The Muse's Undoing

1

MATTHEW

EIGHT YEARS AGO

“He’s asking for you.”

I look up from my sketch pad at my mother, startled out of my concentration zone, hyper focused on my drawing of the sleeping woman on the other side of the hospital waiting room. “Why me?”

Her frosted blonde hair is coming out of its bun, and the circles under her eyes match mine. “I don’t know, Matthew. But can you please…? Just… Help us get him home.”

“Uh…yeah.” I stand up, and she snatches away my sketch pad and charcoal pencil, taking the seat I abandoned. “You’re not coming?”

“He doesn’t want me. I told you.”

She didn’t, but okay. I wipe my blackened fingers on my jeans and head toward the doors leading to the hall where Fischer’s hospital room is. I came along today mostly for moral support, I thought, maybe for the occasional heavier lift, but I didn’t figure they’d need my services getting my brother out of his room.

He’s been in the hospital for over two weeks now. His second surgery was only four days ago. They reconstructed his femur from the inside with a rod, plates and nails, which sounds like a horrorshow and definitely something that requires more than four days recovery in the hospital, but I guess this is all he gets.

I knock on the door, apprehensive. Fischer’s never asked me for anything. More often than not, he doesn’t remember I exist.

“Come in, Matty.” His sharp, barked out words only make the swirling ball of anxiety in my stomach more nauseating. I take a deep breath and open the door.

He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, still in his hospital gown. His hair is an even bigger mess than Mom’s. The dark blonde curls might even be matted, they look so bad.

He’s glaring at me. Gray-green eyes so light they remind me of mirrors focus on me with pure impatience. Or frustration. Who knows? He might be my brother, but the truth is, he’s thirteen years older than me and basically a stranger. “How can I help?”

“I need to get dressed. I can’t walk out of here in this.”

Yeah, I can see why he wouldn’t want Mom’s help with that. I spot the bag of clothes our mom brought on the edge of his bed, and I approach it, keeping my eyes off him. I have a tendency to stare, and he’s probably feeling self-conscious enough already.

The outfit my mom brought is simple enough. A t-shirt, sweatshirt, and sweatpants. Some lightweight wool socks and a pair of Nikes.

As I pull out the clothes, he unties his gown at the neck, letting it slide off his arms and pool on his lap. He takes the shirt from me when I hand it to him and pulls it over his head, quickly covering his undamaged chest. The sweatshirt is next, which he also manages on his own. I have to assume what he needs help with is the lower half since that’s where he took the blast.

For the last three months, Fischer’s been reporting from overseas in Afghanistan. A few weeks ago, he was a near casualty of a suicide bomber. Debris and shrapnel shattered his leg and did some serious damage to his flesh. While none of his injuries were life threatening, they made a mess of him. There’d been talk of amputation, or so I heard, but the only thing he ended up losing, to my knowledge, was a testicle.

Hence, the catheter sticking out of his dick attached to a bag of urine strapped to his good leg. The other leg, his left, is covered in bandages.

He grimaces when he sees the bag. “I need to empty this.”

“Want me to call the nurse?”

“I don’t get to take her home with me,” he snaps. “Hand me that jug.” He points at a clear plastic container on the bedside table, and I pass it over to him. He groans as he bends over to unscrew the drain on the bottom of the bag.

“I got it.” Without waiting for permission, I’m on my knees, draining the bag into the container. He’s breathing heavily above me, but I don’t look up. I do however, note the fact that his scrotum is swollen and asymmetric with a line of stitches up the left side. It makes my balls twinge looking at it, and not in a good way. Fuck, that has to hurt. No wonder he’s snippy.

“Thank you,” he says tightly when I’m finished.

I don’t respond. Picking up the sweatpants, I ease them over his feet, up his calves, and his lower thighs, careful not to touch anything bandaged. When I get to the point where he’ll either have to stand up or at least lift his hips, I stop. “How do you want this to work?”

“They said I should bear weight,” he mumbles. “Supposed to help the healing process.”

“Doesn’t it hurt?”

His dark laugh is vaguely chilling. “Yeah. It fucking hurts.” Without another word, he puts a hand on my shoulder, leveraging himself off the bed, mainly on his good leg. As quickly as I can, because he’s groaning again, I pull the pants up over his catheter bag and his hips.

“This is so fucking humiliating.”