Chapter 7

In the weeks that followed, including the weeks Lois was occupied most nights with the Bar Review course, their romance progressed. Lois Silverthorn's identity at the VA Hospital gradually changed from long-well-known volunteer to "Paul Elias' girlfriend."

Paul spent weekends at Lois' house, and she visited him, chastely, and often long after official visiting-hours, at least two nights a week in the hospital ward.

On one of these visits, midway through Lois' Bar Review course, Paul had news. "They're letting me out of here for good in eight days."

"Paul, that's fantastic!"

"Yeah, it is."

"You can stay with me!"

"I don't know, Lois. I don't know what to do, really. My folks want me to come back home."

"To Kentucky?"

"Yeah."

"That's a long way off."

"Yeah. It's more than 500 miles, actually."

"Jesus!"

"I don't want to go. I mean, I might go back, for a visit, but I don't want to just, y'know, retreat like that."

"No. No, I agree. That wouldn't be good."

"I've got some money. I've got a lot of money saved, from before the army. And my disability pension has kicked in. The back pay, from while they were messing with the paperwork, is a lot of cash. It's enough to maybe start a little investment account, or some such."

"Why don't you -- why don't you go home, see your folks, while I'm all tied up with this bar exam nonsense. And then you could come back, and we could start, y'know, living together!"

"I've gotta figure out something to do with myself. I've got to make some kind of career."

"Yeah. But you can think on that, at home, with your folks. And you can come back here -- to me -- and start working on it. Whatever you've decided to do."

"You sure that's what you want?"

"You kidding? We're great together! You're the first man I ever even considered living with, and you -- if you don't agree to come back, and live with me, I'm gonna be really, really, distraught!"

"Distraught, huh?"

"That means 'pissed, ' Lover."

"Sounds like something out of Wuthering Heights."

"It's a perfectly good English word."

"I think 'pissed' is a lot more descriptive."

"Yeah. Anglo-Saxon."

"OK," Paul said. "I'll go home when they release me. Hell, my dad will probably come and get me, drive me home. But after you take the bar exam, and before you start working 120 hours a week as a lawyer, how about you come out, and meet my folks, and spend a couple' days, and then bring me back here, again?"

"Meet your folks. I like that! Yeah, that's what we should do!"

"So, if I leave here in eight days, how long would it be, before you take the exam, and head out to Kentucky?"

Lois thought about it. "Looks like six weeks."

Paul reached out, touched Lois' thigh with his hand, and groaned. "Oh, man, that's an awful long time on the wagon, without no lovin' from Lois!"

"It'll be good for us," she said. "I can concentrate on the exam, and you can concentrate on your career plans."

"Maybe I should think of a maritime career," Paul said. "With the six-week hard-on I'm going to have, I could hire myself out as a rudder!"

"I like to think of it more as a tiller," Lois said, probing under Paul's blanket for a sneak-feel of his already-erect penis, and then tugging it back and forth, as if steering a sailboat.

Lois knew that at least two of Paul's three ever-present roommates in the hospital ward -- the same guys who'd been there with him the whole time she'd known him -- were probably sneaking surreptitious glances at them as she and Paul engaged in their sex play.

She wasn't concerned about how much the men witnessed. Her assessment was that when those men saw Paul Elias' good fortune, it would give them hope for their own futures.

Probably, she was absolutely right. If Paul, legless and jobless, could score a babe like Lois Silverthorn, well, Hell -- maybe anything was possible!

Eight days later, Paul Elias, loaded down with instructions, prescriptions, appointments for follow-up medical treatments -- and parting kisses from Ophelia Parker and the other nurses on staff -- was driven off in his father's minivan, headed for Pikeville, Kentucky and the family home.

Lois and he had agreed that she would not come to the hospital to see him off, or to meet his father. She'd meet both his parents for the first time in Pikeville, roughly six weeks later, when she came to retrieve him. When, she hoped, they would begin the rest of their lives together.

As far as Lois was concerned, Paul was welcome to live with her in her little house in the Philadelphia suburbs, and just be there for her at the end of every day in what promised to be a demanding legal career. But she was well- aware that Paul Elias wasn't that kind of man. He would want, and need, a career. He would need to get out in the world on his own and find something he could do -- without legs, without his athletic skills that now were forever gone.

Paul's morale, his spirit, was amazingly good. Lois admired him for it, and took some credit for it, herself. She knew she was damned good for morale! But a loving relationship and great sex wasn't going to be enough, all by itself, to sustain them. Not if they were going to be a couple, long-term.

Not if Paul Elias was going to continue to be a happy, contented man.

Paul was going to be back home in Kentucky, thinking about his future. Lois was going to be giving Paul's future plenty of thought, herself.

The Bar Course was nothing like law school had been, and the study materials provided for it bore almost no resemblance to the kind of materials Lois was familiar with from her law school days.

It was a rough-and-ready process, but cramming to learn all the specifics of Pennsylvania law on which she would be tested was, she knew, a matter of critical importance. Lois knew all the horror stories -- stories about top-flight law students who'd already landed prestigious positions in law firms -- or even as university law professors -- only to suffer the at-least temporary career derailment (and the enormous embarrassment) brought on by failing the bar exam.

So she worked at it. Her communications with Paul were limited to 15-minute, late-night telephone calls.

The calls, though, were regular enough to alert Paul's attentive parents to the fact that Something was Up.

"Who's this girl, calls you every night?" his Mom wanted to know.

"She's a very special girl," Paul said mysteriously. "You're going to meet her. She's studying to take the Pennsylvania Bar Exam. As soon as she's taken the exam -- first couple days in August, it is -- she's going to come here to meet you and Dad."

"Oh! Then -- it's pretty serious!"

"Well, now, I don't know about that," Paul said. "I mean, it might get serious, somewhere down the line, if things work out."