First Steps
This Quantum Leap™ story utilizes characters that are copyright © by Bellasarius Productions and Universal Studios. No infringement on their respective copyrights is intended by the author in any way, shape or form. This fan fiction story is written solely for the entertainment of the readers and is not for profit. All fiction, plots, and original characters are the sole creations of the author.
First Steps
The sun tried its best to give a warm glow to the sterile hospital room. Lieutenant Al Calavicci awakened in his bed just as he had every morning for the past four months. His return from the prisons of Vietnam left him weighing 87 pounds, beaten, bruised, oozing from sores all over his body. He'd pumped up to a whopping 104 pounds even after doctors evicted the wildlife living in his gut through a surgery that took a significant length of intestines. Gaining weight was going to be harder because of it, but finally he ate his first real food, food that wasn't pureed or dripped into a vein.
Just the day before, his beautiful wife Beth brought in a plate of homemade spaghetti and a meatball. She wasn't the best cook, but using his recipe, she made the cup of pasta and the golf ball sized meatball look like a feast. Not only was the food delicious, he lifted the fork on his own, even cutting the tender meatball into bites small enough for his gullet to swallow.
The door opened and in walked a bull of a woman the staff crowned Ethilla the Nurse. Ethel Smithson looked like she graduated from nursing school the year Al was born. She'd seen it all and knew it all. She didn't put up with self-pity and her efficiency was legendary. There was another side to Ethel, though. When a patient was especially frightened, Ethel was the cavalry. In the middle of the night, when dreams turned into terrors and no one else was there, Ethel would show up and chase demons back into the hellhole they came from. Then in the daytime, with an appropriate harrumph, she'd dismiss having done anything at all.
Ethel took on double shifts when Al ended up in her unit. This one, this lost pilot would not be abandoned to a system that met its own needs and often fell far short of the needs of the patient. Truth be told, she shed many tears over her Lieutenant Calavicci. No one should have had to survive what he did. The ugliness permanently scarring his body told the stories that he couldn't. Each time she changed a bandage, she noted another rip in his body, another place where evil met pride and nobody won.
"So, you're finally awake. Welcome to noon, sailor."
"Noon? You're joking."
Ethilla pushed a button as the head of the bed ans brought him to a sitting position. Then she slipped a thermometer under his tongue. "Do I make jokes? Now, be quiet. Time for blood pressure." He stuck his arm out. The drill was the same. Three times a day they did this stuff and it was always a waste of time - at least he thought so. As Ethel wrapped the child-sized cuff around the skeletal limb, she told him, "You needed the sleep, so don't worry about it." One stubby hand pumped the black bulb and the band puffed up, squeezing down on his bicep. The other hand held a stethoscope to the crook in his arm.
The thermometer didn't help his diction "I neethded the theep?"
"No talking, sailor." Ethel let out the air and stared at the device. Eye contact with him wasn't necessary at that moment.
"Why wou . . ."
The huskiness in her voice made her sound like she spent every night in a whiskey bar for a few decades, but that wasn't the case. She only went to the local blues club once or twice a month. "Hush! Let me do my work. Trust me. You needed the sleep."
He felt his cheeks flush. Another nightmare had consumed his psyche in the middle of his attempt to rest. Ethel rescued him from a white hot brand pressed into his chest so deep that it boiled his blood.
No matter how often people said not to be, these dreams embarrassed him. And no matter how often they told him he was amazingly strong, he saw his dreams as weakness.
Ethel took the band off his arm, the thermometer from his mouth and two fingers measured his pulse. After fifteen seconds, she decreed, "Everything is normal."
A case of the sullens hit hard. "You think this is normal?"
She stuffed her tools into her over-sized pockets. "Honey, in your case, nothing will ever be normal, but for you that's normal."
"You're not making me feel better."
Ethilla stayed strong for this young man. While his devoted wife came daily, he didn't have a mother to dote on her baby boy, who, though now a man, was supremely hurting. She accepted the job as surrogate, helping him feel that he did have a home and more than one person who cared. "Well, honey, feeling better is going to take more time than you think it should, but it's going to be okay eventually. You have a lot of things to do in your life. We just have to get you back out into the world as soon as we can."
He felt his throat constrict and his eyes clench. When tied down in his tiger cage, he dreamed of being home and of a time when it was all over for him, but dreams don't come true. He came home to a hospital where too many doctors fussed over his fragile body without recognizing or caring that there was a person inside the torn, flayed skin. Turning off, turning away, separating from their healing assaults became second nature. He'd had practice. When the torture was at the moderate level, he taught himself to pay no attention to the pain. This was not any different. Both sets of perpetrators wanted him to survive - one to continue their infliction of inhuman agony, the second to minimize the intent of the first.
Since he'd been home, he lived in the hospital. Every so often, Beth wheeled him outside so he could take a few breaths of real air and get used to the outdoors being a friendly place again. Over his hospital gown, a robe covered his skinny and scarred calves. Mostly he stayed in bed because he didn't have to see what he looked like. The blanket covered his legs. He could tuck his arms under the sheet and try not to notice the IV needle in his arm.
Ethel smoothed his curly hair. "I know, honey. This hasn't been any kind of picnic for you. It will get better. I promise you that and I don't make promises I can't keep."
Part of him liked this hard-edge nurse paying attention to him. Maybe this was what a mother would be. Looking into her dark brown eyes, he confessed, "I've been here a long time and it's just frustrating." He felt his earlobes heat up in a deep blush. Ethel's box-like presence stood strong and he felt safe with her there, but he was a man and this kind of folderol was for little girls. "I'm fine."
"Right and I'm Hot Lips Houlihan"
The absurdity got him laughing. "Babe, you got the hottest lips I've seen for awhile."
His masterful attempt at changing the subject didn't work on Ethel. After 30 years of nursing at Balboa, she had seen and heard every line every sailor could possibly use. "I want you to look at me now." He followed this enlisted woman's orders." Her hand tightened down a little more until he once again felt the warmth of another human being. "You went through hell and no one will ever be able to fully understand it. Even Dr. Berkeley, with all his psychology mumbo jumbo, is just a lot of hot air moving through the wind. Now, forgetting the past isn't going to be possible. You'll see it on your body every day for the rest of your life, but you have a life to look forward to. I've known your wife for a few years here. Your job right now is to get better so that both of you can get on with things. There's a world out there waiting for you."
Real men don't cry and he didn't break the tenet despite the fact that he couldn't swallow and his clamping fingers started to crush Ethel's. "That's just it. What is out there? I mean when I left, Lyndon Johnson was President. Now it's some guy named after a car who didn't even get elected to the office. The Beatles broke up and this disco stuff is crap. I don't know how to function here. I just know how to live in prison camp. I'm not a part of this world."
Ethel looked around at his world and had to agree. "Right now, you're not. Sorry, honey. Who knows? In a few months, you might be a disco dancing king."
He smiled at her. "Yeah, right." Then the smile vanished, obliterated within a fraction of a thought. "Mrs. Smithson, you're the only one who isn't lying to me."
"They're not lying. They're just telling you what they want to believe. Give them time."
"Time is all I got. Hell, I don't even have a pair of jockey shorts."
Nodding she told him, "Now, that one I don't understand. You should be getting dressed each day." She tugged at the sleeve of the hospital gown. "No need for this crib sheet masquerading as pajamas."
"They treat me like I'm going to be bed bound till Hanoi freezes over."
"You mean till hell freezes over."
"That's what I said."
A food service worker entered and with barely an acknowledgment that people were in the room, she set a plastic tray on the mobile table that hovered over Al's feet. Ethel pulled the table close to Al and took off the aluminum dome hiding whatever they wanted him to eat. She smirked, "Oh good, Salisbury steak."
The hunk of ground beef sat in coalesced brown goo disguised as gravy. "I'd take cafeteria food over this slop." A close look at green Jell-O topped with a layer of weeping cottage cheese had him pining, "I'd kill for a Hostess Twinkie."
Ethel turned her head so Al didn't see her stifling an out and out laugh. Once she regained something that may have been composure, she said, "Then go to the cafeteria. They sell all that poison down there."
The dangling carrot of the outside world forced him to make excuses. "Woman, I ain't traipsing through this hospital with the family jewels flapping in the wind."
"Like yours are any different. You're walking now. Get your butt down to the cafeteria and choose what you want to eat."
Grumbling, he whispered, "I can't walk that far without a walker."
Again, no self-pity allowed. "So big man, you're too proud to use the walker?"
Al knew she was right. "Pride goeth before a fall."
"Poetic now, and sarcastic." She covered the cold glop the hospital called food. "Take that pretty wife of yours to lunch. What time is she getting here today?"
Beth's name always made him smile and the smile did a lot for his looks. "She had to take the car in for an oil change. She said she'd get here about 1:30."
It was only 12:15. There was plenty of time. Ethel thought for a moment or two and made her decision. She patted his hand and said, "I'll be back in five minutes." After grabbing the tray of inedibles, she left the room with strong purposeful steps.
But that left him alone again. Being alone made him anxious. It was a holdover from the camps. When you were isolated from your buddies that usually meant you were being prepared for some kind of interrogation. That was the word the guerillas used. The first year or two, they sometimes asked questions, but eventually interrogation wasn't anything more than an excuse to beat him bloody and insensate. Once he'd been there for a month, any information he had was too old anyhow. For the remainer of his eight years, they just kept him alive for sport.
There was a guerilla they called Sport. He couldn't remember why that was the nickname he earned. There was nothing sporting about him. Sport was into pain with the added pleasure of humiliation. So, whenever Al spent time with Sport, his ragged clothes got left in the cage.
The previous evening's nightmare reproduced his last encounter with Sport. Al watched two fires built about ten feet apart. A length of two-inch pipe stretched from one fire to the other. The fires burned for 24 hours and the pipe turned white. A sprinkling of water sizzled when it made contact. Nothing good could happen with that pipe. Al found out when Sport and two more pigs dragged him by his hair over to the glowing pipe. They threw him to his knees no more than two and a half feet away, waves of heat rising from it. One pig tightened the manacles squeezing his bony wrists together behind Al's back. He threaded a rope through the chain and threw it to Sport. The other pig staked out his shackled ankles. Al wasn't able to move his legs at all. Sport stood behind him, holding the rope and screaming at him. The words made no sense. His understanding of Vietnamese was limited mostly to expletives that he used at times like this. So, he used them and Sport wasn't happy. The guerilla kicked Al in the middle of his back and he fell forward toward the hissing pipe. He prepared for the pain, but the rope at his wrists stopped his descent inches from the searing pipe. The tension on his shoulders created its own pain and the game began. Al pulled himself from the pipe that he knew was his destiny. It took only 15 minutes of play time before Sport tired of it and after one last kick, he dropped the rope. Al fell flat, the pipe branding his chest across his sternum. He looked for the strength to pull his body off the blistering pipe, but Sport knelt on Al's tormented shoulders and there was nowhere to go. Al recalled screaming in agony, screaming so loud that he knew someone in New York City had to hear him, but no one did.
The nightmare about that day came often, probably because he'd already had two surgeries to repair the contracted scar tissue on his chest. His right hand gently touched the healing wound. Covered in scars, ugly scars, his body was repulsive. He shouldn't be thinking of going anywhere. No one needed to see what he looked like.
He barely heard his room door open again. Ethel saw the look on his face and dropped the large box she had onto the chair. "I know where you are, Al. You come back to me now, understand?"
With the rote response of a Catholic schoolboy, Al mumbled, "Yes, ma'am."
His eyes hadn't looked up. "Al, you're home. You know that, right?"
The sadness was too deep. "I'm not home. This isn't home."
Ethel took his face in her hands. "You listen to me. You're home. You're going to be well again. I expect great things. Now, there are a lot of hurts inside you that you'll have to deal with for a lot longer than the burns and broken bones. I know that, but I also know that you won't start feeling like you're home until you get the hell out of this room for something other than surgery, therapy or x-rays."
"Yeah, like that will happen some time this century."
She brought the box over to Al's tray table. "That attitude won't work long. It's okay to feel sorry for yourself, but not forever. The future is more than tomorrow or next month even. Your future is out there waiting for you to embrace it."
Dear God, he wanted to believe her. "I don't know. I mean, look at me."
She admitted, "Hospital gowns don't look good on anyone, honey."
"It's not the gown. It's these scars. I hate people staring at them."
"That's what this is for." She put the oversized box on Al's lap. It sat there as he stared alternately at it and then at Ethel. Both hands flew to her ample hips. "You're capable of opening it by yourself. I'm not your nanny."
He lifted the cover from the large, square box that looked like it could hold a small Christmas wreath. The contents broke the rhythm of his breathing. His eyes pleadingly looked at Ethel. "This is okay?"
"Depends. Do you think it's okay?" It took a second of thought, but his slight nodding and growing smile answered her. One of those occasional Ethilla smiles told him to go for it. As the nurse left the room, she said, "Call me if you need help, but I don't think you do."
He hadn't felt this excited in months. It actually seemed kind of silly to him. All that was in the box was a set of clothes, real clothes - not a hospital gown, not a bathrobe, no slippers. These were clothes.
There was underwear, jockey shorts still in the plastic wrapper. Brand new, not some recycled hospital issue boxers. He laughed after noticing his hands shake with excitement. Ripping into the package, he told the pillow, "Damn! I didn't think putting on a pair of shorts could make me this happy."
The hospital gown found the floor in seconds. He stuck one foot, then the other into his underwear. The size was perfect for his underweight body. All of a sudden, he was just a guy getting dressed, standing in his room in his underwear. There wasn't anything remarkable about it, but it felt damn good. Digging further into the box, he found a tee-shirt, a new, clean white tee-shirt with no rips or holes. The crew neck wasn't stretched out. He pulled it over his head and the smell of clean cloth hit him. Before he could go further, he had to inhale the scent of clean, not hospital clean - real world clean. The tee-shirt fit him, too, just like he liked them, a little clingy, but not too much.
The pain in his shoulders didn't bother him as it usually did. It was simply something he had to get past to complete his mission. Now, he was a kid on Christmas morning finding a Lionel train beneath the tree except that in this case it was a pair of jeans, a fire engine red silk shirt and socks that matched. He had to sit down. His skinny legs were shaking from exertion and excitement. The socks slipped over feet that hadn't known coverings in over eight years. As he pulled them up, the scars circling his ankles disappeared, the marks fading away under the bright adornments.
The shirt still had the pins in it, the ones keeping it folded in perfect condition. Pins sent a shudder of pain down his spine. Pins were a frequent instrument of his captors, but now he tossed them into the garbage. It was almost cathartic. Slowly, he unbuttoned the shirt, savoring the knowledge that this shirt had buttons quite unlike the rag he wore every day for the last four years of his captivity. One by one, he pushed the buttons through the holes and when it actually came time to put it on his body, he came close to crying. The silk was soft, even sensual and his marks didn't show through. Sore, achy arms stretched out and ran through the long sleeves that covered the scars. Again, one by one, he secured each button. He had to sit. The effort was tiring him physically, but his heart hadn't felt this strong since the day he arrived at the hospital and Beth was there to great him. Beth. Beth. He said her name over and over again.
Then, with a reverence most would reserve for a supreme religious experience, he took the jeans from the box. Real pants with a Levis label on the back pocket. A shaky hand pulled the zipper down. He lifted his left foot and slid it through the pant leg. Then the right foot and he stood again. The tails of his shirt got tucked in and he finished with a zip and the top button on the jeans. His hands searched through the box. A little disappointment hit him when he didn't find a belt, but that was silly. He needed to be happy with what he had.
Rather than sit on his bed, he took refuge in the chair. This was liberty in its purest form. Even though a deep yawn asked him to get some more sleep, he wouldn't give in. Beth's book sat on the table. He could still read. Grateful that they shared taste, he opened up the Raymond Carver collection of short stories and began one that Beth hadn't read aloud to him. Ten minutes into his literary excursion, there was a small knock on the door. He called out, "Come in." He actually invited someone in. They didn't just walk in regardless of his likings.
After seeing her ward all dressed, Ethel tried not to grin from ear to ear. He didn't look pathetic any more. Skinny as he was, he looked like a returning hero, a real man with a real future. "I forgot this." Another box settled in Al's hands. "Don't know what I was thinking."
As she turned toward the door, he called out, "Please, don't leave."
"You think all I have to do is sit with you?" There was a touch of hurt in his eyes. "Honey, this is your time. You don't want an old bag like me intruding."
He didn't like her self-deprecation. He wanted Ethel to share the joy in her gifts. The only tack he could take - without crying - was sarcasm. "You're starting to piss me off." He pointed to another chair and demanded, "Sit down, now."
She held up both hands, palms facing her tormentor. Bowing repeatedly with deference, she humbled herself, "Yes, sir. Your wish is my command."
Maybe five seconds passed before she got to the chair, but to Al it felt like five minutes. Once she settled in, he opened this new box and gasped, absolutely cliché and all, gasped. "Now, this is what I was waiting for." The leather belt finished the look. Standing up, he threaded it through the loops on his jeans and very much appreciated the extra holes punched in it. His bruised hand tapped his gut and he declared. "I'm hungry. Beth better get here soon or I'm going to the cafeteria without her!"
There was no keeping a smile off her face now. Not only did he look better, but he stood taller, his shoulders thrown back, his head unbowed and he was making decisions for himself again. Even more than that, he wanted to eat. "It's 1:15. She should be here by the time you get those shoes on."
Brand new, white leather sneakers, all laced up and ready to put on stared back at him from inside the box. "I like sneakers. Never had a pair of leather ones, though." Years of being without shoes spread his feet out wide into what he called duck feet. A little of the old fear crept into his posture when he made the attempt to put the first sneaker on his foot, but it slipped over his red sock like a cobbler had made them expressly for him. He stood up and pulled back his shoulders. His smile turned charming and sly, so he winked at the woman who brought him this most important gift, his first touch of normalcy.
Stating it quite profoundly and so very simply Ethel said, "Al Calavicci is back."
He walked across his hospital room toward her. Scrawny, twig arms embraced this gruff old nurse. "Yeah, I'm back."
The part of her that loved his reaction fought against the part of her that needed to be Nurse Smithson. The nurse won out. "Enough of this. I have to get to work." She marched toward the door and turned. "Now, you still need that walker if you're going all the way to the cafeteria."
He stuck his hands in his pockets, rolled his eyes and muttered through his smile, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll use the walker."
THE END