Two Kingdoms, Chapter Three
Sun, Aug. 25th, 2013 02:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
judicious_imitationTitle: Two Kingdoms, Chapter Three
Canon: Polyfaceted
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Original characters (Meyers family); Brenda (Young) Meyers/Bill Meyers; past Brenda/Brett Saunders
Rating: R
Word Count This Chapter: 3,633
Warnings This Chapter: References to gunshot wounds from war and traumatic amputation.
Summary: In this chapter, Bill gets to come home post-amputation. Dawn can't really handle it, but Karen can.
Master Post
Chapter Two
Bill has his laptop hooked up to the hospital’s wireless now, so he can get on Skype. He calls Brenda when they planned by email, about eleven at night in Germany, five in the evening back home, and she answers right away. She smiles at him and types for him to wait a minute, turns away for a moment—he’s guessing to talk to one of the kids—and then puts her headset on.
“Hi, beautiful,” he says.
“Hi, babe. How are you feeling?”
“Physical therapy makes it hurt worse, but they ice it at the end, and they make sure I get my painkillers.” He shrugs. “Good as I can be.”
“Do you have a firm date for a flight home?”
“No, but I do have a roommate now.”
“And you’re on so late?” She looks disapproving.
“He doesn’t give a fuck.” Bill turns his laptop away and says, “Hey asshole, say hi.”
Alex carefully twists to one side and waves at the laptop, and Brenda makes a surprised sound. “You got Alex?!”
“Yeah. Of all the luck, right?” He turns it back toward himself. “He’ll live.”
“What happened?”
“Firefight. He has a lot of holes that he didn’t before. No new ones in his head, though.”
“Bite me, Meyers,” Alex says amiably.
Bill flips him off and continues, “We’re trying to talk the staff into giving us the same flight home.”
“Good luck with that.” She sounds dubious. “If he’s hurt badly, I doubt it’s going to happen.”
He scoffs. “I lost half my leg. Do you really think they’d send me straight home? It’s only been a week.”
She shrugs. “We’d have you on outpatient care by now. Hospital stays are expensive.”
“I’m in the most managed of managed care here,” he points out. “The army either pays here, or they pay for Walter Reed or something.”
She makes a face. “I’d rather you come home.”
Something in his chest tightens. He’s not sure he wants to—can—face his family like this. Especially not Dawn. “How’s Dawnie doing?”
“She’s… coping,” Brenda says carefully. “She’s incredibly upset, but I’m sure that’s not a surprise.”
Bill shakes his head. “I’ve always been stupid and promised not to get hurt, especially the last couple rounds here. Ever since Joyce.” She knows the rest of that.
“I know,” she says quietly, “and I understand. She’s just not doing well. She’s a daddy’s girl, you know that. She needs to know you’re all right.”
He clears the tightness from his throat. “Is she home? Can I talk to her?”
“She is. Just a minute.” Brenda takes off her headset and turns away again.
A minute or so later, Dawn appears on camera, walking toward the computer. She picks up the headset and takes Brenda’s seat. “Hi, Daddy.” She looks pale, with deep, bruise-like circles under her eyes. Her voice is hoarse, and her hair looks a mess.
“Dawnie, baby, how are you?”
She chokes out a laugh. “How do you think?”
He ignores that. “I need you to take care of yourself, Dawn. I can’t think about this if I’m worried about you, and I need to focus on healing so I can come home.”
Her eyes brighten, and she blinks rapidly. “Daddy, will you—are you coming home soon?”
“End of the month, as far as I know.”
She nods and clears her throat. “How are you?”
“I’m in physical therapy now. Doing exercises, they’re doing some other therapies to get me used to it being gone, teaching me the right way to use crutches.” He shrugs. “It hurts, but I get ice on it after, and the nurses give me good painkillers.”
“Are you going to be okay?” his strong girl asks, her voice small, and it breaks his heart.
“Brenda’s going to be there, and she knows people who can help so I don’t have to rely on the VA—her insurance is my secondary. She’ll take care of things, you know that. I’ll be all right with some help, baby. I promise.”
“Daddy, it’s your leg.”
“I’m better off than my roommate,” he says, faux-cheerful. “Guess who it is?”
Dawn stares at him blankly. “I have no idea.”
He turns the computer. “Want to say hi?”
“Is that Alex?!” she exclaims. “What happened?!”
“Let me say hi to the kid,” Alex says, so Bill unplugs the laptop and coils the cord around the railing on the right side of his bed, carefully gets out of bed, and hops over to Alex’s, pushing his tray as a sort of unreliable support. He puts the headset on Alex, since his range of motion is pretty limited, and he says, “Hey, kiddo.”
He can’t hear Dawn’s side of the conversation, so he eavesdrops on his best friend’s. A lot of talking about his own injuries and when he’ll go home, what he and Anne are going to do when he can, and then his traitorous best friend starts talking about him—and giving Dawn more explicit details than Bill wanted her to know yet. He’s tempted to snatch everything back, but that would make him look like an asshole. Instead, he lets Alex look that way—at least to him.
Finally, Alex says, “Here, I’ll give you back to your dad. Love you, kid.” He smiles a bit at whatever Dawn says, then says to Bill, “You can have her back.”
“How generous of you.” Bill takes back the headset and rolls the whole deal back to his bed, where he settles and plugs the laptop back in before saying to Dawn, “You all right?”
She looks vaguely queasy. “You didn’t tell me that stuff.”
“I didn’t want to dump it all on you at once,” he says frankly.
“Well, I asked, so don’t be mad at Alex.”
“This time,” he agrees. “When do you have your driving test?”
That, at least, gets her looking a little better, talking about that and her clubs and classes. He’s grateful for it. She doesn’t need to fixate on his leg.
*
They can’t be right there as Bill gets off the plane, but Brenda gets her family, Sharon included, as close as possible. She keeps checking her watch; the plane should have arrived half an hour ago, so where’s her husband?
It’s another twelve minutes before he shows up. A corporal is pushing him in a wheelchair, and Bill doesn’t look too pleased about that, though it could also be about the crutches he’s holding awkwardly around his laptop bag. There’s a bag hanging off the back of his chair, probably holding his temporary prosthesis; Brenda has an appointment set up with a physiatrist at Yale who will refer him to a prosthetist, probably also at Yale. She feels better about that than she does about him going to the VA hospital.
Dawn doesn’t bolt toward him, like Brenda thought she would; she hangs back. Instead, Sharon’s the first one to him.
“My darling boy,” she says loudly enough that Brenda and the kids can hear, bending to hug him and kiss his cheek. “I’m so glad you’re home.”
The moment Sharon releases him, Brenda’s there, bending to kiss her husband deeply. “Hi, babe,” she murmurs when they part.
“Beautiful, you’re a sight for sore eyes.” He runs a hand through her hair. “Let’s get home.”
She kisses him again, but before she can say anything, Zach manages to wriggle between them. He says cheerfully, “Hi, Dad!” and hugs him around the middle. Brenda’s pretty sure he jostles Bill’s leg, going by his expression, but he just kisses Zach’s head.
“Hi, sweetheart.”
“Mommy says you’re home for good,” Zach says matter-of-factly.
“She’s right,” Bill agrees. “I’m not going anywhere besides to see doctors for a time.”
Brenda turns and gestures to their other kids. “Come say hi.”
Dawn actually takes a step backward, but the other two come over.
“Hi, Bill,” Sam says, giving him a quick hug. Neither Brenda nor Bill has pushed Sam to call him ‘Dad’; Sam, of all of the kids, has the clearest memories of living with and being around Brett other than at visitation. Hell, Zach’s never done it. So Sam has understandable issues with the word.
“Hi, Daddy,” Karen says. She’s careful to avoid his left leg, but she hugs him tightly and kisses his cheek. “Are you okay?”
“I have good medication, and I’m home. I’m okay, Kare.” Bill looks past the four of them then, and Brenda glances behind her. Dawn’s back past Sharon now. “Dawnie, I don’t get a hello?”
Dawn mumbles something. Brenda catches Bill’s gaze and presses her lips together. Hopefully, he gets it; Dawn’s been tense, not sleeping, worrying constantly over her father. It sort of makes sense that she’s staying away. If she does, it might not be real.
“I can take him from here,” Brenda says to the corporal.
“My orders are to get him to your car, ma’am.” He doesn’t let go of the handles of the chair.
“Martinez won’t change his mind, beautiful,” Bill says. “I tried. He was told by a major. I’m just a sergeant.”
Brenda sighs. “Baggage claim?” she asks.
He nods. “My duffel.”
“Then let’s go.”
She keeps pace with the chair as they walk, her hand on Bill’s arm, reassuring herself that he’s home and safe now. Sharon takes the SUV’s keys and vanishes while they wait at baggage claim for the bag. Sam’s the one to grab the duffel bag when it lands on the carousel; Dawn doesn’t make a move toward it. Then Brenda’s phone chirps in her purse, and she checks the text.
“Your mum’s waiting at the curb.”
“Then let’s go.” Bill sounds like he’s fighting impatience, exhaustion, or both. The group of them starts to walk to the door.
“Do we take the chair?” Brenda asks.
“No ma’am,” Corporal Martinez says. “I was told to tell you that you need to rent or buy one.”
“Martinez,” Bill growls. He looks at Brenda. “If you buy me a wheelchair, I’m filing for divorce.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she assures him and pauses. “Just a chair lift for the stairs.”
He mock-snarls at her, and then they’re out the door and to the SUV. Sam tosses the bag in the back, and Dawn yanks open one of the doors so she can scramble into the back seat. Brenda regards Bill a moment.
“Sam, sit with Dawn. Babe, you get this side. Zach, get in your seat.” The car seat is in the middle of the middle, so there’s no moving it necessary for Bill to have a place to comfortably sit.
The boys do as they’re told as Corporal Martinez puts on the chair’s brakes and comes around to offer Bill his hand. Bill ignores him thoroughly, handing his laptop bag off to Brenda; instead, he kicks up the footrests with his right foot, plants the crutches down, and swings himself up in a thoroughly impressive display of upper body strength that sort of turns Brenda on. She waits by the door and doesn’t offer a hand to stabilize him; once Bill’s gotten himself onto the seat, she takes the crutches from him. Karen climbs in on Zach’s other side just after Bill sits down.
She smiles at the corporal. “Thank you. I’m sorry he’s a lousy patient.”
“We all are,” he assures her. That bodes well for the coming months. He hands her the bag from the back of the chair, takes the brakes off, and turns to wheel the chair back inside.
Brenda circles behind the car, puts the crutches, prosthesis bag, and laptop bag in the back with Bill’s duffel, and gets in the passenger seat. Once she closes the door, Sharon pulls away from the curb, and they head home.
*
School got out the same day as Dad got home. Karen has summer tutoring to reinforce science; she passed it, but barely, and that doesn’t prepare her for the next year at all. Sam could probably help, but he has other things to do. The fact that it’s tutoring instead of summer school means she doesn’t have a lot to do over the summer. She doesn’t have very many friends at school; she’s closest to her siblings, really, and Jeannette is one of her only friends her age. Jeannette’s busy with her grad student tutors for most of the summer, since she’s determined to start college a year from the coming fall even though she’ll only be thirteen. Karen’s sure she can do it, too. Dawn has two language classes at Capital, and Sam’s taking some way advanced math class there, not to mention physics. That basically leaves Zach, who Karen loves so much it hurts, but Zach is also five. (“And a half!” he reminds everyone who says that aloud.) And Zach spends a lot of time with Adamo, Rebecca, and Katie over the summers anyway; they all end up at one of the four houses most days, either with a nanny, Uncle Owen, Aunt Alice, or Dad and Grandma Sharon watching them.
So Karen’s been spending a lot of time with her dad and Grandma Sharon, except when Dad has appointments that Grandma Sharon takes him to.
“What does it feel like?” Karen asks one afternoon when Grandma Sharon’s in the kitchen starting dinner. She and Dad are facing each other on the couch, playing gin rummy. She’s working on getting him to teach her poker, even if Dawn says he’ll teach her to cheat, too.
“You’re the first one to ask that,” Dad says, but he doesn’t sound mad. He has his left leg up on the couch, and he’s not wearing the prosthesis; the soft plastic support around it is right there, since he’s wearing shorts, and he glances down at it. His mouth twists for a second.
Even so, Karen has to ask, “Is that okay?”
“Of course, Kare,” he assures her. “You can ask about it, I don’t mind.” He studies his hand of cards but doesn’t make a move. “My stump hurts,” he says at last. “It’s pretty sensitive, and sometimes things touching it make me feel sick. It also hurts a lot. That’s supposed to get better—the pain and the sensitivity. It’s already not as bad. The prosthesis hurts right now because it’s already painful and sensitive, and the prosthesis isn’t fitted quite right because I’m healing. That’s why I only wear it a few hours a day. They’ll start to fix the fit round the end of the month, definitely by the end of next, the prosthetist says.” He shuffles his cards around, but it doesn’t look like he really sees them. “My leg hurts.”
Karen frowns. He said that already.
“I know what you’re thinking, Kare. I don’t mean the stump. I mean the part of my leg that’s gone. It’s called phantom pain. Sometimes it also itches, and sometimes it feels like it’s twitching.”
“How?” she blurts out.
“Probably because my brain’s not used to it being gone. You know how sometimes something tickles your skin but nothing’s there?”
She nods.
“It’s a bit like that, except the part that tickles is as much not there as what’s doing the tickling.” Dad shrugs, closes his eyes for a second, then looks at her. “Does that make sense?”
“I think so,” she says, frowning again. It sounds weird still. “If it’s your brain, can Uncle Greg fix it?”
Dad smiles a little. “It’s not quite like that, Kare. It’s getting better on its own.” He draws a card, finally, but she’s not too interested in the game anymore, even though she’s way ahead in points.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah, Kare?”
He might not like this one. “Can I—can I help Mom when she helps you with it?”
“It’s gross,” he warns, which isn’t a no. “I don’t want you to feel sick.”
“I can do it.” The firmness in her voice surprises even her.
“Well then,” he says after a second, “you can start helping tonight. Maybe you can take over from Mum in the afternoon at some point.”
Karen beams. “I’ll be good at it, I promise.”
“Zach can’t help,” he cautions her, “and don’t go telling him or the other littles about it.”
“I’m not giving Zach nightmares,” she sighs. “I won’t tell. Except Sam.” Not Dawn, though. She might be talking to Dad again and spending time with him, but she won’t even look at his leg or the space where it used to be if he’s not wearing the prosthesis under pants.
“We’ll tell your mom when she gets home.” Dad taps the piles of cards between them. “Your turn.”
Karen tells Mom before dinner but after she’s had a chance to change out of work clothes into her comfortable clothes: light shorts and a t-shirt. Changing means Mom’s switched modes over to “at home” instead of “at work”.
Mom doesn’t try to talk her out of helping; she just says, “We’ll do it while Sam and Dawn take care of dishes, once Zach gets in the bath.”
Karen grins. “Just tell me what to do.”
“I will. Go set the table, please.”
Dinner is spaghetti with homemade meatballs, something Mom usually only makes on weekends. Grandma Sharon has a lot more time on weekdays than Mom does, though, especially when the little kids are at the other houses. It doesn’t taste the same as Mom’s, but it’s still good. Even so, Karen doesn’t pay a lot of attention to her food; she’s too curious about what her mom’s going to have her do to help.
After dinner, everyone splits up. Grandma Sharon takes Zach upstairs for his bath while Dawn and Sam start to clear the table, and Karen goes into the living room with her parents.
“Go get a hand towel and a washcloth,” Mom tells her. “I’ll get everything else.”
Karen nods and goes to do that. When she comes back, her mom has a pack of gauze and two different little tubs of creams, already opened, plus bottles of antiseptic and rubbing alcohol. She has her box of nitrile gloves, too. They’ve unfolded the couch into the bed they’ve been staying on, and Dad’s sitting near the edge. Mom’s on the floor.
“Ready, Kare?” Dad asks.
Karen nods. “Yeah.”
“Give me the towel.” He folds it and puts it under the end of his stump; he’s already taken the support—socket, she reminds herself—and the socks that go under it off.
“Okay, come here. You need to wear gloves to help prevent infection in case the incision line’s split at all,” Mom tells her. She takes a pair from the box and pulls them on. “I already washed my hands. That’s important in case there’s a hole in the gloves. Now I’m going to examine it. Take a look.”
Karen stares, a little fascinated. The end looks reddish and tender, and she can see the brand-new scar along the incision line. The scar tissue itself is bright pink and raised.
“You okay?” Dad asks her.
“Yeah.” She looks at her mom. “It’s healed?”
“The skin is. The muscles are taking their time—you can’t see it, but it takes them longer to grow back together.”
She nods.
“Now we’ll put the cream for the scar on.” Mom follows her words with the action, gently massaging the cream in.
“I could do it,” Dad puts in, “but it’s in an awkward spot unless I set up a mirror.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if it makes him feel sick, but he won’t admit it.”
“Does not,” Dad mutters.
Mom ignores him. “If you do this, be really gentle. We’re doing the desensitization stuff—you’ve seen it, right?”
Karen nods. “When you tap it and touch a lot, right?”
“Right.”
“Why?”
“Because this area isn’t used to being exposed. The skin is, but the way a person’s brain makes its connections means it still thinks there’s something here. It has to learn differently still.”
“The socket helps with that,” Dad puts in, tapping it lightly. “Hand me the bottle of alcohol and the cloth, sweetheart.”
She does, and he starts cleaning the inside of his socket. She watches for a moment before turning back to what her mom’s doing.
“Now the other cream. It helps with numbing it for a little while.”
“Nice relief,” Dad mutters.
“But we only do it three times a day,” Mom continues, “so he doesn’t accidentally hurt it when he does exercises and can tell if the socket’s too tight from swelling or anything. It’s also an anti-inflammatory, kind of like Advil. The numbing is the other reason to wear gloves. You need to touch lightly with this, too.”
Karen’s sure she won’t actually get to do this on her own, even though she’s sure she can handle it; Grandma Sharon would probably worry too much, and Dawn might get upset by a kid taking care of Dad’s stump—she can’t even call it that yet, just his injury. Still, she thinks it’s good to know how to help. It makes her feel… useful. She hasn’t felt that way since they found out why Dad didn’t call on Dawn’s birthday and Dawn fell apart, and nothing Karen tried could help.
This isn’t going to make anything better for Dawn, but the way Dad hugs her after she helps Mom clean up and comes back tells her how glad he is that she could handle it. She grins and grabs the remote. “Can I pick?”
“Sure,” he agrees.
It’s not that nothing’s different; Karen can’t fool herself and couldn’t even before she saw under the socket and socks. She’s never had that ability that she can remember. But her dad’s going to be okay.
Chapter Four
Canon: Polyfaceted
Character(s)/Pairing(s): Original characters (Meyers family); Brenda (Young) Meyers/Bill Meyers; past Brenda/Brett Saunders
Rating: R
Word Count This Chapter: 3,633
Warnings This Chapter: References to gunshot wounds from war and traumatic amputation.
Summary: In this chapter, Bill gets to come home post-amputation. Dawn can't really handle it, but Karen can.
Master Post
Chapter Two
Bill has his laptop hooked up to the hospital’s wireless now, so he can get on Skype. He calls Brenda when they planned by email, about eleven at night in Germany, five in the evening back home, and she answers right away. She smiles at him and types for him to wait a minute, turns away for a moment—he’s guessing to talk to one of the kids—and then puts her headset on.
“Hi, beautiful,” he says.
“Hi, babe. How are you feeling?”
“Physical therapy makes it hurt worse, but they ice it at the end, and they make sure I get my painkillers.” He shrugs. “Good as I can be.”
“Do you have a firm date for a flight home?”
“No, but I do have a roommate now.”
“And you’re on so late?” She looks disapproving.
“He doesn’t give a fuck.” Bill turns his laptop away and says, “Hey asshole, say hi.”
Alex carefully twists to one side and waves at the laptop, and Brenda makes a surprised sound. “You got Alex?!”
“Yeah. Of all the luck, right?” He turns it back toward himself. “He’ll live.”
“What happened?”
“Firefight. He has a lot of holes that he didn’t before. No new ones in his head, though.”
“Bite me, Meyers,” Alex says amiably.
Bill flips him off and continues, “We’re trying to talk the staff into giving us the same flight home.”
“Good luck with that.” She sounds dubious. “If he’s hurt badly, I doubt it’s going to happen.”
He scoffs. “I lost half my leg. Do you really think they’d send me straight home? It’s only been a week.”
She shrugs. “We’d have you on outpatient care by now. Hospital stays are expensive.”
“I’m in the most managed of managed care here,” he points out. “The army either pays here, or they pay for Walter Reed or something.”
She makes a face. “I’d rather you come home.”
Something in his chest tightens. He’s not sure he wants to—can—face his family like this. Especially not Dawn. “How’s Dawnie doing?”
“She’s… coping,” Brenda says carefully. “She’s incredibly upset, but I’m sure that’s not a surprise.”
Bill shakes his head. “I’ve always been stupid and promised not to get hurt, especially the last couple rounds here. Ever since Joyce.” She knows the rest of that.
“I know,” she says quietly, “and I understand. She’s just not doing well. She’s a daddy’s girl, you know that. She needs to know you’re all right.”
He clears the tightness from his throat. “Is she home? Can I talk to her?”
“She is. Just a minute.” Brenda takes off her headset and turns away again.
A minute or so later, Dawn appears on camera, walking toward the computer. She picks up the headset and takes Brenda’s seat. “Hi, Daddy.” She looks pale, with deep, bruise-like circles under her eyes. Her voice is hoarse, and her hair looks a mess.
“Dawnie, baby, how are you?”
She chokes out a laugh. “How do you think?”
He ignores that. “I need you to take care of yourself, Dawn. I can’t think about this if I’m worried about you, and I need to focus on healing so I can come home.”
Her eyes brighten, and she blinks rapidly. “Daddy, will you—are you coming home soon?”
“End of the month, as far as I know.”
She nods and clears her throat. “How are you?”
“I’m in physical therapy now. Doing exercises, they’re doing some other therapies to get me used to it being gone, teaching me the right way to use crutches.” He shrugs. “It hurts, but I get ice on it after, and the nurses give me good painkillers.”
“Are you going to be okay?” his strong girl asks, her voice small, and it breaks his heart.
“Brenda’s going to be there, and she knows people who can help so I don’t have to rely on the VA—her insurance is my secondary. She’ll take care of things, you know that. I’ll be all right with some help, baby. I promise.”
“Daddy, it’s your leg.”
“I’m better off than my roommate,” he says, faux-cheerful. “Guess who it is?”
Dawn stares at him blankly. “I have no idea.”
He turns the computer. “Want to say hi?”
“Is that Alex?!” she exclaims. “What happened?!”
“Let me say hi to the kid,” Alex says, so Bill unplugs the laptop and coils the cord around the railing on the right side of his bed, carefully gets out of bed, and hops over to Alex’s, pushing his tray as a sort of unreliable support. He puts the headset on Alex, since his range of motion is pretty limited, and he says, “Hey, kiddo.”
He can’t hear Dawn’s side of the conversation, so he eavesdrops on his best friend’s. A lot of talking about his own injuries and when he’ll go home, what he and Anne are going to do when he can, and then his traitorous best friend starts talking about him—and giving Dawn more explicit details than Bill wanted her to know yet. He’s tempted to snatch everything back, but that would make him look like an asshole. Instead, he lets Alex look that way—at least to him.
Finally, Alex says, “Here, I’ll give you back to your dad. Love you, kid.” He smiles a bit at whatever Dawn says, then says to Bill, “You can have her back.”
“How generous of you.” Bill takes back the headset and rolls the whole deal back to his bed, where he settles and plugs the laptop back in before saying to Dawn, “You all right?”
She looks vaguely queasy. “You didn’t tell me that stuff.”
“I didn’t want to dump it all on you at once,” he says frankly.
“Well, I asked, so don’t be mad at Alex.”
“This time,” he agrees. “When do you have your driving test?”
That, at least, gets her looking a little better, talking about that and her clubs and classes. He’s grateful for it. She doesn’t need to fixate on his leg.
They can’t be right there as Bill gets off the plane, but Brenda gets her family, Sharon included, as close as possible. She keeps checking her watch; the plane should have arrived half an hour ago, so where’s her husband?
It’s another twelve minutes before he shows up. A corporal is pushing him in a wheelchair, and Bill doesn’t look too pleased about that, though it could also be about the crutches he’s holding awkwardly around his laptop bag. There’s a bag hanging off the back of his chair, probably holding his temporary prosthesis; Brenda has an appointment set up with a physiatrist at Yale who will refer him to a prosthetist, probably also at Yale. She feels better about that than she does about him going to the VA hospital.
Dawn doesn’t bolt toward him, like Brenda thought she would; she hangs back. Instead, Sharon’s the first one to him.
“My darling boy,” she says loudly enough that Brenda and the kids can hear, bending to hug him and kiss his cheek. “I’m so glad you’re home.”
The moment Sharon releases him, Brenda’s there, bending to kiss her husband deeply. “Hi, babe,” she murmurs when they part.
“Beautiful, you’re a sight for sore eyes.” He runs a hand through her hair. “Let’s get home.”
She kisses him again, but before she can say anything, Zach manages to wriggle between them. He says cheerfully, “Hi, Dad!” and hugs him around the middle. Brenda’s pretty sure he jostles Bill’s leg, going by his expression, but he just kisses Zach’s head.
“Hi, sweetheart.”
“Mommy says you’re home for good,” Zach says matter-of-factly.
“She’s right,” Bill agrees. “I’m not going anywhere besides to see doctors for a time.”
Brenda turns and gestures to their other kids. “Come say hi.”
Dawn actually takes a step backward, but the other two come over.
“Hi, Bill,” Sam says, giving him a quick hug. Neither Brenda nor Bill has pushed Sam to call him ‘Dad’; Sam, of all of the kids, has the clearest memories of living with and being around Brett other than at visitation. Hell, Zach’s never done it. So Sam has understandable issues with the word.
“Hi, Daddy,” Karen says. She’s careful to avoid his left leg, but she hugs him tightly and kisses his cheek. “Are you okay?”
“I have good medication, and I’m home. I’m okay, Kare.” Bill looks past the four of them then, and Brenda glances behind her. Dawn’s back past Sharon now. “Dawnie, I don’t get a hello?”
Dawn mumbles something. Brenda catches Bill’s gaze and presses her lips together. Hopefully, he gets it; Dawn’s been tense, not sleeping, worrying constantly over her father. It sort of makes sense that she’s staying away. If she does, it might not be real.
“I can take him from here,” Brenda says to the corporal.
“My orders are to get him to your car, ma’am.” He doesn’t let go of the handles of the chair.
“Martinez won’t change his mind, beautiful,” Bill says. “I tried. He was told by a major. I’m just a sergeant.”
Brenda sighs. “Baggage claim?” she asks.
He nods. “My duffel.”
“Then let’s go.”
She keeps pace with the chair as they walk, her hand on Bill’s arm, reassuring herself that he’s home and safe now. Sharon takes the SUV’s keys and vanishes while they wait at baggage claim for the bag. Sam’s the one to grab the duffel bag when it lands on the carousel; Dawn doesn’t make a move toward it. Then Brenda’s phone chirps in her purse, and she checks the text.
“Your mum’s waiting at the curb.”
“Then let’s go.” Bill sounds like he’s fighting impatience, exhaustion, or both. The group of them starts to walk to the door.
“Do we take the chair?” Brenda asks.
“No ma’am,” Corporal Martinez says. “I was told to tell you that you need to rent or buy one.”
“Martinez,” Bill growls. He looks at Brenda. “If you buy me a wheelchair, I’m filing for divorce.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she assures him and pauses. “Just a chair lift for the stairs.”
He mock-snarls at her, and then they’re out the door and to the SUV. Sam tosses the bag in the back, and Dawn yanks open one of the doors so she can scramble into the back seat. Brenda regards Bill a moment.
“Sam, sit with Dawn. Babe, you get this side. Zach, get in your seat.” The car seat is in the middle of the middle, so there’s no moving it necessary for Bill to have a place to comfortably sit.
The boys do as they’re told as Corporal Martinez puts on the chair’s brakes and comes around to offer Bill his hand. Bill ignores him thoroughly, handing his laptop bag off to Brenda; instead, he kicks up the footrests with his right foot, plants the crutches down, and swings himself up in a thoroughly impressive display of upper body strength that sort of turns Brenda on. She waits by the door and doesn’t offer a hand to stabilize him; once Bill’s gotten himself onto the seat, she takes the crutches from him. Karen climbs in on Zach’s other side just after Bill sits down.
She smiles at the corporal. “Thank you. I’m sorry he’s a lousy patient.”
“We all are,” he assures her. That bodes well for the coming months. He hands her the bag from the back of the chair, takes the brakes off, and turns to wheel the chair back inside.
Brenda circles behind the car, puts the crutches, prosthesis bag, and laptop bag in the back with Bill’s duffel, and gets in the passenger seat. Once she closes the door, Sharon pulls away from the curb, and they head home.
School got out the same day as Dad got home. Karen has summer tutoring to reinforce science; she passed it, but barely, and that doesn’t prepare her for the next year at all. Sam could probably help, but he has other things to do. The fact that it’s tutoring instead of summer school means she doesn’t have a lot to do over the summer. She doesn’t have very many friends at school; she’s closest to her siblings, really, and Jeannette is one of her only friends her age. Jeannette’s busy with her grad student tutors for most of the summer, since she’s determined to start college a year from the coming fall even though she’ll only be thirteen. Karen’s sure she can do it, too. Dawn has two language classes at Capital, and Sam’s taking some way advanced math class there, not to mention physics. That basically leaves Zach, who Karen loves so much it hurts, but Zach is also five. (“And a half!” he reminds everyone who says that aloud.) And Zach spends a lot of time with Adamo, Rebecca, and Katie over the summers anyway; they all end up at one of the four houses most days, either with a nanny, Uncle Owen, Aunt Alice, or Dad and Grandma Sharon watching them.
So Karen’s been spending a lot of time with her dad and Grandma Sharon, except when Dad has appointments that Grandma Sharon takes him to.
“What does it feel like?” Karen asks one afternoon when Grandma Sharon’s in the kitchen starting dinner. She and Dad are facing each other on the couch, playing gin rummy. She’s working on getting him to teach her poker, even if Dawn says he’ll teach her to cheat, too.
“You’re the first one to ask that,” Dad says, but he doesn’t sound mad. He has his left leg up on the couch, and he’s not wearing the prosthesis; the soft plastic support around it is right there, since he’s wearing shorts, and he glances down at it. His mouth twists for a second.
Even so, Karen has to ask, “Is that okay?”
“Of course, Kare,” he assures her. “You can ask about it, I don’t mind.” He studies his hand of cards but doesn’t make a move. “My stump hurts,” he says at last. “It’s pretty sensitive, and sometimes things touching it make me feel sick. It also hurts a lot. That’s supposed to get better—the pain and the sensitivity. It’s already not as bad. The prosthesis hurts right now because it’s already painful and sensitive, and the prosthesis isn’t fitted quite right because I’m healing. That’s why I only wear it a few hours a day. They’ll start to fix the fit round the end of the month, definitely by the end of next, the prosthetist says.” He shuffles his cards around, but it doesn’t look like he really sees them. “My leg hurts.”
Karen frowns. He said that already.
“I know what you’re thinking, Kare. I don’t mean the stump. I mean the part of my leg that’s gone. It’s called phantom pain. Sometimes it also itches, and sometimes it feels like it’s twitching.”
“How?” she blurts out.
“Probably because my brain’s not used to it being gone. You know how sometimes something tickles your skin but nothing’s there?”
She nods.
“It’s a bit like that, except the part that tickles is as much not there as what’s doing the tickling.” Dad shrugs, closes his eyes for a second, then looks at her. “Does that make sense?”
“I think so,” she says, frowning again. It sounds weird still. “If it’s your brain, can Uncle Greg fix it?”
Dad smiles a little. “It’s not quite like that, Kare. It’s getting better on its own.” He draws a card, finally, but she’s not too interested in the game anymore, even though she’s way ahead in points.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah, Kare?”
He might not like this one. “Can I—can I help Mom when she helps you with it?”
“It’s gross,” he warns, which isn’t a no. “I don’t want you to feel sick.”
“I can do it.” The firmness in her voice surprises even her.
“Well then,” he says after a second, “you can start helping tonight. Maybe you can take over from Mum in the afternoon at some point.”
Karen beams. “I’ll be good at it, I promise.”
“Zach can’t help,” he cautions her, “and don’t go telling him or the other littles about it.”
“I’m not giving Zach nightmares,” she sighs. “I won’t tell. Except Sam.” Not Dawn, though. She might be talking to Dad again and spending time with him, but she won’t even look at his leg or the space where it used to be if he’s not wearing the prosthesis under pants.
“We’ll tell your mom when she gets home.” Dad taps the piles of cards between them. “Your turn.”
Karen tells Mom before dinner but after she’s had a chance to change out of work clothes into her comfortable clothes: light shorts and a t-shirt. Changing means Mom’s switched modes over to “at home” instead of “at work”.
Mom doesn’t try to talk her out of helping; she just says, “We’ll do it while Sam and Dawn take care of dishes, once Zach gets in the bath.”
Karen grins. “Just tell me what to do.”
“I will. Go set the table, please.”
Dinner is spaghetti with homemade meatballs, something Mom usually only makes on weekends. Grandma Sharon has a lot more time on weekdays than Mom does, though, especially when the little kids are at the other houses. It doesn’t taste the same as Mom’s, but it’s still good. Even so, Karen doesn’t pay a lot of attention to her food; she’s too curious about what her mom’s going to have her do to help.
After dinner, everyone splits up. Grandma Sharon takes Zach upstairs for his bath while Dawn and Sam start to clear the table, and Karen goes into the living room with her parents.
“Go get a hand towel and a washcloth,” Mom tells her. “I’ll get everything else.”
Karen nods and goes to do that. When she comes back, her mom has a pack of gauze and two different little tubs of creams, already opened, plus bottles of antiseptic and rubbing alcohol. She has her box of nitrile gloves, too. They’ve unfolded the couch into the bed they’ve been staying on, and Dad’s sitting near the edge. Mom’s on the floor.
“Ready, Kare?” Dad asks.
Karen nods. “Yeah.”
“Give me the towel.” He folds it and puts it under the end of his stump; he’s already taken the support—socket, she reminds herself—and the socks that go under it off.
“Okay, come here. You need to wear gloves to help prevent infection in case the incision line’s split at all,” Mom tells her. She takes a pair from the box and pulls them on. “I already washed my hands. That’s important in case there’s a hole in the gloves. Now I’m going to examine it. Take a look.”
Karen stares, a little fascinated. The end looks reddish and tender, and she can see the brand-new scar along the incision line. The scar tissue itself is bright pink and raised.
“You okay?” Dad asks her.
“Yeah.” She looks at her mom. “It’s healed?”
“The skin is. The muscles are taking their time—you can’t see it, but it takes them longer to grow back together.”
She nods.
“Now we’ll put the cream for the scar on.” Mom follows her words with the action, gently massaging the cream in.
“I could do it,” Dad puts in, “but it’s in an awkward spot unless I set up a mirror.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised if it makes him feel sick, but he won’t admit it.”
“Does not,” Dad mutters.
Mom ignores him. “If you do this, be really gentle. We’re doing the desensitization stuff—you’ve seen it, right?”
Karen nods. “When you tap it and touch a lot, right?”
“Right.”
“Why?”
“Because this area isn’t used to being exposed. The skin is, but the way a person’s brain makes its connections means it still thinks there’s something here. It has to learn differently still.”
“The socket helps with that,” Dad puts in, tapping it lightly. “Hand me the bottle of alcohol and the cloth, sweetheart.”
She does, and he starts cleaning the inside of his socket. She watches for a moment before turning back to what her mom’s doing.
“Now the other cream. It helps with numbing it for a little while.”
“Nice relief,” Dad mutters.
“But we only do it three times a day,” Mom continues, “so he doesn’t accidentally hurt it when he does exercises and can tell if the socket’s too tight from swelling or anything. It’s also an anti-inflammatory, kind of like Advil. The numbing is the other reason to wear gloves. You need to touch lightly with this, too.”
Karen’s sure she won’t actually get to do this on her own, even though she’s sure she can handle it; Grandma Sharon would probably worry too much, and Dawn might get upset by a kid taking care of Dad’s stump—she can’t even call it that yet, just his injury. Still, she thinks it’s good to know how to help. It makes her feel… useful. She hasn’t felt that way since they found out why Dad didn’t call on Dawn’s birthday and Dawn fell apart, and nothing Karen tried could help.
This isn’t going to make anything better for Dawn, but the way Dad hugs her after she helps Mom clean up and comes back tells her how glad he is that she could handle it. She grins and grabs the remote. “Can I pick?”
“Sure,” he agrees.
It’s not that nothing’s different; Karen can’t fool herself and couldn’t even before she saw under the socket and socks. She’s never had that ability that she can remember. But her dad’s going to be okay.
Chapter Four
