Packback
4. Trauma
My girlfriend was mad at me. Something was wrong with my startup and she thought it was my fault. I just wanted to get away, to go somewhere with less stress, less pressure, somewhere people liked me better. I knew such a place existed but I couldn’t think where it was or what it was called, and Lauren was yelling at me and I just couldn’t focus. I tried to speak words that would help her understand what it was like but my tongue was thick and slow and I couldn’t see and there was something stuck in my throat and shit, why did everything have to HURT so fucking much?!
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. About once per second. Like a heartbeat but faster than mine.
“Doctor, he’s conscious,” came a voice, a woman’s voice, concerned or even alarmed.
“Tough sonuvabitch, I’ll give him that. Anesthesia!” A man’s voice.
I faded away but the dream kept returning, an endless loop, no way to continue, no way to escape, no way to ...
Someone always seemed to be crying. Softly, shaking, sobbing, always something. Sometimes one person and sometimes another, a third just once. Sometimes a man’s voice. A bunch of times it felt like the room was filled with busy stressed-out people, but that seemed to happen less often as time went on.
The dream fractaled, curlicued. Other memories or dreams intruded. Lauren faded into the background. Megan faded in with Greta, Glyn, Graciela and Firencia, Doe and Brit and a few others. Their faces and voices first, then their names. Then a dark time. I took a long shuddering breath.
“He’s awake,” I heard Greta say. The sound of running feet.
“Scott.” A whisper. Megan’s voice. A soft kiss on my cheek, which glowed after.
I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t move my jaw and there was something blocking my throat, something I could breathe through but not talk around. I couldn’t see and my hearing was off, like it was only coming from one ear. I could move one of my arms, a little, the other not at all. The arm I could move seemed to be strapped down. I twisted my wrist, hoping someone would notice and free it. I seemed to be experiencing everything from a deep fog, like I could only focus on one thing at a time and even that not very well, like I was high. Behind that fog, there seemed to be a dull roaring pain, like a big waterfall from across a wide valley. I remembered walking in places like that, before the dark time.
Where the fuck was I? How the fuck did I get here? What the fuck was going on?
Someone took my hand in hers. Megan.
“Scott,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry. You’re in a hospital, you’ve been hurt very badly, but you’re getting better. You’ve been unconscious for two months. I’ve missed you so much.”
The best I could muster in reply was a muffled gurgle.
“I love you, Scott. I want to be with you forever. I want to help you get better again.”
Another muffled gurgle.
“Your jaw is wired shut, Scott. They broke it in three places. You have a tube down your throat.”
I wriggled my wrist again.
“Can we unstrap his arm?” Megan asked.
“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” was the reply. A woman’s voice I recognized from my dreams, but no face or other recollection to go with it.
“Please,” Megan said. “He’ll be good, I promise.”
“Umm hmm,” I gurgled.
“See?”
“Hold his hand,” the other voice said. “Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid.”
I gurgled more at that. I must’ve done something pretty stupid to get myself into this mess in the first place. I felt Megan’s hand in mine, then straps being undone from my upper arm, elbow, lower arm, and wrist. I raised my arm. It was a lot harder than it should’ve been ... I seemed incredibly weak and it felt like my arm was shaky. Megan helped, guiding my arm where my hand wanted to go. I remembered how we had a kind of nonverbal communication, how we could feel what each other wanted, something that’d never been true with anyone else.
Wait, there had been one other person, but in a very different way.
“Flake,” I wanted to say, but it came out as just another gurgle. Get back to that later.
Megan helped raise my hand to my ear, the one I couldn’t seem to hear through. I tapped it with a finger.
“Is something wrong with your ear?”
“Umm hmm.”
“Can you hear?”
“Umm umm.” I could also make a humming ‘Oh’ sound that suggested ‘No,’ at least to me.
“But you can hear through your other ear?”
“Umm hmm.” An ‘eh’ sound suggested ‘Yes’ to me.
“Is there something we can do to make it easier for him to communicate?”
“It’ll be another two months before we can remove the wires from his jaw or the tube from his throat.”
I held my hand to my ear as if holding a phone. Then flicked my finger as if over something round beneath it. “Oh oh eh,” I gurgled. Then I pointed to my ear that still worked.
“He wants his rolodex,” Greta said. “About time, mister.”
“Eh ee,” I said: ‘Yes please.’ Megan helped moved my hand to my eyes. One ached but the other seemed OK. I touched that one. It was covered in gauze and taped to my face.
“Oh no,” said the woman’s voice. “We don’t know what kind of optic nerve damage he might have.”
“Well, one of his ears doesn’t seem to work and you didn’t know that,” Megan said, her voice angry for the first time I’d ever heard. “Maybe he can help with this, too.”
The other woman’s voice sighed. “Fine. Cut the lights and close the curtains. He hasn’t seen daylight for two months. We’ll take it slow.”
I heard the sound of curtains closing, then a corner of the tape holding the gauze over my eyes lifted. Just a corner. I wriggled my wrist and Megan helped raise my hand to my cheek, which seemed swollen. I made the ‘OK’ sign.
A little more tape lifted, a little more light got in. I made my hand flat, like I meant ‘Stop.’
“You OK?” Megan whispered.
“Eh,” I said, but moved my hand a little, like road construction signalers do while holding “Slow” signs. After half a minute or so I made the OK sign again. It took almost five minutes, I think, and I could see again, at least from that one eye. I tried to smile. My first sight was of Megan’s concerned face. I could feel tears on mine.
“No, don’t cry honey, it’ll mess up your bandages. I’ll do the crying around here.” And she was, but she was smiling.
“Eye Uh Oo,” I gurgled, and then she was crying a lot more. “I love you, too, Scott,” she gasped.
“Rolodex?” Greta said after a minute.
“Eh.”
I found Rolf Lake’s name, pointed to it.
“Aay,” I said, meaning ‘Flake.’ I put my hand to my ear as if holding a phone. Megan did the talking.
I was only awake for about two hours a day. They were reducing my meds as I slowly recovered, but there were still an awful lot of painkillers. Flake came in three days later. Greta had dolled up, and every suspicion I’d ever had about how she could look was confirmed and multiplied. Greta was absolutely unreservedly drop-dead supermodel gorgeous.
I said ‘Holy shit, Greta. You’re going to stop Flake’s heart. Hell, you might stop mine. Remember how I said some of my friends might not be able to handle being with a woman as fine as you? Well, even I had no idea,’ but it all came out as gurgles.
Greta patted my shoulder. The one that didn’t ache as much. “Trust me, Scott ... I know what I’m doing.”
Even beautiful Megan looked like pale winter sunshine next to Greta in full battle dress.
Flake walked in. Saw me in the bed, hesitated like he wanted to walk to me but was maybe a little afraid to, took a couple steps closer, then looked around at the rest of the room, Megan holding my hand, Greta standing tall next to me, a hand on one hip, challenging. Flake’s jaw dropped.
“Shit, Scott, somebody should beat me up if that’s what it’ll take to be in the same hospital as you.”
“Don’t tempt me,” Megan muttered.
“Good morning Rolf,” Greta said, her voice a purr.
Flake swallowed hard. “Call me Flake,” he said, his voice cracking. “Only my Mom calls me Rolf.”
“I’ll call you whatever I want, Rolf,” she said.
“Yes Ma’am,” he said, then finally tore his eyes away and back to me. The doctor was out, she would check in later this afternoon, but a nurse was nearby, behind the tangle of cables to all the monitors on wheels.
“Damn Scott, I didn’t know. I tried calling, a whole bunch of times, but no one would tell me anything when anyone answered at all.”
“You identified yourself as Flake?” Greta asked.
“Usually.”
“Not a good name if you want to get anywhere when your card in his rolodex says ‘Rolf Lake’.”
“Nobody but ...”
“Shut up, Rolf,” Greta said. “You’re here now, that’s all that matters. We have no idea what Scott sees in you, but you were the first person he called for.” She sauntered closer, slid up next to him, held his hand with one of hers, her slender fingers almost as long as his, put her other hand on his shoulder, fingertips caressing lightly to his neck. She was 5′11″ and he was a couple inches taller, but in her 2-inch heels they were the same height. “You’re cute,” she said, “and you work out, I can tell. I like that.”
Flake looked like he was ready to bolt from the room, or swoon, or scream to the heavens in joy.
“You’re not a nurse, are you?”
“Nope,” she said, smiling. “Just a friend of Megan’s and now Scott’s. We’ve fucked a bunch of times and I’ve had my fingers up his ass, and he loooooooooooooved it.” Her smile had grown wider and infinitely more mischievous.
“Well ... damn ... girlfriend.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself ... Rolf. Cute isn’t everything.” Then she kissed him on the cheek, slow, with tongue, breathing into his ear before pulling slowly away.
“I’m Megan,” Megan said. She was holding my hand and seemed reluctant to let go. “Scott and I are ... together.”
“He mentioned you,” Flake said. “He said he’d never met anyone like you, that he liked you very much. Later he said he was head over heels. He’s never said anything like that before, so you must be pretty special.”
“Damn right she is,” Greta whispered in his ear. “So am I.”
Flake shivered. “Have you called the spaceport? Scott said they’d offered him a job.”
Megan and Greta looked at each other.
“I’ll do it,” Flake said.
“Cute and useful, too ... I like you even better now,” Greta whispered into his ear, then her tongue followed, flicking lightly. Flake shivered harder.
They had dinner together at a really nice place. Greta wasn’t hurting for money but Flake, as an e-suite marketer, made out a lot better than me in the various startup settlements. They brought extra for Megan. I got my food from an IV, as usual. Then Greta and Flake disappeared to his hotel. Megan slept on a cot next to me, holding my hand, which the doctor had insisted be strapped down while I was unconscious even though I was behaving while awake.
The waking portion of my days grew longer as the months stretched on. I had three surgeries on my ear but never got my full hearing back. They unwired my jaw and removed the breathing tube from my throat. Megan was away for several hours a day. “Working out,” she would say, and she did seem to be getting stronger, her edges harder. She seemed angrier in general, though she was gentle and loving with me. They removed the patch from my other eye, and while my vision wasn’t right, at least I could see. They got me some weird glasses, uncorrected on one side with a very expensive lens on the other. I didn’t like them ... it seemed to make my good eye fuzzy, too. My ophthalmologist told me I would get used to it but I didn’t want to ... I wanted my old body back and I knew if I could get used to one thing I should be able to get used to another. My vision actually did sharpen up over the fall and winter but was still nowhere near what it’d been from that eye. I got a less extreme pair of glasses that I was happier with. I was getting out of bed with regular PT now. They finally released me from the hospital, which was at UCLA—they’d flown me there from Visalia as soon as I was stable since Visalia didn’t have the facilities to treat all my various ailments. A partial list:
- One arm broken in three places
- One leg broken in four
- Six broken toes
- All five fingers of one hand plus the hand itself
- Clavicle fractured in two places
- Three broken ribs
- My jaw shattered
- A fractured orbital
- One badly ruptured testicle
My face had also been beaten and kicked into a bloody pulp. It was still a bit lopsided, though they told me it would improve. My internal organs were OK, thank goodness. The testicle had been one of the things they’d paid most initial attention to since restoration was only possible if corrective surgery was performed very soon. They’d performed three surgeries in less than 3 days. It seemed to work now, but they told me my testosterone levels would never fully recover, and they’d forbidden me from having actual sex for several months. Greta came by one night and milked my prostate while Megan stroked my cock. I was very hard and my ejaculate flowed copiously, thick and yellow from months of disuse at first and then thinner and white until there just wasn’t any more in me, but they kept me from orgasming. It actually felt really good, if strange—no one had ever done that to me before. I felt relieved afterward.
I’d been unconscious for most of the beating, but Megan saw it all and remained deeply traumatized. She couldn’t talk about it and didn’t want to try but Greta showed me the statement she’d written for the trial. Megan had read it in front of the jury without breaking down, with only a couple small emotional deviations from her written statement. I’d incapacitated two of the six men while Megan stomped the crap out of the one who dragged her away, then put the guy who dragged Greta away on his knees, but they fell on her and kept her from doing more. She got bruised, one of their hands down her shorts and another under her bra, which caused those men three broken fingers. Greta ran for help and the cops came while Mike and his remaining friends tried to drag Jack and their two incapacitated buddies away. This time there was closed-circuit camera footage to back up our stories. All six of the fuckers got sentenced to at least five years, though probation was still an option after two years for Mike, Jack, and one of the others. It hadn’t been the first sentencing for the other three. Megan’s mother and sister bodily separated her from me and took her home for two weeks, indoctrinating her with detailed firsthand stories of all the evils men do, mostly from her mother’s experience with her father but reinforced by Megan’s experiences with me until she couldn’t stand it any more and returned. Before that it’d just been Greta and a bunch of nurses, many of them students. I’d finally been released to my little house in South Pasadena, with 16/7 nursing care. Another health insurance benefit left over from my startup days, but it’d also cost 5 years of my savings.
In January, Greta and Flake told us they wanted to buy a place of their own together on the water in Laguna Beach, and they wanted us to buy another place two houses away. My lease wasn’t up yet but we visited. The house was crazy expensive but not bad considering the location and the weak market at the time. We made offers and those offers were accepted. We ended up moving before my lease in South Pasadena was up. I had to pay the extra months of rent, of course. The new place was much nicer, much bigger, and the location was unbelievable. My savings got pretty well cleaned out but I accepted the offer from the Mojave Spaceport, and could do almost all of the work they wanted from home.
Glyn visited the hospital twice and twice more in South Pasadena. I’d been unconscious for all four visits. She’d brought a camera crew with her the last three times—she’d wanted to produce a long-format documentary about me. She only took a few photos on her first visit and had become an emotional wreck as soon as she saw me lying there, broken and trussed the way I’d been.
Before we left, Megan told me she wanted to do two things with me, the first inviting me to visit what she called her exercise studio, which turned out to be a taekwondo dojo, or whatever the Korean word for it is. She was standing for her black belt. Greta had known and told Megan’s sister, but no one else. Her sister flew out, and with Greta and Flake, we all watched. Glyn’s camera crew filmed it.
“Glyn couldn’t stand to see you so broken up, and she knows you’re still ugly,” Greta said. “She doesn’t want to see you until you’re pretty again, the way she remembers you.”
‘It would be nice if that happened,’ I thought to myself.
There were a certain number of compulsories, many of which involved high kicks at a dummy that looked like they would have been devastating if done to a person. There were a lot of oohs and aahs from her fellow students, who seemed awed. From knowing her as well as I did, she seemed absolutely furious even though her movements were smooth and graceful, almost balletic. It seemed inconceivable to reconcile that kind of grace with that speed and power and anger, but there it was.
Four people came out two at a time in full pads, even more extensive than the ones I’d worn when helping with aikido. With both pairs, Megan kept her distance until one made his move, then knocked him unconscious with a single, surgically precise kick, very quick but not as hard as she’d been kicking the dummy earlier. Then she attacked the other, standing him up with one kick and, with a yell, blasting him completely off his feet with a second, something like six feet backward. The ones who weren’t unconscious tried to jump up immediately, the way I once showed everyone I was OK and still eager, but they seemed unable. All had been conspicuously wary, trying to avoid being hit. The unconscious men woke after a few seconds.
One of the women in the audience, a black belt herself, whispered to me “No one will spar with her anymore, not even the men. She’s too fast, too powerful, too fearless.”
‘Too angry,’ I thought to myself.
Finally the master teacher came out to spar with her, both wearing headgear but no other padding. He countered everything she did and I could see her frustration mount. Finally she was able to slip in two punches past his guard, and he gave her two in return, everything deflected enough to avoid any real damage, then from one side of the mat put one fist into his other palm and bowed to her, the whole place erupting in cheers and wild applause. She returned his salute. One of the other students brought out a black belt and the master teacher fitted it around Megan. She grimaced. I could see she was still seething, but at that moment it was the closest she could come to a smile.
There was a reception afterward. Megan’s sister wouldn’t stand close to me. Megan sought out the men she’d kicked, apologized, and gave them a brief hug. Then she let her teacher, Master Kim, know that we would be moving, so this was her last visit to the studio.
“Please, come twice more. I want you to meet some people and demonstrate what you’ve learned. You’re the best student I’ve ever taught.” Megan glanced at me, her eyes skittered one way and the other, then she nodded. She didn’t want to smile but then she tried and it seemed to fit. She relaxed. “I’m very proud of you,” he said, then bowed, and she bowed back.
“Thank you, Master Kim,” she said. “I would like to ask if you know a good place near Laguna Beach. Not taekwondo but something like muay thai.”
“I will not say I’m not disappointed,” he said, “but I know your heart is not in competing. I know a place in Irvine. Also a pencak silat place in Costa Mesa that may be more suitable for your needs. These are violent arts but you are fearless, Megan. I also recommend Brazilian jiu jitsu. Do not ask me about Chinese or Japanese. You will do well no matter what you try, but remember, tae kwon do is not just for competing. Any time you wish to return, any instructor would be happy to have you, but I would be, especially.”
Megan seemed a little taken aback and a bit choked up. “Thank you Master Kim, that means a lot, especially from you.”
There was a reception afterward. Glyn’s camera crew paid as much attention to me as it did Megan.
“Megan and I agreed to let Glyn film this, but you weren’t a position to consent,” Greta whispered to me.
“I wouldn’t, but it’s Glyn.”
Greta nodded thoughtfully. “You were fond of her, too.”
I nodded. “I still am, I suppose. But I haven’t seen her in months.”
“We have,” Greta said, grinning.
The second thing Megan wanted to do came later, at my little house, after a catered in-home dinner with a very nice pinot noir, just the two of us. We sat on the back deck, listening to the sounds of the city, me glorying in her company and her sweet embrace, reflecting on how well she’d done today and how much she’d accomplished, all without me suspecting a thing. We lay together on an extra-wide chaise lounge. She snuggled into me. We’d both showered, and she smelled and felt wonderful, her lips on mine tasting just as good. I remembered how her smell and the glow I’d felt from her goodbye kiss on the cheek had been one of my best memories of her, that first day on the trail, and I told her. I was hard. It’d been almost two months since she and Greta had milked me, with nothing else happening in between, so my balls were pretty damn full.
“Let’s make love, honey,” she said. “You’re officially cleared for sex as long as I’m gentle. It’s why I scheduled my black belt for today. I’ll milk you but this time I’ll make sure you come, and it’ll be like that time with Greta except that it’ll also be like it was for you and Glyn, long and slow. We’ll work up to the kind where I’m rough with you as you get stronger. I look forward to that very much, Scott. We can talk about it more after we move, but tonight, let this just be about love because, Scott, I love you.”
“I love you more than life itself, Megan. You are by far the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
“I’m not done making everything with you better, Scott.” She was stroking my very hard cock through my shorts, lightly. “Let’s go inside.”