{An old Greek man told me once that real love comes with marriage, and babies. I think sometimes there is truth to that, and it is what gave me the idea for this short tale.
For some less blessed than others life can be difficult, something I personally happen to know about quite well.
This is not really erotic, nor intended to be.}
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Henry sat in his wheelchair going through the mail while he waited for the person from the home care center to arrive.
The mail had the usual ads for things he would never want or buy, but one was the statement he received periodically from the insurance company.
Henry was always interested in that one, the company billed medicare and his co-insurance for the full amount. The government paid nowhere near anything close to the billed figure, then the company authorized a figure that looked like less than 30% also and paid it.
He saw that this last billing was for the woman that came in and helped clean his house, put things away, it was for 3 hours once each week, billed at $64 per hour by the agency that sent them. For some reason they paid that one in full.
He also knew that the workers were paid just $12 per hour, like always, the government got taken in the end.
Of course the person sent by the agency did more than just clean, they also went through the motions of taking his blood pressure, asked the same questions and then filled out the little report.
Pretend nurses, maybe? Henry never asked.
Henry knew damn good and well he could hire someone to do that job for far less than $64 an hour, but after all, this was the government.
What he was hoping for was that the person sent this time would be better than the last one.
After the last one, a well overweight woman whose ethnicity he had no idea what it was had left, Henry noticed that about half of the bottle of fairly expensive wine he had been saving for his 50th birthday was gone.
A quick look around found she had also discovered his bag of snacks, it had been opened and some of that was gone. His little tin of peanuts was gone, too.
She never took any of his jar of change, though. Probably because it was behind his chair and she never cleaned anything back there.
Things like that just pissed him off!
Henry reached down and tugged on his right leg, lately he spent a lot more time in the wheelchair than he did upright because the damned thing hurt.
Only 46 years old, he hated the idea of being disabled, but disease doesn't always wait until the very end of life.
The left metal leg's cup wasn't too bad, he could make that work all right by using two of the padded socks the government got charged $50 per pair for.
No way on his new right one, even three socks didn't take up the slack, the stub pressed fully on the end no matter what he did. That just made it too painful to walk.
One would think the things would fit, since he happened to know they were several thousand dollars each time he got a new one.
It had taken him a month to get the first legs fitted properly, laboriously scraping it with his pocket knife and a sanding block.
That pair he was getting around pretty good with, but then came the time for the new ones.
"I want it just like this one!" Henry had told the young lady doing the fitting.
No such luck there. Now the old one didn't fit because his leg had shrunken some, the new one didn't either.
Fucking government.
"Come on in!" Henry yelled when the doorbell rang.
"Hello, I am Carmen, are you Henry?" The woman asked, pushing the door open slightly and looking in.
"Yea, come on in." Henry was mildly surprised, this one appeared to be about 30 or so and on the cute side.
No extra fat that he could see at least. Sort of pretty in a way, she had the usual roundish face that he had seen in Hispanic women before.
The accent sounded that way also.
She glanced down but didn't change expression as Henry released his right leg and pulled it back off. It was already beginning to sting and he had no desire to end up with another of those sore spots.
The last time had been two dozen trips to the hospital, IV drips.
Being Diabetic just was not something he would wish on anyone, it was a pure pain in the ass.
He remembered that day they told him why he felt like shit all of the time, and why the toes on his right foot suddenly began to turn sideways. In his entire life up to that point he had never given illness a second thought, that shit always happened to someone else.
Barely 40 years old when Henry got the bad news, he told his wife Lee that evening what the test results were. She got a sour look on her face, but then he had almost expected that.
Married just four years, Lee had demonstrated clearly her ability to spend money and more than half the time she was gone somewhere anyway.
That turned out about like he expected, she was gone in less than a month.
Lee had been willing, even eager in the bedroom when they first started dating. He did notice that she looked around carefully when he brought her home the first time to his house.
She wanted to know everything, too, and he explained the house was paid for, so was his car and truck. His job managing the warehouse paid a good salary, also.
There was a fairly nice little bank account, considering his salary it was more than one might think.
A broker he had talked to years back, just a kid actually, suggested buying some stock in Suburu, a car company.
Henry would never have thought of that on his own.
Suitably impressed, Lee said yes when he asked her to marry him.
It only took about two months for the changes to begin. His sex life had devolved into solo sexuality, Lee sometimes would give it up once a month or so, but always acted like it was a chore to her.
She was long gone the day he went in for the surgery.
So was one very large chunk of his assets.
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When he was in the followup up therapy sessions, the older nurse had been working with him on the new steel legs, her hands all over him.
He had gotten an enormous erection, not a thing he could do about that. He had turned bright red at that, but she had just grinned when she saw the very tip of him sticking out the legs of his baggy shorts.
"Well! Now that is different, usually with your disease things don't work very well." She grinned at him. Then she continued with the session like nothing was happening, but Henry noticed she kept looking down there. He kept trying to tuck it away out of sight without a lot of success since the thing was a good seven inches long when it came up full blown.
He had not even thought about that when he put on the shorts, which were just a pair of slacks he had cut the legs off of with scissors.
The next session Henry had with the nurse he wore underwear, even though he hated those and always had. Being equipped with a sort of big set of balls and that thing that hung down even when soft was OK when in use but a pain in the ass to keep put away.
He did notice the nurse kept glancing down there anyway, almost like she was hoping to see it again?
But she never said anything and neither did he.
