in. Daytime TV made him want to blow his damaged brains out.

Then there was his father. Or, rather, his lack of father. The man he had loved the most in the world had abandoned him, given up on him while he was comatose, and might even have gone off to be with some other family.

He knew about his trust fund, which, due to medical expenses not covered by insurance (which was most of them), had dwindled to a little over ten million dollars, but there was no way to get to any of that money for almost three more years. He knew one thing. When he turned 21, the first thing he was going to do was tell his mom she’d never have to work again. He didn’t have big plans to spend millions of dollars. He knew money wouldn’t bring happiness, because the world wouldn’t have changed. All he wanted was for his mother to be able to relax, and to never have to see her drag her tired body into the house and collapse on the couch with a groan of exhaustion.

His spirit was so broken that he didn’t even try to “get better,” physically. Just as he had ignored or avoided the physical therapists who tried to work with him in the long care home, he avoided doing anything on his own that would strengthen his stringy muscles. He was eventually able to get around the house, but only because his bladder drove him out of bed and made him walk to the bathroom, and his hunger or thirst required that he go to the kitchen. He still hadn’t unpacked all the boxes his mother had lovingly and hopefully boxed up when she moved out of their old, nice house into the dump where they now had to live.

Basically, Bobby Washington hated the world. The world sucked, and he was stuck in that sucky world. The only bright spot was his mother, and even she was absent for most of his day, because she had to work two jobs to support them.

He spent two months at home, basically doing nothing except feeling sorry for himself. He contemplated trying to end his life, but didn’t because he knew it would kill his mother, too.

And that was when the bureaucracy finally approved his mother’s request for in-home care. As a result, a young Asian woman arrived one day, suitcases in hand, and reported for duty. The fact that it was this particular Asian young woman, named Mai Li MacIntosh, quite possibly saved his life.

She saved it by giving him a reason to live again.

That, of course, is what the rest of this story is about.

Mai Li was Vietnamese by birth. The circumstances that led to her parent(s) giving her up for adoption were unclear, but luck had led an American couple to adopt her. The woman she thought of as her mother had traveled to Vietnam, to the orphanage in which a then two-year-old Mai Li languished, and she was whisked away to the land of milk and honey. She was raised with a Chinese sister, five years older, who was also adopted, and in America she had flourished. She had always thought of herself as a normal American girl, though she faced some racism and prejudice along the way. She had ignored that, for the most part, and taken advantage of being able to get a good education, which included a degree in physical therapy. At the time she was hired to live with the Washington family and take care of Bobby, she was twenty-three. She had learned her native language and spoke it, if not fluently, at least understandably. She’d done that because her dream had been to return to her birth country to work there, perhaps in an orphanage. For now, though, she was fresh out of school with a brand new degree and certification when she was offered the Washington post. She assumed she’d spend six months or a little more recuperating a boy who had suffered tragic circumstances, and then be free to explore her origins.

Mai Li’s experiences as a girl and then young woman had been both quite normal, from a Western perspective, and unusual at the same time. She had all the same problems as her Caucasian counterparts, in terms of her social life. Hormones had raged through her body just like they did in other girls. Guys were interested in her and she dated regularly. There were always issues involving Asian stereotypes, though, even with kids she grew up with and went to school with every day. She had heard them all. Asians couldn’t drive. Asians were good at math. Asian women were naturally subservient and docile. More than one boy who took her out called her “exotic” when all she did was normal stuff. One girl had actually asked her, at one point, if her vaginal opening was sideways, instead of up and down, like “normal” girls.

All that most people in America knew about Vietnamese women came from the scene in Full Metal Jacket, where a Vietnamese woman, clad in a miniskirt and hot-pink tank top, sashays up to a few American GIs and says, “Me so horny. Me love you long time.” For $10 each, the GIs can get “everything” they want. So most Vietnamese women are whores, right?

It didn’t help that an American diet had done for her what it did for so many young women in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Genes had restricted her height to five feet four inches, but her body had developed into a lush female landscape of curves, hills, and valleys. She had breasts that would over-fill a grown man’s hands, a narrow waist, and hips that swelled to join “an ass to die for” as more than one of her male, teenage classmates had said. Her mother had never cut her hair, and when she left home she only trimmed it to a more manageable length. It now fell almost to that ass-to-die-for. It was straight, black, and heavy, and, if not tied up or restrained by elastic bands or pins, fell and swayed like teasing curtains around her body. Whether by genetics or chance, her nipples were sensitive and often erect, especially if she wasn’t wearing a bra and the material of her top rubbed against them.

She was exotic when compared to her Caucasian, black, and Hispanic compatriots, even if she didn’t want to be.

At the time she arrived at the Washington household Mai Li wasn’t a virgin. She’d lost her virginity in just the way many young women do so, after prom, while a little drunk. It had not been memorable. One other high school boy had slid into her hot (and not horizontal) pussy. He was her boyfriend, or at least she thought he was. All he wanted, though, was to fuck that little exotic Asian girl and, after he’d done that a few times, he lost interest and looked for another hot chick to bang.

The heartbreak of having been used lasted until Mai Li was a junior in college. She met another Asian, a Pilipino man, and dated “one of her own kind” for the first time in her life. Raoul had grown up in the Philippines, though, and was not acclimatized as an American. His attitudes were Pilipino, or actually a mixture of Pilipino and Hispanic. He was macho and expected Mai Li to act like a girl from his country. They dated for six months and had sex more or less regularly. Mai Li wasn’t subservient at all, and the only time they had sex was when Mai Li wanted to have sex. Eventually Mai Li lost interest, primarily because while he got satisfied each time, she did not. They stayed friends and study partners, but there was no romance after that. Raoul found another girlfriend and Mai Li decided men were too much trouble to deal with at that point in her life.

All in all, Mai Li’s experience with men, in a sexual sense, had been pretty unfulfilling. She had several sex toys, though, and they never let her down. She was young and her biological clock was still tightly wound, so she wasn’t worried. She hoped to meet a man in Vietnam who might understand her. She didn’t think about the fact that she really was an American woman. In an ironic way, she let racist perceptions affect the way she thought about the world, and her future.

She certainly didn’t look at Robert Washington and put him in any category even brushing up against an interest in any sexual or even social situation. If anything, after she was introduced to him, she thought he was kind of pathetic. He was cute, but it was cute like an injured puppy. He was a pain, though, because he resisted her efforts to help him get better.

Vicky, on the other hand, was fairly elated when the short, curvy woman reported for duty as Bobby’s live-in care-giver and unofficial tutor. She was embarrassed, initially, because the small third bedroom in their house was still filled with unpacked boxes and things not currently being used. She had known that the Kansas agency that supplied assistance to families with “special needs” members had a file on them and was working to find her assistance. That agency, in fact, went through some two dozen prospective caretakers before finding one who would accept the conditions of employment the Washington household required. When they found Mai Li, they jumped on it, coordinating with the manager of Bobby’s trust fund to ensure that the financial side of things would work out. As happens so often in a bureaucratic situation, a decision was made in a vacuum that didn’t include Vicky Washington’s active participation, and she only had twenty-four hours’ notice before Mai Li came to live with them.

When that happened, Mai Li arrived late, around six P.M., having driven twelve hours to get there. That evening all she did was meet her hosts, get her luggage sorted, and collapse into bed.

It didn’t start with a bang. On the first day Mai Li woke up in her new “home” her duties were still marginally defined. She knew her job would include physical therapy and she was comfortable with that, even if this was her first job as a professional therapist. She also knew she was expected to help bring her charge to the point where he could take and pass a GED test. Other than that, she didn’t really know what to expect.

When she got up she found a note Vicky had hastily compiled and left on the kitchen table before heading off to her job as a waitress in a local diner where many of her customers were long-haul truckers. The note said:

1. Get him up. Make him eat something.

2. Make yourself at home. Anything we have is yours to use.

3. There are some study materials in a box in your room that has “school stuff” written on the side. I hope they help.

4. If you can get him to go outside that would be great.

5. Please forgive him if he’s rude. He’s not a happy boy right now.

6. If you have problems you can reach me on my cell.

The number was listed, along with the number of Bobby’s doctor. “He knows all the other doctors who helped Bobby,” was the last thing on the page.

Mai Li thought about finding something to eat first, but then decided she might as well have some company, so she went to Bobby’s room and tapped on the door. When there was no answer, she opened the door and peeked in. There was a lump under the covers on the bed.

“Bobby?” she called.

The lump moved, but there was no answer.

“It’s time to get up, Bobby,” she said, going into the room.

She looked around. The room was a mess. Dirty clothes littered the floor and other clothes, either clean or dirty, hung out of open drawers. A stack of boxes stood against one wall, under a window that was dirty and fly-specked.

‘Have you no pride?’ she thought, looking at the bed.

“Come on,” she said, stridently. “We have a lot to do, today. Get up and we’ll get you something to eat.”

“Go away,” came a groan from under the covers.

“I can’t go away,” she said, patiently. “I’m here to help you get back on your feet and back into the normal world.”

“Fuck the normal world,” growled her charge.

“What are you wearing?” she asked.

A lump rose under the covers as what she assumed was his head lifted.

“What?”

“I asked what you’re wearing,” she said.

“Why the fuck would you ask me that?”

“Because I’m about to take the covers off of you and I don’t feel like seeing a naked man right now,” she said.

Another lump formed, a lateral one, as his arm lifted. A tousled head appeared as the covers were dragged off of it. Bleary eyes peered at her.

“I’m not naked,” he said, sounding confused.

“Good,” she said, as she stepped forward.

She lifted her foot to clear a pile of jeans and something striped, probably a shirt, and reached for the covers. As she gripped them and pulled, his hand scrabbled to grab the cloth covering him. He was too weak, though, and she pulled the covers out of his grip easily. She whipped her arm and the covers slid across his body to fall in a long pile on the floor.

“Get up!” she ordered. “We’re starting your physical therapy today and you need fuel for your body to use when we do that.”

“I didn’t ask you to come here,” he complained, laboriously rising on one elbow.

“Your mother did,” she said. “And I’m here, so get used to it. Come on. Do you need help getting out of bed?”

This question was prompted by her saddened eyes taking in his emaciated condition. The boy was a bag of bones. She realized this job would involve a lot more than she had expected.

“I can get out of bed, thank you very much,” he muttered.

She watched as he worked his way to a sitting position. He was wearing boxers, in a plaid design. They looked two sizes too big.

“I’ll go get breakfast started while you get dressed,” she said. “Wear something loose so you can bend and stretch. What do you want to eat?”

“I’m not hungry,” he said.

“Well, you’re going to eat something,” she said, firmly. “I’ll go investigate the possibilities. See you in a few.”

She returned to the kitchen and started going through the cupboards and refrigerator. She found flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar, and used them to make a basic pancake batter, with milk as the liquid component. There were pans and skillets on the stove top, which looked out of place in this low-rent accommodation because it was a nice glass-top model that looked expensive. The refrigerator looked out of place, too. It was big and stainless steel, with a large pull-out freezer drawer below double doors above.

She had two pancakes ready on a plate and was thinking about going back to light a fire under Bobby when he shuffled into the room. Like his boxers had looked, his shirt looked like a 3X garment on a medium frame, and his sweat pants looked like the string in them had been pulled out as far as it would go.

“Good morning,” she said. “I found butter, but no syrup.”

“It’s under there,” said Bobby, pointing vaguely at a lower cabinet door.

“Can you get it?” she asked. She was already assessing his capabilities.

“Of course I can get it,” he grumbled. “I’m not a cripple.”

“Did you study the Bataan Death March in school?” she asked. “It happened during World War Two.”

“No,” he said. “Why?”

“Because you look like a survivor of the Bataan Death March,” she said. “All you are is skin and bones.”

“You’re not supposed to say stuff like that,” he objected.

“Why? It’s true,” she replied.

“It’s not nice,” he said.

“I’m not here to be nice,” she said. “I’m here to get you back to where you were before the accident.”

“I’ll never be like I was before the accident,” he said.

“Well, you won’t be if you have that attitude,” she said. “I’ve looked over your medical records and, according to your doctors, you defied the odds more times than I could count. There’s no reason you can’t get better, stronger, and more capable. You can’t lie around like you are now all your life. Don’t you want to go out into the world and get a job, maybe meet a nice girl and go on some dates?”

“No girl will want to go out with me,” he said, sullenly. “I have seizures. It freaks people out.”

“Well, it won’t freak me out,” she said. “Your records say your current meds are working pretty well.”

“Yeah, if you consider having two or three seizures a day working pretty well,” he argued.

“I’m not a neurologist,” said Mai Li, “but I know there are cases where people have been taught how to tell when a seizure is coming on and prepare for it so it isn’t so disruptive. Maybe we can research that and give you a little more control over your life.”

“Yeah. Sure,” he said, obviously dismissive.

“We’ll talk about that later. Right now eat your pancakes before they get colder than they are. You want me to put them in the microwave and warm them up?”

“I can’t eat all that,” said Bobby, looking at the plate.

“Okay, then, eat as much as you can. We’re going to start putting some meat on those bones. After you eat we’ll start your first PT session.”

Their first PT session didn’t go swimmingly, either, with one possible exception. He had eaten the equivalent of one pancake and drunk a small glass of orange juice. Now they were on the living room floor as she showed him what she wanted him to do. She had changed into an exercise suit consisting of a spandex body suit that showed too much in the crotch, which was why she had on running shorts over it. Her hair was up in a ponytail and there were elastic bands holding the tail together every five or six inches so it wouldn’t swish too much.

Bobby might have been disillusioned with the world and un-inspired, generally speaking, but there was nothing wrong with the part of his brain that was male. He knew a babe when he saw one, and his new babysitter, which is how he thought of her, was definitely a babe. The male part of him was interested, even if the rest of him was not.

That interest waned a bit as she made him stretch. One would think that atrophied muscles would stretch easily, but that’s not the case. Any unused muscle becomes shorter, which means normal positioning of the bones makes that muscle stretch more than it’s used to. Holding a stretch like that causes pain, and for the next hour Bobby felt like she was torturing him. When he didn’t do what she asked him to voluntarily, she put her hands on him and moved him into the position she wanted. That hurt just as much as doing it himself. The one slim, silver streak in the cloud he was under was that, whenever she got near to him, she smelled wonderful.

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