Still Kicking
#26 of Hockey Hunk Season 4
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HH#132
S04E15
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Hehhey, and welcome to the Hockey Hunk! The site is back after a shocking surprise downtime, but thankfully we're for Monday, and another chapter of the Hockey Hunk! Woot! Season 4 is proceeding nicely, and I just figured out that this is the amazing 132nd chapter! we'll be hitting 150 in no time, I think! *chuckle* But before that, the show must go on, and you guys make it go on, with your nice, numerous comments - keep them coming! I've got a small backlog at the moment, but I'm working on clearing that one up, so just hang patiently - all of them will be answered in due time!
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The room where we meet is like a small gym, at least if you look at the equipment - there're those giant inflatable exercise balls, stacks of yoga mats, walking bars, a few sets of brightly colored barbells, and a spooky plastic model of a spine hanging from a weird steel frame. There are windows with Venetian blinds into the corridor, but they're always closed. I'm not sure if anyone has ever even found a lever or a pulley or whatever to operate them, even if we tried. Sun glowed behind the similarly closed windows that open into the hospital courtyard. I peeked there once when I was bored and going around the room. I've done that a few times. I've done that a few times indeed. It smells likely disinfectant, because this is a hospital, but at least the coffeemaker in the corner is making some new smells to cover it up. I could smell it already, since I was sitting pretty close to it, with my back over to it. The gurglegargle made my ears flicker occasionally, with that sound the thing made. Was hoping for a cuppa soon.
It's a drab, ugly room, with hard, white light, but it's practical. It's got automatic doors that open with the press of a button, and they're wide enough, and there's no sill, so those of us with wheels can get in easily. No carpets or other snags either. I'm pretty grateful for that, too. I've had my share of stumbles and when you've been patched up, you don't want to hit snags and take a fucking tumble. We've all had our stumble stories here.
I guess we were all in place now. I'd ended up between our girls this week, it seemed. Christina, looking busy as ever, was chatting to Dwayne, on my left, and Alyssa slumped on her chair to my right. I'd said her hello, but got the usual grunt from the wolverine. Navy-Army rivalry, anyone? What the hell? Never a spot too tight to not to, don't they say? I don't know. Been feeling very much out of pride recently. Can't blame myself, I guess.
Squeak-squeak. There seemed to be something going on with Simpson's wheels today. I looked over to him and watched the German Shepherd roll himself back and worth, arms flexing as his paws operated his shiny wheels. He had his OG 107 tank top on today, like always, with that hospital name tag ID card pinned onto his chest. Not exactly dog tags, but everything else was pure Semper Fi from the crew cut to the camo pattern on the backpack he had strapped onto his wheels.
"Soooooooooooo!" the resident Marine barked out once he got himself parked out as he pleased. "I think we're all set here, everyone in attendance at least. Jamie told me yesterday that he's no coming today, so I think we're all set now. Great!"
Simpson clapped his paws together sharply before he continued.
"Let's start like we always do and have a round of 'What Have I Been Up To Since We Last Met' to kick this off, okay?" the German Shepherd commanded.
A few of us chuckled at his words, myself included. It was an old joke, but it worked quite well on this crowd.
"Ha. Ha. Ha."
That was Dwayne, laughing in his own way a bit after the rest of us, because he was cycling when the rest of us did, and he always has to wait for his lungs to deflate and say whatever he wants to when he has air coming out of his lungs.
Simpson flicked his ears and grinned a bit at the Rottweiler in his high-backed chair, paws fidgeting with the little levers that operated the brakes of the German Shepherd's own wheels.
"Always gets you, Dwayne, huh?"
Dwayne flicked his ears, both in turn, and smiled a bit. That guy speaks with his ears almost as much as with his voice, sometimes. I could hear the whirr of the respirator strapped onto that chair, as it pumped air into his paralyzed chest, and I knew he prepared to speak.
"Would...love...to see you...khiick" came his wheezing response, when he could speak again.
It speaks pretty damn much about the character of these furs that we all laughed, Simpson included, at his comment. Even I laughed. Why not? It was hardly the worst thing you'd hear here. Not even close. If you ever saw one of those comedy roasts, you ain't seen nothing compared to what went on in this damn little gym.
"Well I'm afraid my kickers are perpetually assigned to kicking Saddam's ugly ass to all eternity, as you know," Simpson replied, still grinning wildly.
Couldn't help but look. There he was, smiling goofily - which was quite the feat coming from someone who looked like he could indeed kick anyone's ass, with his Full Metal Jacket looks and occasional attitude, there he was smiling and joking with the paralyzed guy, and making fun of the fact that his legs were indeed permanently assigned to Operation Desert Storm. The black pants he wore had the legs folded underneath him, so that the stumps looked quite neat, almost like the knees he no longer had. Gotta love knees. Made me want to hug mine.
"Harris, why don't you start?" our eternal drill sergeant inched his muzzle towards the rat sitting to his left.
The 18-year-old leaned back a bit on the orange plastic chair, as if he had been somewhere far away and only now returned to be with us. Maybe that was part of being a teenager, I wondered, you're often somewhere else in your own thoughts. Thrown in an amputated leg and some heavy-duty cancer chemo and you're in for an interesting ride.
"Dunno what to say really," Harris mumbled lazily. "Just kinda been hanging out."
Guess some things don't change no matter what, huh?
"What've you been up to then?" Simpson wouldn't let him go that easily.
The teen guy shrugged, arms folded around his chest. He wore a cap backwards on his head, and the long-sleeved shirt had the logo of a band I had never heard of on it. Dirty sneakers on his footpaws completed the look. He looked pretty much like your regular kid, besides the somewhat bald spot on his right cheek, where his fur hadn't really grown properly back yet. It was still much better than when he first started attending the group.
"Dunno. School. Facebook. Stuff."
"Face...booksss...great" Dwayne commented. "But...slow....typing."
I saw Dwayne do that once. He's got this sort of a stick he can move with his chin, and then he punches it one letter at a time. He says it's easier than dictating to his assistant, and I guess it makes him feel a bit more independent, too. I can definitely understand the want to feel that, especially coming from someone who was supposed to become a pilot.
"Talk about it," Alyssa grunted. "Should've learned to touch type when I had the chance."
I glanced over to my fellow grunt, sitting onto my right. Unlike Harris and his long-sleeved shirt and his pants, Alyssa made absolutely no attempt to hide her own injury. A complex strap-like contraption and some darkish plastic to somewhat blend in with her fur could not really draw away the attention from the metal hooks protruding from where you'd expect to see fingers. They had some plastic stuff on them so that at least they weren't shine like you'd expert on a pirate captain...but she did sometimes sound a bit like a pirate, when she got mad, and that was often.
"I wouldn't have a job without a computer, though," I spoke up.
"Me either," Christina said. "I couldn't have gone back to my old job if it wasn't for it."
"Don....thhhmind...slow...." Dwayne added. "No...hurry..."
"Well that's what you always gotta remember," Simpson spoke up in his guru voice, "we all have to move at our own pace, even if it feels like we're being held back sometimes. It's the best we can do, and we gotta live with that."
I wondered if they taught him a list of these platitudes back in rehab, or something, considering the frequency with which he could spawn these comments on his troublesome wards here at the group. I had had my share, too, in my moments.
"Well, thank you, Harris!" the German Shepherd boomed. "How about you, Marker? Share us the highlights of your week!"
I could just about see his muzzle peeking out from under his hoodie, and didn't really expect much more. I'd seen him without the hood often enough, on his good days, but I could assume that today wasn't one of those. His paws were stuffed into the front pocket of the hoodie, good one and the one with the rubber paw, a bit stealthier than Alyssa's.
"Well..." he spoke, a low, gruff voice, but soft when he was feeling nervous, "Welll, I kinda had one a moment a few minutes ago, actually."
"Well that's great!" Simpson enthused. "Fresh news from Marker! Come on!"
The paws burrowed in his belly pocket fidgeted.
"Well...I...I was in the waiting room, because I was early, and I...kinda had this chat with someone," the wolf rumbled.
"Ohh well done, Sergeant!" Simpson barked out.
"What did you talk about?" Christina asked.
More fidgeting.
"Just a little bit about the weather..." Marker muttered, "not much."
"How did that make you feel?" Simpson leaned forward on his chair, which kinda looked a bit precarious, when you were only the half of a man.
"It was alright, I guess," the wolf continued. "He smiled. He was this lion with crutches. Had hurt his leg or something."
"Well, it is often easy to find furs to chat to around Stapleton," Simpson nodded sternly, "everyone has some bit broken here, so it's not so easy to stand out."
I knew that Simpson meant well, but someone like Marker would always stand out. No matter how good a job the surgeons had done with the skin grafts, or how he might look like in a while, once the skin would heal and they could fit the artificial fur patches to cover the parts that would never grow their natural fur. That wasn't even mentioning his arm that was no more, thanks to an IED in Fallujah.
"There was this girl, though," Marker carried on. "She stared at me."
Simpson let out a dry chuckle.
"But then there's kids, yeah."
Alyssa snorted.
"Hope you gave the little brat a good scare," the wolverine rumbled, waving up her hooks with an air of menace to them, especially coming from an almost 200-pound war vet with an attitude to match her size.
Marker lifted his head a little, and I knew he was looking at Alyssa, whom looked back and winked at the wolf. His tail brushed the floor.
"A little bit," he said. "I guess."
"I totally scared my little sis' friends like a hundred times back when I had no fur," Harris spoke up, suddenly, drawing out eyes and ears. "Then they just stopped being scared and wanted to see me do the pink monster face again. Lol."
"Can we get a show now?" Christina chuckled. "I bet my kids would love that."
"Sorry, dude," the teen guy huffed, "ain't pink no more."
Well, just a little bit, on his cheek, but I'm sure that would improve, too.
"Well, sounds like you enjoyed your chat with a stranger, no matter," Simpson noted. "Which was very well done from you. That's very well done."
"Great...job...Marker..." Dwayne flicked his ears as he spoke.
"Thanks," the wolf mumbled.
"Which brings us to the light of our lives, Staff Sergeant Alyssa Curl!" Simpson declared from his throne.
The wolverine shot him a look as ugly as a 5.56 NATO from her rifle could have been, and then got up from the plastic chair, making its leg screech on the floor.
"Don't know about you guys but I'm getting myself some of that coffee now," she replied, already on her way towards the steamy pot waiting.
"I'd like a cuppa!" I announced.
"Who am I now? A stewardess?" the wolverine chuckled to herself, still lumbering towards the corner with the coffeemaker. "Get your own!"
"I'd love some, but then I'd have to go to the bathroom before the end of the session and I don't want to leave early," Christina replied. "I was counting on getting back home before I have to go."
"A sip..for me..." Dwayne said. "But...need...Tom..."
"I'll get it," Simpson announced, paws falling to his brakes to unlatch them. "Let your assistant have his coffee break, too."
"Thanks...sarge..."
"No problem at all!" the German Shepherd rumbled as he went on his way. "Come on, jarheads!"
Marker got up from his seat.
"I'll get you some, Harris, if you like," he said. "You want some, Tate?"
"If it's not too much trouble," I said with a smile. "I can get up to get mine, I don't mind."
"It's okay," Marker replied and went on, tail brushing about.
Yeah. He might've been the one missing a paw, but at least he walked without a crutch. I still had one for balance, and two when the stump was acting up and I wanted to get some weight off it to give it a break. My crutch was lying on the floor between my chair and Alyssa's. It was nice of Marker to offer a bit of a help. It's not like I couldn't have done it myself, but...let him help. Made him feel better, I supposed.
Everyone drifted back after a while, holding white paper cups, one of which was placed into my own paw by Marker, whose lips I could barely see from under the hood, but he was smiling a bit. I smiled back too, a real and nice proper foxy smile, like you saw on the covers of children's books about wily vulpines. Alyssa landed onto the chair next to me and took a loud slurp from her coffee, and I could see that she had it on her hooks, just to show off that she had mastered their use, perhaps.
"Whenever you're ready to share then, Alyssa," Simpson reminded her of her duty to the group, himself busy placing paper napkins over Dwayne's neck so that he felt comfortable about lifting up the coffee cup near the Rottweiler's lip, complete with a small straw that he had put there to make it easier for Dwayne get his sip. It was almost beautiful to watch, the efficiency with which those big paws moved, doing something that I suppose should be considered a delicate, caring at.
"Nose...first...please..." Dwayne commented.
"Damn, I always forget that bit!" Simpson smirked before he lifted the cup higher up, so that Dwayne could get a proper sniff at its contents and enjoy that experience as well, before they'd get to the drinking part.
"Whatever you want me to say," Alyssa finally got to business, sitting back on the chair and scratching her belly with her claws, "still working in the back room doing all the paperwork. They still don't think that a one-pawed recruitment officer would make much of a good impression. Still hiding me in the back closet."
"I'd like the peace and quiet," Marker said.
"Well I don't," Alyssa grunted. "Feels so damn stuffy back there. And it's hot. I sweat a lot."
"How is your diet going, Alyssa?" Christina chimed. "Still planning to shed 20 pounds by Christmas?"
"Hell yeah!" the wolverine frothed. "I already lost 20, I want to get the rest off me as well! Damn, I regret that sorrow-eating almost more than that accident with that goddamn AA gun."
"A woman's gotta have priorities," Christina smirked.
"Losing that flab one chocolate bar at a time," Alyssa declared proudly.
"I think that highlights the fact everyone should eating healthily ," Simpson mused. "It always contributes to our physical and mental wellbeing. A few treats are of course allowed every now and then."
"Ice....cream..." Dwayne grinned toothily.
"Chocolate chip ice cream...ummmm...." Christina beamed.
"Vanilla...for me.." Dwayne replied.
Simpson chuckled and dabbed the Rottweiler's muzzle with a folded paper towel, to keep him nice and clean.
"I like strawberry best," I added. "My grandmother back in Cleveland always piles it up on me when I visit."
"I..like that...too..." Dwayne smiled.
"So how about you, Tate?" I was put on the spotlight next, I noticed, and sat up a bit more upright, out of habit. Just like Simpson, once a soldier, always a soldier, though I wasn't quite as hardcore in that as him, I supposed. "What have you been up to?"
"Mostly school," I said, "trying to get that CSS and JavaScript into my head still. Doing okay progress, I guess. It's a lot of trial and error, but it's always fun to run a program and see how it turns out...whether it's gonna print out a fatal error or not."
"Any news on that work practice yet?" Simpson asked. "You mentioned that last week."
"Well...they are still looking something for me to do over July and August, before the classes resume, but they haven't gotten back to me yet," I explained.
"Good luck, Tate," Marker said, looking over to me. "It's always great to get a job."
"Even I'm stocking shelves," Harris said. "It's pretty cool, even if it's a bit boring, lol."
"A job is always a job," Christina said. "If I'd just been left sitting around with Liz and Brad, I don't know what I would have done. I couldn't have provided for them or anything if I didn't just get back to shape and back to work. I can't even think about what could have happened if I didn't."
"And that's why it's great that we have all these rehab programs nowadays," Simpson gave his word. "They don't just whip your ass into shape, they'll also teach you how to be useful again. I'm sure I keep telling you this, but after my physical rehab, I had no idea that in '93 I would be already hauling my ass to the university to learn all about psychology and shit. And you know why? Because the guys at Walter Reed told me that it was something I could do, because they watched me, and told me. They knew something about me that I didn't know before, and I listened. That's what important about this business, boys and girls. We gotta keep an open mind and remember that we're not wrecks. We are still able to do our part, and we do ours proudly, too."
Semper Fi.
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Thank you for reading! Hope you enjoyed the read, and hopefully you'll leave me a nice, long comment, and come back on Friday for another interesting chapter!
Cheerio!