With a sharp inhale, I returned to the hospital room and immediately knew something was different. I felt… Powerful… that there was nothing in all the realms of possibility that were beyond my abilities. Forget the Demigod walking down from Olympus, I was the motherfucking Demigod, and I knew it! I looked over to Marco – who had let go of my hand and was looking at me with an expression of wide-eyed wonder. It took only a few seconds to work out why; Marco’s power – we both realized – paled in comparison to my own, I was more powerful than he was by several orders of magnitude, and everything about him peeled open like a grape. The impenetrable gates that held back his thoughts when we first met now seemed like nothing more than stacked twigs on a hinge. Even his looks – which had been so striking – seemed to crumble under my scrutiny. It was like I could see the decisions and commands that went into every individual change he had made to himself, and – moreover – I could see through them to the skinny and sickly teenager he had been when he made them from his home in Northern Italy one hundred and twenty-seven years earlier.

The world hummed with an energy that I could not only perceive but interact with and control. I could sense the people in the hallways, the people on the highway outside the hospital, the people all over the city that surrounded it, and all over the country that surrounded that. I could feel a couple in Paris making love, I could feel the fear of the man being mugged in Barcelona, I could feel the excitement in the child on the eve of her tenth birthday from her bedroom on the outskirts of Budapest… and I could sense Becky, her dreams filled with visions of our coupling, her body basking in the warm post-orgasmic afterglow of those memories and the promise of more. I felt like my mind was now a muscle, able to be stretched and honed with practice, not simply an important part of the whole and capable of feats that, only a few minutes ago, would have seemed utterly preposterous.

Marco cleared his throat, composing himself before starting to speak. “Feels good, doesn’t it?” His smile returned but now seemed almost nervous, like a man staring down a tiger. With a single thought, I put his mind at ease, I owed a lot to Marco, and I still had a lot to learn from him. He had no reason to fear me… my single thought let him know that. His smile returned to its warm and easy state in moments. “Thank you,” he sighed in relief, “I have heard about people as powerful as you, but I have never initiated one. You can never tell how a person will react when they feel that first surge of power. I imagine yours was quite exhilarating.”

“You could say that.”

“And putting my mind at ease was a nice touch. You seem to have an almost instinctive knowledge of how to use your power, an instinct that most of us take years to develop.”

“I didn’t want you wigging out on me.” I smiled easily – perhaps the first time I had managed that since meeting Marco, “and I get the impression you have much more to teach me.”

“Teach you, no.” he replied, “as far as your abilities go, you have learned everything I have to teach. “But tell you, yes. There are many things you need to know….”

I cut him off with a wave of my hand; someone was coming. Before the door had fully opened, I had used my powers on the attractive middle-aged nurse to make her ignore – or not even notice – Marco’s presence and to think I was asleep. She quietly tip-toed further into the room, took some readings from the machines by my bedside, checked my pain medication, and turned to leave.

Marco watched her go with a smirk. “Very nice use of your powers there,” he nodded appreciatively, “Anyway, most of the things you need to know will come with time, but there is one subject that needs to be discussed immediately.”

“You are talking about the things that Uri has protected you from.”

Marco nodded. “As powerful as our gifts may be, there are a small group of people who can detect them… or at least their effects; the vast majority of people will be oblivious to your powers, but there is a small number who are able to notice the changes around them that most people miss, passive abilities – like reading their thoughts – are still invisible to them as well, but direct powers are different. Over the centuries, these people have formed into a group that you have probably already heard of. They call themselves The Inquisitors.

“For centuries, they have operated through the church, first labeling us as witches or heretics and later moving on to calling us criminals or terrorists. They have orchestrated or directly led massive movements to find and eradicate people of our kind. The Salem Witch Trials that killed Maria? That was them; so were the Spanish Inquisitions, and they played a huge part in the Nazi movement and the Holocaust. They are the greatest and only real threat to our survival, and their sole occupation is to hunt us down and kill us, a task they have become extremely good at. Nowadays, they don’t just use the church; they operate in police forces, newsrooms, government positions, anywhere where they are in a position to detect the effects of our powers. And make no mistake; they operate above the law. There is nobody out there that is in a position to help us.”

“What powers do they have?”

“They don’t have any powers per se, at least not in the same way we do; their powers lie in the ability to notice the changes made by our powers – hence the need to be careful with your commands on the editing stations. Excessive changes, or changes that are too large, draw their attention, and once they have their eye on you, it is very difficult to get away from it. They do, however, have an almost total… resistance… to our power. Attempts to read them directly have failed. Uri is the only one who seems powerful enough to have any effect, and their combat skills are at least as powerful as ours. In a one-on-one fight, our kind usually wins because of the advantages our powers give us. They may be able to fight us off in hand-to-hand combat, but dropping a building on their heads is still enough to kill them. The problem is that they rarely – if ever – work alone. There is always a team; none of our kind has ever stood their ground against an Inquisitor team and lived to tell about it, not even Uri. He has been forced to retreat many times when facing a group of them.

“Their numbers are growing, at least as fast as ours, probably faster, and they kill more and more of us each year. If you ever see one, you need to leave. Stop what you are doing, don’t use your powers, stand up and walk away… it’s the only way of avoiding them safely.”

“So, what? Do they wear a uniform or something? How do I know what to look out for?”

“They glow.” He answered, with no hint that he was joking. “They will appear to have a… err… an aura around them, like they are standing in front of a bright light. You also need to be careful around priests and other religious figures, they may not be Inquisitors, but you can bet your life that they are reporting to one. I cannot stress this enough, but you need to be extremely careful in how you use your powers; if you draw attention to yourself and they work out who – or what – you are… they will come for you, and they will kill you.”

My feeling of invincible power had evaporated, replaced with a feeling of suspicion and paranoia. There was no doubt from Marco’s thoughts that these Inquisitors were a real threat and one that scared the shit out of my new friend and mentor.

“I’ll be careful,” I said after a long pause.

Marco nodded for a few seconds before the smile returned to his face. “For now, that is all you need to know, there is obviously a lot more you need to learn but I don’t want to overwhelm you on your first night. However, this is a threat that you need to be constantly vigilant for; I will be in touch when it is time to continue your training and when it is time for you to meet some of the others.”

“The others?” I asked, my head shooting up.

“Yes,” he smiled, “We are like a family. We look out for each other, help each other where we can, and meet up for the occasional gathering… it’s a good excuse for a party.” He winked.

“I’m… actually looking forward to that.” I smiled.

“Good. Well, in that case, it was a pleasure to meet you, Pete. I look forward to seeing you soon and err…” he looked towards the door, “good luck with the nurses.”

“Thank you, Marco.” I smiled back as we shook hands, “I’ll see you soon.”

With that, he turned and left. It took all of thirty seconds for me to find my way back into my bunker and less time to curl up on the obscenely comfortable and massive king-sized bed. In a matter of seconds, I was out. Exciting visions of what my powers could do filled my dreams, and yet a dark foreboding of this new threat – and my limited understanding of them – was never far away.

********

I had never been a morning person; even before the accident, I had always thought that mornings would be infinitely easier if they were later in the day. Since the accident, it had been worse; every morning, I had woken up in the same bleary-eyed, semi-conscious, pain-med-addled state of confusion, in no way helped by my newly realized need for extra rest, but today was different. The sleep in the bunker was a revelation. Not only was I wide awake, fully alert, and properly rested, but I could somehow tell you exactly how long I had been asleep – both in the bunker and in the corresponding time in the real world – down to the minute. Being awake at 7.25 am… voluntarily… was something that would take as much getting used to as the power itself.

I stretched – both physically and mentally – feeling my powers extend around me in the same way that my body was. I picked her up immediately. Becky was entering the building. The bubble of joyful apprehension that had greeted me the previous day, however, was gone, replaced with something indescribably harder to read.

I’d like to clear something up at this point, something I wouldn’t fully understand for a while yet, but reading people’s thoughts wasn’t like you see on the tv. I couldn’t look at someone and read their deepest desires or darkest fears or suddenly know their atm number; everyone talks to themselves inside their own head, that conscious running thought process that each of us uses to guide our actions - every time I had heard someone’s thoughts, it was this internal monologue that I could hear: everything from ‘shit, that girl is hot!’ to ‘did I remember to feed the cat? All the other things were possible – the desires, fears, and atm numbers – but accessing them was a conscious – rather than a passive – act and one I wouldn’t master for some time yet. Becky’s mind was pulling her in so many different directions that it was impossible to follow her train of thought.

“Trains of thought were, apparently, still assholes.”

At first, I thought it was me, that I was still tired, that I didn’t have enough control over my powers to read her thoughts from this distance, or that maybe I wasn’t as powerful as I thought, but by the time she had changed into her scrubs in the locker rooms and made her way to the nurse's station, it was clear that it was her that was the problem; her mind was racing so fast that not even she could keep up with it. There were, however, some very clear emotions being given out by my beautiful new lover: excitement to see me, nervousness about how I would react, but – more pressingly – concern, bordering on panic at something that had occurred to her last night, something that I couldn’t quite decipher. I felt her finish her conversation with her colleagues at the nurse's station outside my room, look towards my door, take a deep breath, and start walking towards it.

Right on cue, my door opened.

Her smile was brilliant, yet hesitant, as she crossed the room and sat down in Jimmy’s chair, “Good morning.” She smiled, and I returned the gesture, reaching out and taking her hand. “How are you feeling today?”

“Awesome.” I replied it was the truth after all, and although Becky was partly responsible, I had more things to feel good about than she could know.

“How about you?”

“I’m… err... Pete, we need to talk.” She said as her smile faded, her eyes casting down to her feet.

“Look, if this is about yesterday,” I said, a sudden pang of concern sparking in my chest, “I’m sorry if anything happened that you weren’t comfortable with, if you want to walk away and have nothing more to do with me, I will understand… I’m not gonna lie, I will be disappointed, I really enjoyed yesterday, but I understand the position I have put you in.” I started, still completely in the dark about what was bothering her so much, “but either way, nobody will ever find out what happened from me, not even Jimmy. I am not going to put your job at risk with some childish need to boast.”

Becky scrunched her eyebrows in confusion before smiling. “This isn’t about yesterday… well, it is… but not in that way. I loved every minute of what happened yesterday and am looking forward to a repeat performance,” a seductive smile crept onto her face before vanishing just as fast, “that’s not what this is about.”

“Then what’s bothering you?”

“Pete, I…” she paused for a moment, looking down at our joined hands, “I don’t think you understand the condition you are in; you’re not stupid, so I’m guessing that it hasn’t been explained to you properly… but what we did yesterday…” another pause “… shouldn’t have been possible.”

“I’m not following.”

She breathed out another deep sigh. “Your legs weren’t just broken. They were destroyed. Your right femur – your thigh bone, the strongest bone in the body – was shattered. It has the same consistency as gravel! But that kind of damage doesn’t happen in isolation. There is tissue damage, muscle damage, nerve damage, and circulatory damage… the doctors aren’t talking about you needing physical therapy just because of your brain injury, although that is part of it. You need it because the mechanisms that make your legs work are no longer intact.”

“O…Kay.”

“Pete did it hurt yesterday?... What we did?”

“No, not at all.”

She let go of my hand and buried her own face in it. “It should have,” she whispered in despair. “It really, really should have… it should have been excruciating! There is no way that you should have been able to handle what we did.”

“Well, that’s a good thing… isn’t it?”

“No!” she barked back. “It could mean major nerve damage! And more than that, you were…” she rocked in her hips in her chair, “…thrusting, you were moving your hips up to meet mine. You shouldn’t be able to do that, and even if you could without passing out through the pain, it could have caused massive internal damage to what’s left of your legs and pelvis!”

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Bex,” I said, trying to sound reassuring, reaching out and retaking her hand, “I’m fine.”

She yanked her hand away from mine, trying desperately to cover the look of guilt and despair on her face, “You don’t know that! Neither of us does!” she sobbed. “What if one of those bone fragments was knocked loose? What if it pierces your femoral artery? It could have killed you! It could be there right now, and your first attempt at physical therapy could be enough to… I even phoned in during the early hours for a nurse to check on you. I made something up about not being sure about the pain med dosage and asked her to check for me.” She broke down, her shoulders rocking as her sobs increased. “I need to tell someone. You need to be tested again – X-Rays, MRIs, CT scans – whatever it takes to find out what is going on, find out what is happening with your nerves and how much damage I have done. And when they ask how I know or why I am suspicious… I am going to have to tell them what happened.”

“No!” I almost shouted, surprising her out of her rant. “There is no way I am letting you get in trouble for that! You may have loved every second of what we did, but so did I! I told you that I was never popular with the ladies, and that was true. After the accident, I thought my life was over, and then I met you, a woman who I would never have thought would be interested in me at the best of times, let alone in my current condition… and the thought you would be interested in me gave me more hope than I could ever tell you, the first hope I have felt since I woke up. There is absolutely no way I am letting you pay any sort of penance for that… it’s not fair, and it’s not right, and it’s not going to happen!”

The tears were still running down her cheeks. There was genuine anguish in her expression and not – I quickly realized – about the prospect of losing her job, or worse, but at the thought of her inadvertently harming me more than I already was.

“Look, I’m not downplaying your concerns here; I would very much like to live, I’d be very happy to walk again, and I feel like I owe you a proper round two,” she smiled slightly and blushed at that. “But there has to be another way!” I finished.

She pulled her hands back up to her face, rubbed her eyes and wiped the tears off her cheeks, then stood with a sigh. I was about to tell her to sit back down, thinking she was heading to the door, but instead, she walked to the end of my bed and picked up my charts, leafing through the pages with a frowned look of determination. Both of us remained quiet for a few minutes, her deep in concentration and me not wanting to disturb her. Her lips were moving silently as she read along, but her thoughts were annunciating every word she read, the whole time trying to think of something that could be done to justify the new round of tests without drawing suspicion.

“Come on, come on.” She was thinking to herself, “I’ve just found this guy, and there is no way I am losing him now! I’ve just got to find something… anything… to give them a reason to…”

Her eyes suddenly widened. “Do you think you can sit up?” she asked, looking up at me. “After all these weeks of healing, your bones should be able to handle that level of mobility without causing any damage.”

“Err…” I put my hands onto the mattress and pushed myself into as upright a position as my casts would allow. “Apparently so.”

“And that doesn’t hurt?” she asked, her eyebrows raised in suspicious disbelief.

“A bit stiff,” I shrugged, “like I have been laying down for two months, but no, not painful.”

She shook her head, dismissing the incredulity that was screaming around her brain. “Ok, the consultant… doctor Matthews… will be making his rounds at nine. Make sure you are sitting up when he gets here. Use some pillows or something to make yourself comfortable… that should be enough.”

“You sure?”

“Patient needs to be kept in a flat, laying position at all times,” she read from my charts, “under no circumstances should he be bent at the waist when transferred between beds, transported around the hospital, or undergoing testing. Extreme risk of further injuries if the patient isn’t kept immobile. Consideration of traction apparatus to be given at a later date.” She finished reading. “That is in his handwriting… if he sees you sit up, he is going to go berserk, but as soon as he realizes you are not in pain, he will demand tests to find out why.”

“Sounds like a plan.” I smiled, laying myself back down.

Becky breathed a sigh of relief, her mind calming almost instantly and – for the first time – the effects of my internal editing started to take effect; apparently, concern over my wellbeing was enough to activate the ‘within reason’ clause of my commands. Her tongue wetted her lips before they curled into one of her spine-tingling sultry smiles. “So,” she purred, “tell me about this ‘round two’ that you owe me.” She sashayed back to her position next to the bed, putting her hand on my shoulder and stroking it gently.

“I would much rather show you.” I smiled back.

“Name the time and the place, and I’m yours.”

“Maybe next time you are on a night shift, you can sit on a different part of my body. I have favors to return.”

Her whole body trembled in anticipation as she leaned down to whisper in my ear. “When you get out of here, I am going to fuck you so good and so hard that you’ll end up back in a wheelchair.”

“Oh really?” I grinned back as her tongue licked my earlobe.

“And… there is one more hole and a perfectly good cleavage that hasn’t felt your cock… yet” It was my body’s turn to tremble as she kept talking between licks of my ear; the sexual aggression part of my changes were starting to have an obvious effect. “I am going to pleasure you in ways that you have never imagined, baby.”

My dick had now tented visibly under the sheet, a tent that was noticeably larger than last time I had seen it. Becky spotted it too, her hand moving down from my shoulder and under the sheets; a few seconds later, I felt her warm fingers wrap around my shaft and slowly start sliding up and down my newly enhanced member… the difference in its size either not noticed or not cared about.

“Good thing I locked the door when I came in, and I’m not officially on shift for another half an hour.” She winked as she flipped back the sheet, and her head moved down to join her hand. Once again, my whole body arched as the feeling of her hot breath on my dick was quickly replaced by the warm wetness of her lips, sliding quickly down to take my whole length. There was no teasing this time, no edging, and no drawing out the pleasure; as the power of her suction increased, and the speed of her head bobs quickened, I realized that her only focus was on making me cum as quickly as possible.

Her blonde ponytail was swishing around my groin and flapping in the air as her efforts increased. Her head was now almost a blur as she engulfed my entire rod into her throat – even more impressive considering my new size – then quickly drew off almost to the tip before repeating the motion again and again. Her one hand had buried itself in her scrubs, no doubt performing a poor imitation of the pleasure she was giving me, while her other was caressing the semen out of my balls with astonishing efficiency, most impressive as the fact that her efforts were putting no weight whatsoever on my groin – apparently, her wanton lust was not enough to override her concern for my wellbeing, she was being careful in her application of pleasure.

In a little over five minutes, her effects started to pay off, and my balls started tightening, that familiar feeling churning in my gut and my cock swelling to make it even harder than it already was. She pulled her mouth off, the hand on my balls coming up to replace it – and its motions – as she turned to me with a wicked smile. “Empty your big balls into my slutty little mouth, stud! I want to swallow you again.” Her mind blazed with the memories of my taste in her mouth and her savoring of it for her entire shift yesterday. Her fingers were buried in her cunt the following evening as she sucked her own tongue for more.

In less than a second, her mouth was back to work, and only a few more seconds after that, I passed the point of no return. With a silent roar, my whole body tensed, and Becky pulled back so only the head was in her mouth, her hand working furiously on the shaft and her tongue licking whatever part of my skin it could find. In an instant, my cock started pulsing uncontrollably as I unloaded rope after rope of cum into her wet, willing, and waiting mouth, her throat working to deposit the load into her stomach with gulp after loud gulp… In another feat of impressive dedication, not a single drop escaped the vacuum seal of her lips as she slowly descended back down my shaft until her nose was pressed against my pubes, and then slowly pulled back, milking the last of my essence as she did. One last swallow and she released me. A smile – and a feeling – of contented satisfaction at her efforts filled her face, her thoughts soaring with the pleasure she felt from pleasuring me and the refreshed essence on her tongue.

“Wow.” I whimpered, “that was…” my mind couldn’t think of a single adjective to describe what that was.

“I’m glad you liked it,” she smirked seductively. “There is plenty more where that came from, big boy…” her tongue came out to lick her lips, “you taste yummy too. I’m looking forward to my night shift now.” And with a wink, she left me – slack-jawed and drained – and walked to the door, “Don’t forget, be ready at nine,” she called over her shoulder as she left the room, a wry grin playing on her face.

********

There is nothing quite like the clear-headed clarity that a quality blowjob brings… any release would do, I suppose, but the passive ‘laying back and letting her do her thing’ was hard to top. It was also an experience that had been sorely missing from my life up until the last few days and one that I was keen to reintroduce myself to in greater numbers and variety. Jimmy had gotten by on a lifestyle of playing the field for years, and although I had no immediate desire to follow his lead, I would be lying if I said the prospect of hordes of nubile, horny, and ‘skilled’ women throwing themselves at me wasn’t appealing. I vowed to take my opportunities where I would find them but not necessarily go out looking for them. Becky was more than enough for the foreseeable future, but something inside me told me that other opportunities wouldn’t be lacking, nor would they necessarily interfere with the thing between Becky and me if I didn’t want them to.

It was still over an hour until the consultant started his rounds. I had hoped to use this opportunity to properly explore my bunker or at least the computer within it, but there was simply not enough time. In hindsight, I would have realized that the time worked differently in my bunker, and I would have had hours – comparatively speaking – to work on whatever I wanted, but my mind hadn’t quite crossed that bridge yet.

It has always surprised me how time works; the concept of time flying when you’re having fun or dragging like a lame donkey when you’re bored as shit! I know it’s all relative and down to perception, but the hour or so between Becky leaving and my performance to doctor Matthews seemed like the longest wait of my life. It wasn’t even as though I had any particular nerves or apprehension about the meeting; I knew I was fine, and I knew that my powers would make sure of it – yes, I understood Becky’s concern, as I would understand the doctor’s, but they didn’t know what I knew, and I had no realistic way of explaining it to them. Instead, I was relegated to a position in which I had to bear more tests and more unnecessary concern over an issue that – if only in my mind – was already settled, all the while counting down the minutes until I could return to my bunker.

Finally, the hour arrived, and at 9 am on the dot, doctor Matthews – accompanied by a gaggle of other junior doctors – strode confidently and authoritatively into my room.

“Good Morning, mister Roberts,” He started, having not looked up from the clipboard in his hand yet, “How are you doing on this…” he finally looked up and stopped his sentence short. His eyes flashed back down to his paperwork, looking – his thoughts told me – for anything that would suggest he was in the wrong room or looking at the wrong notes. The fact that I was sitting bolt upright was enough to make him question the hospital he was in, let alone the room. Satisfied that his paperwork was in order, he turned his sights on me. “What are you doing sitting up?!?” he almost yelled, concern and consternation taking over his features in a heartbeat. “NURSE!!!” he bellowed into the corridor.

A few seconds later, Becky ran in. The impressive - yet fake - look of concern on her face at the doctor's outburst was almost enough to convince even me. “Yes, doctor?” she replied through labored breaths, she took one look at me, and her face dropped in horror, “Oh my god! Why are you sitting up?!?” she screeched before rushing to my side.

“Who put this patient in the incorrect position?” The doctor demanded, Becky’s flustered attempts to gently dislodge the pillows behind my back hampered by my reluctance to let them go, and her half-assed attempts to remove them.

“I… err… I don’t know, doctor.” She breathed. It was an impressive display of acting, one that I would normally be more than a little concerned about, but I knew enough from Becky’s thoughts to understand that she only lied under extreme circumstances, and my condition certainly qualified.

“What do you mean, you don’t know?!?” the doctor screamed, pacing across the floor to the opposite side of the bed to where Becky was working, “You’re his lead nurse, aren’t you? When was the last time you were in this room?”

“Yes, I am.” Becky replied, still portraying a look and demeanor of abject panic, “I was here a little over an hour ago. He was in the correct position then.”

The other doctors in the room were busily looking at their own paperwork – apparently, copies of the ones held by doctor Matthews - each of them was slowly realizing the reason for the consultant’s outburst. “If I find that anyone in your department has jeopardized my patient and ignored my instructions, I swear to god, I will…”

“Woah!” I interrupted him before this went too far, “Calm the fuck down, Doc. What’s the problem?”

“I’m sorry, Mister Roberts,” Matthews composed himself, “But you should not – under any circumstances – be sat upright. I need to find out who put you in that position.”

“I put me in this position!” I calmly stated back, playing the part of a confused and oblivious patient, “What’s the issue?”

Matthews, all his accompanying doctors, and – in an Oscar-worthy display of acting – Becky felt their jaws hit the floor. “You?” Becky asked suspiciously, “You sat yourself up?”

“Wasn’t I allowed to?”

“Err… no. No, you weren’t,” Becky replied, the shock convincingly displayed across her lovely face.

“Anybody think to mention that to me?” I asked, pretending to be confused.

“Wait…” Matthews found his voice again, “You sat yourself up?” I nodded, “without help?” I nodded again. My eyebrows raised to highlight the apparent stupidity of his question. “How?”

“Err… the same way I usually do?” I over-enunciated every word as if I didn’t understand his query.

Another silence settled over the room as each person within it flicked their eyes between each other. “It’s got to be the pain meds,” Matthews announced, walking around to Becky’s side of the bed and checking one of the machines linked to my arm. It took only a few seconds for his eyebrows to frown even further than they already were. He picked up the clipboard on the table next to the machine and checked the readings over the past few days; apparently, they didn’t make things any clearer. Becky was standing back to allow Matthews access to the machinery – her hand over her mouth in shock. “Are these readings accurate?” the Doctor asked her, gently this time.

“Yes, I’m certain of it.” Becky nodded.

“And the machine is properly calibrated?”

“The anesthetist has been in to check it every three days,” Becky confirmed. Apparently out of ideas, Matthews fell silent, his hand raising up to scratch the back of his head. Becky waited a few seconds before speaking again, “You don’t think it could be….”

“Nerve damage,” The doctor finished, shaking his head in dismay. “It has to be. It’s the only explanation.”

“Err… Anyone wanna tell me what’s going on?” I interrupted, trying to sound worried.

“Mister Roberts,” Matthews’ eyes flashed back to mine, seemingly only now remembering that I was still in the room and part of this conversation. “We… err… we’re going to need to run some more tests.”

“I know. You said that the other day.”

“No, I mean, we need to do them now!” he clarified.

“O…kay… care to tell me why?”

“Look, there’s… um… there’s no way you should be able to sit up, at least not without an extraordinary amount of pain, which you are obviously not feeling.”

“No, none at all.” I frowned,

The Doctor grimaced but kept talking, “And if by some miracle you managed to sit yourself up and ignore the pain, there is absolutely no way you would be able to keep yourself there with the damage done to your bones and leg muscles. More than that, I am concerned that the extra movement may cause additional damage to your lower extremities; we need to lay you back down and get these tests booked in for as soon as humanly possible.”

“More damage…” I muttered as I allowed Becky to remove my pillows and lay me back down, “Great. Didn’t think to tell me any of this before now?”

“The only way that this is possible is partial nerve damage,” the doctor continued, ignoring my question. “Your nerves may be intact enough to allow limited movement but too damaged to communicate sensation – in this case, severe pain.”

“I’m not following.” I lied.

Matthews huffed and walked to the bottom of my bed, hoisting the sheets up to expose my feet – the majority of which were encased in casts. “Close your eyes and tell me if you feel anything.” he sighed, already anticipating the answer. I closed my eyes.

He stuck a needle into my toe.

“Oww! What the fuck, Doc!”

“You felt that?!?” The look of incredulity on the Doctor’s face would have been hilarious in any other circumstances, but his jab genuinely did hurt like hell.

“Of course, I felt it! What the hell is wrong with you!?” I yelled, jerking my leg away from him. Becky was trying her hardest not to smirk at this point. Apparently, I was playing my part perfectly. Matthews had adopted the look of a bewildered schoolboy, his thoughts screaming with equal levels of confusion and concern. “Look, I don’t know what has gone wrong here,” I said, trying to look like I was yet to calm down. “But you must’ve made a mistake somewhere,” I flipped the sheet off the rest of my legs, exposing the full casts on each of them. “I can feel everything,” I wrapped my knuckles against the plaster, causing everyone in the room to either gasp or physically wince, “and it doesn’t hurt that much; yes, there is a little bit of an ache, but I haven’t moved in weeks, so I assumed that was normal. I don’t know what you want me to say, Doc, but stab me like that again, and I’ll jam one of these casts up your ass! With or without my foot still in it!”

Becky had to pinch herself – hard – to suppress a giggle.

That seemed enough to pull the Doctor out of whatever thoughts were still bouncing around his head. “I apologize, Mister Roberts,” he started calmly, “I didn’t intend to cause any pain or discomfort, but the test was necessary. We need to get these tests done as soon as possible, and I’m afraid that will involve a full body MRI scan…” I feigned a look of frustration but let the Doctor continue, “I know it’s not what you want to hear, but we need to find out what is going on.”

I huffed out a deep breath. “Fine, do what you need to do.” I felt bad at my treatment of such an obviously skilled and compassionate medical professional. The guy was just trying to do his job but – unbeknownst to him – was dealing with a patient far beyond his understanding. This guy, under normal circumstances, would be almost solely responsible for overseeing my care and recovery. If I were ever to have gotten better – in the pre-power days – it would have been mainly thanks to him; he didn’t deserve this treatment. But the need to protect Becky was more important. Regardless, I silently vowed to find a way to make it up to him.

“Can I see all of the medical staff outside, please?” Matthews announced calmly. One by one, the consultant’s entourage filed out of the room, Matthews and Becky – both bidding me farewell - a few steps behind them; my nurse lover looked over her shoulder, her eyes meeting mine, and flashed me a wink as the door closed behind them.

Normally, that would have been the end of it, but my abilities were letting me hear the conversation as it happened in the corridor. “So, what are we thinking?” Becky asked him with concern, genuine concern this time; despite her excellent performance in my room, and her amusement at mine, she was still extremely worried about my condition, and the doctor’s lack of answers was doing nothing to calm her nerves.

“I have never seen anything like it,” Matthews admitted after a short pause, “It has to be a misdiagnosis; if it’s not a problem with the pain medication and it isn’t nerve damage, a misdiagnosis is the only explanation that makes sense. But I checked the X-Rays, and Jesus, he jerked his leg away from me!” Matthews was genuinely racking his brain, trying to find a way to explain my condition. Memories of the afternoon when my unconscious and badly broken body was wheeled onto his ward flashed through his mind; he had poured over the X-Rays, the pre and post-op reports, and every other shred of information on my condition in order to formulate a care plan for my recovery. Every ounce of his professional knowledge and experience was telling him that there was no way that a misdiagnosis on this scale was possible. Even if the ER doctors had messed up – unlikely on its own – the surgeons would have seen the mistake as soon as they opened me up. Then there were the countless times when – during my coma – my temperature had spiked, or my breathing had become labored, and he had to personally intervene to save my life. None of this pointed to a misdiagnosis. Something was happening that he couldn’t explain, and unexplainable conditions in a medical environment were never a good thing. Like most dedicated medical professionals in the world, Doc Matthews took the care of his patients personally.

“Alright, here’s what I want you to do…” he announced, apparently coming to a decision, “I want you to get someone from the Fracture clinic up here as soon as possible so we can get those casts off, then I need an X-Ray, MRI and CT scan – in that order – make sure they are all done today, if diagnostics give you any trouble, tell them to contact me and I will make sure they understand the urgency of the situation… I don’t want some technician or some overly bureaucratic pencil-pusher fucking this up! Call me when the results are in.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Becky replied and – after confirming that the consultant didn’t need anything further – headed off to the nurse's station to start on her list of tasks, her mind rejoicing the entire time that Matthews had taken the bait and my condition would be looked into properly… and that she hadn’t needed to sacrifice her job to get it done.