A Fine Arrangement: Dual Quads
or
Dual Quads and Gizmo Sex
A story by XXscribbler
For the past three years, Professor of Anthropology Gisela had been the University's only quadriplegic faculty member -- brake failure on a big truck owned by a national shipping company, clear negligence. The resulting broken neck left her with neither sensation nor motor control below her collarbones. Nothing save a ghostlike ability to sense touches on her skin on the upper right frontal chest. The ability corresponded to no known neural pathway (hence entranced her neurologists) and was critically important to her mental well-being.
Visiting Gisela's lecture today was Jeannie, a new English Lit prof, who was in similar straits. She, too, had no motor control below the base of her neck, due to a long-standing --and losing- contest with ALS. The disease's progress had stopped some years ago, a rare and mysterious occurrence due to some unknowable obstacle through which the disease might break at any time. It would eventually kill her sometime in the next forty years. Or the next six months: it was impossible to predict. Unlike Gisela, Jeannie still had full sensory input from her entire body -- only the motor circuits were shot, except for those above the collarbones.
Jeannie had been hired because of her spectacular resume and academic achievements. Although she would likely have gotten the job in any case, she was sure her disability hadn't hurt -- she could generate multiple tic--marks in the U's annual "how are we doing?" reports on the U's gender (in)equality.
Both professors were in their early thirties and quite attractive - both fine-boned, Jeannie blond and verging on tiny, Gisela brunette and merely small. Each maintained a fierce pride in her looks, wheelchair and other difficulties be damned. Gisela in particular had simply gorgeous well-styled hair and impeccable low-key makeup: quite obviously neither was her personal doing.
Their husbands helped -- Gisela had Jerry, a tall blond lean runner-and-yoga type, complete with full beard and mustache. Jeannie had Bob, shorter and muscular, a devotee of weight-training to just shy of overt body-building. The four all held doctorates, but in wildly diverging topics.
Jeannie was intensely curious the moment she heard about Gisela, hence her attendance at this late-afternoon lecture. She and Bob parked at the top of the backstage wheelchair ramp, just behind the drawn curtains of the stage-wing.
Gisela was at the lectern, ready to go, strapped into her fancy electric wheelchair. Jeannie's motor-chair was commercial state of the art, with controls activated by mouth and head movements, but it paled beside Gisela's, which was a high-tech affair, obviously custom and expensive. There was a tiny joystick the size of a slender soda-straw on one side of her mouth, and an even smaller stalk carrying a grain-of-wheat microphone wrapped unobtrusively around her cheekbone.
Someone had done a sterling job with voice-command programming -- the entire system, house-lights, slides, amplifier volume, even a short video, came up, went away, backed up and reset as she instructed aloud.
Gisela was a fine lecturer with a commanding presence and strong voice that belied her physical condition and hinted strongly at professional training. The auditorium was big -- it was a popular course, and she a popular teacher. Despite being late on the last day before a four-day weekend, there were few empty seats. She held the entire 300+ student audience tightly.
By the half-way point, Jeannie and Bob had decided to stay after and introduce themselves -- after all, they clearly had some mutuality of interests.
Gisela finished up precisely at the bell. Immediately Jerry stepped past Jeannie and Bob, said "Hi!", trotted out onstage, spun Gisela around manually and started back towards the visitors.
Introductions were easy... Jerry and Gisela, meet Bob and Jeannie. In the first thirty seconds they dispensed with discussing ALS. Gisela and Jerry knew about it and understood the situation in a way few others could. Since things were close to equal between the two pairs, the ladies' parallel disabilities seemed magically to vanish as social impediments.
Another five minutes' chat on stage while the crowd dissipated made it clear they were all compatible -- a four-way, pun-and-innuendo-laden first conversation that ranged over a wide variety of topics mostly related to the lecture.
Jeannie suggested that since things were already friendly and the company obviously enjoyable all around, and it was the end of the work-week, perhaps they should go for a drink, a longer talk -- she and Bob had found a couple of wheel-chair compatible restaurants already.
Gisela tossed out a different idea. "Why not come home with us? Our place is specially designed not just for wheelchairs, but actually for quads, so you'd fit right in. We can all be much more comfortable at our place than going out somewhere -- even the few restaurants that actually care and try don't get wheelchairs right most of the time. We can have a drink, sit outside in the shade and talk until we burn out a bit. Plus I'm already hungry, and a restaurant would be slower than I'd like. But feeding can wait until I've had my drink. Or maybe I'll have two."
She grinned at the group: "Then perhaps these two lovely, handsome men could cook something for us all? Being men, it'll probably be meat on the barbie-- GRRRR! The Y--chromosome's primal hunting urges once again fulfilled! I know we have the supplies at home. Including steaks."
She spun slightly to look directly at the men. "I assume, Bob, that you've figured out how to cook since Jeannie went functionally quad? Jerry certainly has evolved."
Bob nodded, and Jeannie commented "He's a good cook, actually. I do the menus, though. I like to force him into new territory -- wouldn't want to get stale. It's way too easy to let one's self drift that way. Let's go -- we'll follow you in our van."
Enroute to the parking lot, Jeannie commented on Gisela's wheelchair. Gisela nodded towards the right arm: it held a little digital display. "I've even got my very own instrument panel! The numbers tell me about my body and the chair. That number beside the big letter "P" is for pee, meaning internal pressure on my bladder. Likewise the R is for rectum. Those help me anticipate things and avoid accidents. A huge help, since I can't feel anything down there."
"There are pulse rate and blood pressure and blood oxygen level -- one should know it if one's asphyxiating, I always say! And there's battery charge, odometer, speedometer, and two-axis tilt meters that toot little warnings when things start getting dicey with my center of gravity."
"All the controls cascade like nested computer menus, which they are, actually. Everything begins with my voice or the joysticks -- I've got two of those, the halo and the mouth-stick. I really ought to have a pilot's license for this rig."
The halo was the band circling her head at temple level -- a "halo on a stick" attached to the control box on the back of the chair. The halo was both a joystick for the chair's drive-motor and a head-support for when her neck got tired. Gisela used lips and tongue and halo to maneuver the chair from side to side on the walkway, showing off.
"It's almost all experimental gadgetry -- one-offs. My older brother lives here in town. He has his own firm designing and building custom mechanical equipment. He does all sorts of stuff. Jerry here specializes in applied artificial intelligence, over in the computer science department. Together they decided to make my high-tech rigging into their hobby. It's a blast working with them: you should see them zip around in this thing when they're "testing" -- each of them has turned it over more than once playing hot-rodder."
She laughed: "We get lots of squirrelly ideas, and of course, most simply don't work. For things that DO work, they file patents. Maybe we'll get rich if the quad population ever explodes. I humor them. Anyhow, just wait'll you see the HOUSE, you two! It's a hoot. We had it custom-built to accommodate me in this thing. And other unusual functions, too. You'll see."
The house was single-story, secluded, beautiful. Jeannie was almost speechless. It was also big. Approaching 5000 square feet, Bob guessed, wondering what they needed all that space for. A long, gentle, beautifully landscaped ramp wound from driveway to front door.
At its base Gisela motored up beside Jeannie and muttered "Sometimes I think it's just ridiculous - whence it's nickname, The Monster -- but my very own Daddy is the best personal injury litigator in the State, and he got me the damnedest settlement from the trucking company that caused all this. I think the other side was scared witless of him. No trial, just negotiations."
"Sooo... we have the resources to do things right. Too bad, Angela, that you can't sue Mother Nature for YOUR damages, isn't it? The settlement included hiring a full-time, permanent live-in nurse-therapist to handle most of the messy stuff, and also to do as much PT as possible to keep up my muscle tone. Or at least, to help prevent bedsores! Her apartment is actually a separate little purpose-built cottage way out back. Her name's Marie -- she's a doll -- a big, tough no nonsense doll, can pick me up like Raggedy-Ann. She comes in every morning and takes care of getting me up and cleaned and ready for the day, complete with about 30 minutes of very active PT, all while Jerry fixes breakfast."
