Free The Perfect Homecoming (Pine River) by Julia London

physicist who also has MND—anyone who has this disease is probably a genius. To wit: First, I had to convince the Methodist ladies to take me on as this year’s charity case. Check. Then, I had to convince them to get me tickets to the game at Mile High Stadium, which they managed, believe it or not, because someone from Pine River knew someone. Check. Better still, they knew someone important and managed to get me into a skybox. I think that’s because I said something like, what is the point of going all that way in a chair if you can’t get into a skybox, and fortunately, everyone agreed about that. Check, check, and checkmate.
    So I scored the tickets for me and my friend Dante, who gets his chemo at the same boring hospital where my doctors sit around playing tiddlywinks, but then I suddenly realized that the family van—a former bread delivery truck —was not going to carry my ass all the way to Denver, no sir. So I suggested to the Methodists that they might want to have an auction to raise money to get me a van, and they did, but they didn’t raise enough, so Libby Tyler stepped in and put together this 5k race to benefit yours truly, and the next thing you know, I am the proud owner of a sweet van, man. It’s like a military machine—they roll me into that thing like a nuclear warhead and lock me down.
    But you know what I learned? There’s no such thing as true glory without someone coming around to bitch about it. I’m serious as a heart attack right now. Believe it or not, some people actually complained that it wasn’t “fair” that I got the van when I’m not exactly a certified charity, and my dad and brother agreed. My dad and my brother are just too proud sometimes, you know what I’m saying? I’m trying to think of something funny to say about it, but honestly, after all my hard work, it totally pissed me off. So I said to myself, okay, Leo, what does a genius do? A genius arranges everything with a real charity to make sure this van will be donated to people with MND and other assorted jelly-legged diseases when I’m gone.
    Oh, I’m definitely going. I mean, it’s not like I know when or anything, but trust me, the tires will still be new on the van when the MND people get it.
    I also learned that being a Dudley Do-Right is totally exhausting, and the worst of it was that Marisol wasn’t there to help me. You’ve heard about Marisol, right? The hotheaded sexy Latina who happens to be a nurse here in town? For the last two years she’s been bossing me around and changing my diapers and making sure my bed is set at the perfect angle so I can watch my TV shows. And then she had to ruin it all by having a baby and taking maternity leave, and let me tell you, that little stinker Valentina could not have come at a worse time. But do you think Valentina cares how her entry into the world affects me ? No way, man. She just cries and curls her hands into little fists and sleeps a lot. I told that little stinker after football season would have worked better for me, but you know how babies and saucy Latinas are—they wait for no one.
    So here’s where things get interesting. Get this—my dad didn’t have anyone lined up to take Marisol’s place, even though she’d been pregnant for like two hundred years, and he said something dumb like, looks like it’s you and me, pal, and I said, over my dead body, which my brother, Luke, pointed out is not a good thing to say to Dad, because, you know, he’s going to have to step over my carcass eventually. But I’m not so far gone that I’m going to let my dad change out my tubes and hose me down and other things I won’t mention here because I might vomit. I guess Dad wasn’t too keen, either, because he found this service, and they send these totally hot nurses out once a day to check things out and do all the stuff I am never letting my dad do. They’re great, but they are expensive, and we couldn’t afford for them to be lollygagging