Insistent Silence

The big motorcycle jerked sideways as the fragment of the truck tire slammed into it, and it was all Rick could do to keep from going off the road as he braked hard and aimed for the right shoulder. Ann slumped against his shoulder for a moment, and then she began beating frantically at his shoulders. He looked into the right hand mirror to see her fighting to get her helmet off, and saw that the right side of the Shoei appeared to be bent inward. Her hands struggled less frantically after a few seconds, and then she slumped against him.

He slid the Harley to a stop and laid it down on the left side crash bars. As it tilted, Ann fell off onto the gravel, obviously unconscious. He ripped her helmet off the rest of the way and noticed several things immediately, her right eye was protruding nearly out of its socket, the teeth he could see in her gaping mouth were broken and jagged and she was not breathing. He peeled the Velcro apart at her jacket neck and was horrified to see a massive bruise already forming as her unconscious body began to enter Agonal breathing as it tried valiantly to inhale through her crushed throat.

His years in Vietnam flashed back to him in an instant, and he had cut an emergency trach into her neck within 30 seconds, inserting two of the frozen drink straws they'd gotten at the gas station into the opening to maintain the airway. They made an eerie hooting sound as her body pulled in the life giving air.

One of the other riders had already called 911, and he could hear the wail of sirens over the roaring in his own head as he checked Ann's pulse, which was strong but rapid. He followed the ambulance to the hospital, and after giving his information, began the long wait for news.

After about an hour a small female form dressed in sweaty scrubs came out of the surgery doors and walked toward him. His gut ran cold, at least until she pulled her mask down and he saw the tired smile.

"Mr. James?" she said confidently.

"Yes Ma'am," he replied.

"I'm Dr. Ellis. Your wife is going to be okay, although it's going to take some adjustment on both of your parts to get it done. I can say with confidence that the only reason that you are talking to me instead of a funeral director is because of your instant action at the scene. Vietnam?"

"Yes Ma'am. Four tours, '68 to '71. Tell me about her damage, okay? I presume she's got a concussion and that she has lost the eye."

"Okay, here goes. You're batting 1000 so far, unfortunately. The eye was beyond repair and the concussion will be a nasty one for a day or two, so we'll keep her under while we watch her cranial pressure, and make sure she doesn't have a bleed. She lost all her teeth, and has a maxillary fracture as well as the orbital bone under the eye. The ENT surgeon implanted a coral sphere while doing the enucliation, so she'll be able to have a prosthetic eye."

"Airway?" he asked.

"Her neck was grenaded, so we had no choice but to give her a permanent trach. The damage was low enough that the epiglottis was destroyed, which sealed the decision about whether to proceed with the trach or not. I have to tell you that this combination of events is going to make it very difficult, if not impossible for her to utilize esophageal speech. The contusion nearly ruptured her right carotid, and we fixed that as well. I will wait for her to stabilize and then we'll talk about a prosthetic eye and the stuff that goes along with that. I'd like you to be with her when she wakes up, since she's likely to panic when she can't talk, but I'm keeping her in twilight sleep for a while, so we've got some time. Any questions?"

"Probably a ton eventually, but for now, as long as she's alive, it's all good, Doc. Thank you for your skill."

"You're welcome. Thank you for your service"

"It was an honor, Doc."

"She's in for a tough time. I'm glad you're here for her."

"We've had bad times, Doc. We'll get through this one too."

"I'll see you tomorrow, okay? I had them put a bed in the ICU so you can stay with her. Oh, I will have a couple of women come see you over the next two days. One has a trach, and she'll fill you in about trach care and get you started on ASL. The other is an ocularist, and she'll go over options for prosthetic eyes."

As soon as the nurse gave him the high sign, he went into the ICU suite, and she looked just about like he'd expected; full of tubes, with a head and face twice its normal size from swelling. Her right eye was covered with a huge patch of gauze and her mouth was taped shut, her lips swollen and bruised much like her head. A breathing tube pulsed slowly at the base of her neck, and the machines, grouped around her like protective robots, hissed and beeped softly.

The next couple of days and nights passed agonizingly slowly for Rick, but he was so thankful that his Annie was still alive that he spent them counting his blessings and stroking the undamaged side of her face. She stirred occasionally in her drug-induced nights, grimacing as if reliving the accident, but a gentle hand was always near and ready to soothe.

"Mr. James?" a strange, soft voice woke him gently in the middle of the third morning. He sat up sharply, instantly recalling the awful events of the recent past, and his tired eyes focused upon a small blonde woman standing at the foot of Annie's bed, a clipboard folded inside her crossed arms. Her blue eyes twinkled brightly, and he was embarrassed to note that her clipboard pushed her breasts up into an impressive cleavage. She held out her hand and took his in a

firm grip.

"I'm Erica Johansen, Mr. James. I'll be the speech therapist for you and your wife." Her voice was soft and gutteral, and he realized that she was the woman with the trach, and he was hearing the esophageal speech the Doctor had mentioned. Suddenly he felt his face burn, and he was astonished to feel tears run down his cheeks. The thought had just occurred to him that he would never hear Annie's voice again, and the thought filled him with remorse.

"I'm sorry, Ma'am, I don't know what came over me. Please forgive me, I meant no disrespect, but I just realized I will never hear her voice again."

"I know...What you're thinking... Mr. James, and it's...totally okay. This isn't... my first rodeo." Her halting speech was accompanied by a hitching motion in her shoulders, which periodically set her large breasts in motion as she inhaled, apparently through a hole like the one at the base of Ann's neck.

"We have a lot...of ground to...cover, so if it's okay with you...I'll get started."

"Please do, Ms. Johansen, and please call me Rick."

"It's a deal if...you call me Erica."

"Done deal, Erica."

"So first...let's meet the 800...pound gorilla, okay?" She untied the silk scarf around her neck, revealing a hole nearly the size of a quarter at the base of her elegant neck. She reached out and took his hand, placing it in front of the hole, and he felt hot air on his palm as she exhaled.

"You may feel it if...you like, it's not...fragile at all."

He placed his first two fingers at the opening and circled it slowly. It was firm and slightly moist. She took his finger and plugged her stoma with it gently. As his finger blocked her breathing, she said,

"It's air drawn...into the stomach and...the spaces above it." He reclaimed his hand as Erica said, "I hope very much that you'll hear her voice...again, Rick. It won't...be the same voice...but it will definitely...be hers. One thing...I have to tell...you is that...esophageal speech...has only about...a 40% success rate, and ...because of the level of damage... done to her throat, there's...a very good likelihood that...she won't be able to...master it, but there...are other options."

"So, Erica, there won't be any sound at all it she can't figure this out?"

"Put your ear right...next to my mouth, Rick, and...I'll let you hear what I sound...like without the E.S., and then I'll do...a different thing with...my mouth and...we'll see if you...can tell the...difference."

Rick leaned toward her and found himself staring down Erica's cleavage, a not to unpleasant view. He could feel her mouth move, and a soft breeze caressed his cheek from her stoma, but he heard nothing. He withdrew a little and she inhaled deeply and opened her mouth in a scream. She exhaled mightily, and he heard nothing but a hiss from her stoma, even though her mouth formed words. She drew him to her again, and this time he vaguely heard a wet voice. "If I bring a lot of moisture into my mouth, I can move it around and be heard a little. This is handy for intimate conversations when you don't want to burp at your partner. It also lets you speak more or less endlessly when you get it right, which is a pleasant change from the halting speech I have normally. By the way, I can't be sure about Annie, and forgive me if I seem too forward, but I no longer have a gag reflex, which can come in handy; plus, I never have to open my mouth to take a breath, if you know what I mean."

Rick blushed clear to his toes. He heard a hissing sound, and realized Erica was laughing. It was a cute sound. Over the next hour, they went over a lot of course work about humidity, obstructions, mucous, the importance of not bending over after eating and the perils of bathing and showering, which he hadn't thought of. When she was done, they stood by the side of Annie's bed and Erica took her hand and patted it gently.

"You'll both come out...of this just fine. I know that...it is hard to ...believe right now...but you will. Now you get to work...and study the ASL...book I gave you tonight...and I'll start on that...with you tomorrow." She came to Rick's side and gave him a quick hug.

"Umm, Erica, how do I pay you for your services? Will you bill me, or should I pay as we go?" Rick

said hesitantly.

"Oh. I thought...they'd told you...I'm a volunteer."

"Not gonna happen, Ma'am. I have the money, and though I think this is priceless, I will find a way to pay you, so think about it, and no guff

about it, okay?"

"Maybe I could get... a ride on your motorcycle...someday. I have...always wanted to ride and...never could."

"That's a deal, Ma'am. And then some, I think." Rick said, visually making notes for later. Because of her height and tiny build, she'd never be able to control a big twin, but a little Sportster would fit her just fine. He just had to find her favorite color.

Awakening

A week after the accident, Dr. Ellis took Ann off of the ventilator, and to everyone's surprise, her overall response was very positive. She seemed to relax a little, her breathing was regular and strong, and the fits of disquiet went right away. Her bruising was in the green/brown phase, and the swelling in her face was gone.

Rick had gotten a surprise visitor a few days earlier; a representative of the trucking company whose truck had launched the tire fragment at his wife. To his great astonishment and gratification, they had taken responsibility for the accident, and had already paid off the hospital bills accrued so far. They also offered to accept future bills for rehabilitation and therapy for the rest of Annie's life. He was already very grateful when the representative handed him a check for 2.5 Million dollars.

When he had rightfully been speechless, the trucking rep had cleared his conscience and said that the tire company had declared a fault in the tires the truck had been rolling on, and that the companies using the tires were to be compensated for their losses. He also said that if the settlement with the tire company exceeded the check he had been given, that they would pass on the difference. The man got applause as he left.

After a flurry of scans and MRI's it was decided that it was time to wake up the patient in room I-127.

Rick had asked the Doctor what to expect, and her answer was typically frank and to the point, "It's different each time, but be prepared for panic and anger and any other emotions you can think of. We'll try to bring her up slowly, but some of these medicines have a very brief decay time, and everybody reacts differently. If you're okay with it, I'll let you take the lead. Just let her know that you're here for her, that she's okay and to not try to talk; you know the drill."

She thumbed the two drip ramp wheels closed a little at a time, watching Ann carefully. After a few minutes, when she opened Annie's remaining eye, it stayed open, circling in its orbit until it saw Rick. Immediately he began to offer quiet support to his wife, until she held a finger to her lips and beckoned for him to come into her arms, whereupon she began to weep silently. When she released him, he slid back and looked into her face, which was smiling gently.

"I love you." She mouthed. The applause was spontaneous and long.

Rick spent an hour explaining things to Ann, who drifted off occasionally, but was alert and interested the rest of the time. She wept a few times, and so did Rick. It appeared, to the doctor's horror, soon allayed, that she had only been very lightly sedated, and had distinct memories of a great deal of the happenings around her. So when she had been allowed to come fully to awareness, she'd already known much of what had happened to her.

Rick had thought to bring in Annie's PowerBook, and she immediately began to use the text to

speech function to communicate.

A week after that, they were home. The accident had happened only a few miles from the house, and so Rick had been able to continue to take care of their cats and dog while Ann had been in the hospital. The couple had been working for a while on communicating, and Rick immediately fell behind, as unbeknownst to him, Annie had taken classes in ASL in college.

They took her rehab very seriously, going to respiratory therapy several times a week, and at the end of the eight week healing period, Annie drove herself to the oral surgeon to have the jaw wires removed. It was a relatively painless procedure, and she was home in just a few hours.Tthe surgeon was surprised to see that she had nearly normal opening distance on her mouth, since the wiring operation tended to cause the jaws to resist opening all the way for a while after the wires were removed. Annie didn't tell the surgeon that she had activities planned for the evening that would require her to open her mouth very wide indeed.

She spent the rest of the day cooking and doing

some personal maintenance, including a shower with the special protective sleeve over her stoma so she didn't drown in her own bathroom. They'd not made love since the accident, and she was so horny she could have mated with any available phallic-like device for the last few weeks. Rick, on his part, had been concerned about injuring her during the healing phase, and Annie herself had been a sensitive about her appearance.

And then there was her missing eye. She still had months to wait before her eye socket would be ready for a prosthetic eye, and she'd worn a black patch for the duration, although she was thinking about making something more feminine to wear for the rest of the time. It had taken her a while to actually look at herself in the mirror, but once she had, she'd actually gotten used to the sight of her eyelid sagging inward a little, just flinching a bit when she blinked. She hadn't shown Rick yet, but she knew he wouldn't mind.

Just the thought of finally having sex after nearly three months, was hardening her nipples, and her vagina was making erotic little squishing sounds as she sat squirming on her makeup chair.

At 45, she was definitely a MILF, and the eight week liquid diet from the accident had stripped 30 pounds from her 5' frame, bringing her to 105 pounds, a weight she hadn't seen since she was 12. Unfortunately, some of that weight had, as life would have it, come from her breasts. Never what she'd considered "perky", they were now definitely pear-shaped.

As she held the heavy mass of them in her hands, they overflowed and slid off her palms, the large brown nipples pointing toward her reflection and hard as marbles. She pulled her hands out from under them and they flopped sagging against her chest and slightly curved stomach, nipples singing their throbbing music to her freshly shaved and oiled pussy. With the decrease in inflation had come a radical increase in motion; she was now constantly aware of her big titties, since every motion she made was amplified a hundredfold by them. Rick stared at her as he never had before, and she had decided it was time to take advantage of her apparently new attractiveness.

She looked between them at her clit, so similar in size and texture that it looked like a third nipple, standing out straight and proud from the top of her slit. The upper border of her pussy ended well above the curve of her pubic bone, so high that when her clit was engorged, it was plainly visible inside her clothing unless she wore jeans, pushing out ahead of her like a rigid two inch penis. When she was a teen, her favorite masturbation method was to load her mother's washer off-balance and stand against it while it beat against her clit.

Her brown hair fell around her face, curling toward the neat oval hole in her neck. Ann lifted her shoulders and sighed, a low 'uhhh' sound escaping from her stoma. She circled it with a finger, and then slid the finger into the opening as she inhaled. Her breath stopped instantly, and she looked into her face in the mirror. Without knowing why, she opened her mouth and the words 'Help me, I can't breathe!' formed silently on her lips. In an instant and totally without warning, a massive orgasm rippled through her, leaving her panting through her stoma and clutching the top of her makeup table with white knuckles.

Ann was stunned, all the more so because her ankles and lower legs were wet with what she could only imagine was ejaculate, since it had no color, and although her sense of smell was nearly gone, it appeared to have no odor.Ann laughed, her shoulders and breasts shaking, and the room filled with the percussive sighing of her breath as it slid in and out of her neck.

'How ironic.' She thought. 'All my life I've tried to squirt, and it took this to make it happen.'

Inwardly, she was worried that somehow, when Rick saw her stoma, her saggy tits and her empty eye socket, that he would be revolted. Outwardly, she felt that she knew what Rick liked, and she was a willing performer in the theater of their sex life.

She smoothed cream onto her body, paying enough attention to her breasts that she nearly came again, then moving on to her legs and torso. She put a large glittery stone into the piercing in her navel, and was pleased to note that it thrust out rather than in, like before the weight left her. Into the piercing in the fold above her clit went a gold 10 gauge ring with a gold bell that drew attention to itself insistently. It also swung against her clit, which was quite pleasant. She captured each nipple with a small vacuum pump, drew them out and inserted the gold barbells at the bases, causing them to stick out prominently.

Her breasts went into a custom made black shelf bra that Rick had ordered for her, but that she had only worn a couple of times. Once it had been a novelty, her breasts suspended pillow-like above the shelf; now it was nasty, her tits spreading out into the shelf and oozing over the edge like pale lava. Her pulse was plainly visible in the slack flesh at the top of the cups. She walked to the closet, and the tops of her breasts sloshed to and fro like water in a bowl.

She sat in her closet and put on her seamed stockings, attached them to her leather garter belt and slid a studded black open-front thong over it all.

Ann selected a bright red shade for her lipstick and pursed her lips together, her toothless gums touching inside her mouth, much to her delight. Her lips were obscenely large because of the lack of teeth. She wondered what her dentist had thought when she'd emailed him to tell him she was going to wait a while before ordering her dentures, perhaps a long while.