Her First Time Ch. 22

This was it, suddenly, I knew it, this was 'the moment'. I gripped the elastic just behind my ears and pushed it up, licking my lips, anticipating what it was going to be like, a naked Betty, my lips around her nipples. I pulled the blindfold away, looked toward where I'd heard Betty, opened my eyes...

And what the hell? There was no Betty on the bed. I looked around, no Richard or Alan Ryder, either. I was laying on a bed, sure as hell not my bed with the silk sheets! Dani was there, sitting in a chair, Jenny on a couch over by the window. What? Where in the hell was I? What had just happened? Tubes everywhere, wires connected to my body. What the fuck? It looked like a fucking hospital room.

"Hon? Dani? What's..."

She looked up, had been holding a book, reading? Hell, I didn't know anything. My brain was in a complete whirl of confusion.

Dani's face changed, eyes wide, a look of total surprise on her face, "Sweetheart! Robert! Did you say something?"

"Where are we?" I asked her, "what's going on?"

"Oh my God! You're awake! Jen, Jen." She was screaming, sounding almost hysterical, no, not 'almost'.

I looked at Jenny, she was jumping up, running over to the bed. Neither were wearing their 'homecoming night' dresses, just slacks and blouses. The confusion in my mind was just getting more and more muddled.

Jenny was just as hysterical as Dani. I don't remember about the next few minutes, it was just too confusing to me. But pretty soon a man was rushing into the room, he looked like a doctor.

Both Dani and Jenny were blubbering, totally incomprehensible, their faces were soaked with tears. Why? Had someone died or something? Is that it, there'd been some accident at Dani's party? But the way they were fussing over me, and their faces looked more like tears of happiness. I didn't understand, not at all!

"Well, Mr. Shore, you've given us all quite a scare the last months," the 'doctor' said. What the hell did he mean, 'the last months'? I knew exactly what had been happening the last months, and yeah, it was a bit of a scary time, but this... this was... something else entirely.

Dani was holding one of my hands, squeezing it so tight, holding it to her face, tears streaming down her cheeks, soaking it. Jenny the other, crying just like Dani. The guy, guess he must have been a doctor, kept asking me questions, 'did I remember my name?' of course I did! 'know where I was?' Not a fucking clue! 'did I know what had happened?' Again, not a fucking clue.

It went on and on, like he was trying to judge my mental condition. Finally, I'd had enough. "Dani, can you please tell me what's going on? Where are we? Wherever it is, why?"

I'd never seen a smile on her face like she had then, not even any of those times with Alan Ryder but her tears not even slowing.

She was kissing my hand, trying to talk, "You had an accident, last October, I went out to dinner with Jen, got home and found you... apparently, you'd slipped in the shower and hit your head. You've been in a coma ever since..." She broke down in tears, took several minutes before she could talk again, "it was a nightmare... the worst night of my life. I... I thought you were dead when I found you... blood everywhere... they didn't know if you'd ever wake up... or if you'd be you if you did..." she broke into tears all over again.

"Have to call... the kids... tell them..."

This was... a little hard for me to understand. A coma? "What day is it?" I asked Jenny. Dani wasn't in any shape to talk, she was trying to make a phone call, but her fingers were shaking so bad.

"It's February nineteenth," Jenny said, "you've been in a coma for almost four months."

I looked at Jenny, my jaw must have hit the floor. What the hell? "You're. Telling. Me. I've. Been. Here. Four. Months?"

But, Tampa? Alan Ryder? And I remembered Betty, Tevin, that night with Jenny, everything from those last months... and it was April, not February! Speaking of April... what about her?

I laid my head back down on the pillow, closed my eyes, trying to understand. Everything was so clear, I remembered it all. Does that mean 'that night' never happened? There was no Alan Ryder? It was ALL a dream? But how? How could it be so clear in my mind, everything that had happened? But I knew there WAS an Alan Ryder, he was in Dani's yearbook, that picture of homecoming night, him kissing her on her cheek was real... I knew... at least I thought I knew. I realized I didn't know what was real and what wasn't. But that was way before that night, I remembered wondering about him before that night, wondering if he was 'the one', Dani never telling me.

It was just a few minutes later that Jon and Jodi came running into the room, Tammy, too, Jon's wife. And my parents. I'd never seen the excitement and so many tears. A little later, Dani's mom and dad were in the room, then Richard, Jenny's husband.

Then I had a thought, "What about the store?" I asked no one in particular, wondering if even that was real.

"Jon quit his job, he's been running the store," Dani explained, wiping tears from her eyes. She looked over at our son with obvious pride, "And doing a wonderful job, too."

There were more questions, lots more tears. I found out that Dani had been at my bedside nearly the entire four months, had been on leave from school to be with me. Jenny had been there a lot, making Dani go home to get some rest. Apparently, between them all, there hadn't been a single minute that someone hadn't been with me, so many prayers said.

I was in the hospital another three days, physical therapy had become my life it seemed. I barely had the strength to walk. I guess after being bedridden for four months...

I wanted to ask Dani so many questions, tell her about my dreams during those four months, but didn't know how. It wasn't exactly the kind of thing you just blurted out to your wife, that you'd been imaging she'd taken a lover, was having sex regularly with him... with my full blessing and enjoyment.

And Jenny, I sure as hell couldn't tell anyone of my dreams about her!

I hoped after we were home, Dani and I, that we could talk, explore my dreams, if I ever got the courage to tell her any of it.

I was too weak for sex, the doctor said it might be weeks before I'd be able.

Dani stayed home with me, said she was taking the rest of the school year off. I don't think I've ever seen my wife so happy as she was those days at home.

After a couple days home, recovering, and going to physical therapy daily, Dani took me by the store. The reception there made me feel so good, those guys were more than glad to see me, and obviously, Jon had been doing a great job managing. Even the customers that came in while I was there were happy to see me.

Then, at night, I started having dreams again. It was about Amanda, the imagined talent agent, guess that's what she was in my coma dream, telling me that Dani was perfect for their movie. But this was different, the movie that my imagination had dreamed up, it seemed so real, Amanda seemed so real, even now that I knew it wasn't.

I had the same dream over and over again, like it was calling to me, like... I was supposed to tell Dani. Maybe...

I couldn't get it out of my mind, I even knew the phone number, or at least a phone number, what the friggin' movie was about, how Dani was going to audition for it. The rest was bugging me, too, the Alan Ryder part. I remembered Dani and Jon watching a guy named Alan Ryder play football a long time ago, was that imagined, too... or real?

Finally, it was a week-and-a-half after I'd come home, I broke. I asked Dani where her old senior yearbook was, that there was something I was curious about. She looked at me with that funny look on her face, but dug out several yearbooks from the top of the closet, looking through them for her senior year. We took it into the living room and sat down on the couch with it. My hands were shaking as I started to look through it with her.

We laughed together at some of the pictures, her cheer pictures, especially the one with her wearing her skimpy cheer costume, balanced on the shoulders of the only guy cheerleader, his hands wrapped around her ankles, helping her balance, his cheeky comment written across it, 'How come you'd never fall for me'. Talk about a double entendre in his comment. "That was Jimmy, he was always flirting, I know he had the hots for me... but he was a creep, always looking up my skirt." I tried not to laugh. Could you blame the guy? If that made him a creep, what the hell was I?

The picture of her and Jenny, they were fast friends even back then. It was taken at the homecoming dance with their crowns on their heads. God, Dani was so pretty, still is. Jenny, too, like Dani has always said, Jenny was actually the prettier of the duo. Seeing the picture of Jenny reminded me of 'that night', my imagined night with her. I shuddered at the thought. That's one I'll sure as hell never admit to Dani, not that I ever would about ninety-nine percent of the rest of it, either.

The thought about Jenny was making me horny as hell, the first erection I'd had since... that night, I guess. And it was a doozy, too. Something else to think about. I wondered when I'd be able to make love with my wife again.

"You still have that dress?" I asked Dani, not letting on that somehow, I knew she did. I even knew where it was. She looked so sexy in it.

She screwed up her face like she was thinking, "I don't know, there used to be a trunk in Mom and Dad's attic, a bunch of my old stuff in it. Wonder if it's still there... probably. I doubt they'd have gotten rid of it. I haven't even thought about it for years. Now you've got me curious, we should look sometime, see if it's there, what might be in it." My heart was pounding, wondering how much of what I'd dreamed about over the last four months was going to turn out to be real.

There it was, the picture, Homecoming, a crown on Dani's head, a black football player kissing her on the cheek, a signature scribbled across it, totally illegible. "This guy," I asked her, "who was this?"