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Out on a Limb

© 2025 by the author using the pen name UpperNorthLeft.

All sexual activity is between adults 18 years of age or older.

Many thanks to Jalibar62 and Comentarista82 who each earned an urn of añejo for their edits on this story. This tale is all the better for their keen eyes and many insights.

Chapter 1

There is a line in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises that I used to greatly admire. One character asks another how he went bankrupt. The reply:

"Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly."

My admiration for the phrase waned when it began to describe the disintegration of my life -- except I did it the other way around.

The sudden part occurred while serving in a combat engineer battalion in Afghanistan. Our mission included building and improving roads, including clearing them of improvised explosive devices.

That was the plan until my vehicle hit an IED that we had somehow missed. I was one of the lucky survivors of the blast but didn't learn this until I woke up days later in an Army hospital in Landstuhl, missing my right leg below the knee.

That's when the gradual part began.

* * *

I was only at Landstuhl for about a week. The residual concussion from the blast and the lingering effects of general anesthesia kept me pretty woozy when I was awake. My main memories of that week are a bewildering blend of post-op care interspersed with nightmare-filled sleep.Out on a Limb фото

When I was deemed stable enough to travel, they air-evaced me to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda for further care. The Army's Casualty Assistance Center had contacted my wife Stephanie when I was injured and helped her to coordinate a visit the day after I arrived.

I hadn't seen her since my last leave six months ago. A nurse led her into my hospital room. She looked beautiful but terrified. I extended my arms and said, "Hey, Steph... I'm so glad to see you."

She approached my bed slowly, eyes wide, and said, "Ted, oh my god..." She leaned over into my arms and began sobbing. "I've been so scared."

I held her until she stopped weeping, and said, "I'm feeling a lot better today."

"But what about your leg? The surgery was successful, wasn't it?"

I shook my head. "It was too badly injured. They had to amputate it below my knee."

She emitted a heart-rending moan. "Nooooo!!! Not your leg. Baby, what are you going to do?"

Hell if I knew. I still wasn't thinking too well. I said, "Rehab and physical therapy, I guess."

"That can't replace your leg!"

I shook my head. "No, it can't, but it can help me learn to get around without it."

Her face crumpled. "But baby, you won't be able to dance!"

Chapter 2

This is probably a good time to tell you how Stephanie and I met at the University of Washington. She was majoring in business, and I was working on my master's degree in mechanical engineering. Those two worlds don't intersect often, but they did for us one Friday evening.

UW students have a world-class exercise facility called the Intramural Activities Center. I was over at the IMA one day browsing through a list of activities they offered. As I read through the schedule for swimming, archery, climbing and martial arts, a woman next to me said, "Are you shitting me?"

I turned and saw her for the first time, a lovely and fit-looking blond a few inches shy of my own five feet nine inches. She looked at me and said, "Can you believe this?" She pointed to a listing for a logrolling class scheduled for Friday evening.

I said, "No. Fucking. Way." We looked at each other and laughed.

She said, "That's just crazy enough that I need to know more."

We walked into the IMA office together and quizzed Maribeth -- one of the staff members -- about this unexpected activity. She smiled at us and said, "This is probably the tenth time today that someone asked me about this class. Here are my answers three: 1) yes, it's real; 2) yes, it's coed; and 3) no, we don't use actual wooden logs -- they're plastic."

Stephanie shook her head. "Wow, coed. Is that a fair competition?"

Maribeth leaned forward and with a conspiratorial glance to either side said, "Actually, I don't think it's fair at all. From what I've seen, women have a definite edge over the men in balance and agility. In fact, one of our UW women has won the world championship eleven times."

Stephanie turned to me and said, "That sounds like a lot of fun. I'll do it if you will."

I found myself helpless in the full glare of her smile and sparkling eyes. At that moment I would have agreed to an evening of possum sacking with her. I said, "Sure, I'm in."

And just like that I had a date for a Friday evening logrolling class.

We walked out of the IMA together and I said, "Golly, I feel like I already know a lot of important things about you, just by the fact that we're going to do this crazy thing together on Friday. But call me old-fashioned. With most of the lovely women I date, I at least like to know their names before we go out."

She giggled. "Pleased to meet you, Old Fashioned. You can call me Stephanie Collins."

I grinned and then took her hand, bent over and gave it a kiss. "Enchanté, m'amselle. But my friends usually call me Ted McShane."

We swapped contact info and bid each other adieu for the nonce.

* * *

I met Stephanie Friday evening at the IMA pool for our first logrolling class. I had on some nondescript board shorts, and she nicely filled out the top and bottom of her one-piece bathing suit.

The pool contained four large plastic "logs". Each 500-pound log was about twelve feet long and about 15 inches in diameter. Our instructor was a petite woman named Lisette, one of the captains for the UW logrolling team.

While one of her teammates steadied the log, Lisette threw a leg over it and hoisted herself up to standing position in one fluid move.

She said, "Lesson one is getting up on the log." "You probably won't be able to do an in-water mount like I just did. So, my teammates will hold one end of the log near the edge of the pool while you step on."

We took turns trying the from-shore mount. We were all pretty wobbly at first, but it got easier with time. As we practiced, Lisette calmly watched us from her log, balancing effortlessly as we all flailed around.

Once we started to get our balance, Lisette said, "Lesson two. I want you guys to find a partner and to mount the logs two by two." More falls and many giggles ensued.

"Now for lesson three: rolling the log." She moved her feet slightly and soon had the log spinning slowly. "Once you get it going one way, stop the spin -- then start it spinning the other way."

It took us a while to manage this deceptively simple-looking maneuver.

After several minutes of jolly chaos, Lisette whistled to get our attention. "Lesson four: knocking your opponent off the log."

As she stood on her log, a teammate hoisted herself up on the other end. Lisette said, "When I give the signal, we will both try to stay on the log while knocking our opponent off."

She clapped her hands and the duel began. She rolled the log back and forth with sudden, unpredictable moves. Her teammate adjusted without difficulty for the first ten seconds, but finally lost control, falling into the pool.

"Okay, now it's your turn."

The rest of the class could fill a whole hour of outtakes from America's Funniest Home Videos. It was humbling but hilarious.

We all really sucked at logrolling when class began, but we sucked a little less by the end. I was able to stand up for 10 whole seconds before Stephanie gave the log an unexpected spin and I went flying off while she laughed her ass off. She laughed so hard that she lost her own balance and hit the drink a few seconds after I did.

By the end of class, everyone was smiling and laughing, and could hardly wait until the next Friday night class.

I was also a tiny bit in love with Stephanie after watching her smile and laugh. It didn't hurt that the only thing better looking than Stephanie in a bathing suit was Stephanie in a wet bathing suit. The boner potential from this made me really glad that I had worn baggy board shorts.

After class we stopped by a coffee shop, where we talked and laughed until closing. By the time I walked her back to her dorm, we had a date for the next day. At the dorm, she gave me a stirring kiss before she went upstairs to her room.

* * *

The next day we packed a picnic basket full of goodies and rented a canoe from the UW Waterfront Activities Center. We paddled across the Montlake Cut to the shore of the Washington Arboretum, and ate our lunch on a blanket in the dappled shade of a tree.

She invited me up to her dorm room afterwards, where we indulged in some pleasant kissing and fondling. I was just rounding second base when she gently halted the base-running.

* * *

It was much easier to stand up on the logs during our second class. In the last half of the period, Lisette ran us through a simple tournament ladder. I was not awful, and actually made it all the way to the semifinal round against Stephanie. Then she dispatched me handily and went on to win the final round.

This tournament gave me my first inkling of Steph's competitive nature. It clearly delighted her to kick my ass, but she was also magnanimous in her victory and took me for ice cream afterwards.

Chapter 3

As the classes continued, it was clear that Steph was a lot better at logrolling than me. One day I groused about this in a good-natured way.

She said, "It's probably my dance background. It has given me a lot more practice at keeping my balance while doing complex movements."

"What kind of dancing have you done?"

"Ballet as a girl, and jazz dance in high school. I've always wanted to try out couple dancing, but I would need a partner for that."

I thought for several thousand milliseconds, and then said, "How about me?"

She raised one eyebrow. "Have you done much dancing?"

I nodded. "Yeah, my parents are really into folk dancing and used to take me and my sister to these week-long family dance camps when we were growing up. We learned square dancing, hip hop and some swing dancing. I'm a little rusty now but I'm sure it would come back."

She mused for a moment and then smiled and said, "Okay, let's go dancing."

* * *

The Seattle-Tacoma area has two to three contradances per week, so that's where we started. Steph had never been to a contradance, but immediately fell in love with the live music, the physicality, and the challenge of learning ten to twelve new choreographies during an evening dance.

In the contra scene, anyone can ask anyone else to dance. As the new hot chick on the dance floor, Steph's metaphorical dance card filled quickly with other men, and she thrived on the attention. I got my share of dance requests from the other women, but much fewer than Steph. I felt lucky to dance with her once or twice in a given evening. When I mentioned this to her, she replied with an amiable, "You snooze, you lose."

Contradancing is, on the surface, a very wholesome and granola activity. However, after spending an evening in the sweet and sweaty embrace of dozens of fully-clothed women, a certain amount of arousal occurs. I mentioned this to the owner of a tavern in Ballard that hosted one of the weekly dances.

He laughed, and said, "Yeah, I know what you mean. I call it the 'milk and cookie meat market'."

It was a warm evening of dancing that advanced our relationship to the next level. An energetic out-of-town band had the dancers almost speaking in tongues by the evening's end. During the final waltz, Steph and I swirled around the floor in a close embrace, and blood flow increased notably in several of our body parts. As our bits of erectile tissue began to impinge upon each other, she pulled me closer so that they impinged even more. My vital signs perked right up.

She breathed into my ear and rubbed her groin against my growing bulge. "Let's get out of here and do something about this..."

* * *

Neither Steph nor I were virgins, and we both had the basic mechanics of sex down pretty well. However, it thrilled us to apply our basic skills on this new physical and emotional terrain of each other. The next few hours ranged from awkward to awesome, and from amateurish to amazing. We fell asleep in each other's arms and woke up the next morning the same way.

We slept late and then went out for a late breakfast. As we ate, I said, "Umm... When I think of erotic dancing, contradancing doesn't immediately come to mind."

She snickered. "You're right -- it doesn't. On the other hand, that last set and the final waltz really got my motor running. Geeze, you could have bent me over the hood of your car and railed me outside the dance hall."

I snickered. "It was a close call. If we hadn't parked right next to the van where they were loading all the sound gear, I might have considered it."

She laughed. "I admire your restraint. I'm not sure if that would have stopped me."

I said, "I guess the point I'm trying to make is that if a granola and apple pie event like a contradance got us both so revved up, what would it be like if we tried a more openly sensual dance, such as salsa or tango?"

Her eyes widened. "Get your phone out, salsa boy, and google us some classes."

* * *

We had no trouble finding a nearby dance studio, and we were soon hooked on couple dancing. We tried many types, but quickly found our favorites. It turns out that salsa and tango are indeed much better foreplay than contradancing. It was rare that we did not follow an evening dance workshop with torrid sex back in one of our bedrooms.

We added yoga and strength training to our dance regime. As our conditioning and stamina improved, we were able to perform some of the more intricate and physical dance steps. Eventually we experimented with mixing dance steps with yoga and parts of the Kama Sutra. We were especially fond of a grapevine step flowing into a series of dips that ended up in Downward-Facing Doggie.

Good times.

* * *

As our skills advanced, our teachers encouraged us to enter a contest. It was fun, but revealing. I had gotten an early look at Steph's competitive nature during our logrolling class, but that was nothing compared to how she became after we did well in our first competition. She liked that so much that most of our other activities began to take a back seat to dancing.

Instead of going to dinner and a movie she preferred to spend the evening practicing dance moves for the next competition. I didn't mind this at all. I loved dancing with her and I especially liked the kick it gave her libido; that was especially intense on any evening we did well in a competition.

Our final term at UW was pretty wonderful. In between the grind of our classes, we spent hours doing couple things, with heavy doses of dance practice, followed by increasingly sizzling sex.

By now I was convinced I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her. I decided to pop the question at the studio one evening. Our teacher had been teaching us an especially spicy tango step. On our last pass through the routine, we nailed every move, ending with a dramatic dip, looking deep into each other's eyes. As I pulled her up to her feet, I slid down until I was kneeling at her feet and pulled out a ring box.

"Stephanie? I've loved becoming your dance partner. I would love it even more if you will become my partner in life. Will you marry me?"

She pulled me up into a deep and profound kiss. When she came back up for air, she said, "You sweet man. Of course I'll marry you."

The other dancers and our teachers applauded and offered their congratulations.

We tied the knot the day after college graduation, surrounded by our families and dance friends.

Chapter 4

After the wedding, we decided to spend the summer chilling while Steph looked for a job in her field. I planned to continue grad school in the fall and work on my Ph. D.

Our progress impressed our dance teachers enough that they asked us to join them as assistant instructors during the summer in between competitions.

Life was going pretty well for us until the end of July, when the Army activated my Reserve unit. I was shocked to learn that we were headed for an indefinite stay in Afghanistan, and Steph was beside herself.

"Afghanistan? How can they do that? How long will you be gone? Can you get out of it?"

"At least six months, and probably more like a year."

"But what about our plans? What about our dancing?"

"I don't have any choice. We'll dance again once I get back."

"But I don't want to stop. We're just starting to dance really, really well together."

I sighed. "I'm disappointed too. It also means having to push back my Ph. D. program for at least a year."

The next week was hell. Having our life plans overturned so completely depressed us -- especially the thought of being apart. One of the few bright spots was when the UW immediately rescheduled my entrance into the doctoral program for the following year.

Going into a combat zone depressed me. From what I could tell from the official injury statistics, my chances of injury or death as a combat engineer were lower than those of someone in the infantry. I purposely did not tell Stephanie that deactivating IEDs would be part of my job.

Our sex life also took a nosedive. We went from multiple times per week to zero for the next few weeks. Normally, Steph would be panting for sex after a dance class. It was two weeks before I could entice her back into bed.

* * *

My final week at home before deployment was especially discouraging. With my departure looming, our sex life briefly resumed, with Steph seemingly trying to memorize every part of my body.

While I got my affairs in order, Steph continued to teach dance. When she got home one evening, I asked, "How'd the classes go today?"

"About the same. They help distract me from how soon you're leaving."

"Yeah, and they should keep you sharp until I get back and we can compete again."

"Oh. Um... Actually, I've been meaning to tell you. I don't want to stop competing."

I was speechless for a moment and then took a deep breath. I tried to keep my voice emotionless but probably failed. "Who? Who are you planning to dance with?"

She didn't meet my eyes, and mumbled, "I've begun practicing with one of the advanced students."

I bit out, "Which. Advanced. Student?"

She still looked away from my now somewhat intense gaze. "Um... Emilio."

Oh, fuck. "Emilio?! That asshat from Argentina who thinks he's God's Gift to Tango? The one who's always drooling over your tits? That Emilio?"

"Yes, he's a very good dancer. He already knows most of the routines we do."

"I don't like that idea at all. I would rather you dance with someone else."

"But he's the only person I know who is almost as good as you!"

I shook my head. "I would rather you didn't dance at all for year than for you to dance with that sleazy piece of shit."

Stephanie stiffened, and I knew that my pushback had unwittingly deployed her "stubborn button". I had discovered it early on in our relationship and quickly learned that nothing good ever came from pushing it.

She seethed, "You -- do not get to decide when I dance or who I dance with. I am not going to stop dancing or competing while you're gone. It will be just fine and we'll dance again when you get back. Deal with it."

 

This was probably the worst argument we had ever had. Steph probably realized she came down on me too hard, but was too proud and stubborn to admit it. Our fight hung like a cloud over us for the rest of the disheartening week before I deployed. We tried making love a few times, but our hearts weren't in it.

* * *

When I first arrived in Afghanistan, Steph and I video chatted at least once a week. However, the almost twelve-hour time zone difference didn't make that easy. It was also hard to find times that worked for both of our schedules. Our calls slowly dropped to about once a month.

It was also hard to find stuff to talk about. Dancing was her life, and dancing with Emilio was now a big part of that. She initially kept me updated on every event they went to or every trophy they won. You can imagine how much that enthused me.

She sent me YouTube links of them dancing at events, but I could only stand to watch one. Seeing her supple body pressed up against his in the intimate tango positions as he ravished her with his eyes was more than I could take. Seeing the smirk on his face while I was trapped there in a tent in the 'Stan made me want to go out and defuse an IED with my face.

Chapter 5

After I was released from Walter Reed, I received a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart, and a medical discharge from the Army.

My wound healed, and extensive rehab began. They fitted me for a prosthetic limb, but it was uncomfortable and I hated wearing it. I learned to hobble around on it, but I preferred to use my crutches instead.

I initially thought that the hardest part of losing my leg was going to be the physical limitations, and it was, indeed, pretty awful. I had always been an active guy and filled my spare time with running, hiking, or sailing. Since meeting Stephanie, that had evolved into social dancing and dance competitions. Bzzzztt!! So much for doing any of that.

Losing a body part sends you into the same grieving process you experience when someone close to you dies. Mornings were the worst for me. I'd wake up from a dream in which I was running or sailing or surfing, and Bam! Reality flooded back and depressed me all over again.

Then there was the PTSD. That and the residual effects of the blast on my brain left me with occasional headaches, depression, and general irritability.

Every service member's family knows the continual dread of possible injury or death when their loved one is in harm's way. This stress is made even worse by the long periods of physical separation during a deployment.

I had thought that Stephanie and I weathered this part as well as any other couple. We had only been married a few months when my reserve unit deployed. We tried to hold things together with video chat, but it was extremely hard on us.

But I was home now and had to deal with all of the consequences of my injury. If losing my leg demoralized me, it absolutely devastated Stephanie. Sure, I was alive, but my injury destroyed the very core of our time together -- dancing.

Once my wound healed and my doctors cleared me for sex, I was eager to resume our relations. Steph did not seem nearly as eager as I was, but agreed somewhat grudgingly when I suggested a romp in the sack.

We tried cowgirl first, which worked fine until her leg brushed up against my stump. When this happened she jerked away with a look of disgust on her face. Until then, my wedding tackle had been working just fine, but this was an instant erection killer.

I asked, "What's wrong, sweetie?"

She wouldn't meet my eyes. "Um... I'm just afraid of hurting your wounded leg."

"Oh, it feels fine now -- there's no pain. They're ready for me to start bearing weight on it with my prosthesis. Here, go ahead and touch it -- it will be fine."

She started to reach for my leg but flinched before touching it.

"No, I don't want to. It scares me. I don't even want to look at it."

It appalled me how my amputation site freaked her out. We turned out the lights, and I reviewed my mental rolodex of Kama Sutra positions.

The most successful position we settled on was me spooning against her from behind -- that way she didn't have to look at me or my stump and was less likely to accidentally touch it. With a bit of work, we each eventually had at least one orgasm. After my long drought, that felt pretty wonderful, even though it was pretty meager fare compared to our prior sex lives.

The next week I met with a psychologist I'd been seeing at the Seattle VA Medical Center. I asked her if it was common for family members to be uncomfortable around amputees.

She nodded. "Sadly, it's not that uncommon. For extreme cases, we even have a special clinical term for it: 'apotemnophobia'."

"Wow, that's a mouthful. Is there a cure for it?"

"Counseling and desensitization therapy might help alleviate some symptoms, but a patient would have to be motivated enough to come to the sessions."

I nodded. "I'll see if I can get Steph to consider that."

Alas, Stephanie was not at all interested in any kind of therapy regarding my stump. If anything, things only worsened. She refused to look at me or even talk to me unless I wore my prosthesis. Moreover, she seemed to pull back in other ways, emotionally and physically.

The final curtain dropped on our marriage one day after I returned from a particularly brutal rehab session. All I really wanted was to sip a cold beer and to watch some mindless TV with my sweetie. When I limped into the living room, I saw her sitting on the couch next to Emilio, the smirking douchebag.

I glared at douchebag and then turned to Stephanie and said, "What's he doing here?"

Stephanie looked at me sadly, and said, "We need to talk."

Have those four fucking words ever made anyone feel better? Have they ever eased the discomfort of a difficult discussion? They sure didn't help me then.

I continued standing and said, "What?"

"I want a divorce."

"You didn't answer my question. Why is he here?"

Emilio sneered and said, "Because she wants to be with a complete man.

I glanced at him with the same gaze I'd give a cockroach and said, "If I want the opinion of a backstabbing, rear-echelon, asshat like you, I'll beat it out of you with my crutches."

He started to get up, but Stephanie held him back.

I sneered at him. "Pussy. Dickface. Is a 'complete' man like you afraid of a gimp like me?"

He started to get up again but sat back down when he saw my face.

I had become acquainted with my inner berserker during my first firefight in Afghanistan. It was an unsettling discovery and I have since tried to keep it carefully locked away deep inside my skull. However, it was fully uncloaked now and shone through my eyes. I think he could see the absolute delight I would take in ripping his head off, defiling his skull and then hoisting it on a pike in front of my house.

I turned the same gaze on Stephanie, who blanched. "Now answer me, dear wife. Why is he here?"

She gulped, and stammered, "Uh, uh... I'm sorry. But dancing is my life. I need to be with someone who can keep up with me. You can't do that anymore."

I said, "And I suppose that he's been keeping up with all of your other needs as well?"

She looked down and didn't say anything, but I had my answer.

I took a deep breath, and then gave a mirthless laugh. "All right then. Divorce it is. And thank you for showing me your true colors. I had no idea that I was married to such a faithless, disappointing, narcissistic, shallow, and selfish attention whore. I am actually relieved that I'll never have children with a piece of shit like you."

I pointed to the door. "Go. And take this bastard with you. You deserve each other. I don't want to ever see either one of you again."

Chapter 6

Alcohol became my go to medication for the next few weeks. Finally, my parents intervened and leaned on me to stay with them at their summer place on the Olympic Peninsula. I finally caved in to their bullyragging and agreed to the visit.

Mom and Dad have a sweet waterfront lot on Mats Mats Bay with its own dock. It was one of my favorite places on earth when I was growing up. I spent most of my summer vacations there, hiking, swimming or sailing during the endless summer days.

It was still beautiful out there, but it was a lot less interesting to a grownup gimp on crutches who couldn't drive or sail. I love my parents but quickly grew bored. There are only so many board games I could play with my mom during the day or internet porn I could surf at night before I started going stir crazy.

After two days of me moping around the house, my dad had had enough. "Get your antsy ass in the car. We're going to Port Townsend to pick up my new sail."

I whined and pouted, but he would have none of it. I crutched my way over to the car and sulked all the way into town.

Dad parked his truck by the loft for Lightsaber Sails, which is next door to the Wooden Boat Foundation. I've known the owners, John and Phyllis, for most of my life. They are great-hearted folks, but I wasn't in the mood to discuss my injury with them. I also wasn't in the mood to listen to an endless discourse of sail arcana between John and Dad.

I wended my way down to the next-door marina and gimped along the dock, idly viewing the boats. A guy on an incoming boat interrupted by whistling and saying, "Hey, mind tying off my spring line when I come in?"

I gaped at him, and before I could protest, a line came flying toward my head. I managed to catch it without falling off the dock and reflexively looped it around a dock cleat. He had timed things perfectly, and as my loop tightened around the cleat, his boat slowed to a stop next to the dock. He then used his engine to bring the stern in close enough to the dock that he was able to lean over the rail of the boat and loop a stern line around another cleat.

"Thanks!" he said. "Go ahead and tie that one off and I'll shut down the engine."

I finished tying the cleat hitch, and then made my way toward the front of the boat, where he had a bow line flaked over the lifelines. I managed to snag it with one of my crutches, and tied it to a forward dock cleat.

As he stepped off the boat onto the dock, I noticed that he was a few inches taller than me and looked a few years older than my twenty-five years. He tied off a forward spring line, inspected my hitches, and said, "Nice work! You seem to know which end of a dock line to put in your mouth."

I snorted. "Yeah, I sailed a lot with my dad while growing up here." I extended my stump slightly. "Not lately, though, for obvious reasons."

"Mmm..." he said and then stuck out his hand. "Bill Shannon."

I shook his hand. "Ted McShane."

"Pleased to meet you. Can you recommend a good place to eat around here?"

"Sure. There are several good choices a block from here."

"Great. I need to do a few more things on the boat. Can you meet me at the top of the pier in about fifteen minutes and show me the way?"

"Sure, see you then." I ambled up the ramp to the top of the pier and then texted my dad.

> U almost done? I'm hungry.

> Sure. 5 min. Where?

>Next door at marina. Top of pier.

> ????

From long experience, I knew that Dad's five minutes could turn out to be anywhere from two to thirty. In this case, it was about fifteen. I turned to look for Bill, and to my surprise, saw him zipping up the ramp in a small electric wheelchair.

I blinked, and then said, "Dad, I'd like you to meet Bill Shannon, who just sailed into town."

"Hi, Bill. Ed McShane." They shook hands. "What would you like for lunch?"

"Anything but peanut butter sandwiches or ramen noodles."

"How about some local seafood?"

"Sounds great. Lead on."

Dan and Bill set a pretty fast pace down the street to the restaurant. I pole-vaulted along on my crutches, trying to keep up.

Chapter 7

When we got to the restaurant, Bill got out of his wheelchair. With a few twists and turns, the front tricycle wheel came off with its attached battery pack, and the rest of the chair folded up into a fairly flat package. He locked the chair to a nearby bike rack and carried the front wheel and battery into the restaurant.

We placed our orders, and Dad said, "Impressive wheelchair. Haven't seen one like that before."

Bill nodded. "Thanks. The wheels come off easily and fit in one of my cockpit lazarettes. The seat normally sits below deck in front of my navigation table. The electric front wheel lives in another lazarette, and charges off the boat's alternator."

I said, "Pardon me for being nosey, but why do you have a wheelchair? You were moving around awfully well at the dock earlier."

He nodded. "Short version of a long story: spinal injury while crash-landing my helicopter in Afghanistan. After years of rehab and some clever braces, I can now walk with a limp and do light deck and dock work. But my stamina is crap. Docking just now pretty well wiped me out."

Dad said, "Wait a minute. You're single-handing a sailboat after a spinal injury? That's remarkable!"

Bill grimaced. "Don't give me too much credit. Most of that should go to better people than I. I never imagined I could ever sail a boat after my injury. But a kind friend yanked me out of my pity party one day and hauled my ass out to a meeting of the Wounded Warrior Sailing project down in San Diego. I was amazed at how well some of the paraplegic vets were handling their boats with a few clever adaptive mods."

He paused and sighed. "I met several other vets there who were transcending much worse injuries than mine. The clincher was when I saw a fully quadriplegic sailor handling the tiller and trimming the sails on his boat using a 'sip and puff' steering system. I decided it was time to stop my whining and to get my sorry ass in gear."

The waiter brought our appetizers out and we polished off some excellent local shellfish. As we awaited our main courses, Bill continued his story. "Next came months of hard work. The docs and physical therapists at the LA Veteran's Hospital did a wonderful job of helping me tune up my body for sailing."

The entrees arrived and we tucked in. Between bites, Dad asked, "How long have you had your boat?"

Bill said, "Wounded Warriors has a small livery of boats in San Diego. I started off sailing some of them. But after a few months, my brother Andy suggested that I should get my own boat."

Bill smiled. "I laughed at him. How could I afford a sailboat? I had no job, no savings and a credit score so far underwater you'd need a sub to find it."

He sighed. "Andy told me not to be such a pussy. He asked around and found a local foundation that gave vets small grants to help them buy their first boats. They gave me a few thousand bucks, which was enough to buy an old Vancouver 27 with a broken mast but a sound hull."

I said, "Is that the boat you just sailed in on? It looks pretty great now."

"Yep. After a crap-ton of time and work, Andy and I renamed that hull and rebuilt it into the Goshawk you see today."

I said, "Wow. I'd love to see some of your adaptive mods."

Dad said, "Me too. But what are you doing up here in the Salish Sea?"

Bill said, "Once I got the boat in sailing condition, I made some training runs up the coast to LA and San Francisco Bay and back to San Diego. The Goshawk handled really well on those runs, and Andy asked me what I wanted to do next."

"I didn't have an answer at first. But I remembered how much encouragement and help I got from the Wounded Warrior program and the other vets who helped me learn to sail and to rebuild the Goshawk. I decided that I wanted to do my part to help. For my first project I decided to sail from California up to Alaska and back to help raise public consciousness about these fine programs and to raise money to support them."

"Bravo!" said Dad. "That's a wonderful thing to do. He paused. "I'd be happy to donate to the cause. How long will you be here in Puget Sound?"

"I'm going to spend a few weeks visiting several of the local yacht clubs. I'm giving presentations to three of them about my project."

Dad nodded. "A fine idea. I have friends in most of the local clubs and would be delighted to help you book a few more presentations."

Bill smiled. "That would be awesome. Thank you!"

Dad said, "You're welcome. Also, you're also very welcome to tie your boat up to our dock in Mats Mats Bay while you're in the area."

"Thank you! I've already paid for my slip for the night here in Port Townsend. However, I'd love to spend a few days with you guys before heading to some of the other marinas in the Sound."

"Great! I'll drop Ted off at the marina tomorrow. He can guide you down to the entrance to Mats Mats. It's a fairly narrow passage, but there will be plenty of water under your keel, especially if you come through near high tide. We've got at least 7 feet of water by our dock, even at low water."

* * *

After lunch, Dad tied his new sail in the back of his truck, and we headed back to the house.

Dad said, "Bill is an impressive fellow. Sailing from California to the Juan de Fuca Straits is no easy thing, and he gets a lot of extra points for doing it single-handed."

I nodded. "Yeah, big props for that. Also, I'm really impressed at how well he gets around on his boat and on shore."

Chapter 8

Sailing the Goshawk down to Mats Mats would be the first time I had been on a boat since my injury, and I was slightly nervous. The Seattle VA Medical Center gave me a prosthetic leg, but I hated how it fit and rarely wore it. I could limp around on it on shore reasonably well but was uncertain how well I would do on the uneven and moving surface of a sailboat. I grabbed a pair of deck shoes and laced one of them especially tightly onto my prosthetic foot.

Dad dropped me off at the marina in Port Townsend the next day. I took my time walking down the ramp to the dock, and had my crutches along just in case I wanted to bail from the prosthesis.

Bill was out on the dock inspecting his lines and rigging when I got there. He said, "Good morning."

"Morning. Ready to thread the needle into Mats Mats?"

He smiled. "Your tone suggests some difficulty with the passage."

I gave a lopsided grin. "Not really. It should be a piece of cake during the day, especially at high tide."

"I'm sure we'll be fine with you to guide us in. Ready to cast off?"

"Sure, want me to double a line on the bow?"

He nodded. "Yeah, that'd be great. I'll do the same thing with the stern line."

I untied the bow line from the cleat but left a single loop of it around the cleat. I led that back to the bow, and tied it around a cleat there. Then I put my lifejacket on and took my time getting on board and moving up to my place at the bow.

When Bill finished his preparations, he started the engine and said, "Ready?"

"Ready on the bow."

"Okay, cast off the bow."

I pulled the loop of line until it was free of the dock cleat and hauled the rest of it onboard. "Bow clear!"

Bill did the same maneuver with the stern line, and said, "Stern clear."

He slowly reversed out of the slip and backed the boat until the bow was pointed toward the harbor exit.

I took my time removing the mooring lines and fenders. As I inched back into the cockpit, I made sure that I had both hands attached to the boat whenever I had to bear weight on my prosthesis. So far, so good.

It's only about 10 nautical miles from PT to Mats Mats as the sea gull regurgitates. However, one first has to make a slight jog out into Admiralty Inlet and around Marrowstone Island. If we pushed it, we could reach the entrance to Mats Mats Bay in about two hours, just at the peak of high tide.

 

However, it was sunny and warm, with a steady 10 knot westerly breeze as we entered Port Townsend Bay. The mountains had all lifted their skirts up and dazzled us from both sides of the Sound. It was so pretty that we opted to take our time and enjoy the sailing.

We came down Admiralty Inlet in an easy reach and I paid close attention to the many adaptations Bill had made to his boat. I said, "I really appreciate all of the extra handholds you've added to the boat. Sure makes me feel more secure up on deck."

He nodded. "Yeah, same here. With my injury, I really rely on my upper body strength to get around. Those extra handholds make that much easier."

"Tell me more about the Wounded Warriors."

He said, "The Wounded Warrior project has an interesting perspective about sailboats. To them, all boats are merely prosthetic devices that let humans move around on the water. And they've got a point. The average sailboat already comes with lots of adaptive gear. You've got hoisting blocks, winches, levers, sails and a zillion lines that amplify your own, measly human strength and enable you to move a multiple ton boat around with your hands."

I nodded. "I like that point of view."

"Yep. The Warriors feel that with all of that gear already on board, what's a few more adaptations?"

He paused, and then said, "I notice that you don't seem to trust your new leg. Had it long?"

"Umm... Over a year. I'm not wild about the fit, so I don't use it much."

"I hear you. I hated to use my back brace back in my whiny denial phase. But I got a lot more religious about it when I started sailing again. Since then I've spent a lot of trial and error to get my brace custom-fitted. Now it just feels like a part of me."

He chuckled. "Dropping off occasional bottles of premium tequila to my prostheticist turned out to be a great investment. He always seems really happy to see me these days."

I gave a rueful smile. "Not mine. I'm still in the sniveling bastard phase with my PT and rehab techs. I should probably work on that."

* * *

All too soon we came up to the buoy marking Klas Rock, near the entrance to Mats Mats Bay. Bill started the engine and we furled the sails. Using Bill's many well-placed handholds, I brachiated up to the bow, put out the fenders along the port side of the boat, and got our mooring lines ready.

From space, Mats Mats Bay looks like a saxophone, with the neck and body forming the passage into the Bay and the bell representing the Bay itself. This passage is fairly narrow and lined by craggy rocks on all sides. There's even a set of range lights to guide boats at night, but we wouldn't need those now. Then there's an 80° dogleg to the left that would take us into the bay.

That dogleg can seem pretty tight if there is an oncoming boat. However, we lucked out and had the whole channel to ourselves. Once around the dogleg, I guided Bill through the lateral markers that led into the Bay proper. I pointed out our dock, where Dad stood waving. Bill eased us gently along the T-head, until Dad could pluck our aft spring line off and get it snugged down to a cleat. In a few minutes he had the rest of the lines attached and Bill shut off the engine.

Mom waved to us from the porch, where she laid out a tasty lunch. We ate overlooking the Bay and swapped sailing yarns.

* * *

By the time Bill left later that week, Dad had wrangled guest privileges for him at ten local yacht clubs, arranged several other speaking engagements around the Sound, and pointed several corporate donors toward Bill's website.

I was sorry to see Bill go. He had become a good friend, had inspired me to get off my ass, and had given me a master class in adaptive sailing.

I was also acutely aware that once Bill left, all of Dad's Sauron-like gaze was going to turn once more toward me and my issues. Maybe a preemptive strike was in order. I decided to get off my ass before Dad climbed back on it.

* * *

I seized the initiative at breakfast the next morning. Before Dad had a chance to sip his coffee, I said, "Dad, I need a ride to the Bainbridge Ferry terminal this afternoon."

"Going back so soon?"

"Yeah, it's been a great visit with you guys, but I have some things I need to do in town."

I was purposely vague about what "things" I needed to do but was decisive enough that Dad chose to let me off the hook.

My first stop was to get a car. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do next, but I needed to regain my mobility. I hadn't driven since my injury but fuck it -- if I can crew a sailboat, I can drive a car. After a little research, I decided on a used electric model with a nifty one-pedal driving feature.

Having done that, it was now time to plan the rest of my life. Let's see -- what to do next...

Chapter 9

My next stop was the Seattle VA Hospital -- specifically their PT department and prosthetics lab. I brought them each a gift basket of various Pacific NW goodies. I told them that I was tired of being a whiny, sniveling, little shit, and was ready to get back to work. They smiled, licked their chops, and the torture began anew.

Now, what to do with the rest of my life. Hmmm...

Before my stint as a combat engineer, I had just earned a master's in mechanical engineering at UW. I had considered staying on there and getting a Ph. D. What would it take to get back into grad school?

A few afternoons later, I was having a pleasant chat with Jean Reynolds, the chair of the ME department. She was a lovely, no-nonsense woman about my mom's age.

She said, "I've reviewed your pre-Army transcript and it looks fine. What have you been up to since you got out of the Army? Why do you want to come back here and get your doctorate?"

I recapped my recent life and related how meeting Bill had bumped me out of my slump and how his use of adaptive technology for sailing inspired me. I realized that a mechanical engineer with actual experience as an amputee could make life easier for other disabled folks.

She thought for a moment and then said, "You're right. When can you start?"

"Umm... Any time, I suppose. Why?"

"Summer term starts next Monday. Interested?"

"Uhh... Sure."

"Great!" She put two fingers in her mouth and let out a loud whistle.

A few seconds later, a young man about my age peeked inside. "Yes, your majesty?"

Jean rolled her eyes and said, "Floyd, this is Ted McShane. He'll be rejoining our doctoral program. Please register him for the summer term and sign him up as one of my teaching assistants."

Floyd bowed, and said, "It shall be as you command, highness."

Jean blew him a raspberry. She noticed my shocked expression and gave me a wink. "Welcome back to UW, Ted. Now, go out there and do good work." Then she shooed me out of her office.

Before Floyd released me from his clutches, I signed an unbelievably thick stack of paperwork and wrote several checks. He then walked me through a few other campus offices, from which I emerged with a new student ID card and a disability parking pass.

* * *

I won't bore you with a play-by-play account of my time in graduate school. Suffice it to say that I worked my ass off and generally enjoyed getting my degree. I will, however, mention a few highlights.

By now I had become pretty good friends with the folks at the Prosthesis and Rehabilitation Center at the Seattle VA Medical Center. They worked tirelessly with me to build a series of prosthetic limbs that were not only comfortable but also worked well in specialized environments. My first project was building my "sea leg", which is a special foot that has never once slipped on any shipboard surface, wet or dry. I now trust it more than my biological foot when working up on the bow of a boat. That success has led me to design other specialized limbs, including some for track and field, prosthetic hands to hold guitar picks, and limbs for martial arts.

One of the VA prostheticists referred me to a colleague at Seattle Children's Hospital. Sadly, there is a great need for prosthetic limbs for children. Kids lack limbs for many reasons, including birth defects, trauma, and tumors. However, kids have a special issue that adults don't have to worry about: they grow up. This means that even if their parents can afford to get them an expensive, custom prosthesis, they will likely outgrow it in a few months.

There are programs to recycle these outgrown prostheses to younger and smaller kids, but the need for these recycled limbs far outstrips the number that are available.

Kids are also incredibly active, put a lot of stress on their prosthetics, and break them all the time. The folks at Seattle Children's turned me on to Project E-NABLE, an online global community of volunteers who use their 3D printers to make free and low-cost prosthetic upper limb devices for those in need.

One of the staff at Children's put me in contact with Evan, a local ten-year-old boy who had lost most of his hand in a car crash. His wound had healed, but he was still really depressed. He dreaded going to school because the other kids teased him about his hand.

He and his parents initially were initially not wild about meeting me, but their doctor convinced them to do it. After she introduced me, I said, "I'm glad to meet you, Evan. I build prosthetic limbs at UW and was wondering if you could help me test this new bionic hand..."

I opened a small case and pulled out an E-NABLE hand that I had 3D printed to look like the Infinity Glove of Thanos. Evan and his parents stared at it like a family of startled tarsiers. I pushed it toward him and said, "Want to try it on?"

He nodded.

"Okay, let me see you bend your wrist back and forth."

He shyly extended his stump toward me and moved it.

"Great! You have excellent mobility in your wrist, which is how you're going to control this hand. You'll extend your wrist like this to open the hand and flex it like this to close the fist."

I slipped the hand over his stump and gently strapped it on. "Okay, give it a try."

He opened and closed his new fist a few times, and his jaw dropped. "That is SO cool!! Mom! Dad! Did you see that?"

They nodded, mute, as tears ran down their cheeks. Ahem! I may have misted up too for a moment.

I gave Evan a few moments to test out his new battle gauntlet, and then said, "That one should work pretty well for smiting your enemies. But we should probably build you a few other models: one that will let you write and draw, and maybe another one that will let you catch and throw things. Sound good?"

He nodded, eagerly this time.

"Great. Now look at some of the models on my iPad, and tell me which ones you like best. Also think about what colors you'd like."

Evan was eager to take his new hand home and try it out on all sorts of things, including his little sister. I urged him to use his new, god-like power only for good, and not for hurting people. I said, "Remember what Spiderman said?"

He nodded, and said the words in unison with me, "With great power comes great responsibility."

"Excellent. Now, take care of your new hand, but don't worry about breaking it. In fact, if you're not breaking something on it every week, you're not playing hard enough." I turned to his parents and handed them a bag of parts. "Here's a collection of the most frequently fractured parts, and instructions on how to replace them."

I added, "One more thing. A big boy like you is going to grow even bigger, and you'll need a bigger hand. When this one starts feeling a little tight, send me your new measurements and I'll print you up a bigger one. Any questions?"

They all shook their heads.

"Excellent. Now give me a fist bump." I pretended to cringe when his gauntlet contacted my hand. After the fist bump, he jumped up and gave me a huge hug, followed by equally big hugs from his parents.

After they left, Evan's doctor turned to me and gave me a tearful hug of her own. "You did some really good work here today, Ted."

Chapter 10

I'd like to tell you about another patient who stands out, but for different reasons. Bob was a farmer from Central Washington who had lost most of both hands in a close encounter with a threshing machine. He had worked hard all of his life with his hands and was now extremely depressed at the prospect of running his farm without them.

I drove out to his farm with a variety of different prosthetic hands. He wasn't initially too impressed by the units I strapped on him. But he brightened up quite a bit after he easily hoisted a hay bale with them. I then handed him an empty steel can, and his eyes widened when he saw how easy it was to crush it with his new bionic grip. His family was also thrilled -- especially his ten-year-old son, who asked if he could borrow Dad's Terminator Hand.

I took some more measurements of his stumps and left him a set of loaner hands. As he walked me out to my car, he looked around to make sure that none of his family members were nearby, and said, "Say Doc. I've got some personal questions about these hands."

"Sure, fire away."

"Looks like they'll be great for heavy farm work, but Is there any way to do simpler things, such as letting me take a leak on my own?"

I thought for a moment, and said, "Sure. It might be good for you to wear two different hands. Use one for heavy work and the other one for more delicate tasks like using the toilet."

He nodded and then said. "I've got one more really crazy question."

"Let me hear it -- the crazier the better."

He gave another furtive look around and said, "Umm... What if I wanted to... err... use it to... umm... pleasure myself?"

For a moment I had no idea what he was talking about, but then the light bulb went on. I said, "Ohhhhh... You'd like to use it to masturbate?"

He blushed. "Shhh!! Not so loud. Uhh... Sure, sometimes. But after seeing what that hand did to the steel can, I'm terrified at the thought of grabbing my johnson with it."

I winced at the mental image his words had conjured. "Good point." I thought for a moment, and then said, "I've got some ideas. Let me look into them and I may have some answers for you in a few weeks when I bring out your new custom hands."

Some online research turned up a digital resource foundation for the orthotics and prosthetics community that contained all sorts of great ideas to assist amputees with their toilet needs. Most of their solutions were much simpler and more practical than the crazy kludges that I had in mind.

Okay, fine -- I'd email that list to Bob.

Then I turned my thoughts to his question of how he could whack off without literally whacking off his dick with his bionic fist. Having just found prior art for peeing, I turned back to the internet for ideas on building a better chicken choker. The answer turned out to be simple: a prosthetic hand is simply the wrong tool for fondling your own tool. When you spank your monkey, you are actually turning your hand into a surrogate vagina. Therefore, why not forget using a prosthetic hand and design a prosthetic vagina!

Oh, wait! Maybe someone else has already done that.

Sure enough, a quick web search for masturbation machines turned up a dizzying array of possibilities. The Amazon page alone was pretty daunting. I saw a lot of things there that I will never allow near my johnson -- the most troubling was something called "the Tentacle". However, I bookmarked a few of the less industrial-looking devices to show to Bob during our next visit.

I also came across a surprisingly tasteful site called "The Love Forest by Doris" in Rock Island, IL. This place offered a staggering variety of doohickeys for doing the dirty, thingamabobs to put your thingy in, tools to enhance your own tool, and all sorts of other devices for da vices. As a mechanical engineer, I have spent my whole professional life designing new machines. But I was now overwhelmed by all the machines someone else had engineered in this unsuspected and erotic parallel universe. Maybe this is how physicists felt when they first discovered the presence of dark matter and energy.

* * *

At some point during my doctoral work, Stephanie filed for divorce. I passed the paperwork on to my lawyer and let him handle all the details. Steph and I had very few assets, and our divorce was uncontested. Even so, the mill of the law ground slowly, and it was almost a year before the divorce was final. At that point, I had much more interesting things to think about in my life. When the final paperwork arrived, I dropped it in my filing cabinet and forgot about it.

I graduated the following May. My parents and friends came out to see me stride across the stage with barely a whisper of a limp, using my latest prosthetic design. I received my doctoral diploma from my department chair. After our grip and grin photo, she whispered, "Good work, Ted! I'm so proud of you."

* * *

After a few weeks off, I started classes again, but this time teaching them as an assistant professor. After spending time with the E-NABLE project and working with custom prosthetics at the Seattle VA, I wanted to concentrate on electromechanical interfaces, i. e. systems which allow the nerve and muscle impulses in a person's residual stump to control the actions of a prosthetic limb.

Chapter 11

As part of my doctoral research, I had spent a lot of time at the Seattle VA working with veterans with various limb amputations and spinal injuries.

For most of our patients, our goal was to get them back to performing activities of daily living, such as walking or getting dressed by themselves. We shared with them a variety of devices and techniques for accomplishing this.

However, from time to time we heard from patients with special requests. One loved to cook, and was saddened by not being able to hold or crack an egg reliably with his prosthetic hand. This was a fun project, but quite challenging. It was easy to build a hand that had enough power to crack an egg. Heck, it was easy to build one that could open a can of spinach like Popeye, just by squeezing it hard enough. The main trick was to be able to reliably pick up an egg without dropping it or crushing it. The next challenge was to then apply just enough pressure to crack the egg without crushing it or filling the mixing bowl with eggshell shrapnel.

Our approach was to add haptic feedback transducers to the prosthesis, so that a patient got progressive feedback on how hard they were gripping the egg. These transducers would give the patient a subtle vibration that increased in frequency and intensity as they squeezed harder.

We went through a lot of eggs while testing different iterations of our bionic hand. However, we eventually came up with a model that pleased our client.

Another special order was from a patient with a below-the-elbow amputation who was a champion archer prior to her injury. She wondered if we could design a prosthetic draw arm and hand combination that would allow her to pick up an arrow, place it on the bow, pull the bowstring back, and then release the arrow reliably -- hopefully hitting the target. We also wanted her to be able to use her bow safely, without shooting herself or other contestants. I'm happy to say that we achieved all of these goals, and the prevalence of arrow wounds in King County did not have any sudden upticks that year.

* * *

My colleagues at the VA suggested that I should also spend some time working with the orthopedic surgeons at Harborview Medical Center. Harborview is the Level I trauma center for the State of Washington, and sees a large number of patients with a broad range of injuries. I met with several surgeons there, and they invited me to attend their hospital rounds. I put on a white coat and accompanied them several days a week. I stood in the back, took notes, and occasionally made suggestions about prosthetic possibilities for their patients.

 

One memorable day we visited Teresa Albaniz. She was a ballerina and like me, was 28-years-old. An auto collision had horribly mangled her lower leg. Her surgeons had tried very hard to save the leg, but the blood supply was badly compromised. This resulted in extremely slow healing and painful, chronically-draining bone infections. Her doctors eventually deemed her leg to be unsalvageable, and recommended amputation.

She was extremely upset over the prospect of losing her leg and ending her dancing career. Some of her grief transformed into anger that we had "given up" on her leg. She refused to consider an amputation and told us to get the hell out of her room. We did.

With her surgeon's permission, I returned to her room a few hours later. I knocked and said, "Hi, Ms. Albaniz. I'm Ted McShane, from your care team."

"What the fuck do you want?"

"I noted your anger at the idea of an amputation."

"My goddamned doctors are giving up on me. Why the fuck shouldn't I be angry?"

I nodded. 'You have every right to be angry."

"Thank you, Captain Obvious!" She paused for a moment and frowned. "Why are you here? Are you even a doctor?"

"Sort of. I have a Ph. D. in mechanical engineering and I work with the prosthetics team..."

"Well goodie for you -- a catastrophe for me is a chance for you to upsell me on some expensive god-damned prosthesis, no doubt with a big commission for you. Go fuck yourself!"

I bit my tongue and took a deep breath. "I'm not here to sell you anything. I just wanted to tell you that an amputation is not the end of the world."

"It is for me! Dancing is my life! If they cut my fucking leg off, that is the end of my life! I don't want to be a worthless fucking gimp!!"

"I understand why you think that. But it doesn't have to be that way."

This really pissed her off. "My god! I can't believe your arrogance! Walking in here and dishing out your god-damned homilies. How could you possibly understand?!"

I sighed. Then I reached down and pulled up my pants leg. I unbuckled my prosthetic leg and plopped it down on the bed beside her.

She sat there open-mouthed for a moment and then slumped back in her bed. In a very small voice she said, "I'm sorry."

I retrieved my leg, strapped it back on, and said, "It's okay. I'm used to being a worthless fucking gimp. If you have any questions, here's my card."

* * *

Teresa was quite different when the care team came by the next day. She said, "I'm very sorry I was so angry yesterday. I know I shouldn't shoot the messenger, but it's been a horrible experience."

Jane Smithers, the orthopedic chief of our team, was very gracious. "Your apology is accepted, of course. We see a lot of grief and anger in our patients, and we don't take it personally."

Teresa said, "I'm almost ready to make my decision, but I have some questions for Dr. McShane. Do you mind if he sticks around for a moment?"

Dr. Smithers smiled. "That's fine. The rest of us will see you again tomorrow."

Chapter 12

As the rest of the ortho team headed for the next ward, Teresa said, "Thanks for meeting with me. I wasn't sure that you'd want to. I was a real bitch yesterday."

I smiled. "I'm happy to chat. Also, I forgive you. Your anger and grief remind me a lot of mine when I lost my leg."

She smiled, and said, "Thank you. This totally sucks, but it's comforting to talk to someone in the same boat."

I laughed when she said that. Seeing her frown, I quickly said, "I'm not laughing at you. It's just that your choice of words is amazingly appropriate. The person who helped me out of my own pity party a few years ago literally came into my life on a boat."

Her frown disappeared, and she said, "I guess I'd better hear that story. Also, if you don't mind my asking, how did you lose your leg?"

We swapped injury stories and ended up talking for hours. Finally, she said, "I guess I need to make a decision about whether or not to have the amputation. Any advice?"

I shook my head. "I can't decide for you, but I am a big fan of Jane Smithers and trust her analysis of your problem. You have a choice of a painful, chronically infected leg that will take years to heal -- if ever -- vs an amputation that will be largely pain-free after it heals -- usually in a few months. If you choose amputation, it's my job to make sure that you get a set of custom prostheses that will get you back to doing most of the things you did before your injury."

She frowned. "You said a 'set of prostheses' -- plural. How many will I need?"

"That's up to you. I currently have five that I use regularly. The one I have on right now is optimized for walking."

I reached into my backpack and pulled several other models. "This one is a running blade that I use for jogging. And here's another one I use when hiking on rough terrain."

I handed her yet another foot. "This is a custom foot I made for sailing. It's designed to give me great traction on deck, and to also avoid getting tangled up in lines. I call it my 'sea leg'."

I pulled out the final foot. "This is yet another foot I've been tweaking for a few years. I'm trying to optimize it for dancing."

Her eyes got big as saucers. "Dancing?"

"Yeah, but it's still just a prototype. I used to dance competitively with my wife before my injury. Tango and salsa."

"Your wife?"

"Well, my ex-wife. She decided that she didn't want her dancing career to be held back by a worthless fucking gimp."

She winced. "I'm so sorry that I ever said that."

"It's okay. You were speaking your mind, and many others share that same mindset."

She shook her head. "Not me. Not anymore. So, what did your wife do?"

"She started dancing with one of her students while I was in Afghanistan. After I lost my leg, she started fucking him too."

"I'm so sorry to hear that." She was beginning to tear up.

"It was bad enough when she asked for a divorce, but it really blew when the smirking piece of shit she was with said that "she wanted a complete man."

"Oh -- my -- god!" A ferocious expression flitted across her face. It was as if a fierce Valkyrie warrior looked out of her eyes. She reached over and grabbed my hand. "You would never hear that kind of crap from me. Ever."

Then she smiled, and added, "And if you build me the right prosthetic foot for it, I will gladly kick your ex's ass with it."

When I laughed, she said, "But enough about your imbecilic ex. Tell me more about your dancing foot. How well does it work?"

"It's still a work in progress, but it's already easier to dance with than any of my other feet. I keep finding new ways to improve it. Also, new ways to make it fail."

"Wow. Umm... So could I buy one of these if I have the amputation?"

I shook my head. "No, they're not for sale." I saw her face fall and quickly added, "But I'd be happy to build you one if you're willing to be my guinea pig and help me test it."

Her face lit up. "I'd love to do that. But... why would you do that for me?"

I took a moment to choose my words. "I suppose you could say it's my calling."

She said, "You mean, like a priest?"

I chuckled. "I didn't see a burning bush or any other supernatural signs telling me to do this. However, I seem to be the right person to be working on this. Prior to my injury, I trained as a mechanical engineer. That training gave me the skills to design and build almost anything. My injury granted me some unique insights on some things that really need building. It finally occurred to me that I should use these gifts to create stuff that really matters and can actually change lives."

I paused and then chuckled. "Our ME department has an annual job fair to which multiple companies send their engineers. It's sort of like speed-dating for grad students. We get to chat with all of these companies and see if any of their jobs appeal to us."

She said, "Did you see anything you liked there?"

"Well, I found that I could be making five times what I make as an assistant professor at UW by designing better golf carts and other frivolous things. Nope. Not for me. Life is too short to make crap like that."

As I stepped off my mental soapbox, I noticed that she was looking at me in a way I hadn't been looked at by a woman for a very long time. I didn't know how to interpret that expression, so I merely said, "What?"

She said softly, "I think you're right. Your calling is to make stuff that matters. But you might also have a calling as an inspirational speaker."

"Uhh... What do you mean?"

"You just made a pretty compelling case for me getting off my ass and getting on with life. I think I'm ready to stop whining and move on. I don't know what my calling is going to be, but I sure as hell want one someday."

"Umm... You're welcome?"

"You've also helped me make my decision. I'm going for the amputation, but on one condition."

"What's that?"

"I want you as my personal prosthesis builder. And I want to help you design the world's best bionic dancing foot -- for both of us."

Chapter 13

Teresa was as good as her word. During the next morning rounds, she asked Jane Smithers to book the OR for her amputation.

Jane pulled me aside later and said, "I don't know what you said to her, but she's really gung ho to have that leg taken off. I may have to start calling you my Amputee Whisperer."

"Oh, Jesus, Jane! Don't you dare."

She laughed. "I won't, of course. But -- you did do a remarkable job of helping her change her attitude about her injury. That improved attitude is really going to facilitate her rehab and will probably improve her prognosis as well. Well done!"

* * *

I almost didn't recognize Teresa when I dropped by her room later that afternoon. She still wore the same, shapeless patient gown, but somehow now looked glamorous in it. It took me a moment to recognize the difference: a positive attitude, a bit of work with her hair and some very subtle makeup. The final touch was the way she lit up the room with a dazzling smile when I walked in. At that moment she was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen.

She sat up in bed. "Would you do me a favor and just walk around the room while I watch you?"

"Uh... Sure. Why?"

"You move so well with your prosthetic leg that I never spotted that you had one. But now that I know you do, I'd like to see if I can spot any subtle anomalies in your gait."

I walked back and forth in the room for a few minutes and said, "How's that?"

"It's almost imperceptible, but I can now see just a tiny bit of overextension of your prosthetic leg when you stride forward on it. Also, there is a tiny hitch in your plantar flexion when you push off with it."

I nodded slowly. "You're right. That's something I'm still working on in my rehab, but it's a lot smoother than it used to be." I paused for a moment, and then said, "You seem to know an awful lot about gait for a lay person."

She laughed. "I've been dancing or teaching ballet professionally since my early teens. Tiny nuances of body position and motion are things that ballerinas obsess about constantly."

I grinned. "I'm definitely not God's Gift to Gait."

Her face became serious. "Oh, but you're wrong. You're a great role model." She paused for a moment. "You're going to think this is stupid..."

I tried to look encouraging. "No, not at all."

"One of the things I've hated the most about my injury was the way I lurch around with my crutches. After years of being a professional graceful person, I have an almost pathological fear of looking clumsy."

I nodded. "Like a worthless fucking gimp?"

She looked down. "I deserve to have you throw that back at me. But yeah, that was my fear. Doesn't paint me in a very good light, does it?"

I shook my head. "No worries. I went through a crap-ton of rage and grief when I lost my leg. I lashed out at anything and anyone that reminded me of my loss. Been there. Done that."

She said, "That's why I love to watch you walk. If I didn't spot that tiny, residual hitch in your gait at first, then no one else will either." She took a deep breath and wiped some tiny tears from her eyes. "And if you can learn to move around so naturally, then maybe I can too. When you walk, I see hope."

I didn't know what to say, so I kept my mouth shut.

We spent the rest of my visit talking about all manner of topics, and I enjoyed her quirky sense of humor. We turned out to have complementary tastes in books and were both fond of British murder mysteries. It was also fascinating to learn more about the world of ballet from an insider.

Before I left, she took my hand and pulled me in for an intense hug. "Will you come and see me after the surgery?"

"Count on it. Did they give you an OR time yet?"

"The nurse said I'm one of the first cases tomorrow morning. Patient transport is coming by at six am to take me to the operating room."

"Then I'll see you in the morning."

She gave me one last hug and then I went home.

Chapter 14

I knocked on Teresa's hospital room door at five am, and heard a sleepy, "Come in."

She looked surprised when I walked in. "I didn't expect to see you so early."

I said, "I thought you might be able to use a little moral support before going down to the OR."

She smiled and took my hand. "Thank you for coming. I've been trying to be brave, but I'm frankly a little terrified. It means a lot to me having you here."

We sat there chatting about inconsequential things for the next hour, until an orderly arrived to take her to the OR. I helped him move her onto the transport gurney.

I gave her another hug and said, "I'll see you after surgery."

* * *

The surgery went well, and after a short stop in the recovery room, they returned Teresa to her room. She was still groggy from the anesthetic but smiled when she saw me. I sat by her bed, holding her hand until she fell asleep.

She was much more alert the next day. Her physical therapy team gave her a set of crutches, and she was soon doing laps around the surgery ward. She was eager to get started with a prosthetic leg, but I reminded her that she needed to wait six to twelve weeks to let her stump heal before bearing weight on it.

I met her mom, Joyce, later that day. She had flown up from Texas to spend a few weeks helping Teresa through her recovery. We had lunch together while Teresa was at a physical therapy session.

As we sat down in the hospital cafeteria, she said, "So, is it you that I need to thank?"

I was a bit nonplussed. "Umm... For what?"

"For getting Teri's head out of her ass about the amputation. It was obvious to everyone else that that was what she needed. But she was in denial for months. I'll give her points for not giving up easily, but Lord, that leg was in sad shape."

"Er... I may have helped her see that an amputation is not the end of the world."

"How the heck did you do that? Our whole family and all of her medical team have been trying to convince her for months."

I recapped my chat with Teresa, including the prosthesis plopping incident. Joyce's jaw dropped and she proceeded to laugh her ass off. When she got her laughter under control, she said, "Worthless fucking gimp... Game! Set! Match!" and started giggling all over again.

She wiped her eyes and said. "I'm sorry. I hope it didn't seem like I was laughing at you."

I just chuckled and said, "No worries."

"Good. Teri needs a swift dose of reality every now and then. Sometimes mere words will not convince her, but she can be shown the truth if you can just whack her over the head with the right visual aid."

"I'll keep that in mind."

She mused for a moment. "Teri said something about you designing a bionic foot that might allow her to dance again. Is that possible?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "Yes, I'm sure I can make a foot that will allow her to do some types of dance, like folk-dancing or waltzing. But professional-level ballet may be impossible with current technology."

"That girl needs to get back on her feet and moving again. She hasn't been able to sit still since she was two. Being off her feet has made her almost suicidal since her injury, which worried the shit out of me and would worry her dad if he were still alive. But what she really needs is to get back to some kind of dancing, even if it's just the hokey-pokey. Hell, if you can get her up and doing the goddamn chicken dance, I will personally perform upon you an unnatural act of your choice."

I should point out that Joyce was a very lovely woman who had aged so gracefully that she could have been an older, saltier, sister rather than Teresa's mom. The idea of doing something unspeakable with her was arousing as hell.

My eyes may have bulged slightly. She noticed, and added, "Of course, that's assuming that Teri's not already thanking you with unnatural acts of her own."

I can't remember ever having blushed before, but boy, was my face red. I quickly looked at my watch and said, "Oh, wow -- look at the time. I need to catch up with the ortho team for rounds."

* * *

After a few more days, the hospital discharged Teresa. I gave her and Joyce a ride home. I got together with them one or two times per week, either for dinner or to take them sightseeing around Seattle.

Teresa's stump was healing nicely. She had also become quite adept with her crutches, to the point of using them to move through some simple ballet choreographies in her kitchen. I was impressed.

By the time Joyce flew home to Texas a few weeks later, Teresa was quite mobile and self-sufficient. She felt comfortable driving her electric car with just one foot. I rode along with her when she dropped Joyce off at SeaTac.

Joyce gave Teresa a long loving hug, and kissed her cheek. "I love you, dear heart. You work hard on that rehab now."

"Yes, Mom."

Joyce turned to me and gave me my very own, boner-inducing, full, frontal, hug. "And you, Ted. Get to work on that bionic, dancing foot. I'm interested in seeing what y'all come up with." She kissed my cheek, and then leaned into my ear and whispered, "Unnaturally interested."

I was sure glad that Teresa was driving and had to keep her eyes on the road while the slight bulge in my pants subsided.

* * *

Teresa and I continued to see each other once or twice a week. We quickly fell into an easy camaraderie and just liked being around each other. Without Joyce around as a de facto chaperone, our relationship began to develop further. Our end-of-the-evening hugs lasted longer, and began to include kisses of increasing duration.

I realized that I was falling in love with this lovely woman and hoped that she felt the same way about me.

Chapter 15

Teresa's stump healed nicely and was pain-free at post-op week six. I measured it every week or so, watching the swelling go down. Once that stabilized, Jane Smithers and I pronounced Teresa ready for the initial fitting of her first prosthesis.

I started her off in a generic, off-the-shelf model. She was raring to go, eschewed using her crutches, and almost fell on her ass with her first few steps. However, she quickly got the hang of it and her gait smoothed out considerably.

I took her to dinner that night with her shiny new leg concealed under a pair of elegant pants. She left the crutches in the car. She could hardly contain her excitement as we strolled into a jazz supper club -- her at my side, holding my arm.

We enjoyed listening to the band, and after we finished our meals and were sipping after dinner cocktails, I noticed tears in her eyes. I said, "What's the matter?"

It took her a moment to gather herself to speak. "Ted. I'm just so happy. You don't know how great it feels..."

 

She stopped, blushed, and said, "Oh, shit. Of course you know how great it feels -- to walk into a place like this like a normal person. Nobody in here knows that we're amputees!"

I smiled. "I do know that feeling. And I'm glad that you know it now too."

I stood up and pointed to the adjacent dance floor. "Care to dance with me?"

"What?!"

"Dance. You know, this social thing people do where you stand next to each other..."

"I know what dancing is, you idiot. But I just got this leg today. I'm not ready..."

I shook my head. "There's this great proverb from Zimbabwe: 'If you can talk, you can sing; if you can walk, you can dance.'"

I took her hand and pulled gently. "You walked pretty darned well today, and I'll bet you can dance okay too."

She shook her head slowly but allowed me to pull her to her feet. I led her to the small dance floor and took her in my arms. We started out just swaying to the music. Nothing terrible happened, so I upped the ante and started taking small steps in a simple pattern.

Teresa followed my lead, even when I gradually segued into a simple salsa step. She continued to follow every step effortlessly -- even when I turned her under my arm into a simple dip at the end of the music. As she looked up at me tears welled up in her eyes. She pulled my head down and gave me a scorching kiss.

I don't know how long it lasted, but we both eventually noticed that the other dancers were smiling and applauding us. We stood up straight, blushed, and nodded our thanks. Then we ambled back to our table.

We sat down next to each other, and she pulled me in for another kiss. "Ted, thank you for this amazing day. For so long I thought that doing all of this -- " She waved her hand around the room, "was never going to happen again. I can't tell you how grateful I am."

I said, "You're welcome. But we can never tell your mother about tonight."

She frowned. "Why not?"

I told her about Joyce's promissory note for unnatural acts and her jaw actually dropped. "She said... what!?"

I continued, "And then she said she might not, if you were already thanking me with unnatural acts of your own..."

I wouldn't have thought that Teresa's jaw could drop any further, but it did. Then she burst out laughing.

When she finally recovered, she paused, then said, "Oh, shit! What if she was serious?"

She thought for a few more seconds and said, "Probably not, but maybe I need to get serious too."

I was definitely lagging several paragraphs behind in her conversation with herself. All I could do was gape and say, "Umm... What...?"

Teresa waved a credit card at the waiter and said, "Check, please!"

She turned back to me. "C'mon, Hon. We've gotta go."

"Why?"

"That dance you did with me just now was the most romantic thing I've ever done. One more dip like that and I would have pulled you down and done it with you right there on the dance floor. Mom was just jerking your chain, but she has a point. Ted, I love you. Do you love me?"

"Uh... Yes! Yes, I do!"

"Good. Then it's time for us to fish or cut bait. Let's go!"

"Where?"

"My place! And start thinking of your favorite unnatural acts! I've got a few of my own in mind..."

* * *

We made it back to her place without too many traffic violations, and were soon in her bedroom, flinging off our clothes. We stood there for a moment, gazing at each other, naked but for our prosthetic legs. Then she said, "It's funny. If I were with anyone else right now, I'd feel more naked taking off my limb than taking off my clothes. But with you, it's different. We've already seen each other's stumps, and that actually makes us more comfortable together."

I said, "Yeah, it's weird. I actually find it a bit of a turn on at the moment. Do you suppose that the opposite of apotemnophobia is apotemnophilia?"

She laughed. "If so, all the better for us." She grabbed my prosthetic foot and drew me toward her.

I said, "Are you pulling my leg?"

"Literally, yes. Figuratively, no. Get that thing off and get under the covers with me."

"Yes, ma'am!"

Chapter 16

The last woman I had been naked with was Stephanie, and she flinched every time she saw or touched my stump. Teresa embraced mine, caressed it, and made love to it with her hands and her lips and her tongue. As she did this, it became my newest and one of my favorite erogenous zones.

Our next few hours in bed were wonderful. All of the shitty comments Steph or Emilio had ever made about my limb faded to insignificance. By making love to each other and accepting each other's bodies, Teresa and I completed all of the parts that the rest of the world might have considered missing.

* * *

We woke up in each other's arms the next morning. I looked into Teresa's eyes and said, "Wow."

She said, "Your eloquence astonishes me." Then she giggled and said, "But I agree. 'Wow' pretty well covers it!"

We lay there a while longer, each enjoying our own personal reveries.

She said, "Those were just baby steps on the dance floor last night, but they were pretty profound for me. With those simple steps you gave me back my dance."

Then she gave me a kiss that devoured my soul.

That led to further acts of mutual devouring that took some time to complete.

Some time later, we lay there completely consumed. I summoned enough energy to roll over and look into her eyes, and said, "So, for the last time, do you still feel like a worthless fucking gimp?"

She thought for a moment, and said, "You know, if someone had asked me that a month ago, I would have slapped their face and said, 'Hell no!' But today, the answer is not only yes, but hell yes!"

I frowned. "Why on earth did you say that?"

She held up one hand, palm out. "Wait -- I misspoke. I should have said 'two-thirds of hell yes'."

"What does that even mean?"

She said, "Well, we are both gimps."

"Umm... Yeah..."

A mischievous glint appeared in her eyes. "And we are fucking..."

I began to grin. "True."

"But worthless? Not any more. At the moment I'm a deliriously happy fucking gimp."

"Hmm... When you put it that way, I guess two out of three works pretty well for me, too."

* * *

Eventually our growling stomachs forced us downstairs to breakfast. As we slaked our thirst and sated our caloric needs, Teresa said, "Did you and Stephanie ever get turned on by dancing together?"

"Oh, yeah!"

"What style of dance did you guys find the most arousing?"

"Tango. Definitely tango."

"Mmm... In that case, may I please have some tango lessons STAT, Dr. McShane?"

* * *

Some patients take weeks just learning to walk with a prosthetic leg. But not Teresa. There she was, twenty-four hours into her first leg, and she was already demanding tango lessons.

I suggested that we take it slowly (i. e. a few weeks) and get her comfortable with something basic like walking on a flat surface. Then she could gradually try walking on uneven ground and learn to climb stairs.

She would have none of that. "Ted, I've spent the last twenty-five years of my life learning intricate choreographies of complex dance movements."

"So?"

"So, I'm a quick study. A damn quick study."

I nodded. "Okay, let's see how ready you are by taking a walk in the park this afternoon."

She went to her hall closet and pulled out her hiking shoes, and started tying one on her prosthetic foot. She said, "Ready to go in five minutes?"

I nodded and donned my own hiking gear.

We got in the car and headed for Discovery Park, a 560-acre Seattle public park on the shores of Puget Sound and Elliott Bay. It has almost twelve miles of trails through forests and meadows, across beaches and streams, and up and down hills.

We parked in the south parking lot and I led her up a set of stairs to the top of the hill overlooking the old parade ground. She cheerfully followed me, mimicking my steps, even when I started walking sideways, and then backwards. She stumbled on the first step but quickly regained her footing and then followed me backwards with no major difficulty. I led her down an uneven, grassy slope to the relatively flat parade ground. There I started doing slow pirouettes as I walked. She picked that up fairly quickly too.

I led her down the hill to the sand dunes above the cliffs. She made a few adjustments to her gait and then did about as well as I did walking in the loose sand.

I was really impressed at how well she was doing but didn't want to tire her out. She seemed a bit disappointed when I led her back to the parking lot but sat down gratefully in the car when we got there. I slipped off her prosthesis and carefully examined her stump. I spotted a few small hot spots there, and she winced slightly when I touched them.

I said, "You did an awesome job today. You've done things in your first day that a lot of our patients don't try for weeks or months. I'm really impressed with your balance and adaptability. However, we don't want you to overdo things. If we had gone much further today, these little hot spots would probably be blisters by now."

She nodded. "Yeah, my stump started to ache some toward the end. I can also tell how deconditioned my thigh is above the stump. My quads, hamstrings, and glutes feel really weak there compared to my other side."

I said, "Your PT folks will put you on the right regime to rebuild them. We'll supplement the PT by gradually increasing your mileage on walks, especially once we get you into your first custom prosthesis."

* * *

When we got back to my place, she napped for a few hours. I made a simple pasta dish for supper, which seemed to recharge her batteries. After dinner, she looked at me with puppy dog eyes and said, "Please, sir. May I have just one tiny tango lesson before bedtime?"

"Okay, but just a quick one."

I rummaged through the tango playlist on my iPhone, and selected La Cumparsita. As the music began, I asked her to count out the beats of a very simple tango step: "Slo-ow, slo-ow, fast, fast, fast. Slo-ow, slo-ow, fast, fast, fast."

We repeated that a few times with the music. Then I pulled Teresa up into ballroom position and let her around the room to that same timing. She quickly picked this up, so I began to slowly improvise different variations to the same beat. After we circumnavigated my living room, I led her through a 180° turn, and we went back the other way.

With that basic step down, I pulled her in closer until we were tummy to tummy, with our legs now interdigitating. This placed our right upper thighs quite closely against each other's genital areas in a most delightful way. Teresa began to breathe a little faster.

As the music became more dramatic, I added a few simple, alternating lunges, which felt as if we were slowly humping each other's legs. Teresa moaned slightly, and my own breath became slightly ragged.

Her ability to follow my lead was amazing -- almost making me believe in telepathy. She kept her body close to mine through each and every improvisation I threw at her. By the time the music swirled to a close we were both sweating freely, and I pulled her down into a shallow dip, with our faces just inches apart. When I bent closer and brushed my lips across hers, Teresa groaned and seemed to have a mini-orgasm on the spot.

I held her until her tremors subsided, then said, "Welcome to the tango."

Her eyes limpid pools of desire, she took my hand and without further words, dragged me into the bedroom.

Chapter 17

That day became a template for the next few weeks. While I was at work, Teresa would attend her PT sessions and then go for walks of increasing duration. After dinner we would dance -- longer and longer as her stamina grew. Afterwards, we raced to the bedroom and fucked like bunnies, burning off the sexual energy that built up while we danced.

When she said she was a quick study she wasn't kidding. She had an almost eidetic memory for the simple choreographies I showed her, and I rarely had to repeat a series of moves.

She also spent many afternoons binge-watching tango videos online. After a few weeks of this, she said, "Can I show you something I made up today?"

"Yes, please do."

She led me through a set of intricate moves that were new to me. I finally got the pattern down, but it took me multiple tries to nail it. Her eyes sparkled when I praised her choreography.

This became a new addition to our evening dance routine. She would show me one of her new creations in the evening, I would stumble through it, and then have to practice it in my office the next day during my lunch hour until I finally got it down. It was getting harder and harder to keep up with her!

* * *

Teresa's dance went through another quantum jump when I brought home her first custom prosthesis. The improved fit was much more comfortable, and allowed her to dance for longer periods without fatigue or blisters.

The custom prosthetic also included most of the dance modifications that I had added to my own prosthesis. It took Teresa a few days to learn how to use the new mods while dancing, but then she was off like a rocket.

It soon became obvious that I had approached the end of my ability to teach her. After dinner one night, I told her, "Grasshopper, you have snatched the pebble from my hand."

"What the heck does that mean?"

She was apparently not enough of a fan of a certain obscure kung fu western to get that reference. I said, "You have learned everything I know about the tango. We need a new teacher."

* * *

I called Sonia Alvarez, my former tango teacher, with some trepidation. I knew that she was the right person to guide us in improving our dancing. My main concern was that Stephanie and Emilio might also still study with her. I was greatly relieved when she said, "Oh, no. They moved to Miami to study with an Argentinian teacher down there."

Our tango skills improved considerably for a few months, but then we reached a frustrating plateau that lasted several weeks. Despite our denial, it slowly became clear to us that this time it was our prostheses that were holding us back.

Here's the problem in a nutshell: your lower leg, ankle and foot do a lot of different things for you as the need arises. Sometimes you need them to be flexible in a certain way. At other times you want them to be rigid and anchor you in place while you do some other move. At certain points in a dance, you need your foot to plantar-flex and push you up in the air.

It's not hard to design a prosthesis that will do any one of these things. However, it is really, really hard to make one that can shift rapidly among these different modes and do the right thing at the right time. We estimated that this timing had to happen within an error window narrower than ten milliseconds. I couldn't initially see how to do this and wasn't sure that it was even possible.

The Holy Grail of prosthesis design is to detect the tiny signals traveling through a patient's peripheral nerves, and then use those signals to control the servomotors of an active prosthesis and perform the correct movement. The problem was that the nerve signals are weak, and our controller had to somehow integrate a complex symphony of these signals and turn them into appropriate actions.

Then I had an epiphany one day at work. I was attending a research seminar on the uses of artificial intelligence in medical image analysis. The speaker described how she had trained a neural net to correctly diagnose diseases such as cancer and pneumonia based on a patient's chest X-ray. It occurred to me that I might be able to use this same methodology to train a neural net to control a prosthetic joint. After the seminar, I picked the speaker's brains for a while and came away with a plan.

* * *

I invited Teresa to my lab and attached a sensor harness to her good leg. I then asked her to perform a comprehensive series of movements with her lower leg -- flexing, extending, inverting and everting her foot. I even asked her to draw all of the letters of the alphabet in the air, using her toes. The sensors strapped to her leg recorded not only the signals in her various nerves and muscles, but also the resulting movement of her leg.

I then used this massive dataset to train my neural net software. Once that was done, I brought Teresa back to the lab. I slid a smaller sensor harness over her leg above her amputation site. Signals detected by these sensors were decoded in real-time by the neural net, which then sent appropriate commands to the servomotors I built into the prototype bionic leg.

After a lot of practice, she was able to successfully control the new leg with her nerve impulses. We spent the next month refining the neural net and its hardware, and Teresa became much more confident using it.

It was a challenge packaging all of the hardware and its battery pack so that it would fit into her prosthetic leg. My initial prototype was pretty heavy, and gave Teresa quite a workout lugging it around. However, the neural net controller worked fairly well, and allowed her to do certain dance movements that had previously been impossible for her. We continued to refine the leg, reducing its size and weight, and improving its accuracy.

Yet another challenge for a powered prosthesis is that without some form of feedback, it can be difficult to control the amount of force delivered by the servomotors. For example, if you try to feed yourself strawberries with a bionic hand without feedback, you are very likely to crush them into jam before they ever reach your mouth.

Another thing simple prosthetics lack is proprioception: the ability to tell the exact location, orientation and movement of your body part. Imagine trying to use a bionic hand to wipe your ass -- without proprioception the final destination of that toilet paper is anybody's guess.

To provide proper feedback, I added a haptic feedback system to her prosthesis that used subtle vibrations to tell Teresa the precise position of her unit and how much force she was exerting with it.

We field-tested the haptic system at home with a basic tango move called the ocho. As the name suggests, one moves one's feet to form a figure eight on the floor. Without the haptic system, Teresa could drag her bionic foot around through the motion in a credible way. However, once she got used to the haptics, her control improved significantly. After some practice, she was able to move her foot through the ocho with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel.

Once we got the bionic foot tweaked properly for Teresa, I used the same process to build one for myself, using lessons learned with her device. We practiced a lot at home and eventually took the devices to our class with Sonia.

* * *

To our delight, the new prosthetics helped us to move past our previous dance plateau. Sonia was quite pleased with our progress and asked if we'd consider dancing at competitions together. Teresa and I thought that was a fine idea.

We continued to refine our bionic legs with Sonia's help. She also had a great insight one day. "Ted, you are spending so much effort adapting your prosthetics to the dance. But maybe we should also look into adapting the dance to fit the prosthetics."

Doh! That seems so obvious in retrospect but it was a startling revelation to me at the time.

Sonia had a number of suggestions for choosing choreography that played into the strengths of the prosthetics and avoided their weaknesses. We even discovered a few movements that are impossible for one's original factory equipment. For example, one day I twirled Teresa under my raised arm and one of the constraints in her bionic ankle snapped. This allowed her to rotate in place even though her prosthetic foot remained planted on the floor.

 

The movement startled us. However, it was an interesting-enough effect that I gave her another twirl, and then a series of fast twirls. Teresa said, "That's a pretty cool move. Can you adapt the neural net controller to allow this movement on demand?"

"Sure! I can do that."

I made a small software modification, and then we practiced this movement over and over. We finally became adept enough to show it to Sonia. Her eyes bulged briefly, and then she applauded. We decided to save this move for a possible future dance finale, in which I would twirl Teresa under my arm in a series of five fast twirls, ending in a dip. We decided to call that move "the Black and Decker".

* * *

As Sonia groomed us for competition, she informed us that we needed to upgrade our dance attire. She took Teresa shopping one day and they returned with a number of outfits that raised my blood pressure when Teresa modeled them for me.

Teresa also bought several pairs of stiletto heels for her ensemble and modeled those. I said, "Wow. Your balance must be incredible. How do you walk in those things, much less dance in them?

She smiled and said, "Hon, once you've spent decades of your life dancing en pointe in toe shoes, a set of measly FMPs is no big deal."

Adding the stilettos to her outfit actually simplified the design for the prosthesis. We realized that with high heels, her bionic foot was already in full plantar flexion. There was therefore no need to embed a heavy duty servomotor in the leg to do that job.

Chapter 18

Over the next few months, Teresa and I spent more and more time together, and finally just moved all of her stuff over to my place.

Her mom flew up from Texas for a visit, and we drove her out to Mats Mats to meet my parents. She and they hit it off immediately and spent the rest of the day trying to top one another in telling embarrassing stories about their kids.

The embarrassment continued all the way through dinner and extended into the after dinner cocktails on the back porch.

Joyce shared a conspiratorial glance with my mom and then said to Teresa, "So when's the wedding?"

Teresa said, "What do you mean?"

Mom said, "It's a simple question, dears."

Teresa and I looked at each other with widened eyes and I said, "Um... Why do you ask?"

Joyce snorted. "Who do you two think you're fooling? You're obviously nuts about each other. You're living together. Then there's those videos you sent me of you two at tango practice." She licked her finger and pointed it at my ass and made a hissing sound. "Pretty hot stuff!"

My mom cackled, and my dad rolled his eyes.

Joyce turned to me. "What do you have to say, Tango Boy? Any good reason why my daughter hasn't made you an honest man yet?"

My mom said, "Answer the nice lady, dear."

Both Teresa and I simultaneously said, "Mo-om!"

I held up both hands and said. "You know, you're both right. We've just had so much fun dancing and working on the bionic foot together that we forgot to take the next step. So to speak."

I turned to Teresa and took both of her hands in mine. "Sweetie, our moms make a good point. What do you think?"

She said, "I thought my life was over when the doctors wanted to amputate my leg. It was you that convinced me that my life was just starting. It was also you that brought dancing back into my life after I thought I'd lost it forever."

She kissed me hard and said, "What I want is to spend the rest of my life working and dancing with you."

Some of the parental eyes began to glisten.

I turned to said parents. "Here we sit, two gimps missing large body parts. But in my whole life I've never felt as complete as I do when I'm with her. That is how I want to spend the rest of my life."

My mom stifled a sob. Or was it my dad?

Teresa looked at them and said, "If you guys were inquiring about our intentions for each other, I think we've answered that question."

I said, "Yes, we have. And next to that, an actual wedding is merely a clerical detail."

Our moms' faces crumpled slightly when they heard that.

I glanced over to Teresa, whose eyes twinkled. She paused for a few more seconds to jerk the parental chains, and then said, "But that's an easy detail to take care of here in Washington State."

She turned to me. "So, sweetie, want to drive over to the courthouse in Port Townsend tomorrow and apply for a marriage license?"

I said, "Absolutely. Then, after a three-day waiting period, we could get married here on the dock this weekend. How would that be?"

Teresa nodded, and we turned back to our parents, who needed a moment to catch up with this sudden acceleration of events.

A wild melee of joyous and tearful hugs broke out, and swept away all in its wake.

* * *

Four days later we stood on the dock in front of our parents, friends and colleagues. It was a beautiful sunny day, with Mats Mats Bay and the Olympic mountain range sprawling behind us. In the midst of this natural splendor and with love all around us, we took each other in marriage. After we exchanged vows and rings, my dad fired up El Choclo on a boombox and Teresa and I performed a tango recessional off the dock to wild applause from the crowd.

==

We delayed our honeymoon for several months in order to further refine the software and hardware of our bionic dance legs. We continued to study and practice with Sonia, until she announced that we had reached another plateau in our dancing. "I have taught you two most of what I know. It is time for you to spend time with another teacher."

Teresa said, "But there's no one better than you in Seattle."

Sonia smiled. "True, but how do you feel about Buenos Aires?"

Chapter 19

Once Sonia suggested studying tango in Argentina, it didn't take long to convince us that it was a great idea -- not only for dance lessons but also for a honeymoon trip. She contacted Antonio, one of her revered former dance instructors and arranged for classes with him.

I put in for a six-month unpaid sabbatical from UW and we flew down to Argentina. We arrived in early December and enjoyed the cognitive dissonance of a pleasant summer climate in a city filled with Christmas decorations and displays.

We rented a small flat in the Recoleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires. We enjoyed the cafes and cuisine of the town -- especially the empanadas, the Argentine beef, the pizza and the ice cream.

Our typical days started with a leisurely late breakfast at a local cafe, followed by afternoon tango lessons with Antonio. Antonio was a warm and welcoming man, who moved with an innate sense of grace and style that had baked into his bones after decades of tango.

Despite everything Sonia told him about us, he was initially skeptical about the abilities of our prosthetic limbs. However, he was soon impressed by how well we moved with them.

When one joins a new dance group, there is a certain initial period of uncertainty in which all of the parties check each other out. One of my friends likened it to two dogs meeting for the first time. After a certain amount of metaphorical crotch sniffing, we and Antonio's other students gave each other a provisional pass.

Over the next few weeks the other students' opinions of our dancing progressed from "not bad for an amputee" to "not bad for an American". But we felt like we had truly arrived when their opinions evolved to "not bad at all". With time, we began to receive occasional comments of "good" and "very good" from them. They were very complimentary about how well we moved on the dance floor with our bionic feet, and were especially impressed by Teresa's blend of ballet techniques and tango improvisations.

Buenos Aires hosts a number of professional tango shows, and we attended as many of them as possible during the next six months. There is a great pleasure in seeing a thing done well, and we were impressed by the depth and variety of what was possible.

We spent most of our evenings in the nearby San Telmo neighborhood, dancing milongas. Milongas refers to both a social dance event and to a specific type of dance. An evening at a milonga typically involves tandas (sets of music) separated by cortinas (short musical breaks).

After an evening of milongas, we often stopped by Rapa Nui, a local ice cream parlor near our flat. After indulging in one of their many fabulous flavors of ice cream and gelato, we would retire back to our flat and end the day making sweet love.

We continued to upgrade our tango wardrobes. I settled on a basic combo of a black shirt and pants and found a pair of very comfortable black shoes with suede soles.

Teresa bought a number of slinky dresses with long slits up the side. These slits not only showed off her long and elegant natural leg, but also allowed her a considerable degree of freedom while dancing. The long skirt and a pair of opaque pantyhose covered her prosthetic leg quite nicely. A pair of pumps with straps and four-inch heels finished off her new outfits.

Daily high-level practice gradually elevated our dancing to a much higher plane. It also gave us the opportunity to further refine our bionic dance legs with software and hardware upgrades.

With daily practice, our Spanish also got pretty decent. By the end of our time there, we were fairly fluent, albeit with an Argentinian accent. Along the way I amused myself by collecting some of the many pithy and inventive Argentinian expletives I heard. One of my favorites was hijo de un camión lleno de putas (son of a bus full of whores).

The six months passed quickly. We learned a lot, and Antonio was very pleased with our progress. He and his school put on a special farewell evening of milongas for us. It was sad leaving all of our friends in Buenos Aires, but we vowed to return someday.

Chapter 20

We returned to the States just as summer began there and threw ourselves back into work and the local dance scene. Sonia was delighted with our dance progress and was eager to hear all of the stories we brought back from Argentina about Antonio and her other friends.

At her behest, we began to enter local dance competitions. We decided to use Teresa's last name on the entry forms, and signed up as "Teodoro and Teresa Albaniz".

We did not win our first dance competition, but we tied for second place. It was a great learning experience, and what we learned there helped us to win our next contest.

After we won a few other regional competitions up and down the West Coast, Sonia urged us to aim a bit higher up the dance food chain. We did reasonably well at these larger events, and eventually found ourselves dancing in Denver, Colorado at the U. S. National Tango Competition.

* * *

Teresa and I were warming up in the ballroom on the first day of the Nationals when I suddenly stiffened. She asked, "What's wrong, Hon?"

"Remember me telling you about Stephanie and Schlemilio?"

She nodded.

I said, "I just spotted them across the room. Looks like we will be competing against them."

"Is that going to be a problem?"

I shook my head. "Nope. Not for me. And definitely not for you."

We ignored them and continued to warm up on our side of the ballroom. Stephanie and pelotudo (dumbass) did not spot us among the dozens of other dancers, which was fine with me. Since we had signed up using Teresa's last name, I was pretty sure that seeing our names on the roster wouldn't mean anything to them. Plus, Steph's capacity for self-absorption was well-known to me, and had probably even expanded since I last saw her.

* * *

The competition was tough at this level, but so were we. We focused on our day-to-day dancing, did our best, and slowly inched our way up the competition bracket.

Steph and cabeza de poronga (dick head) never seemed to notice us until the finals, when we, they and six other couples began our warmups in the ballroom. As we twirled past them, Steph glanced at us, and then did a double-take. I ignored her and kept on dancing.

At the next rest break, Stephanie came over to us and said, "Ted??"

I gave her a weary look. "Stephanie."

She looked puzzled. "What are you doing here?"

"Duh. We're dancing in the finals. Like you."

She turned to face Teresa. "Who's this?"

"This is my wife, Teresa."

Stephanie was gaping at us slightly. Teresa nodded to her, but remained silent.

Steph said, "Uhh... But what about your foot? Your leg?"

"What about it?"

"How are you able to dance with it?"

"The usual way. Practice. Hard work. Being with the right partner. You know, someone who believes in me?"

She winced at that. Then Emilio arrived, and said, "Who are you talking to, Stephie?"

Steph said, "Don't you remember Ted, my ex?"

Emilio's eyes raked me up and down with scorn. "You mean the former man you left behind?"

I smiled brightly. "That's me."

"The last time I saw you, you were missing your leg -- and your manhood." He sneered. "And now you are missing your wife."

I smiled sweetly. "I'm sure that what manhood I have left is sufficient to kick your malparido (badly given birth to) ass."

His eyes flared at that, and I said, "All I am missing now is the person who used to hold me back. Thank you for taking out the trash so that I could upgrade to this woman." I tilted my head toward Teresa. "Mil gracias, basurero. (A thousand thanks, garbageman.)"

He quivered and was about to launch himself at me. Stephanie grabbed his arm and hissed, "Emilio! The finals are about to start."

I said, "Yes, run away with her, you littleconcha (pussy). Tragaleche. Cum-sucker)"

I turned my back on him and led Teresa away and took her in my arms in ballroom position. "Ready to have some fun, sweetie?"

Her feral grin matched mine. "Oh, yes."

Emilio was still quivering slightly when the music began.

I put him and Stephanie out of my mind and concentrated on the lovely woman in my arms.

Teresa is a much better dancer than I will ever be. I merely aspire to being a competent lead and am quite content to be the quiet background against which the fireworks of my lovely wife soar, twirl, and glide around me. We did quite well with all of the required figures, but we really excelled with our improvisations.

The other dancers around us were graceful and competent. But in comparison to Teresa's brilliant fusion of ballet, tango, and inner passion, it was as if they had brought an empanada to a machete fight.

As far as Steph and Emilio were concerned, our earlier exchange rented us tiny rooms in the back of their skulls, and they did not dance their best that day.

We applauded as third place and second place were announced.

The announcer paused to let the tension rise in the room, and then boomed, "And in first place -- Teodoro and Teresa Albaniz!"

The main room lights were lowered and a spotlight centered on us. We bowed to the enthusiastic applause and waved to everyone around the room.

Teresa then caught my eye and I nodded. As one, we each reached down, undid the quick release latches on our bionic legs, and hoisted them high over our heads as if they were trophies.

There was a moment of stunned silence, and then the room went absolutely -- fucking -- nuts.

The screaming and cheering went on for some time.

As I scanned the crowd, I spotted Stephanie standing alone across the room, staring at us with tears streaming down her face.

A scowling Emilio came over to her and said something. She shook her head.

He grabbed her shoulder, said something else and she shoved him away.

When he tried to grab her again, she slapped his face and then slammed her knee up into his crotch.

I lost sight of them as they were quickly enveloped by a group of security guards and hauled away.

I turned to Teresa, who had also been watching this little byplay. She shook her head sadly and murmured, "Chupavergas sin verguenzas. (Shameless cocksuckers.) They really deserve each other."

I nodded and said, "¡Sí, posta! (Yeah, really!)"

And then we moved on with the rest of our lives.

Chapter 21

Sometimes I think, "I'm so busy I can't get anything done." Then something occurs that makes my life twice as busy, and I look wistfully back at the good old days from last week, when life was much simpler.

That's what happened to us after winning the national tango competition. The videos of us dancing, and then raising our artificial limbs over our heads went viral. Suddenly every newspaper and every talk show wanted to interview us. We accepted as many requests as we could and life became pretty hectic.

We did our best to tell our stories with warts and all. How depressed, pissy, and whiny we got after our injuries. How meeting the right person at the right time jolted us out of our pity parties. How we were finally motivated enough to push past our limitations and reach for something beyond them.

We tried not to make it all about us. We emphasized that there were many other amputees in the world, and we hoped we had inspired some of them to pursue their own dreams. A late night talk show host suggested that we should start a foundation to support this concept. We agreed, and the "Reach Beyond Foundation" was thereby launched live on his show.

One of my graduate students grabbed several appropriate domain names and quickly threw up a website for us. A lawyer friend filed the paperwork with the IRS to get 501(c)(3) status for Reach Beyond. Donations started pouring in, and we then had to figure out how to start spending the money.

As we pondered this one day, Teresa said, "Do you remember when you told me about your calling and I told you that I wanted to find one too?"

"Of course."

"I think it found me. I want to work alongside you and our foundation. I want to take everything I've learned about adaptive dancing and make it -- and your bionic foot -- available to anyone who is missing a limb. What do you think?"

I pulled her into my arms and gave her a passionate kiss. "It's a wonderful calling that suits you very well -- it found just the right person."

* * *

We found some suitable space at one of the buildings at Seattle's Magnuson Park. We turned that into a large dance studio, and set up a series of free classes in adaptive dance. We initially taught tango, but later added other types of dance, such as contra and square dancing, clogging, Scandinavian dance, jazz and even hip hop.

Teresa oversaw this operation, and took to her new calling like a duck to water. She came home every night tired, but also a bit wired and glowing with endorphins. We had no trouble figuring out how to burn off that excess energy in our bedroom.

My graduate students and I concentrated on reducing the cost of my bionic foot to make it available to as many people as possible. We designed a modular version of the foot, and placed that design into the public domain.

We also put our designs up on our Foundation website, along with lists and kits of parts, schematics, controller boards, and 3D print files. We borrowed some ideas from the E-NABLE program and used our website to match volunteers who could build these prostheses with amputees who needed them.

* * *

I began my story with a quote from The Sun Also Rises, and I'll end it with another one. In that book the character Brett is described thusly:

"She was built with curves like the hull of a racing yacht, and you missed none of it with that wool jersey."

That very phrase is running through my mind at this moment as I gaze at Teresa's sweater-clad pulchritude sitting in the cockpit of our sailboat and holding our three-year-old daughter Alyssa in her lap.

 

We're sailing from Seattle over to Mats Mats Bay to spend a few days with my parents. Teresa and I are both wearing our sea legs. We are all wearing our life jackets and Alyssa's is securely tethered to a padeye in the cockpit.

Alyssa loves to sail, and she shrieks and giggles at all of the sea birds and seals on the breakwater as we head out of Shilshole Marina on our latest adventure.

Life is good.

THE END

NOTES TO READERS

Thanks for reading this story. It is a work of fiction, but the challenges faced by the MCs are quite real and deserve your consideration.

The Reach Beyond Foundation is fictitious, but the following projects are quite real and are worthy of any support you are moved to give them.

1. Wounded Warriors and Wounded Warrior Sailing

2. Andrew Cassell Foundation

3. E-NABLE Project

Google "adaptive sailing" to find other examples of how sufficiently clever people can customize a boat to make it accessible to people with all sorts of disabilities.

One can definitely dance with a prosthetic limb. Point YouTube at "amputee" and "tango" and witness a number of brave humans who have decided that a mere amputation is not going to stop them from doing something that they love.

Logrolling is an actual sport and is taught at the University of Washington IMA. If you'd like to try this in your own pool, a company called Key Log will ship you a plastic log from Minnesota in exchange for a moderate-sized bag of cash.

Sadly, the "Love Forest by Doris" in Rock Island, IL is entirely fictional. However, if you'd like to read more about Doris and her Forest, check out Write 'em, Cowboy and Write of Passage -- two stories posted on this site by me and my pal Jalibar62 , writing together as Bay2Sound.

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