Dev Dreams, Volume One

  DEV DREAMS

  Volume One

  by Ruth Madison

  A collection of short love stories featuring physically disabled heroes

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright 2011 by Ruth Madison

  Print Edition Copyright 2011, available at most online retailers

  Discover other titles by Ruth Madison at http://www.ruthmadison.com/current-fiction/

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  1)On Saturday Afternoon

  2)Mariann, Dancing Alone

  3)Home Country

  4)The Happiness Pact

  5)Guru's Grace

  6)Knight in Shining Metal

  On Saturday Afternoon

  Em Matthews had a mother, a father, a roommate, and a boyfriend, but only one friend. His name was James. She met him at the hospital where she worked. Em volunteered doing odd jobs. Technically, she was an intern and there to get some contacts in the field she was studying. In practice, she swept a lot of floors.

  She wasn't really sure that she wanted to go into physical therapy anyway. To her mother, going to college was just a distraction until Em got married. She thought this would be a good choice because Em would meet eligible men, but then her mother had found Kyle and that was that. James would not be what her mother considered an eligible man.

  Em didn't pay any attention to him at first. She walked through the corridors of the hospital silently, keeping as close to the walls as she could, usually with her head down. She spoke to no one but her supervisor. Em had always been painfully shy, and she could barely get through the normal interactions expected of people at school and work. But James said hello to her as he passed in the hall. She was so startled that she didn't say anything back, but watched his back as he rolled down the corridor. Even though he was in a wheelchair, he didn't seem like a patient. It was a power chair, but still he had an ease with it that she hadn't seen in the many newly injured men and women who lived in this wing.

  The next day she saw him again. This time she attempted a small smile in his direction and he smiled back, stopping his chair in front of her. Uh-oh. Now she would have to say something. She wasn't good with people; they scared and overwhelmed her.

  She noticed immediately his adorable smile and his brown hair sticking up in all different directions very charmingly. He wore thin glasses and had a little stubble over his chin. His body seemed lumpy under his shirt and his hands were bent sharply at the wrists, the fingers pressed together. “I'm James,” he said. “I do speech therapy with the stroke patients.”

  “Oh,” Em said, “I'm Em. I'm nothing really.”

  He frowned. “What was that?” As usual, her voice was so soft that a person sitting two feet in front of her couldn't hear her. She tried again. “I just said I'm nothing important here.”

  “Oh, I doubt that,” he said. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Em?” She never noticed her rising intonation but her boyfriend, Kyle, teased her about it a lot.

  “Is that short for something? Emma? Emily?”

  Em looked down at her shoes as she said, “Ember.” People always laughed at her name because she was so unlike a fire.

  “Suits you,” he said.

  “You’re joking,” she said.

  “No. I’m serious. You have fire in you, and isn’t that what an ember is? The potential for a fire?”

  Em smiled a little. She liked that idea.

  “Hang with me, kid,” James said. “We'll find your spark.” He grinned and Em felt warm inside.

  The next week Em was rubbing Windex slowly across some glass doors that led out into a garden beside the rehab center. She was lost in thought, watching all the people sitting outside in wheelchairs. She wondered why she was always invisible. No one would notice her watching because she was like a ladybug: tiny, harmless, unnoticeable, and quiet. Throughout her life, her student report cards had listed her as “timid,” “meek,” and “shy.” The people here were supposedly worse off than she was in life, so why was she jealous of them and their forced companionship?

  “Hello, Em,” she heard behind her. She turned and found James looking at her. She smiled.

  “Want some help?” he continued.

  “Okay,” she said softly, tucking her hair behind her ear.

  He rolled near the glass door sideways and moved the arm closest to the door off its rest. It hovered shakily in the air until he got it pressed against the glass. Em reached over and put a paper towel between his hand and the door and he began moving it around.

  The head nurse, Nancy, saw them and laughed. “Going to join our janitorial staff, Jim?” she asked.

  “I’m keeping my options open,” he said cheerfully.

  Nancy shook her head and walked on.

  “Say,” James said, “I have a meeting to try to expand the budget, do you think I should go with a corporate look or boyish charm?”

  No one ever asked Em's opinion. She didn't know what to say. After a few moments of pondering she ventured, “I think maybe it would be best to look as serious as you can—professional.”

  She was surprised to see James actually considering her words. “Suit it is,” he said, looking up at her. He nodded toward the door and said, “Not bad, right?”

  That was how it began. For the first time Em was involved in the life that happened around her. Jim brightened her workday. She swept the stroke patient's floors while James was there and listened to him work. The patients rarely even noticed she was there. James and Em took breaks together and went to the cafeteria. They sat outside in the garden and watched people, making guesses about their lives outside the hospital. They played scrabble together in the rec room when no one else was there, James knocking letters onto the table and telling Em where to arrange them. She kept trying to tell him she had a boyfriend, but somehow she could never manage to say it.

  One night she got back from work to find her roommate, Julia, sprawled out on their couch with books and papers all around her.

  “Hey.” Julia called out as Em dropped her key in a porcelain dish by the door.

  Em smiled back and hung her coat up on a hook.

  “Your mother called,” Julia said. “She said she’d try you tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” Em said. She had to write a paper tonight and she hadn’t had much time for schoolwork these days. The paper was due at the end of the week and she still didn’t know what the topic was going to be. She sat down at her computer at the desk next to her bed. But she didn’t see the blank white screen and the blinking black line—she saw James.

  She loved his shaggy brown hair that looked soft, and his smile that always made Em smile back. There was a spark in his eyes that she had never seen anyone direct at her before. He laughed easily and he respected her opinion.

  Without a word written on her paper, the doorbell rang; a moment later Julia called out, “Em! Kyle is here!”

  Em hurriedly ran her fingers through her hair and smoothed it down before Kyle arrived at her doorway. She smiled and stood to walk over and kiss him lightly.

  “Are you ready to go mini golfing?” he said.

  “Oh, I forgot that was today.”

  “You’ve been forgetting a lot lately, Em. I worked hard this week so we could go out mini golfing. I thought you’d be looking forward to this; I know how much you like it.”

  “Yes, of course I do, let’s go and get my coat.”

  It was true that mini-golf was Kyle and Em’s favorite thing to do together. One of the f
ew fun things Em could do, Kyle sometimes joked. He said she was too serious and always focused on her schoolwork. Ember didn’t see herself as serious; she just had fun in more subdued ways. Em’s favorite thing to do was take a book, curl up on a big chair with rain rattling the window, open the cover, close her eyes, sniff the pages, and read for hours. Kyle only read for work.

  “Why are you frowning like that, Em?” Kyle asked, “Putt-putt doesn’t take that much concentration.”

  Em lifted her eyebrows and hit her orange ball. She missed, but it didn’t matter. Half the time she lost the game on purpose so Kyle wouldn’t sulk on the way home.

  Em got home early that night, refusing Kyle’s offer of coffee after the game. She still had that paper to write.

  The next day Em's mother called early enough in the morning that both girls were still at home. Em knew it was her and steeled herself for an unpleasant conversation. For the first twenty minutes, Em's mother listed all her neighbors and what they were up to, then all the people at church and all the news about them. Finally she said, “I can hear you biting your nails.”

  Em looked down and saw that her hand was near her mouth. “I’m not,” she said.

  “Don’t lie to your mother.”

  “I should go—the hospital will be expecting me.”

  “It’s cute that you have a job and all, but don’t let it distract you from more important things. I’ll be coming to visit in a few months and I expect to see your nails in good shape by then. Keep up with the manicures.”

  “Yes, mother,” Em said. She looked down at her plain nails, which had been bitten down to the finger.

  “Appearances matter. I don't know how many times I'm going to have to tell you that. Ask Kyle, he doesn't want a girl with stubby nails.”

  So she did. That evening she called Kyle and asked what he thought of her mother's assertion that her nails were ruining all her prospects in life. “Yes,” Kyle said. “It's a problem. I thought you were working on it.”

  “I am.”

  “An unkempt appearance is unprofessional and unattractive.”

  “I'm mostly kempt, though, aren't I?”

  “It's the details that leave a lasting impression.”

  Em didn't argue. She was tired of Kyle and her mother ganging up on her, though. She was tired of feeling ugly. At the hospital the next day she was still thinking about it.

  “What’s wrong?” James asked.

  Em looked down at her hands. “Do my nails bother you?”

  “What?”

  “My nails.”

  “Your nails?”

  Em nodded. She held them out to him so he could see her stubby short fingers and almost complete lack of nails. He leaned forward to look at them and suddenly Em felt acutely aware of some kind of electricity in the air around them. His skin was so very close to hers, his mouth inches from her fingertips. An unexpected urge rose in her to brush her hands up the sides of his face. She pulled her hands back abruptly.

  “They look fine to me,” James said, raising his eyes to hers and twinkling in that way that he did.

  Em coughed and made an excuse to get back to work. She almost tripped as she hurried out of the room. After she finished her chores, she started walking home in the dark night. Her arms tingled as she thought of his skin being so close to her. She saw his eyes in her mind and for some reason she turned around and walked back to the hospital. The still bright lights inside were a harsh contrast to the night outside. In the rehab wing, though, everything was dim.

  Em hurried to the nurse's station and said, “Where is James?”

  “What's that?” The nurse cupped her hand behind her ear.

  “James? Do you know where he is?”

  “Oh, I think his shift ended.”

  Em hadn't noticed how high up her heart felt until it sunk back down. He'd be home already. The nurse continued, “He'll be in J wing.”

  “Oh,” Em said. She wondered what he was doing there, but perhaps he had loose ends to tie up after work. She walked over to J wing, a residential hall, really more like a nursing home, affiliated with the hospital.

  The hallways were empty and Em had no idea how to find him. Her voice was too soft to call for him. She kept a hand against one wall as she slowly walked from one end to the other, stopping abruptly at a painting hanging at the end of the hall. She crossed to the other side and began walking back the other way. What was she doing? Why wasn't she just going home? Her stomach clenched at the thought of returning to her little apartment, her schoolwork, her boyfriend. She kept pacing the hall until an attendant walked by.

  “Excuse me?” Em said. She had to repeat it twice before the attendant noticed her. “Do you know where I can find James?”

  The man pointed and said, “Room 304.”

  Em followed where he had shown and gently pushed open the door, stepping into the room. There were two beds: an old man on one and James on the other. He was wearing blue pajamas and his wheelchair was empty beside him. He didn't see her right away, as he was looking over at the other man and gesturing his wrist at the basketball game on the television.

  “Hi,” Em said softly. James turned his head to the door and his face dropped. She had never seen him look so serious. “What are you doing here?” he said.

  She hated that he looked at her and seemed upset. “I don't know,” she whispered, “I just, I wanted to see you.”

  “Now you see me,” he said and his voice was frighteningly still.

  There was a question on her face that she was afraid to ask. He answered it anyway, “I live here. You're a PT student; you have to know that I need care.”

  “I didn't think about it.”

  “Well, now you know.”

  Fear was racing up and down Em's veins and words were becoming jumbled in her head. She didn't know how to tell him that it was fine, that it didn't bother her to know that he lived in a nursing home. This wasn't her familiar James. She wanted him back.

  He wasn't looking at her. Em also looked down and then she saw his bookshelf. Three small shelves beside his bed, packed two layers deep with paperback fantasy novels. She rushed forward and dropped to the floor between the bed and the wheelchair.

  “I have this one,” she said, pressing her small hands against one of the spines. “And this one. And this one too.” She pulled one out. “I haven't read this one yet. Do you think I could borrow it?” She looked up at James, who was straining to see her from his position on the bed. He smiled and nodded.

  Something on the television screen happened and the old man cheered, startling Em. She stood up and brushed off her skirt.

  “This is my roommate, Gerald. He's 92,” James said.

  “Nintey-two,” Gerald shouted, pointing at himself.

  “Yes,” James said loudly, “I told her.”

  Gerald returned to watching the screen. Em glanced over at Gerald and then looked back at James, feeling a melting in her chest seeing his ruffled hair. “Will you go to the garden with me?”

  “Now? You're crazy.”

  “Please,” Ember said.

  “Can you get me onto my chair?”

  Em nodded vigorously. “How?” she said.

  He directed her to a transfer board, instructed her how to place it. “Come closer; let me get my arms over your neck.”

  She bent her knees and leaned into him, but she was still unprepared for the dead weight of his body and he slid far too quickly to the edge of the wheelchair.

  “Oh God,” James said.

  “Sorry.”

  “It's okay, we made it, we're good,” he said. “Just give me a little push to the back of the chair.”

  “Hurrah!” Gerald cried from across the room.

  James looked relieved to get the back of his hand against the wheelchair joystick. Em was also relieved for him to be back in control. She didn't want the responsibility.

  Em poked her head around the door and made sure there was no one in the hall. Jim's wheelchair whi
rred behind her as she slipped down the corridor. The sound was very soothing.

  The paths outside were smooth and wide, but James pulled ahead and directed his chair over the low grass and behind a group of shadowy trees. Em followed and stood shyly in front of him until finally she darted forward and kissed his lips. “Come and sit on my lap,” James said.

  Em blushed, but she climbed onto his lap without a word. She lay her head back against his shoulder and felt the rough stubble from his jaw against her forehead. She matched her breath against the rise and fall of his chest behind her. “I've been wanting to do this for weeks,” James whispered in her ear.

  As soon as he said it, Em knew she too had been wanting to do this almost from the first moment she met him. Nestled up against him felt so right, like he was a cocoon and she a caterpillar.

  “Help me get down to the ground,” he said.

  She stood up and he leaned against her. She tried to lower him slowly, but they both tumbled onto the grass. With the moon as the only light, Em untangled his feet from the wheelchair's footplate and straightened his body. Then she lay down beside him and touched the side of his face with the back of her hand. They were silent for a few minutes, enjoying the night air and crickets.

  “I’m going to get fired for this,” Em whispered.

  “No one has to know,” Jim murmured into her hair. He kissed her and she gave up protest. His fist was under her shirt, against her back, and her mouth was on his neck. He tried to pull her shirt off and she helped him. Then she pulled off his pajama top and threw it onto the empty wheelchair behind them. She straddled his body and her bra rested against his thin, bare chest. Her hands stretched across his shoulders and his neck. His fist ran down from her neck, between her breasts, over her stomach, and down one thigh.

  “Have you ever done oral?” he asked.

  “Um, no,” Em said. She didn't know what he was talking about, actually, so it was safe to assume she hadn't.

  “I want you to take off your panties, then come up here and put your knees on either side of my face.”