Wheels of Steel, Book 1

by Pepper Pace

  “Robin?” She dragged her eyes back to the dyed and tanned man before her.

  “I—yes. Yes, of course I’ll continue working with Mr. Hamilton.”

  Aaron rose again and offered her his hand. “I’m happy that we can keep you aboard. If you need anything just contact me or Ben. And don’t forget your course in seizure management this Saturday from three to six. You’ll have to pay the registration fee but we’ll refund it.”

  “What? How much is it?”

  “Mary Louise will give you all of the information at the front desk.” He gestured to the door with a friendly but rushed smile. She had been dismissed. She headed out the door and Mary Louise gave her an over-bright smile.

  “So I wrote down the information about the class. It’s this Saturday at three o’clock. It’s downtown, on Broadway, room 525.” She handed her a slip of paper.

  “Aaron mentioned something about a registration fee?”

  “Oh yes! It is one hundred twenty dollars, which Pinnacle will fully refund. We just need you to provide-”

  Robin’s eyes closed and when they opened they were narrowed in the direction of the receptionist. There was such a thing as going too far, and Pinnacle had just achieved it. “Mary Louise, you’ll need to write a check for the one hundred twenty dollars right now.” Mary Louise gave her a surprised look.

  “Well…we can’t do that. We have to go through appropriations for something like that. And well we had to get this appointment out before that could happen and so…what I’m saying is that the cost for the class is not really approved yet.”

  Frustrated, tired and finally at her wits end with Pinnacle, Robin did something that was long overdue; she blew up.

  “You expect me to literally pull one hundred twenty dollars out of my own pocket for a class that’s going to be held in two days? Pinnacle presumes a lot; what if I don’t have that money?! What if I had plans for Saturday?! And truthfully, that the funding for the class hasn’t been approved yet doesn’t make me feel at all comfortable. Let me just say it like this; if you want me to take the class then you will need to pay the full amount up front!”

  Mary Louise just stared at her. Robin’s brow went up. She turned and headed for the door considering the woman’s lack of a response as an answer.

  “Wait! I just need to talk to Aaron.”

  “No.” She continued walking. “Not waiting.”

  “Okay, wait! I’ll write you a check.” Robin stopped, even more annoyed than before. Mary Louise knew that she could do this all along--freaking liars…She returned to the desk where the older woman pulled out one of the big check notebooks that she’d seen Ben using.

  “I suppose that we can pull the amount from something else until it’s approved.” Mary Louise said, mostly for the benefit of Robin. Yet Robin knew that the money was just sitting there and they would have tried to find a way not to reimburse her. She had their number.

  “Mary Louise, that check you’re writing, if it’s not for the full amount of the course and I have to come up with any out of pocket costs then I’m walking away.” Mary Louise looked at her. “There may be an additional fifty dollars to cover some state fees. I’ll just make it out for one seventy-five, just in case.”

  Robin just stared at her without expression. Mary Louise handed her the check and Robin took a few moments to look it over. All of the I’s were dotted and the T’s crossed. “Thank you.” She said and then left the office.

  Once she left Pinnacle, instead of going home to nap as she needed to do, Robin drove over to University Hospital. She considered picking up a small bouquet of flowers but stopped at the snack bar and got a huge cinnamon roll instead. She had come to realize that the older woman had an affinity towards sweet treats and while she didn’t want to give the woman a sugar rush, she enjoyed bringing her treats. Sometimes it was ambrosia salad, or yogurt parfait cups, sometimes muffins. But Miss Lucille always received them enthusiastically, praising her son for his thoughtfulness.

  The elderly woman was awake and watching the television. When Robin stepped through the door she gave her a big smile. “Robin!” She greeted her happily, though her voice was weak and she seemed short of breath. She still had an oxygen tube to her nose and monitors connected to her through lines that ran beneath her oversized hospital gown.

  Robin momentarily froze at the entrance as dejavu struck her. It was just like Daddy…she plastered a smile on her face and quickly moved forward, taking the older woman’s hand and squeezing it gently.

  “Have a seat dear. You just missed my son and his children. They were here all morning. I really wanted you to meet him, but maybe next time.” Robin wondered if their visit had just been a figment of the older woman’s imagination—or maybe wishful thinking. She hoped that she wasn’t wrong, and hoped that they had actually come to visit her. But she didn’t believe they had.

  “How are you feeling, Miss Lucille? You look good.”

  “Oh, I feel better. My own doctor gave me medicine to open up my lungs.” She nodded her head. “I can breathe a little better now.”

  “That’s good. Is there something I can do for you while I’m here?”

  Miss Lucille was just happy to have someone to talk to and the two sat and chatted for a while, splitting the large cinnamon roll, nibbling from it as they talked. A man suddenly appeared at the door, pausing to look at Robin in surprise.

  “Hello. Are you a nurse?” He was a rather nice looking man that appeared to be his late forties; tall and fit and dressed casually in jeans and a button down shirt.

  “Oh Bently!” Miss Lucille held out her hand for the man. “Robin this is my son Bently. He’s a doctor. Bently this is my caregiver from Pinnacle, Robin.”

  Bently came forward and took his mother’s hands and then leaned forward and kissed her wrinkled cheek. He shook Robin’s hand next, a slight frown creasing his brow. “You’re from Pinnacle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well I told them yesterday that we’re not going to need them anymore.”

  “Oh, well I’m not here on their behalf. I just came to visit your Mom.”

  Miss Lucille’s eyes brightened. “I told you Robin is a good girl.”

  “Oh, Robin.” His expression relaxed. “My mom talks about you all the time. Somehow I thought you’d have angel wings the way she goes on about you.” Robin blushed and glanced at the elderly woman who was looking at the two of them as if they were the sun, moon and stars.

  She stood. “Well, I’ll get going and let you two spend time together.”

  “Don’t rush off, I can’t stay.” He said quickly confirming her earlier belief that he and his children had not spent the morning with her. He turned to his mother whose happy smile vanished. “Mom, I just came by to let you know that your new home is all set for you. We had some of your personal items from the house brought over to make it comfortable.”

  Miss Lucille gripped her blankets and suddenly seemed flustered. “Oh…but I don’t want to move, Bently, I thought you said I could stay in the house.”

  “No Mom, that was before the hospital stay. I said that if you got ill we’d have to get you into a place where there are people who can take care of you.”

  She gave him a confused look. “Well…my house is a place where people can take care of me.”

  Bently gave Robin an apologetic smile and Robin glanced at the door wishing for a polite way to make a getaway. Bently took a deep breath and began again, as if he was talking to a toddler and had explained the same thing a million times.

  “Mom, the place where you’re moving will be very nice. There will be people that will prepare your meals, give you medicine, help you bathe and get to the toilet. They’ll keep everything clean and neat for you. It won’t be like those places you described. I promise. You’ll have a bedroom, a living room and a kitchenette. It’s really one of the nicer places.”

  “But it’s not my own home.” She said in a soft voice.

  Robin felt nauseous.
She didn’t want to be here to witness this very personal conversation. “I’m sorry I need to go.” She turned to Miss Lucille, a woman that she’d known for only a short time, but a person that she’d grown to care about. “When you get settled in I’ll visit you.

  She gave her a hopeful look. “You will?”

  “I will.” She gave Bently a pointed look and his eyes flitted away from hers. She was suddenly taking the old woman’s hands in hers, and bending low enough to stare straight into her eyes. “You will meet people there like the ladies from your bridge group. Maybe you can even start a new one. And maybe…maybe you can help keep some of them company—the ones who aren’t as lucky as you are to receive visitors. Wouldn’t that be nice to help keep people that are sad and lonely company? And I bet they will have good food, not just boiled eggs in the morning and a frozen meal at dinner.” She didn’t need to glance at Bently to see that his back had stiffened.

  “What’s the name of the facility?” She directed to him without looking at him.

  Sputtering slightly he eventually managed to give her the name and she turned her attention back to the elderly woman, smiling gently. “You take care of yourself.” She bent and kissed her cheek. Miss Lucille’s smile returned and grateful tears sprouted in her eyes.

  “Thank you for the cinnamon roll…and the butter and jam and all the other things.” Robin stared into the woman’s clear eyes. She had known what was going on all along, but sometimes pretending helped to get through.

  “My pleasure.”

  Robin practically staggered home. She was emotionally and physically exhausted. Seeing Miss Lucille in the hospital had dug up old memories of her father’s last days. Her chest felt tight and she found it hard to catch her breath; the inevitable hopelessness of losing someone was a feeling that she did not want to relive…but an emotion that she just could not shake.

  She had no time to nap, only to bathe and make a quick sandwich for dinner. For about the hundredth time she seriously contemplated quitting one of the jobs. She worked too hard. What was supposed to be just monitoring a sleeping patient had turned into actual work. She had one more year before the car would be paid off but if she banked enough money perhaps she could have enough to float herself, or maybe she could even pay it off early.

  All she knew is that it felt good not to have to turn to her Mama to help her out financially.

  And that thought was enough to send her off to work, tired, yawning…but at least self-supported.

  Chapter 10

  “See.” Link said with a grin as he pulled up to Jason’s parking lot and deposited him safely to the sidewalk. “This was much nicer then digging for breaks.”

  He nodded happily. “I’m not complaining.” What had began as touch and go, had turned out to be a great night. He’d made some great beats with his friend and had gotten a blowjob! The ‘watcher’ had taken him to one of the lower level bathrooms and had given him a blowjob as he sat sprawled out in his chair. Afterwards he’d returned the favor when she climbed up onto the counter positioning her legs on either side of his chair.

  He’d never done that before and the only thing that could have made it better is if she would have let him kiss her. He’d never kissed anyone before.

  “You know, you and I can make this a regular gig. It’s good money in it.” Jason turned his attention back to the other man. He hadn’t actually seen Link get paid but knew that it had probably been a paying gig. Link certainly hadn’t offered him a cut, not that he would have taken it. Jason shrugged.

  “It was fun. I’ll think on it.” He responded honestly.

  “You are the most talented person I know.” Link said thoughtfully. “And you do this for pleasure. Think about making this work for you, Jason. Wheels of Steel…it’s ok. But we should be thinking bigger.”

  But DJ’ing wasn’t his thing. He liked being behind the scene or mixing in private. Maybe if he didn’t have CP it would be different, or the seizures. But he did have them and there was a lot more to consider when you had disabilities. First was the access, second was the way people viewed him, third was the transportation of himself and the gear. For the most part people understood that just because he moved and lurched and his head flopped and jerked didn’t mean that he was mentally disabled. His slurred speech was not indicative of slow thinking.

  But then there were the others; he called them the ‘head patters’ and ‘slow talkers’. Nothing much pissed him off more than these so-called ‘well meaning’ people. They got in your face and talked to you like you were mentally disabled; assuming that you were incapable of understanding.

  He understood that he was luckier than some even though he was in a wheelchair. Others with CP couldn’t even talk. They were people that could think and reason just like any capable person, but were trapped within a body whose muscles could not be controlled; looking to the rest of the world like a person with a mental disability instead of a person imprisoned within flesh and bone.

  When people tried that ‘head patting’, ‘slow talking’ with him he let them have it! He had once caused an aid to fall down a flight of stairs when he was 12 years old. Every day, after his mother left for work, she’d call him retard. And one day he’d gotten so tired of it that for the first time in his life he cursed. And once he started he couldn’t stop. He’d kept advancing on her, spewing foreign sounding profanities, spit flying and green eyes in a rage. And she’d kept moving backwards until she was lying at the bottom of the stairs. He wanted to say, ‘Now who’s the stupid one?’, when he’d been smart enough to stop and she hadn’t!

  She had been one of the worst ones, but there had been other bad ones in his life time, especially when he was little, before he knew that it was okay to fight back. He used to get sat in a corner for eight hours while his Mom went to work, or tied to the bed. Once, an aid had slapped him in his face because he had spit up oatmeal that she’d been shoveling down his throat. His mother had seen the handprint when she returned home from work and had beaten the woman with the first things she’d picked up; a mug that said World’s #1 Mom.

  Mostly his caregivers listlessly moved about their tasks, barely speaking or even considering him, but not neglecting or hurting him. And there were those very rare occasions when he’d met diamonds in the rough. One was a guy that had been old enough to be his grandfather, and who called him son and told him stories and talked to him like he was a friend and not just a client. Jason didn’t have a relationship with his own father so he enjoyed having him around. But he’d only stayed around for about six months and then had gotten a better job. He’d never seen or heard from him since.

  Another time he had a therapist that had been with him since he was ten years old. She was fired when Jason was sixteen after his mother discovered that she’d recently been giving him happy endings at the end of the massages. It was one of the things that he’d never forgiven his mother for. It always amazed him that people who had made huge impacts on his life could just arbitrarily walk out of it with no second thoughts, when they would be forever imprinted there in his mind. Over the years he’d learned to condition himself not to care. Aids never stayed around; the good ones found better jobs and the bad ones didn’t have a job for longer than it took for him or his mother to discover that they were condescending, lazy, thieves, or cruel.

  Jason tiredly dragged himself to bed for the night, but instead of sleeping he thought about the way he had felt DJing with Link and he thought about the taste of a woman and how nice it had all been. The next day, even before he showered or used the toilet, he hurried to the computer and checked YouTube for the numbers on More Love, happy to see the numbers steadily rising and that there were more comments. He read them quickly. Surprised, he saw that someone had even commented on the party the night before. He couldn’t believe how quickly word had spread.

  “You guys looked good, wish I was there.”

  He frowned, not sure what that meant. How would she know if they looked good if sh
e wasn’t there? He next checked the messages on his homepage and was shocked at what he saw. Someone had posted a video of last night’s performance taken from an iPhone! Anxiously he pressed play and the recording sounded pretty good…more than pretty good. It captured the crowd’s reaction and he noted that he and Link looked oddly intriguing; sitting in wheelchairs and mixing and scratching music. It was almost like a gimmick; moreso when the video showed him pushing his chair back and looking at Link as if waiting for some type of cue, and then the seizure.