NewU Pt. 05

"Didn't you hear me? I'm dressed!" I laughed. His arched eyebrow and his faltering mind told me that his banal and easy banter was hiding some extremely fragile nerves. "Nothing to report," I smiled warmly. "I'm still good."

"You seem to be in a better mood, too." He beamed, relief that the previous day's revelations were more than just a hopeful dream washing over him. "So, this is a flying visit, I'm told you have places to be."

"Physiotherapy," I nodded. "Hopefully they can give me the all-clear, and I can finally get out of here."

He arched an eyebrow at me. "There are three stunningly good-looking nurses fawning over you and tending to your every need. You are the only heterosexual man I know who would think that is a bad thing."

"True," I said with a humorous shrug. "But the view sucks." I nodded up to the ceiling.

"Ah." Jimmy nodded as he caught my meaning. "Well, if you do manage to get out of here soon, you might be interested in my news."

"I'm all ears."

"Uncle Bob has given us the lofts." He said with a beaming smile.

It is worth, at this point, explaining something about Jimmy, something I had pieced together from half conversations and broken thoughts. Jimmy's parents had died when he was a child, but by all accounts, they were incredibly popular and well-liked people. Their friends, despite not being able to take Jimmy in, had always kept in touch, looking out for him and helping out where they could. Uncle Bob was one such person. He wasn't related to Jimmy in any way at all, in fact, Jimmy wasn't even sure how he had known his parents before their death, but he had taken Jimmy to football practice, let him practice driving in his car and hooked him up with decent accommodation when Bob learned that Jimmy would be attending this University. Bob was the definition of a good guy.

Jimmy had introduced us in the early days of our friendship after already regaling Bob with tales of how he would have failed his course if it wasn't for me. As far as Bob was concerned, that was good enough for him.

More relevant, however, was the fact that Bob owned and operated the Queen's Head. The Queen's was the local student bar; it was the closest one to campus and one of the few specifically designed to cater to the tastes of the local student population. It was only some archaic law that stopped Bob from being able to change the name. Jimmy had told me once that Bob had wanted to change the name to 'The Queen's Legs', just so he would be able to say that the Queen's legs are about to close. But that sounded more like a Jimmy joke rather than any real business idea; even I had to admit it would be pretty funny though and would make Bob and his bar a local legend.

The lofts were a failed experiment on Bob's part. Unlike most landlords, Bob didn't live in some apartment above the bar, so he had tried turning the vaulted and empty upstairs of the building into student accommodation. He had failed miserably, but he ended up with two enormous loft-like apartments that quickly became the envy and desire of every student who knew about them. Filled with top of the range appliances and amenities, the open plan apartments were stunning, but had, as far as I was aware, always been occupied. Bob has promised Jimmy that as soon as they became available, Jimmy would get the first offer. Apparently, that day had come.

"Its all settled," Jimmy went on. "They are fully furnished, so you don't have to worry about packing or moving your shit, and the first few months rent has already been taken care of."

"Wait... what?" I blinked a few times. "Where did that money come from?" The lofts weren't just known for their size and luxury, they had the price tag to match. "And how are we supposed to afford all this?"

"Don't worry about it," he replied with a smile. "Family and friends discount on the rent, and he is letting us off the first few months on the condition that we help out around the bar every now and then, and you keep helping me to not fail." He finished with a chuckle.

It sounded like a hell of a deal.

The conversation about our new living arrangements went on for a while, as did the one about the starting of classes. By the end of the chat, everything from a study schedule to which house parties we would be attending had been hashed out.

"Anyway," Jimmy went on, "I met up with some of the old crowd last night. They are all pleased to hear about your recovery, they're looking forward to the welcome home party." He smirked.

I nodded, only half paying attention, the idea of living in the lofts was already pulling my lips into a smile, and with only a few weeks until classes started, it would be a great time to get in and settled.

"Just think of it," he went on. "Partying in the bar, then instead of having to find a cab or walk home, we can just drag one of the girls upstairs to our very own apartments." I chuckled but could help but notice the absence of one particular name in that sentence."

"Girls?" I arched an eyebrow, "and what about your fantasy nurse?"

"Philippa? Who did you think I was talking about?" I held his eye for a few moments. "okay, okay, so my track record doesn't lend itself to monogamy, but we've talked, and as soon as you are out of here, we are going on a date."

"Oh, really?" I smiled, trying to hide my confusion at her earlier actions.

"Told you, I can be a one-woman man, not had any pussy since..."

"Lil Miss Irony." I finished his sentence with a chuckle.

"Exactly. Oh, ye of little faith." He wagged his finger as he rose from his chair, the 30 minutes since his arrival having flown by. "Err... one more thing before I head out." Jimmy said, swinging around with that shit-eating grin he always wore when he was about to say something to make me uncomfortable. "Olivia asked about you."

Olivia. Now there was a name that I hadn't thought of since I had woken up. With a smile and a nod, I watched Jimmy leave the room. I closed my eyes, retreated into my bunker, and pulled up the memory on the big screen, losing myself in it in moments.

The last time I had seen her was about a week before the accident.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Dude, I am telling you... she's interested!" Jimmy repeated with an air of playful exasperation.

"How can you possibly know that?" Jimmy was my best friend, the only person I could spend any large amount of time with before considering homicide, but my god! He could keep on! He'd make a statement like that without even the slightest amount of what I would call evidence, then refuse to even try to explain how he knew.

"Just trust me," he said with a roll of his eyes. "To everyone else in the room, that shit is obvious."

My eyes flicked up from my place at our table to the brown-haired beauty, talking to her girlfriends at the bar. As often happened with Olivia, she seemed to know exactly when I was looking, and her eyes turned to meet mine. Even from across the room, there was no missing the teasing smile that pulled on the corner of her lips and the playful, almost seductive draw on her drinks straw before she went back to her conversation.

"What am I supposed to say to her?" I asked with a sigh, taking another sip of the vodka and coke before leaning back into my chair.

"Just ask her to dance." Jimmy replied with a smile.

"I can't dance."

"So?"

I blinked at him a few times. "What do you mean, so?" I finally asked, deciding that blinking wasn't sufficiently demonstrating my level of confusion and settling instead for a frown. "How can I ask her to dance if I don't know how to dance? That's like asking to take her for a drive without having a license... or a car."

Jimmy rolled his eyes again with another smile. "I'll let you in on a little secret. No guy knows how to dance, and the ones that do took lessons... lessons taught by women. Just take her to the dance floor, let her move to the music," his voice had taken on a wistful, far away quality as he spoke. "And you just let yourself move with her. There's nothing to it."

"I don't know." I said cautiously

"Alright, just go up and ask if she wants a drink."

"She already has a drink."

"Fuck me!" Jimmy drawled, reaching up to massage the bridge of his nose. "You're not making this easy."

"Tell you what." I said with something approaching confidence, "If you can tell me exactly why you think she likes me, I will go up there and talk to her, right now."

"You really don't see it do you?" He said, his hand dropping back to the table

"Apparently not."

"Fine. Look at her." My eyes one again moved towards the bar. Olivia was standing next to one of the barstools, her hips and body facing towards me, but her head turned to the side in happy conversation with her friends. "Now, count how many seconds it takes for her to look at you."

"That's not fair, that girl seems to always know when I'm looking at her."

"No..." Jimmy said, his face cracking into a smile, "It's because she looks at you -- and only you -- at least as much as you look at her."

Right on cue, Olivia's eyes flicked to meet mine. This time, however, instead of a cute little smile, she turned to face me. I could feel her attention on me. She tilted her head to one side with a playful grin, holding my gaze and returning my stare... Then winked.

The flush of red shot across my cheeks in seconds, and my gaze faltered. Olivia's little giggle, the last thing I saw before my eyes fell back to Jimmy. "There." He said with a triumphant laugh, "Now, down your drink, go to the bar for a new one, and while you're there, offer her one as well. Then, no matter what her answer is, talk to her!"

"Err..." I tried to swallow the lump in my throat as I reached for my half-empty glass, "About what?"

"Who gives a shit? Ask her how her course is going, or how she's been, tell her she looks nice... fuck, talk about the weather! Just -- say -- something!

I lifted my glass to my lips, barely feeling the burn of the Jimmy-sized vodka portion in my drink. I let the charcoal liquid slide down my throat and, with a determined nod, stood and started walking towards the bar.

Olivia was beautiful, the classic girl-next-door kind of look that made my knees go weak. Her light brown hair had just enough of a wave to it to no longer be called straight, and streaks of almost caramel color punctuated her locks. The light seemed to play in the color before bouncing out into the world, doing things that I would never be able to adequately explain.

If her hair was mesmerizing, her eyes were outright dangerous. I'd spoken to Olivia quite a few times before, the first of which being at Jimmy's now infamous 'best buds' party after the first year's exams. But every time I looked at her, I seemed to get lost in those brilliant pools of hazel. Olivia -- at least in my mind -- never looked at me, she looked inside me. As if those eyes could peel back all the layers of defenses that I had built since childhood to reveal each and every one of my secrets. It was like I was being studied, and yet, there was no place I would rather be.

I was almost halfway across the room when she saw me coming. Her pink stained lips were curling into another smile, her form-fitting jeans and low-cut V-neck top clinging to her body as she took a single step away from her friends -- almost as if she was making room for me at the bar. Twenty feet to go. My eyes met hers, and I felt the first twitch of a smile spread onto my face. I could be funny when I wanted to, right? I mean, girls like a sense of humor, or so I had been told. Maybe the weather line wasn't such a bad idea, make a joke out of it, break the ice. Just take a deep breath and...

A hulking mass of jock blocked my view of Olivia before I lost my focus, a small crowd of guys surrounding the girls. By the time my eyes found her again, her attention was on the new arrivals, a friendly smile on her lips as she and her friends started to laugh and joke with their new admirers. I wheeled left and headed to the bathroom. Not quite missing the disappointed look that she shot my way as I abandoned my plan, a look I wouldn't recognize as disappointment until months later as I re-watched this memory from the bunker.

Looking around my bunker as the memory faded from the screen, I noticed a door that hadn't been there before. I stepped through it, instinctively knowing where it led and spent the next few hours on a balcony overlooking the magnificence of my city. Thinking about my life, how it hand changed, the opportunities I had missed out on... everything. Watching the bolts of light rocket between the towering buildings of my metropolis, I couldn't help but feel that the old Pete had been killed in that crash.

Just like Moe had.

And a new Pete, with new abilities and a new personality, was about to step out into the world. But first, the physio...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

A few hours later, I was wheeled into the clinic room wearing a face that screamed impatience. Between the revelations with Charlotte, thinking about Olivia, still being frustratedly aroused from my time with Philippa, the hours I had spent waiting between Jimmy's departure and the orderly actually turning up and, most importantly, being absolutely fucking certain that I was physically well enough to be discharged, this whole exercise was becoming more and more infuriating the longer it went on.

Having been left in a wheelchair just inside the clinic, I looked around with half-hearted interest at the machines and apparatus that I would probably never need. There was only one other person in the room, I eyeballed her coldly.

Alight sweetheart. You are the only thing standing between me and freedom, let's get this over with!

The physiotherapist was nose deep in my files, apparently preferring the tactility of actual paperwork rather than looking at a screen, she had barely registered my presence as I looked at her. More than a decade of plying her trade had rendered her immune to every type of hostile stare that could be imagined, and she was under no illusions that my look would be a friendly one.

The more I looked at her, however, the more I noticed her. I had never really been one to admire the more mature lady, although being in her mid 30s hardly qualified her for that moniker. She was startlingly attractive. Her caramel hair flowed in loose waves onto her shoulders, dark rimmed glasses framed a pair of keen brown eyes and her lightly glossed, full, pink lips were pursed in concentration.

Aside from Jimmy and my parents, the woman sat behind a small beech colored desk was the first person I had seen since waking up that wasn't dressed in either nursing scrubs or a doctor's coat. A fitted white blouse and beige suit pants perfectly wrapped a toned body used to hard physical work. A few years younger and she would have been just my type.

Jesus... did I just say that?! I'm spending far too much time with Jimmy.

I blinked a few times and let my look soften as my mind reached out to hers. She was intrigued. She couldn't even speculate how many people she had guided through their rehabilitation; everything from children dealing with birth defects, to wounded combat veterans and almost every imaginable integer between. But my case was as novel to her as it was to everyone else. Just like them, she had assumed that there would be almost nothing left of my leg muscles, let alone my ability to walk, but the recent tests had shown almost the opposite. Physically speaking, I should be fine. But the amount of time that had passed since I was last upright would -- as far as her professional opinion was concerned -- still cause problems. Cases like that were the hardest to crack, she would be fighting an uphill battle with me and she knew it.

Fortunately, she liked a challenge.

She finally turned to look at me, her eyes flicking over my seated body for the briefest of seconds before settling on my eyes. "Good Afternoon, Mister Roberts," she said with a friendly and professional smile. "My name is Samantha. May I call you Pete?"

"Sure."

"Ok, Pete," She said with another wide and attractive smile. "Do you know why you are here?"

I sighed heavily and leaned back into the wheelchair. "I am here to jump through whatever hoops I need to, to get discharged." I said with a huff.

Samantha ignored my impatience with another warm smile. "I understand that this is frustrating, but I have you booked in for six weekly sessions, that should..."

"Six weeks?" I repeated, cutting off her sentence as I dropped my head to my hand and massaged the bridge of my nose.

Samantha, to her credit, didn't let her smile slip for an instant. In fact, her mind grinned at the challenge she had hoped I would provide. There had been hundreds of 'me' over the years, each of us utterly convinced of our own capabilities before being shown the error of our hubris. "There is another option," she said after a short pause. "We could administer the final test now. If you pass, I can sign you off today. If you don't, you agree to come back here every week until you do."

I pretended to perk up, I had been following her thoughts the entire time and was hoping that this was the route she went with. "Really?"

"There are conditions, though" she clarified with a nod. "The most important of which being complete honestly. Let's say I ask you to touch your toes, you may be able to do it, but if it is excessively painful then it will need work. If you push yourself, it can do more damage and you'll be back to square one. So, I will administer the test on that one condition. If there is a lot of pain, you will tell me. If I think you are hiding it, I will fail you on the spot. Agreed?"

"That sounds fair to me, Doc" I said with a nod of my own.

"Second condition," she said with another smile. "My name is Samantha, calling me 'Doc' will also get you failed." She finished with a playful wink.

I laughed and held up my hands in mock surrender. "Samantha," I corrected myself with a chuckle.

"Alright. Let's start with the basics. Can you stand for me?"

"Jeeves, You sure about this?"

"Very, sir."

I flashed my eyebrows, placed my hands on the armrests of the chair and hoisted myself to my feet. It took a moment for me to find my balance, not so much shaky or unstable, but more of a head rush at the first time being upright since climbing into Moe's cab all those weeks ago. A full-length mirror on the wall behind Samantha gave me my fist look at my new physique.

I looked good!

There had been some hints at the physical changes I had made to myself, but from a seated or lying position I usually found myself in, it had always been hard to judge. The sweatpants and white tee that Becky and Philippa had so tenderly helped me into were bulging with a new muscular body, the type which would normally be paid for in hundreds of hours at the gym.

Happy with my footing, and trusting my new legs to hold my weight, I looked back at Samantha with a triumphant smile.

"Very good." She said with an impressed nod. "Any pain?"

"Not really." I answered, surprising myself with my honestly. "A little stiff, but nothing I would call painful."

"Alright, excellent." She said with a smile, standing from her own place at her desk and crossing the room towards me. It was the first time I'd had a chance to look at her properly. She was about the same height as me, maybe an inch shorter, but her posture was perfect. Her straight back thrust her chest our invitingly and her legs crossed as she traversed the space between us, her hips swaying suggestively as she walked. I couldn't tell at this point if it was a conscious motion or just her natural gait, but it was certainly having an effect, dragging my eyes to her waist and holding them there as she approached.