I don’t know what they gave me but it must have been some powerful shit because I didn’t wake up till late the next morning. Usually the therapists or nurses or somebody would get me up for breakfast, but I think they just decided to let me be after the whole mess with my parents. I might have slept even longer, except Deanna came into my room and leaned over my face, calling my name.
“What?” I muttered, rolling my head to look at the clock on the wall. It said 11 o’clock. I couldn’t believe I had slept that long.
“I was beginning to worry you were dead or something,” Deanna said.
I looked down and saw that I was still wearing the undershirt and diapers from the day before, but I could tell from my positioning that nurses had been coming in to turn me and empty my catheter bag during the night. I had one leg partially turned over the other and there was a pillow between them. White towels were under my hands to keep them from curling up. “Nope, still here,” I said. “Unfortunately.”
Deanna’s eyes softened. “What happened, Ethan? You were really upset.”
“You were right,” I said. “You were right about everything. My mom doesn’t want to take me home.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t want to be right.”
I sighed and closed my eyes, “I feel like an idiot for believing her.”
“Why shouldn’t you have believed her?” Deanna said. “She’s your mother. And I can tell you were a good son to her.”
Deanna’s words were comforting to me. My eyes were still bleary from sleeping so long, but as I looked at her, I realized that she actually had a very pretty face. I guess I had been so distracted by her body, but in this position, looking at her best feature, I suddenly felt very attracted to her. “Thanks, Deanna,” I said.
She smiled at me and picked up my hand to hold it. I looked down and saw that her fingers were laced into mine, best she could with her atrophied hand. Her face was very close to mine and all of a sudden, I was seized by the urge to kiss her. I leaned forward and pressed my lips against hers. They remained there for a several seconds before she jerked away.
“Whoa,” Deanna said. “Um, Ethan, what are you doing?”
I hadn’t expected that kind of reaction. I would have thought that someone like Deanna would be thrilled to get a kiss from me. “I… uh, like you.”
“Ethan…” Deanna looked really uncomfortable all of a sudden. “I don’t… I don’t feel that way about you.”
Deanna had backed up and now I could see all of her. She did have a very cute face, but her body was so deformed. Her arms and legs were withered and crooked, the size of a person half her age. Yet here she was, rejecting me. I looked down at my own body, my thinning arms and legs, my abdomen noticeable bulging under my undershirt, my adult diaper. I guess I didn’t blame her, but I had thought that someone like her wouldn’t have very high standards. The fact that even Deanna couldn’t feel any attraction to me made me feel worse than I had thought possible.
“Ethan, I’m sorry,” Deanna whispered. “I still want to be your friend.”
I looked away from her. I felt tears welling up in my eyes again. I was becoming such an emotional wreck. I never would have imagined I’d be at the brink of tears over being rejected by a girl, especially not a girl like Deanna.
It was at that moment, I realized what my life had become. I was twenty years old and I was going to spend the rest of my life in a nursing home, dependent on others for all my care. And there would never be any women in my life again, not ever.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I think when I was first injured, I impressed the doctors and nurses with my upbeat attitude. No matter what was going on, I was always joking around and flirting. I was all the nurses’ favorite patient and they were all my favorite nurses. That all ended when both my mother and Deanna rejected me within a 24 hour time span. Maybe I’d been in denial before, but suddenly, I realized what things were going to be like from now on and I didn’t feel quite so upbeat anymore.
I knew I was being an asshole, but I couldn’t help it. I felt like I hated everyone. Especially Casey, for wagging her incredible body in front of me on a daily basis. Every time I looked at her, I was reminded of the fact that I would never have a girlfriend again for the rest of my life. I knew everyone was starting to hate me, but I didn’t care. It wasn’t like I was going to be friends with nurses who were taking care of my most intimate needs.
Casey took my asshattery pretty well. She always was very cheerful, no matter how big a jerk I was being. “Time to get out of bed,” she always announced when she came in first thing in the morning.
“You’re late,” I noted, gesturing up at the clock.
“You’re counting the minutes?” she laughed.
“Nothing else to do in this fucking place,” I said.
“Ethan, I warned you about language,” she said, still in that cheerful voice.
“Fuck that,” I said. “I’m fucking twenty years old, if I want to say fuck, I’ll say fuck. Who are you to fucking tell me what I can or can’t say. Fuck fuck shit damn motherfucker. Cocksucker.”
Casey was strapping a fresh leg bag to my thigh and calmly putting my shorts on during my little Tourette’s outburst. She smiled at me, “Are you done?”
“Can’t I just eat breakfast in bed?” I whined. “I don’t want to get up.”
“No, you’re getting up.”
“I don’t feel well,” I said. “I want to stay in bed.”
“You’re getting up.”
I did that every morning, asked to stay in bed. I didn’t see the point of getting up and sitting in my ridiculously bulky power wheelchair. There was nothing to do in this place anyway. It was better just to stay in bed and watch the shitty TV.
Casey pulled my shirt over my head and lifted my arms through the sleeves. There was nothing I could do to help her in this task, so I just sat there and continued to sulk and complain. She loaded me into the Hoyer lift and into my wheelchair. Before I could slip, she expertly strapped me in at my chest and waist. I looked down as she secured the strap around my gut and noticed there was a nice big patch of my diaper sticking out as usual.
“These diapers suck,” I commented. “Can you at least tuck them in?” Seriously, did I need to wear a big sign across my chest that said “incontinent”?
Casey obliged and tucked the diaper away, so my not-so-secret was hidden once again. She wisely didn’t ask me to control my own chair, and just pushed me to the common dining area. I was relieved that Deanna wasn’t around and all the kids at the table were pretty out of it.
“I don’t want Laura to feed me,” I said, as Casey tucked a napkin into my shirt collar.
“Why not?” Casey asked, sounding slightly exasperated.
“Because she sucks at it.”
“Ethan, you know Laura’s the only aid that’s available right now…”
“So I guess nobody cares that she fucking sucks.”
Casey folded her arms across her chest, “Ethan, I’m going to get Laura. I want you to behave yourself.”
Laura was a nurse’s aid who was at least a hundred years old. I think she might have been around when monkeys first evolved into humans. Saying that she sucked was actually very kind. Her hands shook like an earthquake when she tried to feed me and I was lucky if I got half a spoonful in my mouth. And she always called me Ernie.
“Hello, Ernie,” Laura said, her wrinkles deepening as she smiled at me.
I didn’t smile back. I just looked down at the plate of food that was on the clear plastic tray strapped to my wheelchair. It was a breakfast of eggs and sausage. At this rate, I was going to gain back all the weight I lost real fast. And then some.
“I’m not hungry,” I said.
Laura wasn’t listening to me. She was scooping some food up onto a fork and aiming it for my mouth. I didn’t really want this disgusting egg concoction, but she held it there insistently until my lips parted, then she shoved it in. I felt like a machine when she was feeding me.
She had shoved about half the eggs and several pieces of sausage down my throat, and the napkin on my chest was littered with pieces of egg that had missed its mark. I really didn’t want to eat another bite. “No more,” I said.
“You have to finish your breakfast, Ernie,” Laura said, impatiently pushing an egg-filled fork against my closed lips.
“I don’t want—” I started to say, but Laura took this opportunity to shove more food into my mouth. I was so furious, I instinctively spit the eggs out. Unfortunately, the eggs landed on Laura’s shirt.
As angry as I had been, Laura looked even angrier. She threw down the napkin she had been using to dab my chin (not nearly often enough, since I currently had a chin covered with food) and stormed out of the dining area. I realized at that moment that I had gone too far. I saw her outside talking to the nurses and Dr. Palmer, and she was pointing at me really angrily. Fuck.
A minute later, Dr. Palmer walked into the dining area and approached me. “Hi, Ernie,” he said.
“Ethan,” I corrected him.
“Right, I’m sorry,” the doctor said. “Can I have a word with you in private?”
I had a really, really bad feeling as I followed Dr. Palmer to his office. I knew I had been a huge jackass the last couple of weeks and even Casey had had it with me. I just never thought about the consequences while I was being such an ass.
“Ethan,” Dr. Palmer began as he settled in behind his desk. “I’ve been hearing from the nurses that you’re not being cooperative with the staff.”
“I just wasn’t hungry,” I mumbled.
“Regardless,” the doctor said, “I really feel like this facility is not the place for you. I’ve asked the social worker to expedite your nursing home placement.”
I didn’t know what to say. I knew I deserved this and even if I didn’t, it was inevitable. I knew from the start they wouldn’t let me stay here past age 21.
“I’d appreciate that while you’re here,” Dr. Palmer said, “you could be pleasant with our staff. There will be consequences if you’re not.”
“Like what?”
“You’re dependent on the nurses for all your needs,” he reminded me. “These are not ladies you want to piss off.”
“Are you fucking threatening me?” I asked.
“Just stating a fact, Ethan,” he said calmly.
“Fuck you,” I spat. “This place sucks. And you’re a fucking quack, just trying to get rid of patients so you have less work to do.”
I saw the flash of anger on Dr. Palmer’s face and I knew I had gotten to him, but he tried not to let it show. “I’m going to schedule you to meet with our social worker again,” he said.
“Fantastic. Can I go?”
Dr. Palmer looked at me for a long time, then finally nodded, “Yes, you can go.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By the time my meeting with Marian the social worker came, I think every nurse on the floor hated me. I whined incessantly about everything and especially was an ass when it came to feedings. And there were consequences, like Dr. Palmer had warned. When I needed something non-urgent, I got ignored. They put the mouth-operated channel-changer for the television out of my reach. And once while pushing me to the shower on a stretcher, they left me naked and uncovered in the hallway for a good fifteen minutes. I screamed my ass off over that one.
Each time they did something to me, it just made me angrier and made me act up more. It was a vicious cycle. I knew I had to stop, but it was too late. I felt like I couldn’t go back. This was the person I had become and would be for the rest of my life. I was the asshole quadriplegic.
I didn’t want to meet with Marian, so Casey had to push me there. She was no longer friendly with me and neither was Marian. I guess Marian had heard about the way I’d been acting. These women, I tell you, they really stick together.
“We’ve found placement for you, Ethan,” Marian told me curtly.
“Do I get to see the place?” I asked.
“I think it’s best if you just go,” Marian said. “Clearly the current situation isn’t working out for anyone.”
I felt a lump rise in my throat. “Uh, where is it?”
“It’s called Arbor View,” Marian said. “It’s about ten miles from here. It’s mainly elderly patients but there are a few younger people like you with cognitive problems.”
Marian had the pamphlet open on her desk and I saw a glimpse of one of the rooms at Arbor View. It looked like there were at least six beds in the room. “I don’t want to live there,” I said.
“I think this is for the best,” Marian said. “There’s a bed opening up in about two weeks.”
The stupid thing was, my first thought was that I’d never be able to bring a girl in there and have some privacy. It took me a few seconds to realize how ridiculous that was. I mean, I was going to be living in a nursing home. How was I ever going to have a girlfriend in a million years, unless her name was Grandma and she had drool running down her chin? This was my fate: I was going to grow old and die a lonely, incontinent quad in a nursing home.
I felt choked up and I didn’t trust myself to speak. Finally, I mumbled okay. Once again, I couldn’t get out of her office on my own and Marian had to help me. I don’t know how, but I held my tears in until I was out of her office and she had slammed the door behind me.
There was no one around so I sat out in the hallway, crying. I didn’t know why I had been acting like such a dick lately and now I was paying for it. I wanted to apologize to the nurses, but I knew it was too late. They already hated me.
That’s when Deanna rounded the corner and saw me there, crying like a baby. I was embarrassed and tried to stop, but it wasn’t like I could wipe away my tears. I had been kind of a dick to her too lately, so she’d been staying out of my way. But now she wheeled over to me. “Ethan,” she said, “what’s wrong?”
The nursing home had been what set me off, but when I thought about it, I realized it was a lot more than that. “I don’t want to be like this anymore,” I said. “I want to be able to walk again.”
To my surprise, Deanna laughed. “Of course,” she said. “I want to be able to walk too. And be normal. But that’s never going to happen and I accepted it a long time ago. You haven’t.” She paused. “That’s why nothing could ever happen between you and me.”
I frowned, “What do you mean?”
Deanna sighed. “Come on, Ethan. You still think of yourself as an able-bodied guy who’s stuck in a wheelchair. You don’t think of yourself as a cripple yet. You’ll get there eventually. You just passed denial and now you’re on to the anger phase.”
“No, wait,” I said, “what were you saying about something happening between you and me?”
Deanna rolled her eyes. “Okay, you want to know the truth?”
“Yes.”
“I am attracted to you, Ethan,” she admitted. “Very attracted. I just… I feel you’re not ready to be in a relationship right now. You’re cute, yes, but emotionally you’re a wreck.”
I smiled. “You think I’m cute?”
Deanna shook her head and sighed, “I shouldn’t have told you that.”
“Can I kiss you?”
“Ethan!” Deanna exclaimed. “I just told you why we can’t have a relationship.”
“But we can still kiss, right?”
Deanna shook her head again, “Unbelievable…”
“Deanna, I think you’re awesome,” I said. I meant it. “And I know I haven’t accepted my situation yet, but I really think that kissing you could help me with that.”
“Oh, do you?” Deanna said, amused.
“Definitely.”
I knew I had her when she lined her wheelchair up alongside mine, so that she could face me. She was still about eight inches away from my face, so I quickly puffed on my control, then leaned over to bridge the gap. This time she didn’t pull away from my kiss, and let me tell you, it was amazing. Only fifteen minutes earlier, I had believed I’d never have this kind of contact with a woman again, unless maybe I was paying her. I felt my anger melting away as I slid my tongue into Deanna’s mouth.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Everything changed once Deanna and I were a couple. I made amends with the nurses, who were more forgiving than I would have thought, and the nursing home transfer was postponed indefinitely. I guess they realized that I had been pretty badly depressed. I still was often frustrated with my situation, but I was also in what turned out to be the most meaningful relationship I’d ever had with a woman. I was falling hard for Deanna.
There was also nobody better to teach me about being a crip. She was totally comfortable with her body image and it helped me to become more comfortable too. “So what if you don’t look like everyone else?” Deanna said. “Everyone else in the world is trying so hard to look hot or look perfect. Well, you can’t. It kind of takes the pressure off, doesn’t it?”
She had a point. I was never going to look like I was even in the same species as some buff male lifeguard, so I could just focus on being who I was. I was always going to have a gut and I was never going to have normal muscle tone in my arms or legs. But there were things I did have control over. Deanna encouraged me to talk to the dietitian about making changes in my diet, because since I had gotten here and was eating normal, I was gaining weight fast since I couldn’t burn calories like other people. She told me if I didn’t cut down my calories, I was going to end up obese and not only would that lead to all sorts of medical complications, I also wanted to look good for Deanna. I know she thought I was hot. Not lifeguard hot, but quad hot.
I wish I could say Deanna and I were hot and heavy, but you’d know I was lying. I was paralyzed from the shoulders down and Deanna was too weak to do more than hold a fork or a pencil. We were both dependent for most of our care and our transfers, so it wasn’t like we could jump into bed together. So for the first couple of months we were in a relationship, we just kissed. And I have to say, it was pretty great. Deanna was a good kisser, and with the lack of sensation in the rest of my body, the parts that I could feel, such as my lips, were hypersensitive. Kissing was, in many ways, better than sex.
Deanna and I were not at all secretive about our relationship and could often be found making out in the hallway. Dylan knew about us and I could tell he was steamed. He was totally into Deanna and it frustrated the hell out of him that the two of them were just friends. He did what he could to get to me, but there wasn’t a lot he could do.
The thing about Deanna though, was that unlike me, she was not paralyzed and I could tell she wanted to be more physically intimate with me. She tried not to let on, but I could tell she was a little frustrated. I wanted to give her what she was craving, but how could I? I couldn’t even get myself into bed, much less scoop her into my arms, carry her across the room, and pounce on her.
That’s where an orderly named Paul came into the picture. Paul was about ten years older than me and of Mexican decent, but spoke very good English. He worked the night shift and he and I would often get to chatting when he was in my room. He knew about me and Deanna and he’d crack some pretty funny lewd jokes. I had a feeling that of all the people in this place, Paul was the one who could help me.
“So how’s your girl?” Paul asked me when he came into my room one night.
“Not too good,” I replied.
“Oh yeah?” Paul raised an eyebrow. “Trouble in paradise?”
“She wants to have sex.”
“Oh…” Paul murmured, then he looked me over, lying in bed with my hands stretched out over little white rolled up towels. “Oh!”
“So it’s a problem.”
“That’s too bad, my man,” Paul said. “I hate to see a good guy like you getting cock blocked by his own body.”
I took a deep breath, “You could help me.”
To my relief, Paul was down with it. I explained to him what he’d have to do and the guy was just glad to help, even though the whole thing was kind of weird. “Hey, just because you’re crippled, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get to fuck,” he said.
I let Deanna in on the plan and she was just as excited as I was. The next night, after most of the unit was fast asleep, Paul wheeled a grinning Deanna into my room in a manual wheelchair. He then shut the door to the room I shared with my virtually brain dead roommate.
Paul lifted Deanna so that she was in the bed next to me. I had never been close to Deanna like this before and it was exciting. I wanted to ravage her. Paul then pulled off Deanna’s nightgown so that she was naked, save for her diaper. Then he took that off too.
When you’ve spent most of your life jacking off to photos of supermodels in magazines, a body like Deanna’s was a bit of a shock. Her arms and legs were withered and atrophied, her breasts were tiny yet still managed to be asymmetric, and her spine was very curved. Yet I can’t remember the last time I had been as turned on by her as I was at that moment. Deanna was gorgeous in her own way.
Then it was my turn. I was just wearing an undershirt and diapers, so Paul took off my undershirt to reveal my scrawny shoulders and bulging gut. He then pulled off my diaper so that Deanna could see my flaccid penis with the catheter coming out of it. Like Deanna, I had the body of a person who was very severely disabled, but I could tell that she too liked what she saw.
“Anything else you want me to do?” Paul whispered.
“No, I think we’re good,” I told him, looking over at Deanna and winking.
“All right, I’ll be back in a few hours.”
Thank god Deanna could move her arms, otherwise we would have been in trouble. She ran her hand over my bare chest, her fingers going through the dark hairs, making circles with her limp wrist. I watched her, swallowing hard. “Hey, Deanna,” I said, “uh, you’re still a virgin, huh?”
“Yes,” she told me. “I assume you’re not.”
“Well, no,” I said, “but you’re my first since the accident. So, that counts.”
“I don’t think we can really have sex though,” Deanna said.
I had been wracking my brain to think of a way we could have intercourse. Paul didn’t know how to remove my catheter, so that was a huge barrier right there. But even if he could, neither Deanna nor I had the muscle strength to have sex. But that didn’t mean we couldn’t have something. “I think it will be okay,” I said.
Deanna’s hand gradually made its way down to my penis, which was still limp despite how turned on I was. I knew I could get erections because I’d seen them when Casey was scrubbing me, so I kept my fingers “crossed” and prayed I’d get one now. Deanna’s hands were weak but I could see my penis starting to grow slightly. It was in no way hard enough for intercourse, but that didn’t really matter. Deanna looked up at me and grinned, and I grinned back.
As my dick grew, I tried to remember how it used to feel when I’d get an erection. I couldn’t feel anything, so I really had to try to use my imagination. I had read online that some guys could sort of tell when they were hard, but I felt nothing. Yet I felt mentally very turned on watching Deanna massage me. “That’s nice,” I whispered to her.
“You like it?” she whispered back.
“Oh yeah,” I breathed, “keep doing that…”
I watched as Deanna proceeded with her own version of jacking me off. Her limp hand went all over my abdomen and penis, keeping my erection going. After a little while of this, she moved up above my shoulders, to the area where I could feel. As much as it was a turn-on to watch her jack me off, it was nicer when I could feel what she was doing. I felt her hand all over my neck and face and hair. I moaned with pleasure.
“Let me kiss you,” I begged her.
She toyed with me a little, then finally dropped her lips onto mine. Since I couldn’t use my arms or legs anymore, all I had left to pleasure a woman with was my mouth. I needed to become really amazing with my mouth. Right now, I was just a little amazing.
Deanna and I kissed and snuggled for the better part of two hours before Paul returned and helped Deanna get dressed and back in her bed. He then came back in to help me get dressed. “Have a good time?” Paul asked me with a wink.
I nodded vigorously. “Thanks, man. I really appreciate it.”