Chapter 24

Sometimes you can't plan ... Murphy steps in and that's it. Generals know that plans do not survive first contact. I didn't know what I was going to do when I got home. I knew what I wasn't going to do ... I wasn't going to sail. Daddy would stop that in a hurry.

"One hand for the ship and one hand for yourself. You have one for now and I'll be damned if I'll chance you again until the doctors say-so. Get my drift?" That's what he would say.

And I would promise and then bitch Grace out every time she went sailing ... I knew it, she knew it but that wouldn't stop her. No, Grace would sail the K5 around Pentwater Lake like she was a Lightning 19, using the race buoys as if she was barrel racing her favorite pony. Not that she had a barrel racing pony ... knowing Grace ... barrel racing would be next. Barrel racing is a perfectly acceptable pastime when the lake effect snows pile yards deep and the Lake Michigan ice is thick. K5 would be snug in her newly erected heated boathouse.

When did that happen? Who paid for it? Daddy!!

In my first couple go-rounds, they pitched your ass out of the hospital as fast as they could ... in this life they kept you ... forever it seems like.

Nearly two weeks. Soft diet: three days. After three days of pap spoon fed by an increasingly better looking candy striper, they unhooked my right arm and took out that awful catheter.

On the fourth day I was expecting the gorgeous Miss Candy but I got some old hag with a semi soft diet tray. She plunked it down on my bed stand ... just a fraction of an inch out of reach ... smiled a toothless grin and swooshed out the door.

I still hadn't managed to reach the rolling stand ... although I did manage to push it even farther away ... when Hagatha swooshed in and swooshed out tsk-tsking at my lack of appetite. I had a good view of my semi soft diet breakfast every morning for two days.

On Saturday, Grace came to see me. Grace is a wallet and bluejeans tomboy ... generally ... there have been times ... I believe I mentioned two. Today she wafted in in a skirt and blouse ... and a huge purse. Mom was right behind her. Mom stopped at the door and blocked it ... Grace was underage and not allowed.

As I was wolfing down the two cold Antler Wendy burgers I could hear Mom arguing with the head nurse. She started rattling off phony government statistics about the closeness of twins and how bad it was for them to be separated. Grace was allowed five minutes of closeness and the head came in and told me to wipe the mustard off my chin. Grace was up to something.

I just knew that by the time I was out of the hospital the K5 would be Grace Austin's boat. Grace would tinker. The mast heel was set in a fancy tabernacle screw and clamp setup. The tabernacle was keel mounted. She could move the mast heel two inches forward and two aft. with a pivot at the cabin top. A one turn adjustment at the heel would mean a huge change at the mast head. Already single rigged she would move the halliard tail hangers to suit her and I know that was going to piss me off. Who knows what travesty she would torture my boat with next. I fretted.

Fretting made my temperature go up and suddenly I was wired up for all kinds of antibiotics and had to stay until my 'fever' broke. This suited Hagatha of the impossible to reach breakfast tray no end. She cackled as she swooshed out of the room.

"If your temperature stays down you can go home ... in 4 days."

"Hospital food for four days? How could I be so lucky," I said, brimming to overflowing with sarcasm.

"As far as I'm concerned you can go home today," she confessed. "I don't know how you did it but your stepmom has hired away our best candy striper."

"News to me," I said, cursing my immediate wood. That got a look. She blushed.

"One of the disappointments in sitting behind a desk all day is missing truly impressive..." and she looked directly at my tent. "Do you need a daycare nurse?" She blushed again, evidently witnessing the 'event' is something Nurses do almost hourly, they are notoriously difficult to please and very seldom blush.

'It's just a dick, lady. Guys have 'em' I thought.

Either she is a mind reader or an excellent judge of facial expression because she said. "Not like that, David. Not like that. Your Uncle Harry comes close." She slapped her hand over her mouth and spun out the door.

I was hoping for some deathless confessions but she took vacation and stayed away until I was gone ... rats!!

Mom, and I can truly call her wicked now, has hired Miss red and white ... her name really is Candy, but her last name is a concoction of consonants and four vowels that, while readable, are unpronounceable. Hjálmtýsdóttir ... daughter of Hjálmtý. Icelandic.

But I was here and she was there. I fretted. My temp went up.