Chapter 7

Bobby had to drive, of course. He was responsible for the car, and Erica probably couldn’t have driven anyway, in the condition she was in. She sat stiffly in the passenger seat, still in shock, and paying no attention to William, who was in the back seat. Bobby felt compelled, therefore, to ... chat.

Over the hour and fifteen minutes it took them to get out of the airport and to Erica’s driveway, Bobby learned quite a bit about William Bradford. He preferred “Will” to “William.” He wasn’t in any more pain than he usually was. He had no plans for his future. The VA Hospital in either Wichita or Topeka would take on his future medical needs, which Will hoped were few. He hated hospitals, having spent the last three years of his life in them.

Bobby, and a still weeping Erica, learned that he’d lost the leg early on, before he’d even regained consciousness from his initial injuries. The hand had gone a month later. Physically, the vast majority of his treatment since then, had been all about the burns. He’d had dozens of skin graft surgeries. There had also been additional surgery on his leg as they tried to get him to wear a prosthesis. He didn’t see the point. Even if he could walk, he still couldn’t work, and he was used to the chair now. They were talking about some contraption to take the place of his left hand, so he could grip the left wheel of his chair and get around a little better. They kept insisting it wouldn’t be necessary if he’d just accept a prosthesis for his leg.

Of course, there was a lot that Bobby and Erica didn’t learn on that ride too. They would find that out over a long period of time, but they didn’t know it when they got him out of the car and into his chair at his new home.

He was angry. He was both mad at the world in general, and at specific portions of that world in particular. He was mad at the medics who had saved him on the battlefield. He was mad at the surgeons who had brought him back from the brink of death since then. He was mad at the Air Force. He was mad at anybody who felt sorry for him. He was mad at himself for not having the courage to take his own life. Most of all he was mad that they were giving up on Vietnam. His ruined life, and the lives of all those men he had called friends, had been wasted ... ruined for nothing ... and that made him angriest of all.

The first problem was getting him into the house. No one had thought about the chair, and how the steps to the front and rear doors posed an immediate problem. Bobby’s muscles overcame that immediate problem.

“I’ll build you a ramp,” he said to Erica, who was no longer crying, but who looked completely lost as she stood and watched the man who couldn’t possibly be her little brother being pulled up the steps backwards.

“I don’t plan on going anywhere,” said Will.

“Yeah,” said Bobby as he backed up to the door. He reached back and tried to turn the knob. It was locked.

“Erica?” he called.

Her eyes snapped up to his face from the face they’d been staring at.

“Key?” he prompted.

“Oh!” she blurted. “Of course.”

“You’re the only person in town I know who locks her door,” said Bobby, trying to lighten the mood a little.

“Of course I lock my door,” said Erica, looking confused.

“I forgot,” said Bobby. “You came here from Chicago, where everybody has to lock their doors.” Bobby leaned down to speak into Will’s right ear. “I’m glad you’re here. Now maybe she won’t be so scared of the boogey man.”

Will lifted his chin a little.

“No problem,” he said. “The boogey man is scared of me. Everybody is scared of me.”

“I’m not,” said Bobby. “I think I could take you. Maybe.”

Will grunted. Erica got her keys out, opened the door, and they all went inside. Bobby pushed Will’s chair into the living room.

“Give me a second with your sister,” he said, leaning over to speak to Will.

He turned and took an unresisting Erica’s elbow, taking her to where he thought the kitchen might be. It turned out to be the dining room, but the kitchen was further on, through a swinging door. In the kitchen he faced her.

“Get a grip, Erica,” he said, his voice low. “He needs you.”

“I can’t,” she whispered. “I didn’t know!”

“Well, now you do,” said Bobby urgently. “He’s still your brother. He’s the same person inside that he always was.”

“I can’t,” she moaned, looking down.

Bobby knew he had to do something to break her out of her almost catatonic state. He would never be able to explain why he chose to do what he did, but it worked. He reached out and squeezed her breasts with his hands. His fingers seemed to flow as he pulled on them, until his fingertips were on the tips of her breasts. They squeezed, seeking to find her nipples through her shirt and bra.

She drew in breath harshly, and held it, as her round, amazed eyes looked at his hands, and then rose to fix on his face. Her jaw went slack for a few seconds. Then her eyes cleared and she jerked backwards, as her hands slapped at his.

“How dare you?!” she gasped.

“Now that I have your attention,” said Bobby, as he dropped his hands to his sides, “you have to go in there. You have to talk to him. You have to start this relationship. I don’t care how hard it is for you ... he’s here and he needs you.”

“You touched me!” she said.

“Okay, you’re shocked,” said Bobby. “I touched you and it shocked you, but there is no harm done and you can go on with your life. He shocks you too. You have to go on with him as well. He’s your brother, Erica ... he’s your blood. Where is that independent, capable woman I like so much? You have to get a grip!”

“Get out!” she snarled.

“Okay,” he said. “I’ll get started on the ramp. You go talk to your brother.”

“Get out!” she said again.

He turned and left. She heard him speak to the husk in the wheelchair in her living room, and then she heard the front door close. Almost immediately, she regretted throwing him out.

That left her alone with her brother.

“Billy?” Her voice had a catch in it.

“I knew this was a bad idea,” said the voice of her brother. It came from the thing in the wheelchair, though, and she couldn’t make that work in her head. That voice was disappointed, though ... disappointed in her ... and that registered.

“I just need some time,” she said weakly.

“I’ll never look human again, Erica,” he said harshly. “I’ll never walk again, or work, or anything, but I don’t want your pity!”

That stung. What else was she supposed to do? How else was she supposed to feel? He was a wreck! He was all but helpless!

Old habits die hard. Sometimes that’s not such a bad thing, though. She had been a dyed in the wool feminist when he’d become her ward, and they had often raged at each other as he acted like the men she was so disgusted with, and she acted like a bitch, as far as he was concerned. Still, when all was said and done ... they had been all each other had, and they always made peace. They didn’t agree on things ... but they still loved each other, and they always made peace.

That old habit ... of being able to rage at each other ... served to get them past that intolerable moment when neither knew how to move forward. She took offense at his attitude ... that he was pushing her away. He ranted about how he couldn’t stand the pity, including hers. She railed that he was helpless, and he promptly proved what he could do. He lurched up out of the chair, leaning heavily on his right hand while he pushed with the stump of his left, and hopped in a circle around her. He was good at hopping. He’d done that thousands of times. He ended up back in his chair, looking up at her out of that half twisted, half normal face.

Her initial horror of the scarecrow looking thing that flapped its arms as it hopped around her was mitigated by the voice of her little brother in that scarecrow image.

Then, as he sat again, staring at her, she was struck by the fact that both of his eyes looked the same. The one staring at her from the dead mask on the left of his head was just as brown and alive, as the one on the normal side. And his attitude ... his voice ... his personality ... it was all familiar. His psyche had been damaged, that was clear, but it was still Billy.

“Don’t fucking call me billy!“ he screamed. His voice fell. “Billy is dead.”

“You’re not dead!“ she screamed back. “You’re my baby brother, no matter what happened to you!“

That simple shouted sentence created the tiny, almost insignificant crack that would widen over the weeks to come. It would create a place where her love, when she learned how to show it to him, would seep in and soften the hard crust that was all that was left of Billy Bradford.

It would take time, to be sure. He would complain constantly about her characterization of him as her “baby” brother. He would carp constantly about her continued use of “Billy,” instead of the name he now preferred. On her side, she clung to “Billy” as the only thing she had left of the boy she remembered. She knew he wasn’t a baby, but she felt maternal instincts for the first time in her life as she adjusted to his visage, and it began to horrify her a little less. That took time too, and I get ahead of the story here for just a moment, but you need to know that, like creeping lava, that cannot be stopped by anything except solid rock, the parts of the old relationship that had borne them up when their parents were lost, started to bear the weight of this trouble too. In this new life they were both embroiled in, almost nothing was the same as it had been ... except that they only had each other again.

In short, Will’s arrival in Erica’s house changed everything in both their lives.

That first shouted communication lasted almost three hours, and wore them both out. Very slowly the decibel range they were “talking” in went from in the hundreds, to the high eighties, and then inevitably lower as their passion faded along with their energy levels. Little things helped to deescalate the anger and frustration. At times, all she could see was his right side, in profile. He looked like Billy then, grown and changed, but still Billy. From his vantage point, she acted just like his older sister had when he had wanted to join the Army. That was something familiar, in a world that hadn’t had anything familiar in it - except pain - for a long time.

They were actually talking in normal voices when there was a clatter outside. Erica went to the window and saw a pile of boards on the front lawn. Her eyes went to the street, where Bobby Dalton was getting more lumber out of the back of a rusty old pickup truck. Her mind tilted for a second. He had said he was going to build a wheelchair ramp. But she had thrown him out after he had ... groped her.

She blinked as the feel of his hands on her breasts suddenly came back to her. She had stared at his hands as they had done that ... and part of her anger had been not at him, but at the completely unwelcome twinges of something sweet as his fingertips had squeezed her hated breasts. She had been horrified that she could feel anything but disgust, both at him and the situation she was in.

The memory of that made her angry again, and she opened the door, to walk out on the porch. She waited until he trudged across the lawn with an armful of boards and dropped them in a heap.

“I told you to leave,” she said, her voice tense.

“I did,” he said, looking at her.

“I meant forever,” she said stubbornly.

“I know,” he said. “I’ll leave again after I get this done.”

“I don’t want that done!” she yelled.

“Yes you do,” he said calmly. “You’re mad at me right now, but you’ll be glad you have this someday.”

She was surprised to feel the back of her shirt being tugged hard.

“Come back inside and leave the man alone,” said her brother. He had gotten his wheelchair right behind her.

“He touched me!” she snarled.

“Where?” asked Will.

Her hands went to cover the tips of her breasts automatically. Her mind wasn’t in tune with them, though.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I won’t put up with that from any man!”

“He touched your knockers?” Will’s voice sounded amused. “Well good for him. I’m almost jealous.”

“They’re not knockers!“ she yelled at him. She realized that the neighbors had probably heard her yell that, and her voice dropped. “You know better than to say things like that, Billy Bradford! You know how I feel about that kind of thing.”

“He’s building a wheelchair ramp, right?” asked Will.

“Yes, but that doesn’t mean he can assault me!”