Bridges 27

Chapter 27

Ugh…I hate morphine.

I know an odd thing to say really but I do. It’s a great painkiller unless one you’re allergic then you tend to hallucinate. I’ve had patients that have done that not fun. Or you can be like me and be overly sensitive to it and I press my little button and zonk…out like a light into la-la land.

But I’m not taking Oxy, or any of the other painkillers because it’s way too easy to get hooked on the and I had a close call in my opinion with Perk when I was recovering with my leg.

I lived with the pain from combat and it didn’t kill me or drive me bananas with how much it hurt then so I’m not really hitting mu pain meds that much at all while I’m here. Besides I’ve got some really great distractions from the pain. Cass for one and we spend a lot of time just talking and laying together in my bed and watching TV or rather stuff on DVD together and when she’s not here she’s actually over in Vancouver at the big detachment there because she’s taking a job with the extra RCMP security they’re going to have during the winter Olympics here in January and that’ll be a big bonus before she takes time off for having the baby and stuff.

So while she’s not here I’m online with the Hospital back home talking and e-mailing with the admin and the nursing supervisors about how they do things there and what it’s going to be like and what I can expect and what’ll be expected of me when I get there and studying here in my room with the materials that I need for my upgraded training and stuff.

Oh…

Oh, it’s been a long time since I’ve been a student. I don’t really get to be that much in pain with my surgery because my heads all ready to explode half the time with all the stuff I have to learn plus the stuff I missed. There’s new ways of doing things in medicine all the time and new tools and new drugs and the job really is one that you do have to always keep learning at and I’ve been away from it a long time.

But I’m also discovering the feelings I had back there in the thick of it and doing some real nursing and stuff. I love this job actually, I love being a nurse. Not a doctor, no thank you being a doctor’s great and all if you have the mentality for it but I don’t have that mind set. I’d rather slog it out with the other nurses and be right there for a lot of the action.

I miss being out of bed and I miss jogging and just doing my regular stuff. But being busy really does help. By day three I’m out of the bed and able to sit in the chair. I’m still on the catheter but it’s a start. Day four and day five I’m walking around and they really encourage that to build your strength back up and I even do some walking around the place talking to the staff and even bum the use of the treadmill on day six to get somewhat of a longer walk in without me roaming the halls and bugging the hell out of everyone.

Day seven they take the packing out and the catheter out and I’m watched to see if all’s well and I get my first post op in depth (chuckle) pelvic check and dilation. Oh it was so very, very strange and I’m pretty sure that I was feeling something near the end of things in a good happy way. I’m there overnight into day eight to keep an eye on things post dilation just in case but all was well.

I’m still sore, a bit puffy yet and that’s to be expected but. I get to go home, well rather to our hotel room and I take a long shower and a very gentle wash down there but a wash. Sponge baths are good and all but they just don’t cut it on a personal satisfaction level. I might have gone with the bath but I wanted to actually enjoy being able to stand up and be clean.

Sex…No me and sex are going to be distant friends for a long while yet unless you count me and my dilator set.

But the other stuff more than makes up for it all. I feel the difference in everything right now. There’s nothing there that was there no matter how hormone adjusted it was and everything now aside from the swelling I’m smooth there. Right there, and it matters.

No not in that earth shattering way that sometimes people fantasize about in TG fiction but. All these things like peeing and wiping. And just the way it feels to sit with the feel of pressure on the bit parts, then showering…that really, I never knew how much water flowing down and off a body could feel right. Then never…ever having to tuck ever again, the way my underwear fits, the way my pants fit.

It’s those little things that make these big impacts really. It’s all in the details I suppose right?

I do actually at one sort weird moment sat there naked with a beer from the mini bar in our hotel room totally just sitting there looking at myself in the full length mirror on the back of the closet door and just took it all in. Nothing pervy just…looking, seeing that this was really me, that this was all real and I’m not even sure why or how like important it was like psychologically but it sort of cemented stuff in my head.

By time we’re ready to go we head from base into Vancouver and to do some shopping. I want to buy things but it’s the 22nd and it’s Christmas and it’s going to be my first real Christmas in so long. It’s nice too to go shopping to, it’s warm out sort of because well it’s Vancouver and yet today it’s snowing and it’s actually my favorite kind of snowflakes with those big fluffy down like flakes are just sort of falling from the sky like melty little feathers.

There’s memories floating up more and more of my younger years before I was molested. Good memories like this kind of snow and me and my Dad hiking out over the field’s home to the tree line to look for the perfect Christmas tree.

He was a good Dad too. I might have been born his little guy but I was his little girl, his princess and he piggy backed me out once my feet got tired and we found our tree and once we got it cut down he made this sort of saddle thing out of his coat regardless of how cold it was outside and I got to sit on the tree like it was a horse as he pulled us from the woods to the house and he even played pretend with me like I was actually on a sleigh.

I hold my coffee with a warm happy sniffle in the lobby of B.C. Place. Cass looks over at me and she slips her arm into mine and nuzzle, smells and kisses my cheek.

“You okay Honey?”

“Yeah, I was just having a Christmas memory.”

“A good one?”

“Yeah…it’s just lately it feels like I’m starting to get some of that little girl that I was back, memories start drifting up and stuff and they’re pretty good ones really.”

“Well that’s a lot better than the alternative right?”

I lean over a little and kiss her. “Right.”

I love that look, that shine that’s in her eyes when we kiss. I love looking into the eyes of someone that really loves me.

Real love, trust me you can tell just like in every corny romance novel…you can really tell when you look into their eyes.

“Cass?”

“Mmm…” she says, sort of as she’s taking a sip from my coffee.

“I’d walk through ten times the hell that I’ve lived through to make you smile.”

“Sam…”

I kiss her again. “I can’t help it, I’m a Chase. Dad said stuff like that all the time to my Mom…even when she got cancer; even though things got….My Mom never ever doubted that he loved her. You deserve that Cass…every time I see you that heady breathless happy in this squirmy good in my own skin just gets stronger.”

“Sam…” she’s staring at me and her eyes are getting misty and there’s tears forming there and I reach up and cup her face with my hands and kiss her some more and very gently wipe those tears away with my thumbs and smile at her.

“Sam…you are the best thing that has ever happened to me……God you say stuff like…do stuff like this… and I love you so much it almost hurts to breathe.”

“Good thing you’re marrying a nurse then.”

“Yeah, and those sexy scrubs too.”

“C’mon Ossifer hotness, let’s go Christmas shopping.”

We kiss and cuddle walk over to the escalator and the entire ride up it.

Oh you so have to try that sometime…It felt like kissing on the way to heaven.

But I might be a bit biased.