Chapter 3

It took me all morning to see that they got my stump properly attended to. It wasn't a serious injury, but it was painful, and I felt better after having everything checked out. It was a big relief to be told that no permanent damage had been done. I drove over to Bolling as soon as I was done. When I arrived at Brenda's apartment, it was almost one o'clock. I was really very hungry, and anxious to get something to eat. I knocked on her door and she opened it only a few inches, but I noticed that she hadn't latched it with the intruder chain.

"I'm sorry to be so late, Brenda. I had an accident this morning and I needed to go out to the base and make certain that I hadn't done any damage that needed to be repaired."

"What kind of an accident. Uncle Ernie called me and told me that you asked him to call. He said you hurt your leg."

"I fell back onto my stump and it really hurt like hell. I wanted to be sure it wasn't serious. I didn't eat yet today. Can we go out and get something together?"

"You mean to a restaurant? I'm not sure I trust you enough to be alone in a car with you again, Gainey."

"I understand, I'm sorry. That wasn't very good thinking on my part. Is it all right if I go out and get something to go, and then I'll come back and we can eat it? I really am hungry."

"If I come with you, do you promise not to try to touch me? If it gets too bad, you'll have to bring me right back here."

"Look, I don't want to do anything that's going to make things uncomfortable for you. I can go out and get something. It isn't that big of a bother for me to do that."

"I need to start trusting you sometime, Gainey. You just have to try to keep from scaring me. Don't be upset if I have some kind of nervous reaction to being in a car with you. I'm going to get in the back seat anyway. I don't like being up front anymore."

She told me to go out and get in my car and she would come out in a minute. When we were both settled in my car, I asked her if there was some restaurant in particular that she preferred. She said that she didn't go out to eat often, but that she really liked any kind of Chinese food. I took her to the Happy Dragon Restaurant. It was close, and it was the only Chinese Restaurant that I knew in Bolling. My mother and I had gone there for my high school graduation celebration dinner. It seemed so long ago to me.

We both ordered two items. I had the beef and broccoli and the shrimp fried rice. Brenda ordered the egg rolls and the spicy shrimp dinner. I ate one of her four egg rolls, and she had two heaping spoonfuls of both my choices. The only strange part about any of it was that Brenda insisted on doing the ladling from my dishes, and her putting the egg roll on my plate, before I touched anything. It was almost as though she thought I was contaminated.

She finished all of her food, but I only finished the beef and broccoli. Half of my shrimp fried rice was left.

"Aren't you going to finish your rice?"

"No, I'm full. You can have it if you want it."

"No, I better not." She looked like she really wanted it. It must have been her aversion to touching anything I'd touched.

"You should have taken more before I touched the plate."

"I didn't know you were going to waste so much, else I would have." She was looking at me in a way I recognized as being disapproving. She reminded me, at least in that instant, of my mother. It wasn't that she looked at all like I remembered my mom looking. I guess her facial expression was what reminded me of my mom. For some strange reason, it was in that instant that all the weight of what I had put my mother through landed squarely on my shoulders. I felt the full pain of her loss crushing my heart and filling me with anguish and sorrow.

It must have shown on my face, because Brenda reached across, instinctively, and put her hand on top of my own. It rested there for only a matter of a few seconds before she realized what she had done and quickly pulled her hand back. In those few seconds I had felt a connection to Brenda that I'd never had before. It had nothing to do with sex or with guilt and remorse, it was just the two of us sharing a moment.

Brenda seemed to realize that it had been momentous too, because she reached across and grabbed my plate of shrimp fried rice and pulled it over in front of her. She was flustered, as she began lifting forkfuls of the rice into her mouth. I sat watching her eat, realizing that her doing so, marked yet another milestone for the two of us. After five or six bites, Brenda seemed to relax again. By the time she was finished with the rice, both of us had calmed back down again. I paid the bill, leaving too large of a tip behind.

I left the restaurant, wondering what my mother would have thought had she known that Brenda and I had actually shared a meal together again. I felt sure that it would have made her less upset with me. I took comfort in that, but I still felt sorrow for not giving her anything in the way of comfort while she still lived. I opened the door to leave the restaurant, letting Brenda pass through in front of me. I noticed she was careful to avoid any accidental contact between us.

When we got to the car, Brenda opened her own door and sat in the back seat once again. I hadn't really thought it would be different, so I didn't think much of it. We drove back to her apartment in silence. When we got there, Brenda jumped out and walked quickly to her apartment door. She didn't tell me anything, so I had absolutely no idea of what she expected from me next. Was I supposed to take that as a hint and leave? Was I supposed to go over to her apartment door and knock on it? I sat in my car, trying to make a decision. I had almost decided to leave when Brenda's door opened back up, and she looked out at me.

It was awkward, the two of us staring at each across a distance of about one hundred feet. It must have been at least five minutes before Brenda shut her door again. For some reason, I took that as a signal from her that she had expected me to come over to her apartment. Why else would she have stood in her doorway for five minutes? I got out of my car, walked over to her door, and knocked on it once. She opened it right away, no intruder latch again, and this time it was open at least a foot.

"Didn't you want to talk to me some more, Gainey?"

"You got out so quick, I wasn't sure that I hadn't done something to upset you."

"Don't you think I'd have said something if you did?"

"I don't know. I get nervous around you most times. I don't want to do anything to make you mad or afraid."

"That's almost funny. We're both afraid of each other. If I let you come in, you have to go sit on the couch. You can't make any sudden moves either. Do you agree?"

"Are you sure that you're ready for this? We can take it slower if you want. There isn't a deadline or anything."

"Are you coming in, or are you running away again?" She sounded suddenly angry with me. She opened the door enough for me to come through it. I walked in, and then over to the low sofa and eased my way down on it. My leg was still tender and painful, and I had the prosthesis laid out at an unnatural angle for the way most people with two real legs would sit. I was going for comfort at the moment though. I figured she would understand the need.

"Nice apartment." I said this as I looked around. It looked like a smallish one bedroom apartment. The living room and the kitchen were open to each other. Either room, by itself, would have looked tiny. Open like they were, they just appeared small. I could see through the hall into her bedroom. It too looked small.

"Do you need to take your leg off or anything?"

"Excuse me?"

"Your leg that you hurt this morning. Would it help if you took it off for awhile?"

"I usually only take it off at night when I'm going to take a shower or going to bed. Its fine like it is right now."

"I'd feel safer if you took it off while you're here."

"I'd need to take my pants off too. I promise I'm not going to attack you or anything."

"Maybe you aren't planning to, but you weren't planning to the last time either. At least that's what you've told me."

"Maybe I should just leave. It would embarrass me for you to see me like that. I'd need to prepare myself mentally to show myself to you that way."

"I need you to be more vulnerable than I am right now. I'm awful close to panicking, Gainey, please."

I undid my belt buckle and spent the next five minutes struggling out of my pants and unfastening my artificial leg. Brenda watched me, caught up in the intricate straps that held my leg in place. I knew I was flushed with embarrassment. Over the past months, many nurses had seen me like this, but never anyone that I cared about. Brenda understood that I'd be vulnerable without my prosthesis. After I sat my leg close by where I could quickly retrieve it, Brenda came closer and looked at my stump and at the insert area of the artificial limb. I had the stump covered with an elastic protector. She couldn't see the stump end itself. I felt better about that at least.

"Take that elastic thing off your leg. I want to see it naked." I did as she requested. More like what she had demanded. I was expecting her to make some cutting comment about how ugly the discolored scarring was. It wasn't a neat scar pattern. It was angry looking still, but it was a lot prettier than it had been. I felt like I was sitting there in danger of being attacked in some way. I felt somewhat helpless to protect myself.

"Are you all done with gawking at me?" She was also looking at the front of my briefs. This made me uncomfortable as well. When I'm nervous or uncomfortable, my dick sort of retreats. The front of my underpants looked nearly empty, and she was staring at it.

"I want you to take off the other pants too. I want to take a look at it."

"I'm not at my best right now, Brenda. I'm nervous and embarrassed. There isn't that much to see. Can't you let me keep my underpants on?"

"You said you'd do whatever I asked, Gainey. Take off those pants." Her tone of voice wasn't reasonable. It was strident and emotionally charged, demanding. "I'm not ripping them off you, like you did to mine." I reached on both sides and pulled my underpants off. The head of my shriveled up dick barely poked through the pubic hair. I was well humiliated. If that was her intention, she'd succeeded in accomplishing it. "It seemed a lot bigger to me six years ago. Is there that much difference between normal and hard?"

"These aren't exactly ideal conditions for me to put myself on display. There is a lot going on in my head right now, and all of it prevents me from putting my best foot forward as it were."

"I only see one foot. Isn't that going to be your best one by default?"

"You are correct, in a literal sense at least. None of this playful banter is going to improve the majesty of my moment though. I hope it at least amuses you, because this whole situation leaves me embarrassed and humiliated."

"Don't you dare speak to me about your humiliation, Gainey! I've had six years of humiliation. If I went and got a rolling pin and shoved it up your ass, maybe that might qualify as humiliation, but not this. This isn't humiliating."

"Go ahead and enjoy yourself then. This is the last time you'll ever get the chance."

"Why? Do you think we're all even now? If you do, it just shows me that you don't know what you've done to my life. I'm just showing you a tiny bit of what you showed me that night. I was curious about you too, the leg and your dick and the scar. I didn't plan on doing anything to hurt you or to ruin your life. All I wanted was to look. You can get dressed again and get out of here, if you can't take a little embarrassment."

"No, you're right. I'm still new at this. I haven't gotten used to being a morbid attraction yet. Is there something else you'd like to see?" I could see her point. I'd overreacted in my embarrassment. What she'd done to me wasn't anything comparable to what I'd done to her.

"Can I take your wooden leg and put it over on the other side of the room?" I wasn't comfortable having it referred to that way, but I didn't want to seem too pedantic. I nodded my assent to her. She came over, careful, lest I reach out and grab her. She grabbed at one of my straps and quickly lifted the limb from where I had it resting. She took it over to the far wall and rested it against it. "It's a lot lighter than I thought it would be."

"I thought that too, in the beginning, now it seems too heavy to me."

"Will you play with yourself, so I can see if you can get hard or not?"

"You didn't believe what I told you?" I did grab the head between my right hand fingers and started to play with it. I knew it wasn't going to work. I'd long since quit attempting to achieve an erection. Once in awhile, when I was in the shower, I'd make a half hearted attempt, but I was almost certain at those times that nothing would happen. Nothing happened this time either.