(W)hole by Ruth Madison

Author:Ruth Madison
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: romance, sexuality, disability, disabled hero, disabled, wheelchair, paralysis, devotee, devoteeism, paraplegia, imperfect hero
Publisher: Dev Love Press

Chapter Fourteen

Stewart felt slightly ill the day after sledding. His gut was unsettled. After doing his exercises, he craned his neck to see out his dorm window, and the snow on the ground did not encourage him to get out of bed. If only he had that luxury. But he had to get up and use the bathroom.

“What's up?” Robert said, looking at him from across the room with a suspicious expression.

“Nothing,” Stewart said, but Robert continued to look at him and frown. Stewart ignored him. Robert must know by now that if Stewart didn't want to talk about something, he wasn't going to.

As he shifted into his chair and pushed down the hall to the bathroom, he examined his feelings. A vulnerability he wasn’t used to was churning in his gut.

He wondered if it was strange that he had never before told anyone the true story of his injury. “Surfing accident” had always sufficed. Why had he told it now? How had Elizabeth coaxed it out of him?

From the very beginning he had sensed a sweet innocence about her that made his guard lower. No one had ever had that effect on him before.

In the bathroom, after emptying his catheter, Stewart pushed fingers through his hair, tangled from sleep. In his chair, he was too short to see himself in the mirror over the sink, and as a result, he rarely saw himself any longer. This didn’t bother him; he knew what he looked like.

He decided that a shower would make him feel better. The bench in the shower stall was something that he’d added himself. Another oversight on the part of the university. Sometimes his suitemates liked to steal it for a joke, but today it was in the corner of the bathroom where it belonged.

Stewart put it on his lap and rolled to the edge of the shower area. There was no lip or tub, it was just a showerhead attached to a tiled wall and a drain in the floor with a vinyl curtain across the entrance. Stewart put the bench on the floor lined up with where the water would hit. He closed the curtain and undressed in the shower, tossing his clothes out to the bathroom floor as he got them off.

He gripped the bench and made sure it was steady before he trusted his weight to it. Once he was transferred, he gave his wheelchair a little push to the far side of the shower area and reached for the nozzle to turn on the water. He wasn’t able to adjust where it hit, but he had gotten good at placing the bench at just the right spot.

The water splashed into his face. He used his hands to shift his body a little to the left. He ran a bar of soap over himself. When he got to his bicep he slowed and admired his tattoo. He’d had it so long that he often forgot it was there.

“The Tiger” they called him in California.

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