My Only Talent Ch. 22

He laughed. "So you can't lose?"

"Not with Lara, Doc. I win every time."

"What about with Suzanne?"

"Well, I have hunches about her too, but not as many as with Lara. She is much more unpredictable, not that any woman is easy to understand!"

He laughed. "Boy is that ever the truth. The more I learn about my wife, the less I seem to know! So these hunches have told you when to move forward with Erminia?"

"Yes. But in her case I kept going more slowly than the hunches told me, because I could not believe she was changing so fast."

He just looked at me for a while, the way people sometimes do when they want you to fill the silence and tell them more. I was done for now. It was certainly another subject to discuss with my Dad over the Christmas break.

"OK, Robbie. I guess that's all you want to tell me, for now. I desperately want to learn more, to learn all about it. But I will be as patient as I can be, and keep your confidentiality. But consider this: you might want to understand more about yourself before you make certain decisions, especially when it comes to having children later. "

It reminded me of one of my grandfather's favorite aphorisms. 'Having children is hereditary. If your parent's didn't have any, chances are you won't either!' My dad decided to have kids, so I probably would too, but with whom, and when?

"One other thing: Dr. Grandael seems very competent, and is likely a very intelligent and curious person. She will not let go of this until she has some rational explanation of what is going on with you. I don't think we want to tell her what we just talked about. She might not be able to resist the chance to keep investigating and to do more experiments on you. Publishing something definitive about this could certainly make anyone's career take off. I propose that you tell her that we discovered a problem with your intestinal track, such that you were not absorbing all the calories from the food you ate, and that explains the difference. Tell her you are now under the care of Doctor Dee and that he expects to have things regulated and working normally by the time your spring semester starts. And don't let anybody take any x-rays of your head, either."

I made myself another thick sandwich from the buffet, corned beef on rye with hot mustard and fresh tomato slices, and then polished off two still warm oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and one white chocolate with almonds. I wish they had these cookies at the dorm. I left without looking back at the receptionist, or even seeing if she was looking at me. I walked back toward campus, spirits suddenly soaring. No tumor threatened me with immediate death, and I was finished with my first semester of college. My most pessimistic current estimate of my grades was four A's and two B's, which I would be perfectly happy to take every semester from now on. Despite what I thought were upcoming troubles with Suzanne, I had my perfect Lara as my rock to hold onto no matter what else happened. Tonight I had to do my duty with Millie and Erminia, and if she progressed the way I expected her too, I would have to fuck both of them his evening. Duty calls!

.....

Carmencita closed her treatment notebook. Everything was updated and written up on her laptop; all the goals had been met. In fact, her latest patient, the so called 'Nando Longomonto' was actually in better shape now than before he was injured. She still had absolutely no information on how he was injured, other than 'in a fall', and according to the terms of that convoluted non disclosure agreement she had signed, she was not allowed to ask him about that, or anything else that did not pertain directly to his treatment. It had gone almost perfectly, thanks to his unrelenting effort and her brilliant new rehab techniques.

She had even tried something really brand new with him, a sexually charged reinforcement plan from a controversial assistant professor of Education up at ESU. He had proposed using it for more complex learning, but when she read about it she thought it was perfect for relearning 'muscle memory' things like she was trying to reinstall for her rehab patients. Every time 'Nando' made a new fitness plateau, she would show him a little more of her flashing smile or a little more thigh or chest flesh, or put her body in a more revealing and stimulating position near him. He watched her with obvious interest, and it was motivating him wonderfully, such that he had recovered well ahead of schedule, but it had some unintended consequences. It was programming her as much as it was him, and she began to have fantasies that when he was fully recovered he would stand up, rip off her clothes, throw her on the bed and make love to her.

She had only fallen in love with a patient once before, and that was a little cute as a button eight year old girl that had been terribly mangled in a car crash and had come back from it like a real trooper. Everyone at the specialty rehab hospital had fallen for her too, and Carmencita wanted to have a daughter like her someday, hopefully without the injuries.

But 'Nando' was very different from most of her male patients. First off he was smart as a whip. He never forgot anything she told him, and put it all together seamlessly in his mind. He seemed to intuitively pick up what her goals were for him, and why they were important, and he worked incredibly hard to reach them. There was another patient, a ten year old boy from rural Nueva Leon whose legs were injured in a school bus accident and that was apparently a savant chess player; destroying everyone in the hospital that was brave enough to play him in five minutes or less per game, and looking bored while doing it. But when 'Nando' arrived and sat down across from him, it became a 45 minute war, with both players concentrating fiercely, and the kid lost two out of three.

She asked Nando him about it and he laughed. "That kid has real talent. He could have wiped the floor with the ten year Dw..., um, the ten year old me. Fortunately I have the advantage of having read so many chess books about all the classic openings and great games. Every time I use something, he stores it away and never falls for it again. He's a great kid, too." Nando stared at her whenever she laughed, or smiled. Dare she hope that he might be as interested in her as she was in him?

In the last two weeks, she had been taking him out of the hospital to try various things and assess his strength and range of motion. He turned out to be an excellent bowler, and golfer, and even a good dancer. But when she took him dancing, she learned something about him that scared her a little. There weren't too many dancehalls in their little town, and all of them made their money by selling beer, sometimes a little too much of it to certain customers. They had been completely absorbed in each other and having a great time when suddenly the mood was shattered by an obviously drunk ranch hand who loudly announced that her date was a 'wimp' and that the 'pretty lady should be dancing with a real man.'

She realized that Nando appeared average and unremarkable in almost every way: height, weight, and build, and with his glasses and haircut he looked more like a store clerk than anything else. He almost seemed to try to look that way. She felt the tension go up in the room and was worried that her rehab plan could suffer a real set back if this burly and beer charged rodeo rider pounded on her patient. But Nando said nothing, just turned his body slightly, crouched a little, and looked calmly at the guy, showing no signs of fear or even discomfort. This was clearly not what Rodeo Boy was expecting: he might have been hoping the little clerk would head for the hills. He must have decided to up the ante in this little macho game.

"You better get your little faggot ass out o' here boy, before I tear off one of your arms and beat you to death with it!"

This engendered absolutely no reaction; Nando didn't even blink. This clearly unnerved Rodeo Boy even further. He must have decided he needed a little help, because a knife suddenly appeared in his hand and he lunged at Nando. It was almost like a dance class. Gracefully, with no wasted motion, Nando reached out and deflected the knife away, and grabbed the wrist that held it. A little sidestep and a half spin and the arm with the knife was totally wrapped up and immobilized by both of Nando's arms, and then the cowboy tripped on one of Nando's feet and started toward the floor. Before he hit the ground, Nando's other foot pushed into Rodeo Boy's armpit, she heard a muted popping sound, and the knife dropped to the floor. Then Nando was up on his feet while Rodeo Boy writhed and screamed on the floor.

She had never actually seen a shoulder being dislocated before. She was usually only involved in putting them back in. And she was absolutely certain that Nando had known exactly what he was doing, and she couldn't think of a faster or more efficient way to do it. She had to replay it in slow motion in her mind, because it happened so fast. Hadn't the ranch hand said he was going to tear off one of Nando's arms? Was that shoulder dislocation simply cold blooded irony?

She thought it probably was, but then there was a lot about her most interesting patient she still didn't know. But she certainly wanted to. What was that name he almost said? "Dw.. something"? She had gone to Eisenhower Middle School, and Dwight was the first name she thought of that fit. Maybe "Dwayne", or even "Dweezil"? Her curiosity burned. He kicked the knife away with his foot, and then came over to her to ask if she was alright. Then he surprised the hell out of her. "Let's reset that shoulder. It might reduce the paperwork on this thing." She nodded, and he knelt behind Rodeo Boy, holding the shoulder in perfect EMT class form, while she popped it back in. Rodeo Boy stopped screaming and just sobbed. Who the hell was this guy, anyway?

He sure as hell wasn't the spoiled child of that real estate asshole she had seen on TV. That NDA agreement said big law firm, and big money, but all of his clothes and things were very inexpensive stuff. Everything except his laptop computer, that is. It had an all metal case that you could pound nails with without hurting it, and a funny screen. If you were not looking directly at it, you couldn't see anything but grey. But if it was turned right at you it was the brightest and most detailed she had ever seen. He worked on 'correspondence courses' on it almost every night. When he first checked in, he had to ask the LAN guy to give him a 'PK bit' or something like that so he could 'tunnel' into some kind of 'virtual network' through the wireless connection.

Finally there was no delaying it anymore. She told him he was fully rehabilitated and ready to go back to work. He was excited and sad at the same time. So was she. She finished up her report and gave it to him on a USB drive, like the agreement specified, and asked him if he wanted a ride to the airport in San Antonio tomorrow. He said he would send an email and get instructions about when to report back to work, but in the meantime, could they go out to dinner tonight. She said yes without even thinking. What exactly was she getting herself into, here?

He had looked up the best restaurant in town and it turned out to be a BBQ joint that served on butcher paper instead of plates, and he asked her to stop on the main street for a minute, and came back into the car with a bouquet of flowers. She knew she was already lost at that moment. He told her he had never met anyone like her, and it might be because she was his therapist, but he thought he was in love with her. He wanted to wait a few weeks until he was back in his normal environment to be sure, but would she consider having a relationship with him after that. Her heart was in her throat, but she knew she had to get some information, and now was the best time. She asked him who he really was and who he really worked for.

He looked uncomfortable for just a moment, and then took out a business card and gave it to her. It said "Dwight DeWitt Fleming, Systems Analyst, United States Department of Agriculture" in Washington, DC.

She looked up, gave him what she hoped was her very best warm and loving smile, and said "Bullshit!"