Wheels In Motion Ch. 05

But with Addison... I had wanted my first time with her to be romantic... special. I wanted that feeling of revealing yourself to a lover for the first time. Of seeing... her, for the first time as well. I was with a her now. Last night, I'd felt like that moment had been stolen from me.

Once my brain kicked on, I found I was fine with it. She'd been so caring, so helpful, so matter of fact that she was going to be there for me and that was that. It somehow made it alright. Not alright, better than alright. She had taken care of me. She cared for me. I felt... happy. She stirred behind me and I rolled myself over to look at her.

Her pale blonde locks had fallen over her face, but I could see her green eyes open beneath the curtain of her hair.

"Hey..." I whispered.

"M-m-m-m-m, morning," she replied, stretching. She finished her stretch by brushing her hair off her face then laying her arm back over me again. "How are you feeling?"

"Better. Thank you for last night."

"You're very welcome. Thanks for inviting me to stay."

"I didn't mean you had to stay the whole night, but I'm happy you did. Not how I imagined the first time we'd spend the night together, though."

"Me either. Still nice, right?" she asked.

"Nice waking up next to you for sure. I'd kiss you, but I'm pretty sure I have morning breath."

"Like that would stop me," she said then leaned towards me and our lips met.

Zing!

I pulled her tightly to me.

After a few minutes, I laid my hand on her side, gently stroking her ribs. Her skin was so soft. I was getting ready to slide my hand to a more interesting place when the alarm on her phone went off.

"Hit snooze!" I groaned, as she broke off our kiss and rolled away from me to grab her phone from the nightstand.

"Hang on," she tapped at the screen a couple of times, then said, "I can't, I gotta get going."

"Really?" I said. "You can't stay for like... twenty minutes?"

She set her phone down and kissed me again. "Do you really," she said, our faces intimately close, "want our first time to be a twenty-minute rush job?"

"No," I grumped.

"I have to be in court with a client in an hour and a half. You know what that's all about, right? People counting on you?"

"Fine," I said, only slightly less grumpily. I sighed. She kissed me once more.

"We're still on for Thursday, right?" she asked, getting out of bed. She picked up her phone again and started looking through her email, facing away from me.

I sat up on my elbows. She was only wearing underwear, a matching white lace bra and panty set. The hourglass shape of her waist curving down into her beautiful, round bottom stirred something in me. Yep, definitely not totally straight anymore. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and I couldn't resist. I let out a loud wolf-whistle.

She spun around, grinning. "Enjoying the view?" she asked, and bent one knee, pointing her toe and striking a sexy pose.

"I certainly am! I thought you slept naked though," I said with a grin.

She blushed and it was adorable. "It was only our second date."

"That's not what you were wearing when you got into bed with me last night. For sure I wouldn't have gone to sleep."

She stuck out her tongue at me. "In fact, I was wearing this, just with a t-shirt over it. Your hair got my shirt all damp last night, so this is your fault." She turned and spied the t-shirt in question on the door knob of my bedroom and started pulling it over her head.

I pushed myself up further to lean back against my headboard and crossed my arms in a fake pout. "First you can't stay and now you're even depriving me of my view while you get ready to leave me."

"Sorry. Them's the breaks. You'll have to wait," she said, pulling her jeans up her legs, then she sat on the edge of the bed to put on her sandals.

I pulled myself forward so I could embrace her from behind. "Okay, I'll wait. But just so you know, on Thursday I'm in charge." Then I started planting soft kisses on her neck. Her skin was so smooth.

She leaned back into me with her eyes closed and made a humming sound. "I think I'm going to like you being in charge."

"Me in charge starts now, by the way." I nipped her earlobe, making her jump. "So, until Thursday... don't."

She laughed, then turned in my arms to kiss me again. Zing! Would that ever stop happening? I hoped not.

"Okay, now I really have to go, or I won't be able to make myself go and then I'll miss my court date and then I'll get disbarred and then I'll get fired and then I'll be penniless and then you'll have to take me in and feed and clothe me."

I let her go and she rose from the bed, sliding her phone into her pocket.

"I'll feed you, but you'll have to earn clothes. Until you do, you'll have to do chores around the house while naked."

She grinned at me. "Oh no, that sounds awful! How will I ever suffer through the trials and tribulations of being your naked maid?" We shared a laugh.

"Push my chair over here please?" She did and I slid into it so I could see her to the door.

"What should I wear Thursday? Or do you know yet."

"Were you able to get off Thursday and Friday?" I asked.

"Not entirely. I was able to take off Thursday. I have a hearing on Friday I can't get out of, but it's not until two o'clock."

"Perfect, I have to go in at four on Friday myself anyway. Be here at noon, and wear something for being outside during the day. Shorts and a t-shirt are fine, but bring your court clothes. You can hang them in my closet."

"Really? Being a little presumptuous, aren't we?"

"I'm in charge, I'm allowed. Bring a dress to change into also. Nothing fancy, just something for dinner. Oh! And a bathing suit."

She cocked an eyebrow at me. "Sounds like you have an elaborate day of activities planned out.

"You'll have to wait and see on Thursday. I'm in charge, remember."

"Yes ma'am!" she said, and gave me the most awful salute I'd seen since boot camp.

I winced and said, "Oh god, no, not like that. Do it right, like this," I gave a crisp salute, palm flat, fingers rigid, the tips touching the corner of my eyebrow.

She tried to mirror my movements, "Better?" she asked, grinning.

"Better, but still needs work. That first one would have earned you fifty push-ups if a drill sergeant had seen it."

"You'll just have to beat it into me, Sgt. Charles. I have to go." She leaned down and kissed me once more. "See you Thursday."

"That's Specialist Charles!" I called after her as she walked out of my door.

~~ DuPont Circle, Washington DC, August ~~

ADDISON

"What's this?" I asked, as Liz met me at her door holding out a navy-blue baseball cap with a red bill.

"Your uniform for the afternoon," she said, grinning at me.

I took it and held it up to see the curly "W" of the Washington Nationals on the front of the hat. She was wearing an identical one, her ponytail pulled out of the hole in the back.

"I have to wear this? I'm a Brewers fan you know."

"I know, but they aren't playing the Brewers this afternoon, they're playing the Phillies. I think we can all get behind the idea that the Phillies suck, right?"

"That train, I will board," I said, putting the cap on my head. I was pleased with how it went with my denim shorts and my Wisconsin Badgers t-shirt.

"Do you need everything in your backpack for tonight? Can you fit whatever you need in mine?"

"Uh, I'm not sure. I brought a dress and a bathing suit like you told me to. Are we not coming back here before dinner?"

"That's for me to know and you to find out," she said with a sly smile. "Give me everything you need from your backpack, and I'll squeeze it in mine while you hang up your suit for tomorrow."

I handed her my folded dress and my bathing suit, then went into her closet and hung up my suit for court. I took a moment to get one additional item from my backpack and shoved it in the bottom of my shoulder bag. When I came back she was zipping her backpack shut then turned to hang it on the back of her chair.

"I think we're ready to roll!" she said.

We arrived at Nationals Park for their day game with the Phillies in time to find our seats before the National Anthem. Liz swept off her hat and sat ramrod straight with her hand on her heart from the opening notes. I followed her example, standing a little straighter than I normally would have.

She'd gotten us really good tickets, on the concourse above the box seats behind home plate, where there were some single seats next to spaces marked with the handicapped symbol for wheelchairs. This was the final game of the home stand, with Stephen Strasberg taking the mound to try to complete a four-game sweep of the Phils.

It was hot, and we both opted for big bottles of water instead of beer, as well as a gigantic tub of popcorn to share.

In the bottom of the fifth inning Trea Turner got jammed and hit a foul back towards us. Liz sat up excitedly in her chair but the ball curved away from us, smacking down on the concrete of the concourse out of reach and bouncing another twenty rows back.

"Dang it!" she said with a grin. "I've never caught a foul ball! My dad used to take me to minor league games when I was a kid. I've come close a few times but I've never caught one."

"You don't talk about your folks much," I said.

She got a little frown on her face.

"You don't have to!" I quickly added.

"No, it's okay. It's just... I've never really told you much about where I came from other than joining the Army, have I? I don't talk about it much."

"It's okay, Liz. I don't want to pry."

She turned and looked at me with a surprised look on her face. "If we're dating, this subject is hardly prying. It's fine." She took a sip of water and cleared her throat. "I told you I grew up in Indianapolis. My dad worked at an auto-parts manufacturing plant. It was a union shop, so we did okay. Mom cleaned houses. Dad liked baseball and that was about the only thing he and I ever bonded over. I think as a kid I just decided to like it so we'd have something to do together."

I reached out and took her hand. Her tone was light, but I could sense an undercurrent of tension in her voice.

"When I was thirteen, dad got sick. Mesothelioma, probably from working with asbestos while making brake pads. He declined pretty quickly. We lost him six months after he was diagnosed."

"I'm so sorry," I said and squeezed her hand.

"Thanks. Anyway, mom didn't take it well. She drank. A lot. Eventually did some harder stuff too. She burned through dad's life insurance pretty fast and had a hard time holding on to her cleaning customers. We ended up moving from a little house in a good neighborhood to a crappy little trailer home, and I moved from an average school district to one of the worst. I--"

She was interrupted as Anthony Rendón smacked a home run into the left field bleachers. Once the crowd settled down, a few minutes later, I asked, "So how did you end up being a doctor with everything stacked against you like that?"

"One thing my dad told me over and over was, 'Liz, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If you don't work harder than the person next to you, you're going to lose. You're plenty smart, so don't waste it.' I knew I wanted to go to college. I didn't know what I wanted to study, I knew I didn't want to clean houses or work in an auto plant. I also knew there was no money for it. So, I worked my ass off and graduated first in my class."

"That must have opened a few doors."

"You'd think. Too bad it was such a shitty school. Finishing first there wasn't apparently much of an achievement to the colleges I applied to. I got a few scholarship offers but nothing that would have made it actually possible for me to go anywhere other than the local community college, and that would have meant staying at home with mom."

Her eyes unfocused, staring at nothing in particular.

"The month I graduated, I was with some friends at the mall and there was an Army recruitment center, with a big sign on the window saying 'forty thousand dollars for college!' I walked right in. My friends were horrified. They followed me, trying to get me to leave, but I made them go home without me. I sat and listened to the recruiter's whole pitch. I took the ASVAB the next weekend and maxed it out. The recruiter told me I could ask for any enlisted MOS I wanted with that score."

"MOS? What's that?"

"Military Occupation Specialty. Basically, what your job was going to be in the service. I had no idea what to do so I asked his opinion. He talked me into 68W."

"What's that?"

"Sorry, that's the code for combat medic. He sold me on it as 'a great skill that translates immediately into a job after the Army!' He persuaded me I could get out and be a paramedic while I went to college. In hindsight, I know it was only because he was missing some recruitment goals for that MOS and not because he really thought it was the best job for me, personally. But it turned out for the best, in the end."

She turned and fished out a bottle of sunscreen from her backpack and started slathering it on her legs.

"I loved medic training. When they said I was going to a medevac unit and was going to get to fly, I thought that was pretty cool. My first deployment, though, I was so scared the first time we flew in to pick up a casualty"

"Were you scared about getting shot at?" I asked.

"Surprisingly, no. By that time in Afghanistan, it was actually pretty rare for a medevac bird to come under fire, although Jo told me some stories that would curl your hair. At any rate, I was more worried about screwing up, or letting someone under my care not make it alive to the hospital back at Bagram or a FOB."

"I almost forgot how many acronyms you use," I said with a smile. "That one I can guess: forward operating base? So, what happened your first time?"

"We got called in to evac a soldier. He was hit bad, shot in the gut and he was circling the drain fast. That seven-six-two round can really mess you up. I was the newbie on the crew; I'd only been on Jo's bird for a few weeks. There was a senior medic with us and he went right to work on the wound, to try to slow the bleeding." She offered me the sunscreen.

"Thanks," I said and started putting on my second coat of the day.

"He told me to start a line, to try and replace some of his fluid volume. Imagine the first time you ever have to start an IV in a real person, when it's not training, when it's real life and death, it's in the back of a helicopter doing a full power takeoff, the turbines are roaring, the patient is screaming. I was trying not to get tangled in my safety line, and maintain my focus. I had to put my knee on his wrist to hold his arm down while I did the stick."

She paused, taking a deep breath as she remembered. I didn't say a word, not wanting to interrupt her story.

"To my surprise, I got it on the first try. Hung the bag, and the other medic and I worked the whole flight to keep this guy alive. We landed at the hospital pad and the nurses took him. And then we got back in our chopper and flew back to our base. That was it."

"Wait, so you didn't even know if he lived or not?"

"Not right away, and I was really upset about that. We landed at the base and got to work cleaning our bird, washing all the blood out, restocking our first-aid supplies. As the newbie I got the scut-work, hosing out the back. There was so much blood, I convinced myself there was no way he would have survived. Then, just as we were finishing up, Jo came back from the ready room and told us the guy pulled through surgery and was going to be flown home in a day or two."

"Wow," was all I could say. I'd completely stopped paying attention to the game and was hanging on her every word.

"Yeah. And I immediately lost my shit. I started bawling, and couldn't stop. My training medic got all uncomfortable and made himself scarce, but Jo and one of the other crew, Sgt. Ben Jackson, sat with me while I got my shit together. Then they told me they knew I was going to be good at my job because it showed both that I cared, and that I could keep my cool when it counted and let go when I could. Ben told me it was nothing to be ashamed of. It was to be embraced."

"You let yourself go when it was safe to do so," I said.

"Yeah. Anyway, I grew addicted to it. Making the save. Bringing them in alive. I'd started taking college classes online as soon as I was past basic. I knew I shouldn't waste the opportunity, but I wasn't sure that I really wanted to go to college anymore. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to be the one who was there when people were in their worst moments, and I wanted to pull them back from the edge. To make the save. To get them to help. So, I figured I'd either stay in the Army, doing the job until retirement or I'd do my six years, then get out and be a paramedic."

She took a long swallow of water, staring at the field.

"And then we got shot down. When I got to Walter Reed, the first thing they asked was for me to come up with some goals for my recovery, and I got so mad. I'd already had my goals, and they'd been taken away from me! Can't be a paramedic in a wheelchair! I was such an asshole to my therapist and my treatment coordinator."

I rubbed her arm, and she put her hand over mine.

"I started talking to one of the doctors there about my frustration. And one day, he showed up and told my physical therapist that he needed me for the afternoon. He wheeled me out to his car and took me to Montgomery General, where he had privileges. We hung out in the E.R. for a few hours. An MVA came in while I was there, and the energy of the staff... it was the exact same as when I'd been a flight medic. Controlled chaos, with one goal. Making the save."

She sat back and smiled faintly. "That was when I knew what I was going to do. I went back to my room at Reed that night and started researching colleges with pre-med programs. With all the courses I'd been taking online, I was maybe only a year and a half from getting a bachelors. I picked GW because it had both pre-med and a medical school, and it was supposed to be one of the best in the region. I mean apart from Johns Hopkins, but Hopkins is in one of the shittiest neighborhoods in Baltimore and Baltimore doesn't have a subway. I didn't even apply there. I landed at GW and I've been here ever since."

I gave her hand another squeeze. "That's an amazing story."

"Well... thanks."

"Where's your mom now?"

"Still in Indiana. She's never really pulled herself together since dad died. We're not very close anymore. I think the last time we talked was at Christmas. Or, no, Mother's Day. She's shacked up with some guy who works in a tire shop."

"I guess I understand why you don't talk about your parents, or anything before the Army much."

"Well, it wasn't great, that's for sure, but life is what you make of it and I feel like I've done a decent job of hitting what I was aiming for."

"I'll say. You told me you don't fuck around when it comes to getting what you want. I can see you weren't kidding."

She turned in her chair to face me. "That's right. And what I want now is sitting right here next to me."

She reached over, pulled me to her and kissed me. When she let me go, I was sure my skin was a shade pinker than I could blame the sun for.

The Nationals ended up completing the sweep and I had to admit I enjoyed seeing the Phillies fall. Washington was a fun team to watch. Not that I was in danger of giving up on my Brew-Crew, but I could see myself becoming a fair weather Nats fan. At least when they weren't playing Milwaukee.

After the game we made our way back down into the metro. Liz surprised me by having us get off the Green Line at L'Enfant Plaza, then we switched to the Yellow Line, headed south across the Potomac into Virginia, where we got off at the Pentagon City station.