The corridor is quiet at this early hour. Monitors in the surrounding rooms chirp like mechanical crickets. It is another sleepless night as I stare motionless at the ceiling, trapped in a plaster cast from armpits to pubis.
Titanium rods are attached to the cast and extend above my head securing the halo traction which is anchored to my skull with four stainless steel screws. Head movement is impossible, even if I weren't paralyzed from the neck down.
You may ask yourself, well how did this happen? The Sunday before graduation from high school, the parties stacked up. First stop up north at John's, then Cindy and Tom's, and lastly Mark G's. At the last minute, everyone headed to the pool at Laura's house for a pool party.
Some smartass showing off for Mia the cute exchange student from Brazil, said he could dive out from the ledge on the shallow end through an inner tube and end up in the deep end. The first time he made it, thinking that was easy, tried to do it again.
The second time he had to cut his dive short, made it through the inner tube, but caught the edge of the drop-off into the deep end. The finale of the two jumps, he ended up floating dead man's style, face down.
A girl in the pool pulled his head up with his long red hair, and he said to her, "I think I broke my neck." She pushed him back underwater thinking he was joking.
Swim team members eventually pulled him out of the pool, and an ambulance was called. His parents a couple of blocks away thought, 'Boy that's close, hope it's no one we know.' Quite the day, and by the way, I was that eighteen-year-old smartass.
I hear nurse Katherine pushing her cart down the hallway. That lone wheel wobbles to its own beat, a welcoming announcement of her near arrival. Nightly, during her shifts, she silently checks on patients, leaving the six-bed ward I'm sequestered within until last.
With the three other patients in my ward checked on, Katherine slips into my curtained space with bowls of hot water for a cleansing bath.
My eyes land on her as she moves towards my hospital bed. Her soft hand reaches for my wrist as her fingers find my pulse. Surely she notes that my pulse is elevated by her presence, but her sponge baths are epic!
She draws back the light blanket and sheet surveying what isn't shrouded in plaster. "Hello, Jonathan," she coos. My erection struggles to fully engage as the condom drainage that is taped to my cock isn't at all forgiving.
Knowingly, her simple greeting and my partial arousal make it easier to unwrap the tape securing the condom. As she tenderly peels the medical-grade duct tape off, I wonder if I will have any skin left, or will it be callused and numb?
Katherine gently rolls me to my side placing a warmed blanket underneath me and rolls me to my back, proceeds to place a warm, moistened, washcloth over my semi-erection. My cock left soaking in the warmth, she baths the rest of me, asking what I had been up to today.