Didi
Need some company?” I ask, poking my head around the door.
Dodds looks over his shoulder. He’s parked in his wheelchair over by the window and is staring out at the lake. “Sure,” he says, giving me a weak smile.
I walk into his room and pull up a chair beside him.
“What have you been up to?” I ask.
“Not much,” he says. “Just physical therapy. What about you?” he asks.
“Well, I just spent the morning observing an art therapy class.”
He snorts through his nose. “Man, those classes. I did one once. The teacher told me to paint whatever I was feeling.”
“What did you paint?” I ask.
“I just colored the whole piece of paper black. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
I nod.
“The teacher said it was ‘interesting’ or some other bullshit. What was she expecting me to paint? Flowers? A pretty sunset?”
“A unicorn?”
Dodds smiles—a real smile this time.
“Who’s that?” I ask, pointing at a picture of a stunning blond girl on his bedside table.
“Just a girl,” he mumbles.
I get up for a closer look. The photo is faded and a little crumpled, but there’s no disguising how beautiful the girl is. She’s wearing a sundress and the light is behind her, so the outline of her body is silhouetted against the sun. She has a slyly knowing expression on her face as if she knew when the photo was being taken that her dress was see-through.
“Is she your girlfriend?” I ask.
Dodds shakes his head. “No. She’s just a girl.”
I put the photograph down, taking the hint that he doesn’t want to talk about her. Beside the photo is a pack of cards.
“You want to play cards?” I ask.
“Yeah, sure,” he says. “You know poker?”
I nod. “My best friend’s brother was a marine. He taught me,” I say.
“Yeah?” Dodds asks as I hand him the cards to shuffle.
“Yeah. You better get your wallet out and be prepared to pay up.”
Dodds snickers under his breath and wheels himself over to me. “We’ll see about that,” he says.
I smile to myself, shuffle, and deal. Dodds takes his cards and I search his face for any sign of a tell. He’s good. His face stays blank but his fingers start tapping on the arm of the wheelchair, which is a dead giveaway. I make a note of it and play my first hand.
“This don’t feel right without a bottle of tequila,” he mutters as he tosses some quarters onto the bed.
I glance up at him.
“I’d kill for something to drink. It’s been way too long since I had a beer. You’d think the least they could do after I gave my legs to the war on terror would be to provide me with a refrigerator stocked with ice-cold Buds.”
I smile. I get where he’s coming from, but it seems to me that drinking is the worst thing he could do right now. Alcohol makes you depressed. And on top of that, the alcoholism rate among wounded veterans is sky-high.
“Have you thought about what you’re going to do when you get out of this place?” I ask, wanting to deflect him.
Dodds sits staring at his cards. He shakes his head. “No idea.”
We play on for a few minutes. “What about going back to college?” I say.
“Back?” he asks me with a wry smile. “I never started in the first place.”
“It’s not too late,” I say, showing him my hand.
He grimaces and shoves the pile of quarters at me. “I was never much good at learning,” he says as I deal a second hand.
“What about a vocational course?”
He picks up his cards and shrugs. “What’s the point?”
I frown. Is this about his legs? Plenty of people with disabilities lead busy and fulfilling lives. I think he’s probably heard that pep talk already, though, so I refrain from saying anything. Instead, I tip my head at the poster on the wall outside in the hallway. It’s a silhouetted man standing in front of a setting sun. “The future’s what you make it.”
“Well, that’s bullshit,” Dodds says. “I want to marry Kate Upton and become a stuntman in Hollywood. Think I can make that happen?”
“You marry Kate Upton? You got more chance of growing a new pair of legs.”
I look up. Sanchez is in the doorway, not in his wheelchair but on crutches. He has his new prosthesis attached, but I’m guessing he’s still getting used to walking on it.
“You playing poker?” he asks us, swinging into the room on his crutches.
“Yeah,” Dodds says. “She’s whipping my ass.”
Sanchez hobbles toward us. “Sounds like fun. You wanna whip mine too?” he asks me, grinning.
I arch my eyebrows. He leans on one crutch and offers me his hand to shake. Though I know who he is, we haven’t yet met formally.
“Corporal Sanchez,” he says. “But Jesús to my friends.”
“As in, Jesus Christ, who is this loser?” Dodds says, smiling, and I see that the two of them have a good rapport going.
Sanchez drops down onto the bed beside me. “Right, deal me in,” he says.
I do. He fans out his cards. “You know I met with your mom the other day?” he says to me as we start playing.
“Oh yeah?” I ask, feeling my back stiffen. Here we go . . .
“Yeah. I got a bone to pick with her, actually.”
I raise an eyebrow as I throw in a few quarters. My hand is almost unbeatable. Dodds’s fingers are tapping out a beat again. I think that means he has a bad hand. Sanchez has the worst poker face ever. He grimaced at the sight of his cards. I toss in a couple more quarters.
“She told my wife she needed to learn to express her needs better.”
“What’s wrong with that?” I say.
“You haven’t met my wife,” Sanchez says. “If that woman learns to express her needs any clearer, I may as well cut off my balls now and put them in her handbag under lock and key.”
I pull a face at the image.
“There’s a lady present,” Dodds says, tipping his head in my direction.
“Don’t mind me,” I say, laughing.
“So, if it’s okay to ask,” Sanchez says, “what are you supposed to be doing here?”
“I’m a psychology intern. I’m just observing my dad and a few of the other therapists, sitting in on consults, seeing how the center works. I’m also supposed to be thinking of a topic for my thesis.”
“What’s that? Like an essay or something?” Dodds asks.
“Yeah, something like that.”
“So you’re going to be a doc, then, like your parents?”
I nod. “That’s the plan. Though it’s still a ways off.”
“A sex doc?” Sanchez asks, his eyes lighting up.
“No, I don’t think so,” I say, shaking my head. I’m not sure how I’d ever give good relationship or sex advice to anyone when I can’t manage to get it right myself. “I’m not sure what I want to specialize in yet,” I tell him.
“Fucked-up vets?” Dodds asks. “You’d never be out of a job, that’s for sure.”
I give him an awkward smile. “Maybe, yeah. Or maybe something with kids.”
Sanchez and Dodds both nod their heads, studying their cards.
“Well, I’m sure you’ll get there,” Dodds says, throwing down his cards and calling fold. He turns to me with a half-mocking smile. “The future’s what you make it, right?”