Andrew
Thursday. The routine of my fucking life. Get up, work out, shower. Dress. Today the housekeepers came, and when they were finished I ran two loads of laundry and answered the door to Tessa’s air conditioner repair crew, who got her key from me and started work at her house. I turned on my across-the-street feed and kept an eye on it.
Today was doctor visit day, and Dr. Arnaud showed up just after one. He was a black man in his mid-fifties with close-cropped hair, wearing a comfortable short-sleeved button-down shirt and khakis. It was a casual outfit, but he still managed to look like a man who was not only working, but smarter than anyone else in the room.
He took my blood pressure, checked my heart and lungs, and asked me questions. Except for the legs, I was probably Dr. Arnaud’s healthiest patient; I didn’t have anything else physically wrong with me. His semi-regular visits were primarily about the meds I was on.
The suicide attempts meant I was depressed, of course. There was anxiety in the mix, as well as PTSD from the accident. They tried different drugs that were meant to help regenerate my nerves, though none of them had worked so far and I was off them at the moment. Medicinal weed jacked up my anxiety and insomnia, so that was a no go. There were drugs for pain and for sleeping that I said no to. Still, my blood usually contained a mix of some kind of cocktail.
Like I’d told Tessa, it wasn’t the chair. It was the man that was in it.
“Things are looking good,” Dr. Arnaud said when we were finished. He was sitting on my sofa, writing out notes and a couple of prescription renewals. “You’re in prime shape, Andrew, so much so that I’m not sure why I need to keep coming here. You could come to the office sometime.”
“And leave this paradise?” I asked, gesturing around me.
“Ah, the sarcasm. Still in full effect, I see.”
“It’s all I’ve got.”
“Is that so?” He paused his scribbling to point his pen at my monitor feed. “You keep looking at that shot of the house across the street.”
“My neighbor is getting her air conditioning fixed while she’s out, and I promised her I’d keep an eye on it.”
“Isn’t your neighbor an elderly lady?”
I hate talking to people, but when you see the same people enough times, a few things inevitably slip out. “The elderly lady died and her granddaughter moved in.”
Dr. Arnaud blinked his dark brown eyes twice at me, and basically saw everything inside me like an X-ray. “The granddaughter is pretty,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.
I scratched my beard. I was going to trim it as soon as he left. “No comment.”
“So she is, then. What does she do for a living?”
“At the moment, she’s at a photo shoot, modeling bras.”
“Good lord, son.” Dr. Arnaud rifled through his classy leather messenger bag. “Hold on a minute.” He found a stack of brochures and picked out four of them. “Take these.”
“What?” I took them and looked at them. “You have got to be fucking kidding me.”
Spinal Cord Injury, Sex, and You.
Yes, You Can Still Have Satisfying Sex!
Couples Intimacy After SCI
26 Positions To Try
“Give them a read,” Dr. Arnaud said. “You might find them interesting.”
“Why is everyone so interested in my sex life? And do you just carry these around with you?” I flipped to the last one. “Twenty-six positions?”
“I’m a doctor, so I carry a lot of things with me. And yes, twenty-six positions. You can try some with your bra model.”
“For fuck’s sake. She isn’t my bra model. And I’m probably the most sexually frustrated patient you’ve ever had, but this is still a bit much.”
“Sexual frustration isn’t healthy,” Dr. Arnaud said without batting an eye. “As your doctor, I don’t recommend it. Actually, if you could alleviate it, you might be able to get off some of these meds.”
I glared at him. But I didn’t give back the brochures.
“Okay, that was a joke,” Dr. Arnaud said, though he’d shown no sign of laughing. “Sexual activity does not actually alleviate depression, anxiety, or PTSD. However, healthy sexual habits release endorphins and raise dopamine levels in the brain. It’s good for you. There’s no reason you can’t have a healthy sex life, Andrew. I’ll leave you some condoms.”
“I don’t need condoms.”
He gave me a stern look. “Believe me, you do. As your doctor, I won’t hear otherwise.”
“No, I mean—”
“I know what you meant, and I’m not buying that either. Look, I treat a lot of patients with SCI. It’s my specialty. The healthiest ones find a way to have regular sex, and some of them are married. With kids, even.” He took some packets out of his magical bag. “Though it’s a bit early for kids if you’ve just met this bra model, so as I say, here are some condoms.”
There was movement on my security feed, and I saw a car pulling into my driveway. A familiar car. Nick had texted me earlier, saying they had landed safely and were home.
“Shit, my brother is here,” I said. “You have to leave.” I looked at the brochures in my hand, the condoms on the table. “Oh, Jesus.”
Dr. Arnaud was pulling a small bottle from his messenger bag. “I have some lubricant, too. It’s probably going to be helpful.”
“What? Give me that.” I gathered up the brochures, the condoms, the bottle. “You carry lube around, too? What the hell, doc? You’re worse than Donna the wellness therapist. You sure you don’t want to put some crystals around my house?”
“Crystals are not scientifically proven,” Dr. Arnaud said, finally closing his goddamned bag and standing up. “Lubricant, however, is.”
“For Christ’s sake, get out of here already.”
He left while I wheeled quickly to my bedroom and dumped the loot into the drawer of my bedside table. He must have let Nick in my door while he was exiting, because next I heard a familiar growly voice: “Hey fuckface, we’re back. Where are you?”
I slammed the door and wheeled back out to the living room. Nick was standing there in his usual worn jeans and tee. He had Evie with him, her red hair tied up in a messy ponytail, a smile on her face at the sight of me. They both looked tan, happy, relaxed, and, yes, completely sexually satisfied after two weeks of nonstop, uninterrupted banging.
Jesus. Seven years of perfectly content celibacy, and all I could think about anymore was sex.
“Andrew!” Evie said, coming forward. She was wearing a pretty sundress. She leaned forward and kissed my cheek. She smelled like suntan lotion and happiness.
Fuck, it was hard to be in a bad mood when Evie was around. “I see you’re still married to my brother,” I said to her. “If you’re in distress, blink twice.”
“Ha ha,” she said wryly. “Here, I brought you a present.”
She dropped a gift bag in my lap, and I opened it. Inside was a statuette of a Hawaiian girl in a grass skirt and coconut bra—classic kitsch. I pressed the button on the base and she started to gyrate, her hips circling mechanically as a few notes of tinny music played. “Welcome to Hawaii!” came a high-pitched recorded voice as the girl danced. “Welcome to Hawaii!”
I sighed and turned it off. It really was hard to be in a bad mood when Evie was around.
“What did Dr. Arnaud say?” Nick asked, dropping onto the sofa.
“He said that after two weeks without you here, I’m healthier than ever,” I replied. “I should probably move to Montana.”
“Did you work on Lightning Man?”
“A little bit.”
Nick’s eyebrows went up. I usually worked on Lightning Man for hours a day, escaping into the comic-book world I loved so much. I’d still done a good amount of work in two weeks, but I’d been distracted by Tessa.
“So that’s it?” Nick said. “You just hung out here and worked?”
“What?” I was distracted again. The air conditioning guys were finished across the street. I watched the feed as they locked Tessa’s door and put her key in her mailbox, like I’d told them to. I noted the time. I’d offered to send Tessa updates, but she told me that models whose phones are constantly pinging on set look unprofessional. Instead she’d call me when she had a break.
Nick repeated himself. “I said, nothing happened while we were gone? Nothing at all?”
I pulled my gaze from the security feed and looked at him. Even though he was sort of scowling at me, he looked happy and relaxed.
It was good to see my brother. He was bossy and rude and he gave a shit about me, even when I was being a dick. The push and pull of his presence had been an essential part of my life. But he was married now, and I remembered the panic I’d felt the day he left, the fear that I had no idea how I would get through two weeks without him. And yet it was two weeks later, Nick was back, and here I was, just fine.
Was that a good thing or a bad thing? I had no fucking idea. Who was I if I didn’t depend on Nick as my lifeline?
“No, nothing happened,” I told him. “I don’t have a very eventful life.”
Nick glanced at Evie, and a knowing look went between them. The kind of married-people look I’d have to get used to for the rest of my life.
“That’s bullshit,” Nick said, looking back at me. “I already talked to Mom, and she says you have a girlfriend. Named Tessa.”