Wright's Conversion

By Wilson Devereau

During high school, particularly his last two years, Addison Wright was hotly envied by every male athlete who ever saw him perform in track or basketball and had the privilege of watching him shower. They also envied him his shiny mod motorbike.

At six feet and 185 pounds Add was, from head to toe, almost unbearably handsome. His physical attributes and endowments became legendary among the team members who, behind his back and only to each other, called him Long John.

The female population of high school, particularly during those last two years, also reacted strongly: there wasn't a girl there who didn't evidence steaming in her pants when she caught sight of him. And to sit next to him was like being brought into the presence of Tom Cruise or Bruce Willis--only more so since Add was better built and better looking.

And how did Add feel about this? Well, he wasn't exactly blasé, nor yet was he impressed. He wasn't bored, nor was he interested. Add knew what he wanted in life and it was comparatively simple, although it would require education beyond high school.

There were only two things that truly appealed to Add. The stronger of the two was his motorcycle, his symbol of freedom and of the control he felt over himself and his future. The lesser of the two was sports, specifically track and basketball: they attracted and fed his sense of competition.

Where football was concerned, his firmly negative stance had bewildered quite a few people, among them not only the coach but also his dad! However, wrestling would have produced the same reaction. He avoided sports that involved physical contact. Basketball was borderline.

He had no close male friend, although several jocks had hinted broadly about how much they'd like to be with him and what a good time they could have double-dating and how much they admired his athleticism and man you've really got a super build and what's it like to be hung like that I bet the girls really go for you. The football coach was among those somewhat outspoken admirers which was probably another reason Add snubbed football.

Where and how Add had learned to turn off the male and female turn-ons is hard to say, but he knew all the answers and all of them were "no."

An only child, Add, oddly enough, had never been close to his parents--his mother was forty-one when she bore him. They doted on him but they were more like grandparents than parents. Basically Add was a loner, and his beautiful bike, a gift from the parents, was his escape from the girls' incessant yackety and the boys' childish efforts to be adults, something which few of them could expect to achieve even after a lifetime of trying.

The only girl Add thought twice about in high school was Jennifer Jarrett. Jenni was a lady and as cold as frozen salt water. Also in her favor was that she didn't even try to speak to Add. She didn't even see him. To be slavered over by young men and women is both repulsive and flattering, but to be ignored by any one of them is unbearable. During Add's and Jenni's senior year Add went after her hammer and tongs and got a date. Then another date. Then another. As the dates continued, the girls and guys finally admitted that they were a thing. Add did not take Jenni on his motorcycle. Her mother forbade it. But then again, Add would never have asked her to ride with him. It was strictly a one-man's bike.

Jenni's mother, Rachel, was what might be described as an anti-sex maniac. Jenni's father, Michael Jarrett, had died a virtual virgin, thanks to Rachel's views on the "coarseness and unspeakable vulgarity" of sex. Where Jennifer came from was not quite a mystery but almost. Rachel wanted one child and agreed to suffer the degrading act of fertilization to get her wish. Having served his purpose, Michael Jarrett, defeated and emasculated, gave up the ghost.

A curious thing about Add: when dating Jenni, he never kissed her, didn't even ask for a kiss and certainly never tried to steal one or grab one by force. This puzzled Jenni who had overheard the girls discussing boys' kissing techniques and what happened if you put your hand in their crotch.

Jenni, of course, always dutifully reported to her mother each and every word Add had spoken during each and every date, and Rachel would then supply a learned commentary on male perfidy, male brutality, the triviality of male sexuality, and the male proclivity for insensitivity.

Unsexed and somewhat unhinged, Rachel was determined that her daughter would fit the same mold, as this would, in the long run, vindicate her rampant psychotic fears and prove her right. Rachel apparently suffered a guilt complex of abnormally large proportions and was forcing Jenni to carry part of that burden. Indeed, Michael's untimely death as an escape from Rachel's sexual permafrost might well have been the motive force behind the guilt. Were that actually the case, it could then be argued that Rachel, whatever else she may have lacked, must at least have had a conscience.

As Rachel began to understand that Add never touched Jenni, she jumped to the conclusive explanation that Add was sexless and would therefore be the perfect husband for her daughter. Consequently she attempted to draw Add into the household. But the sexless marriage Rachel thought to accomplish with this move was not forthcoming. After graduation, Add disappeared into a job and Jenni saw him but once all summer. Fall came and Add and his motorbike went.

Having moved to the city where there was a state university, Add found a well-paid part-time job before he went to enroll and, incidentally, to discover that his renown as a track man had preceded him. The discovery pleased him. On his first day out and upon meeting the coach, Add knew what to expect. Taking special note of Add, top to bottom, during Add's first day in the field, the coach saw everything he wanted to see in the showers, the sight causing him to dream about Add two nights in a row.

There was an unexpected aspect to Add's enrollment: he signed up for fine arts, and his first appearance in each of the classes wowed all the girls but strongly unwowed the boys, at least most of them. In fact during his first week as a freshman, he was asked by the old maid who taught life drawing to pose nude. When Add asked what it paid and she told him, he said he was sorry but he couldn't afford it.

Add didn't want to become an old master but rather an ad agency art director and so he took every course available in advertising, copywriting, journalism, business, taxes and so on, and mixed them with his art studies. During his four years at college, he averaged almost five extra credits per semester.

Also during his four years at college he rode his glossy bike, which he kept so polished it seemed to reflect lights that didn't exist. One of his classmates observed that it was obviously the only thing he loved: She had once asked him for a date and suggested they take the bike and got turned down in record time.

A misogynist Add wasn't. He kept in touch with Jenni during those four years, writing her at the bank where she worked, and toward the close of his senior year, he wrote her proposing marriage. When Jenni received the letter she wept, because she hadn't had one single date during those four years--her mother had seen to that.

Privately Jenni questioned her mother's views, and even though Jenni had long since learned that it was impossible to argue with mother, her initiative had steadily been drained out of her. For once the gossips in town were right. They said that her mother needed someone to keep her company and to wait on her and to talk to about how terrible men were. They also said that it would all come to no good end! Jenni often fantasized about going out and getting herself fertilized and about the fun she'd have telling mother she was pregnant and watching mother choke to death after throwing a fit of magnificent magnitude. The letter of proposal changed all that, and she told no one about it, particularly her mother.

She wrote Add accepting the proposal and telling him she wanted to escape from her mother and that they should elope. She would meet him anywhere on any day he named.

Add answered that the elopement would have to wait, that he was having job interviews; but once he was accepted in the job he wanted, they would run away and get married. Since Jenni had given up all hope of ever getting married, she thought his terms were very generous. And she was thrilled at the prospect of riding behind him on his bike!

As it grew closer to commencement, the big corporations came out in full force, together with smaller and more specialized businesses. Add was interviewed by eight companies, five of which were ad agencies, and all eight offered him a job, but he took the agency he wanted. Located in Chicago, it was the largest and most prestigious of the five.

One of the interviews, however, had unnerved him, and during the night that followed the day of that interview, he was tortured by dreams of one interviewer, the owner of the smallest of the five agencies. The man was Harold Harrison Handlar, an amputee, and he was, oddly enough, the first amputee Add had ever met or ever seen. Add's sleep that night was visited by a dream which brought with it a frightening incident.

Hal Handlar, the owner of this small agency, badly needed an art director of Add's caliber, in other words a man who could handle business matters in addition to design and layout problems. His right leg was missing just below the hip, but so little stump remained that a prosthesis wasn't really practical. He had one and wore it on state occasions, but fared far better with his crutches on all other occasions.

Also located in Chicago, Handlar couldn't really compete with the others in salary or perks, but Hal was personally deeply impressed with Add--knocked off his foot as it were--and swore that some day he'd be big enough to hire that guy and pay him what he'd be worth to the agency.

Add had assigned June 11 as elopement day--he had it planned to the last detail. Knowing Jenni couldn't pack anything, he told her to take clothes to the cleaners and conceal night things and toilet articles in her handbag, promising her they would shop for more. Curiously enough he never once wrote that he was happy Rachel would be kept out of it. He had ignored Rachel from the beginning and there was no reason to recognize her now. He wrote Jenni to leave work, pick up the cleaning and go outside and walk to a certain corner and he would pick her up at exactly 5:10 P.M.

However, he failed to tell her he would be driving a used car he had purchased, so there was a bit of hassle getting her to recognize the driver as her future husband and not some vulgar pick-up. That was the only hitch other than her disappointment that she wouldn't be roaring off into the future with wind in her hair.

About ten miles out of town, Add stopped the car, got an empty suitcase out of the trunk and helped her pack. Then he told her they would be married the next day after they had got a license and gone to a justice of the peace.

"What about tonight?" Jenni asked.

"I have reservations at a motel. Two rooms. You're my sister. I'll register us both." No doubt about it: Addison was both thorough and thoroughly moral.

Everything went as planned, although Jenni was disappointed they weren't married and sleeping in the same bed. Even so, she had misgivings about the sexual aspect of marriage. She dreaded to see his naked body and hoped he'd keep his pajamas on. And as for anything else about his body, she simply refused to allow herself to think about that. Her mother's devotion to the brainwash was paying off thus far.

The next day they got a license and were married by a justice of the peace. They had dinner in a cafeteria and went to a movie and then went back to a motel that was not the same one Add and his "sister" had stayed in.

Jenni was, of course, terribly nervous. But as to having to see Add in the flesh, she needn't have concerned herself. Add had never in his life been undressed to the skin in front of a woman and he had opening night nerves to the point where he experienced slight tremors. If anyone with years of sexual experience behind them had watched Add and Jenni approach each other and climb into bed, they would have died laughing.

For the first time since he had known her in grade school, he kissed her. On the cheek. Then on the mouth. But neither of them could get aroused because they were each so nervous. He felt her body and it seemed OK, like a girl. But each time he touched her she went rigid with fear. She did not touch him. Not even his face. He touched her breast and found the nipple and she said with great firmness of purpose, "Don't do that!" He stopped doing that.

They lay there in the dark, Add sweating and Jenni not breathing much.

After perhaps five minutes, "Why didn't you bring your bike?"

There was a long pause. "We have two suitcases."

Another pause.

"Oh."

Another long pause. "I liked getting your letters. I kept them all. They're hid, but I imagine mother will find them and throw them away. Not until she's read them, of course. Shall we phone her tomorrow and tell her?"

"Why?"

"Didn't you tell your parents we were going to get married?"

"No."

Jenni was surprised. "But why not?"

"None of their business."

Jenni was seeing a side of Add she didn't know existed. She decided to change the subject.

"What did you do with your bike? Is it in Waukegan?"

"Yeah." Add was feeling frustrated and disappointed. He had looked forward to this night for over six years and by golly. . .!!!

Add systematically went to work on Jenni, fighting off her refusals and finally breaking through her defenses via her lovely breasts. He didn't tell her he loved her, he didn't tell her what beautiful breasts she had, he didn't speak. He just went at it like a dog with a bitch in heat. At times he gave himself the impression he was raping his wife and at other times he got the impression that she was allowing it, but the overall effect of the evening was one of rape, allowed or otherwise. The one thing he had been afraid of turned out to be true, but not as bad as he had feared it might be. They were not exactly correctly mated as to size, but with care he didn't cause too much damage. And the taste and feel of her body was something he had longed for. And he wasn't worried about consequences, he was armored.

On the other hand, Jenni was awash in a mixture of horror, euphoria, repulsion, attraction, and nausea because she accidentally touched that thing he was inserting so slowly while he asked her if she was OK. Her mother had warned her. But she did not cry out in pain, nor did she speak in low tone of love. She simply took it all as an ordeal, a Middle-Ages form of torture right up to the last few minutes when she suddenly felt something the like of which she had never dreamed possible--her whole body was vibrating with joy and she felt as if she were as large as the universe and she knew she was talking gibberish and she sang out and then it slowly died away and she was aware of that thing inside her and it felt so strange and she was hot beneath him and that thing was enlarging her body with its thick weight. And they drifted off like lambs after the slaughter into the land of nod.

The next day, two days after the elopement, they moved into a small furnished apartment where they could live while looking for a house. Add was full of kissyness, and wanted to hug Jenni every other breath. Just like her mother had said: They only want one thing! The apartment was tacky but it served the purpose and, the weekend past, Monday was the Big Day for Add to start his big job, commuting on his bike through lots of traffic.

The day after Labor Day, September 7, the newlyweds found a house with three bedrooms and a bath upstairs, and a living room, powder room, dining room and kitchen downstairs. There was also a basement in addition to a frustrated husband. His success with Jenni on opening night had been repeated only about once every other week since then. And although Jenni seemed to have a humdinger of an orgasm, she really didn't like sex, probably due partially to Add's lack of verbal romance. He was usually so desperately in need of relief from the pressure in his prostate, that he just plowed away without regard for Jenni. At times he got so desperate, in fact, that he often took matters into his own hands while showering. This was not what he'd pictured marriage to be: from all the talk he'd been exposed to during his young years in locker rooms and showers, he'd looked forward to much more. He had tried oral sex on her and she balked with horror at anything so vulgar and dreadful. And she had never ever taken hold of him when he was at his most ready and panting for play. So much for sex.

After a couple of months in the new house, Add noticed that Jenni never asked him what he did that day, or how things were going at the office. She had met and coffeed now and then with neighbor women, and her mother phoned her almost every morning to remind her how disappointed and crushed she'd been over the elopement and what a terrible thing it was to have a child who turned on her like that. The calls made Jenni so miserable that during the day she kept both the upstairs and downstairs phones unplugged, but she didn't tell Add about it.

One evening in mid-November, Veterans' Day, a raw damp Wednesday night, when he got home from work, Add found out. He had tried to call her thirteen times that day, all day long, and got no where. She said she was home reading, and had disconnected the phones because she didn't want to talk to her mother and hated to listen to it ring. He was stunned with the news. They had never discussed her mother, although he knew that Jenni had written her the whole story and he had wrongly assumed that Rachel had accepted her fate.

As he plugged the phone back in, he said, "Don't ever disconnect the phone again. You've got to keep in touch with the world--and with me. What if you needed to phone for help?"

"I can't stand listening to her. She says terrible things about you and calls you names. She says it's all your fault and that I shouldn't have listened to you or believed you," Jenni was giving him the essence of each phone call.

"She's trying to break us up. She just wants you to come home and take care of her. Jenni, your mother is a selfish bitch!"

"Oh! OH!! You take that right back, Addison Wright! My mother is a beautiful woman and a noble woman, and you know it!"

"I don't know a damned thing about your mother except that she was overjoyed when your father died and I'm now beginning to understand why he died--he died to be free of that vicious-tongued useless bitch! You can't stand her. I still have all the letters you wrote me and in every one of them you complained bitterly and nastily about your mother this and your mother that."

Jenni was, of course, in tears and just before Add wound up his speech she fled to the bedroom upstairs. This left Add shaking with anger and in the next second shaking with remorse. He rushed upstairs. It was the eve of their elopement, which had taken place twenty-two weeks earlier.

Jenni was on the bed with her face buried in a pillow crying. Add sat on the bed and put his hands on the small of her back and rubbed gently. She calmed down enough for him to say:

"I'm sorry, Jenni, I didn't mean any of that. I just got angry and I should know better."

She turned a tear-stained face to him and rolled over and sat up. "Yes, you did mean them because they're true. And I lied to you." He frowned in disbelief. "When she phones it isn't to say bad things about you, it's to say bad things to me about how awful I am and what a selfish and unthinking child I am and what did she ever do to deserve me. Every day it's the same thing. I honestly believe she's going insane. She never says anything different. I wish you could hear her." She threw her arms around him. "She scares me. She really does."

"Does she threaten you?"

"Well she says God's going to punish me for being so mean to her and for running away like that. She says God is going to do terrible things to me."

"Oh. Jenni! You don't mean she--

"I do mean it. She talks like that every day."

"Why don't you answer her by telling her to shut up? That would startle her so much she'd be quiet for at least a minute."

"Add, you don't know my mother. I talked back just once when I was eight years old and she beat me black and blue with a hairbrush. She never again ever touched me to punish me, but that once was enough. I remember it was just before my father died and he asked me how I got so many bruises all over me and I told him."

Jenni was almost crying again with the memory and Add took her in his arms. He kissed her while she lay in his arms passively and after she had allowed him to undress her, they started having sex together with neither of them saying a word, and with her just being passive. While he was building to the climax, a macabre thought fell into his head and it occurred to him that he was having sexual intercourse with a dead body.

The thought so disturbed him that he lost both his stride and the wind in his sail.

"I apologize for my lack of consideration. Please forgive me." He then got up and went to the bathroom. Jenni lay there looking tousled and wanton and thought how right her mother was about men and what they want.

Jenni still lay there while Add went downstairs and rummaged in the refrigerator for something to eat. Having found very little, he went to the staircase and called up.

"You want to go out for a bite to eat?"

"No."

Nothing else, just `no'. He answered, "I'm going out for a hamburger. Back in about an hour."

"OK."

Add put on his bike leather jacket and helmet and took off, but he hadn't gone more than six blocks when a car hit him from behind, knocking him into an on-coming car which side-swiped his left side and then and sent him careening on his left side about 100 feet down the street, smashing into a parked car, with an oncoming car running over the rear wheel of the bike while he was still in the seat.

He didn't lose consciousness but lay there feeling the blood collecting around his left leg and arm and he knew he was badly hurt. Some people then moved his bike very slowly and one of them fell to the pavement and there were voices and some one was touching his arm and his leg and they talked but he couldn't understand because they were so very far away. And then he was aware of lights and being in a room and pain in his leg and arm and people cutting things with scissors and darkness closed in again.

The phone jangled the half-formed thoughts in Jenni's head. "Oh God!" she said out loud, "it's that crazy woman again." The phone rang again, and she realized it was the downstairs phone. This one by the bed was still not plugged in. She leaned over picked up the wire and snapped it into place just as the phone rang again. She picked up the handpiece.

"All right, what do you want now?" she said angrily into the mouthpiece.

"May I speak with Mrs. Wright?" a woman's voice said with some bewilderment. Jenni winced.

"This is she. I'm sorry but I've been getting nuisance phone calls."

"Mrs. Wright, this is the Samaritan Hospital calling. Your husband has been in an accident and it's rather serious. Could you come down to the hospital? The doctor would like to talk to you."

"Oh God! Is he still alive?" Jenni was cold with fear.

"Yes, but he is seriously injured. Could you come to the hospital?"

Jenni was shaking. "Yes, I'll be there as soon as I can."

"Thank you. Come in the main entrance and tell them at the information desk who you are and they will direct you. Thank you."

Jenni started crying as she threw her clothes on. Dressed, she grabbed her purse and got the car keys off the hook in the kitchen. Fortunately she knew where the hospital was. She also noted that it was only a little after eight.

Once parked at the hospital she ran to the main entrance. The woman at the information desk directed her to Emergency where she found a nurse who asked to help her.

Jenni explained and the nurse took her into a small office where two men were in some kind of conference. She interrupted.

"This is Mrs Wright, Dr. Melanski." The two men turned and looked at Jenni.

"Thank you," Dr. Melanski said to the nurse who nodded and left. "This is my colleague, Dr. Overland. Mrs. Wright, my news is not good. Your husband was struck from behind by a drunk driver--he's now in police custody--and with such force that his motorcycle smashed into another car and then dragged him quite a distance. His left leg and arm were badly mangled."

The doctor stopped talking because Jenni had turned dead white. Both men helped her to a chair.

Jenni took several deep breaths before she spoke. "Are you trying to tell me he's going to be a cripple the rest of his life? You can't tell me that. God won't allow it. I'm not going to be married to a cripple. Where is he? What have you done with him?"

"Mrs Wright, he has been taken to surgery where an exceptionally fine orthopedic surgeon is going to do everything he can to repair the damage."

"Repair the damage? You mean he can sew his arm and leg back together again?

"No, Mrs. Wright," Dr. Melanski said and looked at Dr. Overland. "Most of his left leg was destroyed and much of his left arm as well."

"You can't do that. He's left-handed. He's an artist. He needs his left arm to draw with and paint with. You have to put his left arm together and make it good as new."

"Mrs. Wright." Dr. Melanski paused to bring his patience into sharper focus and to give him strength to shatter her completely. "Mrs. Wright, there is not enough left of either arm or leg to put them back together. What is left will become only what is left. He has lost his left arm and his left leg."

Jenni interrupted with a muffled scream and buried her face in her hands. "You have no right to do this to me," she said, her face still hidden behind her hands. The two men exchanged glances again. "You're helping God punish me. It's God's punishment and you're doing it for Him."

"Mrs. Wright," Dr. Overland spoke for the first time, "I know this is excruciatingly painful for you, but you must understand what has happened. You must understand what the future will bring with it because of what's happened. You must accept this as something you cannot change, something your husband cannot change, something we cannot change. We can help you and your husband come to terms with this. He's the one who'll suffer most for what's happened. At this moment he's starting a new life. He's going to need your help. You're his wife and your help will be invaluable to him. Without you he'll want to give up. With you he can become whole again. It's up to you to make the difference."

Jenni looked at Dr. Overland with hatred. "You're blaming me. You're putting the blame on me. Well you listen to me. It's his fault, he wouldn't go anywhere without that motorcycle, and now look what he's got himself into! Serves him right. My mother warned me. She told me this marriage would come to no good."

"Mrs. Wright, your husband is in surgery now," Dr. Melanski said with unexpected firmness, "we're asking you to wait here until the surgery is finished so we can keep you informed of the outcome. Will you please do that? It's on the eighth floor. There's a comfortable waiting room and a small serving bar where you can get coffee and a light snack."

"I already know the outcome, Dr.--whatever your name is. I'm going home. You have my phone number to call me if he dies." With that she rose from her chair a bit unsteadily and stalked out of the room, disappearing down the hall towards the information desk.

Dr. Overland looked at Dr. Melanski. "And I thought I'd seen them all and heard everything!"

It was close to ten when Dr. Winneger and his two assistants had finished their task of molding living flesh into a shape that could be receptive to the prosthetics that might help Add resume some of the pieces of his previous life. His left arm had a residual of about seven inches which would support a prosthesis. His left leg had only about six inches of residual, but even that would be enough for mobility, once he caught on to manipulating it.

When Add opened his eyes in recovery, it was dark. At first he thought he was blind but he saw a door open and a man walked in and came to the bed quietly. He was dressed in white.

"Where am I?" Add asked in blurred speech. "It's dark. I can't see. My arm hurts and my leg hurts. What time is it?"

The male nurse carried a hypodermic needle with which, after dabbing Add's right arm, he injected a drug. While he worked he said, "It's almost three o'clock in the morning. You need rest, and here you can sleep as late as you like. You're going to feel much better in the morning."

There was no response from Add other than Add's looking at the man's face and closing his eyes. The next time Add opened his eyes he saw two different men standing there talking quietly. The room was light and Add could see it was a hospital room. The men stopped talking and looked at Add.

"What's happened to me?" Add asked. He looked down the bed at his left side and saw the mounds caused by bandages. He also saw that there was no left leg. He made a choking sound and looked at the two men. "Did my arm go too?"

"Yes, Addison, it did. The accident was a very bad one. You are lucky to be alive."

Add looked at his left side again. "Being alive is the worst thing that could happen to me. Why didn't you let me die?" He had hardly got the words past his lips when panic struck full force and pried a loud cry out of his throat. He choked the sound off and held his breath. His face turned red.

"Addison, I am Dr. Winneger. This is Dr. Melanski. We know that at the moment you are not able to accept yourself but we also know that this will change."

The words had the desired effect: he took a deep breath. "Oh God!" Addison screamed. "Get out of here and leave me alone and take all that shit with you!" He started wailing again and, covering his face with his right hand, rapidly rocked his head back and forth.

"Let me die I want to die!" He tried to sit up but the sudden pain the move created made him cry out and lie back again. "Goddamnit goddamnit goddamnit goddamnit goddamnit" he muttered until he had no breath left. Then he started crying very faintly, like a lost child, and didn't make a sound but the tears flowed. Dr. Melanski got a tissue from the box on the bedside table and wiped his face and helped him blow his nose, but it didn't stop the flow of tears. A male nurse came in, raised his eyebrows in a question, both doctors shook their heads and the nurse left.

With tears still flowing, Add said, "Would someone call my wife? I need to see her and talk to her. I need her. Didn't anyone call her? Can I talk to her?"

Dr. Melanski answered. "I talked to her this morning on the phone and she said she was coming as soon as she could. In fact she's probably already here. Can we bring her in?"

"Please." Add was still crying as Dr. Winneger left the room. Within seconds Jenni came in looking white and ill.

"Add," she said softly as tears started in her eyes.

"Jenni!" Add said. She walked over to the bed and Dr. Melanski evaporated.

She took his hand and looked at his face and the two of them wept in silence.

"Have you talked to the doctors?" Add asked after he got himself together.

"Yes, a little."

"How long will I be here?"

"They said probably about six weeks."

There was silence as Add faced that information. "What time is it?"

Jenni looked at her watch. "Five to eight."

"You didn't phone the agency yet?"

She shook her head.

"Did you call your mother?"

She nodded.

"What did she say?"

"She said--" but Jenni started crying again and didn't finish.

Add looked at her hard. "I know what she said. She said it was God's punishment." Jenni cried more loudly. "Didn't she?" Add demanded. Jenni nodded. "That woman wants to destroy you and destroy me. She almost succeeded. Next time she'll succeed. Well, let her! They should have let me die last night. Give the old bitch what she wants!"

"Add, please!!" Jenni begged and wept in silence.

"I'm sorry." Add stared at the ceiling in an effort to think something constructive. "Would you please call the agency? Tell them I won't be in today or tomorrow or the day after tomorrow and any other day. Tell them I died last night."

Jenni was crying hard now. "Add," she begged and rose.

"Call them now, but not on this phone. I don't want to hear anything they have to say. Go home. Call them from there. Get out. Get out! You're driving me crazy with that bawling." She stopped breathing and looked at him in fear. "Kiss me and then leave." She leaned over and pecked him on the mouth, turned and walked out.

The moment she left the room Add broke down all over again and wept and tossed his head from side to side muttering repeatedly, "Where do I go from here?" Then he was silent for perhaps thirty seconds.

Suddenly he exploded. "You son of a bitch, you slob!!" He yelled at the top of his lungs. That seemed to release something for he closed his eyes and added quietly, "Stop it!" just as the door opened and the male nurse hurriedly entered. "Stop it!" he repeated.

The nurse stopped in his tracks and intently looked at Add, who had opened his eyes when he heard the nurse come into the room. "I'm talking to myself. Is that allowed?"

"Sure that's allowed. I do it all the time. I'm more interesting to talk to than most of the people around here. You OK?"

"No, I'm not. . .uh--what's your name? Are you a nurse?"

"My name's Ed. Yeah I'm a nurse. Why were you being so rough on yourself, calling yourself those names. Slob. Son of a bitch. Or were you calling me those names? You're OK! The only trouble is from now on, you just have to see OK from a little different point of view."

"Sure. Goodbye. You're leaving. Thanks and goodbye."

The nurse smiled. "Hey! I like that! You got what it takes. I'll be listening for more where that came from." And he turned and walked out.

Tears were coming back. "You slobbering son of a bitch!" Add said through clenched teeth. "Self pity. Self pity. Self pity. You've sunk to this. Crying because you've lost half of that body that knocked everybody out. Except your wife. Except your wife. So OK cry your eyes out, you shithead, it won't do a bit of good. Go on you jackass, feel sorry for yourself!" But try as he might, he couldn't stop it, but sobbed noisily until he was exhausted and drifted off to sleep.

Ed woke him with some medication and some juice. "Are you feeling a bit hungry?" he asked.

"No." Add answered.

"You OK?"

"No."

"It's nine-thirty. We've had a phone call from a man who'd like to see you this morning. He said it was about business. We told him you were not well and was not receiving anyone."

"What was his name?" Add asked.

"He didn't say but there was something about an ad agency. Here take your pill."

Add tried to sit up but groaned in pain. His entire body was giving him agony from head to toe. Ed raised the bed so that Add was sitting half up, and he swallowed the pill and the entire glass of juice, which was unidentifiable but sweet and maybe had apricots in it.

"They're coming to fire me. My boss. I work for J. Edgar Hoover." Ed looked puzzled. "That's a joke. When we get ticked off at the agency, we call it J. Edgar Hoover."

"You said you weren't OK and here you are making jokes. I'll remember this. He said he was coming right over, but I told him you couldn't see anyone."

"When he gets here you send him in. Let him gloat. Let him see me in all my one-armed, one-legged glory. Maybe he'll learn something. Maybe I'll learn something. He'll fire me and where do I go from here. Oh God oh shit!" And Add started again.

Ed looked at him with complete sympathy and understanding. "Yup," he noted, "right on schedule." Ed left.

Back at the nurse's station, Ed started doing chart work when a man on crutches attracted his attention. He looked at the man approaching and noted that he had lost his right leg very high, almost at the hip. `Jesus!' he thought. `I hope this isn't the guy to see Wright.' Then he shrugged. `Might as well get it over with. Wright's got to face it sooner or later. Might as well be sooner.'

The man stopped and looked at Ed. "I would like to see Addison Wright. My name's Handlar. I just happened to hear about his accident from the agency where he works. I run an agency and tried to hire Wright, but the other agency outbid me. How is he?"

Ed looked carefully at this man. Between 45 and 50. Rugged, in excellent shape for an amputee--no fat. Handsome in a way. "In exactly the shape you'd expect him to be in."

"Depressed?" Handlar asked.

"That's on its way. The amputations took place last night. He's just discovering he ain't what he used to be. You may know something about that."

Handlar was impressed. "Yes, I may just happen to know something about that. May I see him? Maybe I can do something for him."

"You can see him, and if, at the moment, you can do anything for him, we'll know there is a God. And you're Him."

Handlar smiled. "I like your positive point of view."

"I'm a realist. And also something of an amputee nursing specialist. You all go through the same brutal routine. If you were to look twice, you'd see how positive I really am. Go on in. He won't throw you out. He also just discovered only a few minutes ago that his body took one hell of a beating in that accident last night. He's in 321."

Handlar left Ed with mixed feelings. Obviously Ed knew amputee patients well. The next morning is not really the time to call, but he remembered his next morning. At 321, he opened the door and walked in without any announcement.

Add was red-eyed, wet-faced and in bad shape.

"Hello, Add. You remember me?" Handlar said, standing about two feet from the bed on a level with Add's chest. Add had a good view of the missing leg.

Add's stomach turned over with muffled violence and made his voice sound half strangled. "You're the guy who interviewed me. Get out of here."

"My name is Harold Harrison Handlar. Yes, I interviewed you. And this morning I heard what happened last night. I've been through this, too, as you can see. I know a little about what you're feeling and thinking, because I felt something similar when it happened to me." He paused to let that soak in.

When he resumed, he talked very quietly and very slowly. "We're all losers. I'm a single loser. You're a double loser. But it's good to discover that we losers aren't alone. I know you think you're alone, but you're not. I'm not alone either. I thought I was, but I'm not. At the moment, we have each other." He paused. Add just looked at him.

"When I woke up and learned that my right leg was gone for good I cried. I cried for two weeks." He smiled. "That's a lie. I cried for two months. I saw no one but the nurses and doctors. No one with a missing limb came to tell me that I wasn't alone. It would have helped. It would have been a shoulder to cry on, a shoulder that understood, and I swore then that I would not let that happen to anyone else in that position if I could find out about them and visit them early."

He looked at Add with compassion. "Luckily I found out early about you. I called your agency this morning and Jenkins told me what had happened. He said he would be over. I'm glad I got here first. My shoulder is at your disposal."

Add looked at him with emotions that Handlar couldn't read, and then he held up his right hand and Handlar took it in both his hands and held it tightly. Tears were running down Add's face. He said, "Thank you for coming. Thank you for your shoulder. I hate self pity, but I guess there's nothing else left. Where do I go from here? I want to die. Did you want to die?"

Handlar's heart leapt with joy. Add had asked two important questions. His visit was working the way he wanted it to.

"Your last question first. Yes, I wanted to die. I prayed for it, but something inside wouldn't allow it. Like my plans didn't include death until later. Later. Later. That's what I kept hearing. Your second question--where do you go from here--is easy. You go right on. At the moment you're on a forced vacation, but when the vacation in over, you go back to work and go right on."

"It's going to be a long vacation. Did you know I'm a southpaw? I've got to start over and it may never work. I'm through as an art director."

"A southpaw? So? You're not through as anything. Sure, train your right hand. You know why I wanted to hire you last June? Because you have all that work in advertising business and administration behind you. You can write copy. You're educated, and until they amputate your head, you're just as employable as the next guy. Your future hasn't changed one shred. Some of your personal life will be different. Far more inconvenient than anything you've experienced up to now. But you'll get used to it and learn to live with it, we all do. Can I sit down? My leg is getting tired."

"Sure, pull up a chair."

Handlar released Add's hand and retrieved a chair and dragged it back to bedside. He sat and Add held out his hand again for Handlar to take.

"Keep talking. I'm still coming apart at the seams. You're giving me hope." Add's face was still drawn, his eyes still red.

"You want to hear all my story?"

"Yes," Add said. "Give me something else to cry about."

Handlar noticed with satisfaction the humor imbedded in that remark.

"I'm forty-eight years old. When I was seventeen I was working for a supermarket doing odd jobs like restocking, carrying groceries to the customers' cars. One day right after school was out, I'm walking between the building and the parked cars and I notice a car had pulled in and parked with the rear of the car to the building. All the other cars had headed in, not backed in. Well I had to pass the car and I noticed it was one of those old models with a pointed fin jutting out from each rear fender.

"Just as I got to the right rear fender and without any warning it literally jumped backwards, the pointed fin pinning my leg against the building. I knew that I was in trouble, but I couldn't feel anything. People got the car pulled away from me and I fell to the ground and then I must have passed out, or partially so, because I don't really remember much except finally arriving at a hospital. Then I woke up in a room and discovered that my right leg was gone. I went into panic like I didn't know existed. There was no one with me and I started screaming and yelling and two nurses came in and one of them took hold of my hand and talked to me but I just went on yelling and calling for my mom and dad.

"And now this is the time to tell you that my mom and dad had been divorced for almost five years and my mom had remarried and moved away to the west coast and my dad had turned me over to his sister who wasn't interested in raising a kid, so I didn't have any family. My aunt did come to see me that evening and said how sorry she was that a thing like that should happen and that she had phoned my dad. Had he come in yet? I told her no. And she left after about another minute or two. That same evening my dad came to see me and he was drunk and told me not to worry that it was nothing. And then he left. I was in the hospital four weeks and he came back only once. My aunt came to see me once a week. When I went back home to her house, she would hardly look at me. I spent the summer with trying to get a leg and getting the insurance all settled and that fall went back to school for my senior year. From then on I've worked my ass off and now I have my own agency."

Add looked hard at Hal Handlar and then turned his face to the wall. He was crying again. "I don't know where to begin," he said while the sobs began in earnest.

Hal didn't say anything but held Add's hand tightly and let him cry it out. After several minutes of silence, Ed came in, looked at Hal, nodded and smiled, and withdrew.

After turning and looking at Hal for a long minute, tears still running down his face, Add said, "What about your agency? You can't spend the day sitting here watching me feel sorry for myself. You better get back to work."

"Since you're not there to run the place for me, I suppose you're right. But since you seem to be running it from here, I'm not going to worry too much about it!" Hal smiled and picked up his crutches from the floor and rose to his foot. "You haven't seen the last of me," he said. "That's a warning. Whenever things seem to be at their most hopeless, remember you're not alone." He smiled and crutched out without turning back for a last look.

Add felt less desperate after Hal's visit. He had the impression that somebody cared. Jenni came in for about five minutes and left. That afternoon Jenkins came to visit and the visit was OK, but not totally satisfactory. Jenkins only said that he had put Add on sick leave and half salary and that his job was waiting. For some reason or other, Add did not remind Jenkins that he was a southpaw.

Hal's visit stuck in Add's mind. He remembered everything Hal had said, how he'd looked, and that night Add had a recurrence of that dream he'd dreamt a few months before, only this time it was more weird and far more graphic. It woke him up and frightened him. He started to think about it, but quickly turned it off.

That first week in the hospital was the bad one, but there was one piece of good news: The drunk had insurance and the company had stepped in. Otherwise Add didn't do much but think unclearly, arriving at no conclusions, no solutions. Ed had kept him going with stories about rehab which would begin his third week, when the incisions were more firmly fixed.

Jenni came in about once a day but didn't stay long and seemed to be remote and uncommunicative. She didn't know what to say. Add tried to visit with her, but Jenni wasn't that kind, he was discovering. In fact, once or twice he caught himself thinking that he'd married a stranger. When she was with him, she either looked at the wall above his head or at his face.

Hal also came in every morning on his way to the job. It got so that Add looked forward to those early visits--in spite of the fact that the disturbing dreams recurred.

In rehab they started putting him to work to learn to write with his right hand. It was hellishly frustrating, but he stuck with it. In fact everything he did was frustrating. Just trying to get into a wheelchair was a nightmare in itself. They taught him to use a crutch with his right arm so he could go to the bathroom on his own. They encouraged him to be on his right leg as much as possible. But he had no appetite and he began to look thin.

Hal Handlar continued to come see him every day, which Add enjoyed because it seemed to give him the impetus to get through the day. He had become dependent on Hal and Hal always wanted to know how the right hand was coming along. Hal cared where Jenni didn't seem to give a damn. Jenkins on the other hand came back only once, staying long enough to tell him they couldn't rehire him and that he would be getting severance pay of two full weeks salary. On Hal's next visit, Add told Hal the bad news. Hal was outraged by Jenkins's bad behavior.

A prosthetist named Frank started coming in as well, and Add became acquainted with him and they began working toward a temporary limb.

After three weeks of rehab and five weeks total in the hospital, they told Add that because he was such a healthy young man and such a fine specimen of the human race, he was ready to leave and good luck with the prostheses and keep us posted on how thing are going.

Add told Jenni, "Tomorrow's my last day here. I'll be home where I belong. I have dreamed of getting back to you, Jenni. I'll be able to sort things out with your help."

"Yeah, that's just great," Jenni had said without a trace of enthusiasm.

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