Jason had spent two lousy days in the same condition, lying on a hospital bed. He’d been wheeled down to X-rays once, but otherwise it was uneventful. The television hadn’t been invented. There weren’t even action shows like The Shadow on the radio yet. Last night he was about to endure having his bowels emptied manually, when he said “Buy and hold” just in time. How many beatings had Jason taken, and how many near-death experiences? But he’d ejected from the game just twice, once when he was getting beaten, and the other when he felt so depressed from the marriage scenarios.

He absentmindedly shuffled the cards in his hands, hoping that his sponge bath would be done by Celia, as if it mattered. If the older, heavier nurse scrubbed his lifeless junk, did it make a difference?

The door opened, and the portly, much older nurse entered the room carrying a bowl and a sponge. She wore the white nurse’s hat, and underneath it, he could see that her hair was thinning, and she was nearly bald. What a way to go out in his last night of the game. Just as Sister Mildred was a more realistic nun, this woman was a more realistic nurse than the sexy Puerto Rican. In this case, it was probably a good thing that the heavy nurse about to give him a sponge bath wore a surgical mask to cover her face.

“Laura! They want you in surgery.”

The large nurse turned to see Celia in the doorway, then handed her shapely colleague the bowl and sponge, before heading out the door toward the operating room.

“Are you ready for your sponge bath, Mr. Whitlock?” Celia asked, and her eyes always shined when she asked him. She pulled his gown off of his upper torso, folding it down over his waist.

“Yes. And call me Jason, please.” Jason felt himself relaxing at the sensation of the cool sponge on his forehead.

“You said you had a cut here?” Celia asked, and even if her voice was muffled by the mask, she was close enough that Jason could understand her easily.

“It was a gash. The referee almost called the fight until my corner man got some petroleum jelly on it.”

“Your forehead is as smooth as a baby’s butt.” Celia’s eyes lit up and she laughed into her mask. “I’m not saying you have a face like a baby’s butt, just that it’s smooth.”

“Thanks for the clarification.” Jason laughed and was glad that it didn’t hurt. He figured the pain meds must have kicked in.

“You said you were a boxer.” Celia scrubbed down along his cheeks and neck.

“I was two-and-0, but the last guy I fought was a dirty dog, who intentionally headbutted me.” Jason responded to her prompting and rolled over onto his side, holding the handrail to help keep himself up and perpendicular to the bed. He felt her sweep the sponge over his upper back, then heard her dip it into the bowl again, and squeeze out the excess water, which trickled into the bowl.

“Intentional?” she asked. “That shallow bullet hole in your left shoulder blade is almost gone.”

If that bullet wound was healed up, it made sense to Jason: the bullet had been slowed down from traveling through the wooden platform that Jason lay on, so that the slug barely broke the skin. “I told you he was a dirty dog, hitting me right after the bell and then catching me with a low blow.”

“Wow, that is dirty. Okay, you can lie back down.” Celia helped ease him onto his back and draped the gown back over his upper body. She then moved to the foot of the bed and started on Jason’s feet.

Jason thought that if he stayed positive, there was a bright side to the fact that he was paralyzed, such as that he’d never have to worry about feeling the pain of a low blow again. “Yeah, that’s the ticket, Jason, make up bullshit to keep your spirits up.”

She worked her way up his legs and began to clean the bandage on his calf where he had taken the .38 slug. She ripped off the bandage, and it didn’t matter if she yanked out hairs with it. “You are really healing up nicely here, y rápidamente, también.”

“And quickly, too.” Jason echoed her. She was throwing in a little Spanish as she often did just to keep Jason amused.

Celia got up and went to the table, where she removed a gauze bandage from a drawer, and cloth tape. She put the bandage over Jason’s calf wound and sealed it on four sides with the tape, which she tucked into a side pocket. She resumed his sponge bath, working her way up his thighs, and she was forced to raise his gown up over his waist.

“¡Qué lástima!” she said sadly as she gently scrubbed his genitals.

“What a shame,” Jason thought, translating her words, and those words pretty much summed up everything. What a shame that he was paralyzed from the waist down. What a shame that this cute woman was scrubbing his groin, but he felt nothing other than a deep sense of loss. What a shame that the Midas Game had been the best experience of his life, but tonight was his last night.

“¡Dios mío!” she exclaimed.

That was Spanish for “Oh my God!” but why would she say that? Jason looked down and saw that his penis had begun to stiffen as the nurse scrubbed his balls. Blood surged into his rod, making it turn deep red, and causing the hardening knob to reach upward in the direction of his belly button.

Celia ran the sponge up his erection, traveling from the base of his penis all the way up to the frenulum. She had to force his stiff rod downward to run the sponge downward from his red dome, traveling the vein on the top of his tool, and down to the base of his erection. She set the sponge aside.

“Do you want me to stop?” Her brown eyes gazed into his eyes.

“No, please no,” Jason begged her. He didn’t know if this would be the last sexual experience he would have in the game, and as sad as his life was as a broke schoolteacher, this was better than anything he experienced in the real world.

Setting aside the sponge and bowl onto the floor, Celia ran her bare hands up and down his shaft, very slowly, massaging his erection. Then she dug her thumbs into the underside of his bloated penis, straddling either side of his tube, and inched up to his dome.

He could feel it! Jason exulted in the sensation. One of her hands jostled his balls while the other stroked his shaft. Then she made an ‘O’ of her finger and thumb, which she slid along his rod, still moist from the damp sponge. She twisted the ring she made of her fingers beneath his frenulum, causing him to moan with pleasure. Celia now used both hands on him again, holding the left to pinch the base of Jason’s cock, while her right hand flogged his hard shaft, adding twisting motions when she reached his cockhead.

“Yes,” he muttered, enjoying the delicious sensations. “Yes, that’s it.” He felt a tightening in his prostate, and she must have sensed his approaching climax, too, in a further tightening of his erection.

Her hand swept up his precum oozing out of his urethra each time she twisted his dome at the end of her upstroke. Celia put her palm under his cockhead, collecting a thin puddle of clear jism that dribbled out. “Go ahead, Jason, let it go. Don’t hold back, it’s been too long.”

It had been too long. How many days? A week? He looked down at her tan hands, and her palm poised to catch his load. The first pulse of his ejaculation poured out of his slit, nearly filling Celia’s cupped palm. His erection next spat out a bolt, and then another, causing the warm puddle of thick milk to overflow the nurse’s cupped hand.

“That’s it, let it go,” she coaxed him, while whipping his clenching shaft with one hand.

Jason tried not to cry out from the sensation of the orgasm he experienced, as well as the feeling of joy that he wasn’t impotent, and could experience sexual pleasure again. He was overjoyed to feel his rod pulsing and squirting into her palm. The sight of his white semen on her tan hand excited him.

She used her cum-filled hand to grasp his shaft, sliding along its entire length to wring out the last bits of semen as it convulsed and tightened to expel the dregs of his seed onto his stomach. She twisted her hand all the way up and down his greasy pole, and the scent of semen was heavy in the room. Her grip lightened, until she was using just the stiffened fingers of one hand to slide along the underside of his slick tool, coaxing a pleasurable twitch or two from his rod.

“Excuse me.” She went to the table and returned with a towel that she used to mop up his warm load, making him feel twinges of an orgasm as she cleaned his tool.

“Thank you,” Jason told her. “I really needed that.”

“You’re welcome.” She hesitated, and bit her lip. “Men often get erections from the sponge bath, but you’re not supposed to. No one with your kind of spinal damage gets an erection, ever.”

Jason wondered if that meant there was some kind of hope for him. Even if he was confined to bed like this, but could experience what he just did, then maybe life was worth living.

“I’ll have to tell the doctor, even though I may have to leave out a few details.” She smiled, or at least he thought he saw a smile in her eyes, because her face was otherwise hidden by her surgical mask.

Jason had drifted off to sleep by the time the doctor arrived in his room.

“Mr. Whitlock?”

Jason woke to see the doctor holding his x-rays, a large black sheet perhaps two feet by three feet, up to the light. “That’s the problem with x-rays: they’re very effective at looking at bones in the body, but not very good at examining tissue, like nerves. The nurse says she was giving you a sponge bath when you responded with an erection and a spontaneous emission.”

“Spontaneous?” Jason thought. “Yes, doctor, that’s correct.”

“Did you feel anything outside of your genital region, or do you now? Your inner thighs, pressure on your rear end or the back of your calves where you’re lying down? How about an urge to urinate, or a feeling in your bladder or rectum?”

Jason shook his head. “No, doctor, nothing.”

“Frankly, I’m stumped.” The doctor dropped the x-ray sheet to his side. “You have all the symptoms of a severed spine. The loss of bowel and urinary control, lack of sensation. Those persons never regain sexual function…which leads me to the possibility of a partially severed spinal cord. There may be good news in that you have retained some degree of sexual function.”

So there was hope, which Jason felt as a spark igniting a warm glow that spread across his chest.

The doctor looked down at Jason where he lay in the bed. “But unfortunately, that doesn’t change the fact that you will never walk again, feel anything in your legs, or regain control of your bowels or bladder. I’d hate to see you get your hopes too high. You still have a long, difficult road to recovery as far as your upper back is concerned.”

“Thanks, doctor.” Jason smiled, if only from the memory of Celia’s magic hands.

The doctor left, and he was all alone in his room.

Jason decided that he could return to the game for at least one more night to see what might happen. Despite what the doctor said, he still felt an ember of hope.

* * *

Jason dreamed that he heard the Latin mass, or perhaps it was a group of monks reciting mass in Latin. The voices were a mix of both male and female, and he gradually became aware that his dreaming was based on what he heard while lying on his hospital bed, a soft chanting in Latin—even though he didn’t speak Latin, he was certain it was Latin that he heard. He opened his eyes in a sleepy curiosity, and noted that the lights were off, so that the room was only lit by the crescent moon outside the window.

The nurses or attendants were wearing coats, or were those robes? They converged on his bed, and the chanting grew louder. Latin was close enough to Spanish, because it was the source of most Spanish, in fact, so Jason could recognize certain words, one of which leaped out at him. Jason froze in place, fully awake.

Satanas meant “Satan.”