Chapter 364: Healed Bones, Broken Friends

Shelly, I hope you don’t have any deeply hidden secrets in there that will shock me. Not that there is much that would surprise me these days.

She still had a few hours to go on their replacements and had some screws in her vertebrae to replace with stronger ones for the upgraded brace.

I shouldn’t go into someone’s head to poke around in their memories, but I felt there is a reason I wanted to do this for her. The place in my head has done a pretty good job guiding me to do things for reasons I don’t understand.

I should have expected to be right there reliving when she broke her back. It started about ten minutes before it happened. She was with a group of friends doing dumb kids’ stuff while someone took pictures. The group was about twenty feet above a gorge. She was sitting on the railing with her friends in front of her and beside her on the rail. Being stupid, the girls stood on the rails or sat on someone’s shoulders. You can guess that wasn’t going to end well.

Two of the girls lost their balance and started to fall backward. Shelly was still on a guy’s shoulders, who was helping girls down from the railing. She didn’t even process what she was doing as she hooked her feet around the guy’s side, pushed herself up off his shoulders, and reached to grab the arms of the girls who were falling. She managed to get her fingers locked around their wrists, but it was too late. There was too much momentum. Her lunging forward to grab them was more than her feet could hold around the guy’s sides.

The girl on her left, Nalani, was grabbed around the waist by one of the boys. Shelly and the girl on her right were too much stress on the girl on the left. It dislocated her shoulder, and she couldn’t keep holding onto Shelly’s wrist. When the boy, whose shoulders that Shelly had sat on, reacted, he just missed grabbed around her, getting a grab on her shirt instead. A girl had managed to grab Nalani’s shorts. Shelly’s shirt ripped a second before Nalani’s shorts.

My implant showed me a video from a tourist recording the kid’s antics. It showed Shelly hitting the rocks first, and then Nalani’s shoulder pushed into Shelly’s chest. Nalani walked away with a dislocated arm from all her weight pushing into Shelly’s chest, plus some scratches and a cracked pelvis. Shelly was fortunate that her back landed on the rounded top of the rock. Six inches to the left was a jagged rock that would have gone through her back and out the front, taking her heart and lungs with it.

The tourist’s video caught what the others didn’t see. Shelly let go of Nalani’s wrist and did her best to push on Nalani’s side. That is what saved Nalani from hitting some jagged rocks that would have killed Nalani instead of cutting her up. If Shelly hadn’t done that, she wouldn’t have broken her back.

Much like the guy who tripped over me the day I got hit by lightning, Nalani has been a basket case ever since. Even when Shelly got the spine brace and could move again, Nalani blamed herself for Shelly breaking her back. The guy that grabbed Shelly’s shirt didn’t get messed up in his head, but he stopped hanging out with their group of friends. I saw video clips from outside Shelly’s house and in pictures of Shelly with a group of friends, but he was always off in the background. I’d seen that enough over the years. He felt guilty for not stopping her from falling off the walkway, so now he was doing all he could to be there for her if she ever needed him.

Back in Shelly’s mind, I saw how Nalani not coming around hurt her more than having broken her broken back. They had been very close since pre-school. Nalani’s parents didn’t know what to do to help their daughter, so they let a quack tell them to put her in a mental hospital until she could work through her issues. All they did for her was drug Nalani when she freaked out about the accident. That happened every time she talked to a shrink about it. She got stuck in a loop.

I think I can fix this with a bit of help.

A quick ping to the man-in-the-machine showed me what I was hoping to find. The guy that had grabbed her shirt, Porter, was outside trying to find a way to check on Shelly. He was worried because of the special ambulance waiting outside. It could have Shelly in traction to rush her to the hospital. He didn’t know anything about the people in this house or why Shelly would be inside.

One of the androids nudged me to get my attention. They needed me to check the fit around Shelly’s spinal cord for one of the replaced vertebrae. It didn’t feel right to them. When I checked, I saw that it was pinching on one side. From what they got through my implant, they could remove some material to fix the issue. Once I verified that it was correct, they let me go back to picking Sherry’s brain.

I quickly found out a lot about Porter. He was an orphan living with foster parents not far from Sherry’s house. The family had no intention of adopting him but enjoyed watching the children they foster grow up over the years because they never had children. Both are at the top of the ladder in their respective jobs, so they aren’t around much to provide emotional support. Instead, the kids have whatever resources they need, doctors, food, clothes, and some spending money. Their staff keeps an eye on the kids to ensure they are going to school, keeping their room straight, and aid in picking them up when sick. For the last two years, it has only been Porter living in their home.

He spent more time at Shelly’s and their friend’s homes, but mainly at Shelly’s. They were close enough that her parents trusted him to sleep in her bed, shower together, and do other things most parents would never allow. He needed to see that she is ok and isn’t mad at him. It was an accident. Porter not coming around to see her hurt her as much, if not more, than Nalani.

Once I had the last stem cells in place, I found that they needed me to do the last of the big things. Once the androids and robots no longer needed me to keep shields up for her, I pinged my implant with my idea. They would have what I needed ready.

“These people are the best in the world. I don’t know if they repaired the damage everywhere, but I was watching them as they removed tiny bone fragments embedded in her spinal cord. I don’t know how they do their thing. Right now, I’m going to get myself in trouble,” I explained probably. “Shelly has a stalker, and I’m going to drag his butt in there to watch them finish fixing her back, sewing her up, and then attaching the new spinal brace. I’m not going to be the only person in the world that knows how to adjust it in minutes instead of hours. He is going to spend his every idle minute working on a training model that will automatically get out of adjustment, and he has to fix it,” I told them. “Then I’m going to find somewhere to rent, or borrow, a car. Someone else needs to see the video someone put up on a monitor in the room. I had an accident that put me in a coma for most of a year. A guy from school tripped over me a few minutes before it happened. The whole time I was unconscious, he was off someplace in his head. After seeing the video and getting a message that the other girl is acting similarly, I’m going to bring her back here to be there when Shelly wakes up. They need her as much as she’s needed them since the accident.”

I started the video and pointed out that Shelly had pulled Nalani over top of her as they fell.

Shelly’s dad said, “We don’t know a thing about you, David. How exactly do you think you are going to get us to allow you to pull Porter into the operating room when they don’t even let us watch?”

“That is easy. I’m not asking your permission for anything. I’m going to do it for Shelly and her friends,” I explained. “The surgical team is waiting to get Porter into a hazmat-like suit similar to what I wore be where I could hold my friend’s hand anytime I wasn’t in the way.”

It put him off a bit, but Frank said, “I’m on David’s side here. These people did their magic to turn my children from quadriplegics into two kids happily dancing with a new friend. I’m a retired Admiral, and none of my contacts can find out anything about these doctors, where they did their magic, or even how to contact them. David shows up, and your daughter is in there having the impossible done to her. No one in the military knows of anyone, including those groups that don’t exist, that can remove vertebrae and recreate it in a substance harder than bone. The people knew David and required him to join them in the operating room to keep a close eye on their work. He is seventeen. If they said he could do as he said, I don’t think you can stop him. It isn’t like he is doing something self-serving. How many teenagers do you know that go out of their way to help someone without ulterior motives?”

I didn’t hear their reply because I was slowly moving around to get behind Porter. Before he could react, I had my arm around his waist and began walking to the house.

“I’ll put you down, Porter, if you promise to do what I tell you, precisely, without any questions. You will be doing what I want one way or the other. There is no way you will be able to get away from me, so don’t even try,” I told him.

He promised as we walked into the house.

“First, you need to go and hug Shelly’s parents. I’m pretty sure they have missed you as much as you missed them. Then you are going to come in to hold Shelly’s hand, even if she is unconscious,” I told him.

It took a few minutes for Shelly’s parents to get their composure back enough to let Porter leave their arms. We walked into the suite where nurses were waiting. They stripped Porter, pushed him into the nearest bathroom, washed him from head toe thrice before putting him into pair of scrubs. He then had gloves put on before going to get suited up. I slipped back into a surgical jumpsuit, put on a mask and cap. It was all for show. I had been in the surgical area in my shorts, t-shirt, and sandals since I sterilized them and the entire room before they ever got started.

Before I took Porter into the room, he got to watch the video from the tourist.

As we walked into the airlock between the hall and the surgical area, I told him, “Nalani is going to need you to give her much more support than Shelly is going to need in the coming weeks.”

I explained how the guy at school tripped over me and how I expect Nalani to have the same thing going on in her head.

“It is clear that Shelly sensed something that made her try to pull Nalani over so that Shelly took the brunt of the impact. Neither of them remembered it, and everyone above couldn’t see it from your angle,” I told him.

It took him a few seconds to take in the view of Shelly laying on her stomach with her butt and pussy facing him as he walked in, her legs parted when they did the catheter. From here, I could see she looked like she had her cherry.

I guided him over to be beside her as I told one of the androids to carefully guide his hand around the side of her spine to where he could hold her heart in his hand and feel it beating. They then carefully moved her intestines around to put his hand on her uterus, ovaries, and then outside her vagina. Everything showed up on the monitor, where one side showed his fingers touching her inside and the other showing a cartoon graphic.

“I don’t think that you two can get much closer as two people than holding her beating heart,” I told him as they were cleaning him up and putting on fresh gloves. “You can tease her by telling her you had your hand inside her so far that you were able to feel her ovaries. I wouldn’t say anything to her parents about what I asked them to let you do. Or at least wait a few years after she gets the brace off.”

Porter finally spoke and said, “I stayed away because I was so scared, I would break her. Just touching her the wrong way could paralyze her, even after they put that brace on her. Now here they let me run my fingers on her most private of places. I would never have imagined holding her beating heart in my hand.”

“Now it is time to hold her hand anytime you aren’t in the way. Trust me. She knows it is you and that right there beside her now, even if you weren’t when she needed you the most,” I told him. “Now I have to go get Nalani. She needs to see the video and be here when Shelly wakes up.”

The androids pulled him away for a minute to show where they replaced the broken parts of her spine and then showed him the vertebrae they removed. They guided him through removing the old screws from a few vertebrae before it got to be too much for him

When he came back over to me, I told him, “I’m not going to say anything to anyone about it, but Nalani has been getting the birth-control shot every three months. She hasn’t needed it because one of her medicines keeps her body from releasing the hormones that cause her body to ovulate or have a period. They don’t want to deal with a girl having her period when she can’t take care of herself. Right now, Nalani is shitting all over the place. A friend of mine is an expert herbalist. I am sure she will have a courier here before I get back with Nalani, with what Nalani will need for a few days until the rest of the meds get out of her system. I will explain more when I get back. Don’t ask them to let you slip your hands inside to play with her butt muscles. That isn’t cool.”

“How did you know I was thinking about that?” Porter asked.

“Because I thought about asking them to do it until I realized that goes over the line. Holding and rubbing Shelly’s cock sheath from inside her body was right on that line. If I guess correctly, you’ve felt it from the inside with those same fingers,” I replied before leaving.

As I headed to the front door, Shelly’s dad hurried over and walked out with me.

“I don’t have much choice in trusting you, David. I can at least let you borrow my car,” he told me.

With perfect timing, I saw a car carrier like the one the performance driving school used. A guy hurried up to the house to ask if I was David Jones.