Free Mica (Rebel Wayfarers MC) by MariaLisa deMora

to this chair and this life.
    He’d been standing to the side of one of the tractors, reading a clipboard of the maintenance needed for this rig. He was watching idly as Dickie ran the lift to pick up the tractor so the mechanic could work on it. There was an abrupt grinding noise, and then shouting. Something picked J.J. up and threw him face first into the wall, trapping him there. He had pushed ineffectually at the wall, unable to move away.
    Twisting and seeing what had him pinned, he knew why he couldn’t move. The tractor had slipped off the lift, and he was immobilized between the big wheels of the rear axle and the bay wall. He was surprised there was no pain, and he could clearly hear everyone yelling at once, but there were no constructive suggestions.
    It figured he’d have to organize his own rescue. “Hey, Marty,” he yelled, “call 911,” and people quieted down some. “Dickie, see if you can get the lift back down. Maybe the truck will slide back. I’m stuck, man. I can’t move here.”
    He heard Marty yelling into the phone, and twisted the other way to see Dickie looking at him with horror on his face. “Richard Rupert, see if you can put the lift back down,” he barked out an order as if he was still in the Army, using his brother’s proper name to try to snap him out of it, and as he did so, he felt a twinge of something not-quite-painful in his lower back. Dickie didn’t shift, just kept looking at him.
    “Don’t move, J.J.. Don’t move anything,” Marty screamed at them. “The ambulance is on the way.” Sliding as best he could between the truck and the wall in order to be next to J.J., he started asking questions. “Where do you hurt? Can you breathe okay? Where are you bleeding?”
    J.J. shook his head. “I’m just pinned, Marty. Get the damned truck off me.”
    Shaking his own head, Marty said, “Not moving you until the ambulance folks get here, J.J.. Just stay with me, man.” Marty’s voice was high with tension and fear, and J.J. wondered what he could see from where he was standing.
    J.J. felt something wet on his chin and lifted a hand to wipe the spit away, but his hand came away red. That should mean something, but he couldn’t decide what, because he was getting tired. “Marty, I’m tired, man. Call Danny…tell him I’m going home?”
    Marty’s eyes were big in his face. “Sure, sure, J.J., I’ll call Danny. Stay with me…”
    And J.J. didn’t hear anything else for a while.
    Waking days later in the hospital, J.J. found he no longer had a spleen, one of his kidneys, an appendix, or a gallbladder. Apparently, the docs had cleaned house while they were inside him, taking out all his spare parts. He had also lost the ability to walk. He could feel nothing below his pelvis, and his legs were like dead wood. He was paralyzed.
    Pulling himself from the memories, J.J. shook his head free of the water droplets and turned off the shower. He grabbed a towel off the warming rack, drying his skin roughly, rubbing viciously at the scars on his belly. Then, he began with what he thought of as his suck-it-up routine. He knew he was lucky. He had his life, and his family, and a job he still loved most days. He had few things to complain about, other than the accident. Dragging a shirt and shorts onto his frame, he headed to the kitchen to make dinner, wondering if his brother was still stuck in the hospital in Chicago.

    11 -              Recovery
    Mica drifted slowly upward from unconsciousness, listening to the sounds surrounding her before trusting to open her eyes or move. Beeping, overhead speakers, squeaky-wheeled carts, soft voices… Hospital, she thought, I’m in a hospital . Eyes closed, she inventoried her body to see why she was in a hospital, evidently in a bed from the feel of it, and in a hospital gown to boot.
    Whispering her findings to herself, “Shoulder hurts like a son-of-a-gun. My head hurts, back hurts, wrist hurts, ankle hurts,” her