Playing with Fire

Chapter 3. September, 1998. Gas grill explosion patient.

It was later that year around Labor Day weekend the next time I had a patient with a boner problem. His entry in my journal began after a call from an ER nurse. There was a group of young people at Greenwood Street Beach in Evanston one of them was cooking burgers and dogs on a portable grill, the kind with a disposable propane tank. Something went wrong causing the tank to explode with a sudden mushroom cloud of fire setting the cook's clothes and hair on fire.

Quick thinking friends shoved him to the ground and rolled him to put out the flames that caused 2nd degree burns on his arms, hands and part of his face plus one spot on the side of his stomach. They said he was 'ethanol positive' (drunk) but cooperative and stunk like burnt flesh and beer.

Two hours later the patient arrived with a large entourage. He only had on tiny black brief underwear and nothing else under a white bed sheet. Some of his hair was singed, so was part of his left eyebrow. His arms were wrapped from above his elbows to fingertips and he had a 4x4 gauze on the side of his stomach on the left side and white burn cream on his forehead and side of his face which looked like a severe sunburn.

In our burn unit there's a large open foyer outside the rooms. There were twelve people standing there ready to hear my speech. "Our rooms aren't large enough for everyone to fit and for me to have the space to do my job so I need everyone go to our lounge over there (I said pointing behind the crowd) and decide who visits first. No more than three at a time, hopefully family first. I'll need about twenty minutes to get him into bed and do my work so we won't be bumping into each other. They grumbled but walked into our small TV room/lounge/waiting room taking up all the seating.

The four of us moved the patient (Patrick, age 18) into his room and transferred him onto the bed without inflicting too much pain in the process.

He had brownish red hair and fair skin. His hair was that cross between red and brown that was more straw colored and he had some faint residual childhood freckles on his shoulders. Many people with red hair had similar skin features on their body.

He had a beautiful adolescent body, smooth-hairless tummy, round-wide inny, wide oval nipples that pointed at the ceiling. He had almost no hair in his armpits and looked like maybe he shaved his chin two or three times a month. He had some very decent muscles in his upper body too. This guy was definitely homecoming king material. Judging by his mostly female audience he's certainly straight as an arrow but I had yet to hear his voice.

At first I thought he looked a lot like a well known actor then finally remembered the name, except for his face he reminded me of the actor Joe Dallesandro from three 1974 films I saw called 'Flesh' and another called 'Flesh for Frankenstein.' I couldn't remember the third one.

I listened closely to his lungs first after the transport crew left making sure to press on his nips with my fingertips and the stethoscope and watch his reaction - none. I listened to his belly sounds then gave his IV a flush and inspected the inside of his mouth, nose, eyes and ears for signs of burn injuries. All normal so far. I already got a detailed report from ER so I never unwrapped his arms but I checked circulation in his finger tips. That's the capillary refill check, squeeze the end of each finger and watch the nailbed turn pale then release and watch how quickly the color returned, on him it was immediate, fingers and toes.

His admit orders were already in the computer so I set-up his morphine PCA pump and went to the lounge to tell the first group to walk over to room five and then cycle visitors in and out on their time table. I told them about where I needed to walk and how to call me for help. The only person that looked like a relative was an older man, short-roundish, with red hair and a red face who never spoke to me. I guess he's the father but I wasn't sure. He had a few grey hairs by his ears. The old guy smelled drunk to me.

His father walked over when I was installing the glass bottle of morphine in the PCA pump, he asked what it was and I told him it was a narcotic pain med. "Is that expensive?" He asked, I told him I really had no idea what any of this stuff cost, I was only about making sure his son left the hospital alive and recovering properly.

By midnight his worshipers were gone, it was just Patrick and me. He was on his back, head and upper body elevated. I asked if he was cold being exposed entirely except his tiny panties, he said he always dressed like that at home and wanted to stay that way for now.

"What does a guy need to do to take a leak around here?" He asked during a quiet time. I reached inside a cabinet and pulled out a white plastic urinal. It took the average guy's brain about two seconds to figure out that pissing in bed often meant no privacy, but Patrick was like 'whatever dude, give it here.' I handed him the urinal but he raised his heavily bandaged arms and looked puzzled, so I offered my assistance saying "Looks like this is gonna be common for the next few nights. By the way, I'll be your nurse at night most of the time you're here, my name is Brad, you can call me Brad or Nurse if you forget, okay?"

"Look I gotta pee really bad, sorry dude." I recalled the ER said he had about six beers on-board too so I yanked the curtain across the doorway, walked to the side of the bed and reached my gloved hand for his 'panties' waistband and pulled them down exposing him. I never liked it when patients called me 'dude,' which was why I introduced myself as Brad or Nurse right away.

With gloves on I aimed his wiener toward his knees and slipped it inside the urinal. I held the plastic bottle and told him he was okay to start peeing. Patrick almost filled the urinal, then again in 40 minutes we repeated the process. He mostly lay there with his arms at his sides, legs spread a little, with me managing his penis while I stared into his deep pit of a belly button while he pee'd into the urinal. Since I had almost thirty seconds to stare in his hole I decided he had a very nice looking hole, almost as nice as mine which was wide but only an inch deep.

Believe me, when you held penis inside urinals for a living it quickly became an unpleasant task, but it's certainly better than handling poop and bedpans.

Around 2am he fell asleep. I charted and ate my lunch at the desk since there was nobody to cover for me to take a proper lunch break. Around 3am a call button was pressed, the white light above the door to room five was on, I figured it was time to hold his pecker again. This time he had a pee erection and couldn't aim down so we opted for an angled trajectory this time. He also didn't seem to be the least bit embarrassed, I certainly would have been.

I had to prop a rolled blanket under his butt cheek to turn him halfway on his side for a good position to pee, he raised his arms over his head to help roll him partway on his side.

"Sorry about that." He mumbled when I stuffed his erection inside the opening on the urinal.

"Go ahead." Then in silence I stood there holding the urinal but stared at the side of his nut sack, trying to look like I was keeping an eye on the bottle so it didn't overflow. It came to me that he was likely to dribble when I took the urinal away so when he was nearly done I got a few washcloths out of the cabinet to catch the drops. I set the wash cloths under the head of his erection and took the urinal to the counter. I poured urine into a sample jar then dumped the rest in the toilet and rinsed the urinal and hung it over the railing on his bed. The sample would go to the lab to check his kidney function.

When muscle broke down from burns it eventually showed up in your pee, which turned dark. Luckily we kept fluids pumped into him to protect his kidneys, plus he looked totally healthy and his kidneys were only 18 years old! When he first arrived and I checked his mouth I saw no cavities just perfect teeth and gums, so this guy was in great health.

I left him alone after he was done. I knew from experience that for a teen being alone in our rooms surrounded by walls and curtains was like a sensory diprivation chamber, even with the TV on. His was on and the sound muted but he seemed to be more of a social interaction type of person. I predicted his stay here might become painfully boring and he could turn into a call-button abuser.

My shift was getting closer to the end, usually an early sign was the arrival of kitchen staff when they came around to collect meal carts from last night.

I went in to check on Patrick at 5am and found him asleep with the sheet pulled up to his stomach, but the ridge in his shorts was still visible and his plump tits still pointed at the ceiling and my soul. I noticed how his upper body looked well developed, he had spent time lifting weights, but his stomach was flat and hairless, not a single flaw of any sort on most of his front side. He really was beautiful. In report she said he was a swimmer but he did not have the typical swimmer body, his arms and chest were too large for that.

When the day shift arrived for report I was feeling tired and was ready to go home. I was home and in my shower by 7:59am.

Thursday evening I made it to work on time and sat through report, Patrick was still in room five and had three school age looking girls in the room admiring him. He had the sheet slid down to his groin to display as much flesh as possible. It seemed odd to see that much exposed flesh in a building where most people thought it was very cold. They had a post surgery patient that was leaving in a wheel chair as I stepped off the elevator, that room was a mess but the cleaners.

When the day shift staff left Patrick was my only patient, when I came in to do my first assessment he was saying bye to his friends, each one kissed him on the mouth. When they leaned over the bed to kiss him each one rested one hand on his chest, then they all left. He did have nice chest muscles for a young guy, lots of people were into chest muscles.

One of the girls had on gobs of perfume, after they left I asked Patrick to tell her it is completely inappropriate to wear perfume to any hospital or nursing home. At first he seemed offended then I explained why and he said he'd tell her if he could find a way to say it without sounding like a jerk.

"Were they at the beach when you got burned?" I asked.

"Yes, all of them were there but none of them swam in the lake, we're all on varsity swim teams last year." He said with a grin and stared at me as if he was expecting a comment.

"You know why I wanted them to get wet?" He asked with a smile.

"No why?" I asked.

"Same reason why the frozen foods are always closest to the registers at the grocery store, you know stores are designed by men, right?" He asked.

"I have no idea."

"At the store when they shop in the frozen food section it makes their titties get hard and poke out, just like at the beach. That way when they get to the checkout their nipples are still hard and easier for male cashiers to see, especially on a hot summer day." He described with a big smile.

He looked at me to see if I was looking back at him, then he glanced down at his chest, left and right but his hands were wrapped, so he said his didn't change much in the cold, maybe got crinkly a little. I smiled and chuckled a little now that both of us were admiring his wonderful plump red tits, he seemed proud of his chest. He winked at me and said he needed to pee.

"How did they do this on day shift?" I asked Patrick, but he never answered. He just wiggled down in bed and tried to roll on his side so he could pee in the urinal.

I walked to the counter and pulled on some gloves then did the same routine as last night. I slid down the front of his briefs and pulled out his erection and moved the urinal so the last two inches of his rod were in the urinal, but I had to hold it in place so he didn't slip out. It took him a while to relax enough to piss. I asked him to rate his pain level and he said it was a four in his hands so I told him to hit the button, he reached over and hit the PCA pump button (with the side of his bandaged arm) which made the pump beep softly. While he was doing that I stared at the side of his dick, I estimated to be about 5-6 inches long and somewhat thick. It took almost a minute before he was done.

His pee looked lighter colored than yesterday so I dumped it in the toilet and told him I'd be back. While I left the room he wiggled around to lay on his back, and kept the sheets low enough to display his entire front side to me.

Fifty minutes later the call light and beeper went off, so I finished charting my assessment and vital signs then went into his room. As I crossed the foyer I looked into the other room, the cleaning crew was mopping the floor and were nearly done. The bed in that room was already made.

In the room Patrick had a smile and sort of a hazy look of being high on morphine. He asked for me to change the channel on the TV since his hands were wrapped he couldn't work the remote control. So I flipped through the channels while he picked one to watch and stopped on ESPN.

He asked if I could stay with him for a while, so I rolled the little wheeled stool over to the side of the bed and sat there and visited, that simple act put a smile on his face. Like I said, these rooms were torture to socially active young people.

I asked him how he knew those girls. "We're all swim team, the tall one is a senior this year, the others were her friends from Skokie. All of them were on different swim teams around the area."

I commented that they looked like they were flirting, Patrick laughed and said everyone wanted his body, he had universal appeal, except to his family.

"Is that why you show off skin when anyone's in the room?" I asked with a slightly confrontational tone.

He laughed and said he'd been doing it since he was a little kid and barely realized it any more, when anyone was around he automatically took off his shirt. "When you're on the school swim team you get used to being seen almost naked by the whole world."

The only comment I could think to say was to tell him that the beauty of youth usually faded quickly. Super good looking girl in eighth grade often looked dog faced ugly by the time they were thirty.

Patrick said he'd heard that too and felt it was a cruel fact of aging, then he asked me how old I was.

"I'm 27, my birthday is coming soon."

"Where'd you go to school?" He asked with his arms at his side staring into my eyes. I had a very hard time not glancing at his chest.

"I went to New Trier East and Western Illinois for my nursing degree."

"Huh. I went to Niles North, I grew up near Old Orchard, but we swam against New Trier every year and usally won."

Not trying to sound insulting I asked if he graduated and he said yes but he didn't know what he wanted to do in life and had a job as a stocker at a store near home.

"Yesterday when you arrived, who was the old guy?"

"Oh, he's my dad."

"Yeah, he looked like you. Does your mom have red hair too?"

"Mom? No, she's got brown hair and she works tons of hours because my dad lost his job last month."

"Huh, that sucks. You contributing to the family economy?"

"Yep, since I graduated I pay rent now but I can't afford much. I wish I could leave Chicago and start a new life."

"Like where would you go?"

"Oh, maybe Colorado or Utah, somewhere with mountains and clean air where nobody knows my family."

"Huh, sounds beautiful. I've never been out west but I'd love to someday, my parents take me on a trip once a year, somewhere where it never snows."

"I don't mind the cold and snow so much but the flatness of Illinois is boring." He offered then added, "Ever drive to Saint Louis?"

I told him no, so he said around Bloomington and Springfield the ground is dead flat and all he saw was a few trees and some barns, that's it.

We sat there in silence for a while. I could tell by his eyes that he was looking closely at me when I looked away. Everytime I looked back his eyes snapped back up to my eyes. I had to struggle to keep my eyes from glancing at his chest.

I reached over and slid his bed sheet up over his chest and got up, kicked the stool over to the cabinets and told him I'd come back later, maybe he should take a nap, his eyes looked very stoned.

I walked to the door and paused to look back, he was smiling and watching me closely but I couldn't decode the expression on his face, but he definately had some kind of look. I asked if he wanted the lights off, he said yes, so I hit the switch and shut the door. He turned his head and closed his eyes, the morphine made most patients sleepy.

The house manager came in at midnight for report and told me to take my lunch, when I walked across the foyer I glanced in his room and Patrick was asleep still. Half an hour later I came back after eating the six inch sub sandwich I brought from a shop near the L station on the way to work.

There was a small break room on the third floor but it wasn't safe to keep your lunch in there because they'd come up missing sometimes, but it had some nice recliners and a TV so it was a nice place to get away from call buttons and beeping cardiac monitors for half an hour.

After she left I went to check on Patrick and jot down his vital signs. He was 115/66 at 65bpm, temp 98.6 deg orally. He was breathing 15 times a minute and sats of 98% on room air. His lungs were clear and showed no burn creep, but the doc wanted me to leave his arms and hands wrapped all night to protect them from him itching him burns in his sleep, which I guess he did during the day.

He asked me to come back and talk again. I kicked the stool over by the bed and sat down again and wrote his vitals on a paper towel to chart them at the nurses station. I also noted how many times he pressed the PCA button since 7pm, only twice. His morphine use was way down from yesterday. When I listened to his lungs I usually listened on the front of the chest instead of the back, even though breath sounds were much easier to hear on the back then the front.

Human lungs had five chambers, two on the left side, three on the right. Since breathing was a key issue for burn patients it was worth the time to listen over each lobe. With the stethescope in my ears I sat next to the bed with my arm reached over his chest and listened to several breaths on each lung lobe. My eyes were focused on his beautiful red tit the entire time.

Patrick didn't seem to care about being touched or looked at so it took all my self control to keep my fingers on the stethescope bell.

While I was listening to his chest he asked me if I got in trouble much in high school. I held up one finger to ask him to wait a moment so I could finish listening to him breathe. It was important to monitor breathing on a burn patient, especially because he was getting a higher level of saline infusion to protect his kidneys.

I took down my stethescope and hung it behind my neck, then I asked him to repeat what he asked.

"You want to know if I got in trouble in high school?" I asked.

"Yeah. Did you?" He repeated, I thought it was an odd question.

"A little, never in school but definately at home. I was not exactly what my parents wanted as an only son."

"What happened?"

"Its a long and personal story, not a good one for work if you know what I mean."

I had to think quickly, so I asked him what he wanted to do for a living.

"Haven't decided, maybe I'll be a priest, I'm Irish-Catholic." He replied.

"You don't want to get married and have little Patricks running around the house some day?"

"Huh! I don't think I'd survive myself as a kid!" He chuckled.

"Were you a high energy little kid?" I asked.

"Oh totally, first one up, last one to sleep every day. Drove my mother nuts." He boasted.

"So you're a swimmer. I do laps in the lake when it warms up." I told him.

"When I was in school I swam laps every day for an hour, it was a class with credits for me. Huh!"

"I know our school had a swim team but I never followed our sports. I was kind of an invisible student." I thought he'd ask but he didn't ask why I tried to be invisible.

Then our conversation stalled briefly.

He pushed the sheet down to expose himself and asked me to help him pee, I smiled and got up to grab gloves and the urinal.

I pulled the curtain across the doorway and pulled down the front of his shorts and commented they needed to be changed, he had an odor. I moved his limp dick into the urinal and told him to pee. I stared into his belly button again and listened to the urine flow inside the plastic bottle. He lay there in silence as he emptied his bladder. Eventually he was done and I noticed it was nearly clear, so we could probably slow his infusion, I had to chart that and include it in report in the morning. He hit the PCA button while I emptied and rinsed the urinal. I stood by the counter and watched him breathe briefly, then I turned to leave and he asked me to come back again. I waved and went to the nurses station to chart all my findings and notes.

I considered giving him a bed bath since he was getting stinky, but I doubted I could do it without getting an obvious boner so I'll say he slept most of the night and let day shift clean him.

I'm sure the day shift nurses would not be distracted by his youthful beauty.

At 5:15am he was on the call button again, same routine as last time, he needed to pee and wanted my company.

That time he asked if I was gay but I declined to answer. Actually, what I said was I couldn't talk about that inside the hospital, to me that was an invitation to talk with him outside the hospital. I wasn't sure if he caught that or not. That trick never worked for me in the past but I said it anyway.

He told me about the beach party where he got burned. He said he really didn't know many of the people at that party except for one of the girls that came to the hospital twice since the night he got hurt. He seemed to have a lot on his mind, I mostly sat on the stool by the side of the bed and listened to him talk. The more he talked the more he forgot where he was and the more he smiled and seemed like a normal guy.

He never spoke of relationships or drugs or sex, just of guy friends and family problems and how he wanted a car but had no money. He sounded discouraged when he said that by saving twenty bucks a week from his tiny paycheck he'd be able to afford a used car in three more years but didn't think he'd survive that long living at his parents house.

For a macho looking guy he never spoke of macho guy stuff, made me more suspicious he might be gay or bi and possibly an actual virgin too. It was hard to imagine a really good looking young man, muscular and popular being a virgin. I bet that was a secret he kept locked away from everyone.

He asked where I lived. I said I lived near the Linden Avenue L train station. He said he lived south of Old Orchard, on Church Street in Skokie about ten miles away from where I lived.

Another trick I've used in the past was I offered him my phone number in case he had questions about care of his burns after he got out of the hospital. He perked up and told me to write it on paper and slip in into his pocket on his clothes (partially burned and in a plastic bag in the patient belongings closet in each room) I grabbed a paper towel and wrote: Burn questions? Brad Fox RN phone: 8-4-7-B-A-N-D-A-G-E (847-226-3243). I opened the bag and was hit with a wave of burnt clothing smell and found his jeans pocket and pushed the paper towel inside.

Not too long after our chat the day shift people started to arrive. They said he'd probably have his wraps removed today and might go home tomorrow if he was infection free. He'd need some help but he had a family to return to so it shouldn't be a problem.

During report one of the day shift nurses asked if Patrick got mad at me, I said no. She said when he went to hydrotherapy he got pretty mad at the staff for making him scrub his burns clean. I said, "No, he's been very pleasant all night, maybe a bit much on the call button but he was my only patient for most of the night.

I thought the day staff might have been bothered by his lack of clothing and willingness to display his nicely shaped body. I acted like I didn't notice.

Friday night when I arrived we had three patients, two were late day colonoscopies that got squeezed into the schedule from the ER and were recovering from sedation. They should be discharged home during my first two hours.

Patrick looked better, his IV fluids were down to 50ml per hour and his burns were unwrapped now so I could see all of them They did his face today which he said hurt like hell but he was covered with gel again but he had no signs of infection and his antibiotics were now pills. His empty dinner tray was still on the bedside cart and when I went in his room to check his vitals and listen to him breathe the kitchen people came around with a tall cart and took all the kitchen stuff, including ones the day shift ate from. Some hospital staff ate meals at work, but at night the local restaurants were closed so we had to bring our own food.

Patrick was mentally absorbed by some cop/detectivre show on the TV when I lowered the sheet to look at his burns and listen to him breathe. He was beautiful, which was normal for him. I thought to myself he really only had one way to go now, that was downhill as far as sex appeal and beauty. He said he went to the water tank again today, it hurt really bad. I told him I heard about it.

Tonight was just like last night except the first half was way busier than normal. I got my two recovery patients discharged by 9pm, which was a weird time to go home, but they weren't scheduled procedures, they started as ER patients that came in with rectal bleeding, both of them had negative exams but had internal hemmorhoids tied off. Both of them went home without any problems. After they were gone the light came on in room five so I went to see what he needed. Patrick said he needed to pee, but with his hands unwrapped he could do it himself, he asked me to stay because he had a hard time holding the urinal and splashed pee on himself earlier. First, I got him a urinal, the one on the bed railing was gone.

I stayed by the bed after handing him the urinal and put on gloves and stayed beside the bed while he moved his wiener into the urinal and started to pee. I noticed he looked half hard and had to aim it up towards his hip instead of down towards his knees. When he was done he handed it to me to dump and rested his arms and grimaced with pain from using his hand muscles. I reached down and re-positioned his penis and pulled his hospital shorts up and over his crotch. He watched me closely then said I was the nicest nurse and the most gentle. He winked at me and I smiled back then left after I covered him with the sheet. I told him if I worked in hydrotherapy he'd probably hate me. Patrick laughed at the thought.

I walked to the door and asked if he wanted the curtain closed and he said to leave it open so he could see the foyer, as he said that he pushed the sheet down to expose his chest to anyone outside his room.

He slept most of the night and once again I didn't get a proper lunch break but I had to call for someone to cover me when I had to use the men's room.

When day shift nurses arrived they said Patrick would go home today after he learned how to clean himself, apply silvadene to his burns, and what symptoms needed quick medical attention.

I got home late because I ate breakfast at the Greek diner by the L station. I took a quick shower then went to bed and jerked off while I recalled Patricks's flawless body and imagined licking his flesh and rubbing my face across his tummy and taking his dick in my mouth for hours at a time while he moaned in pleasure, in my fantasy I imagined him complaining that his balls hurt because I made him come too many times.

I came hard and sprayed all over my chest and stomach, so I smeared it around and finger massaged it on my tits and took another shower, changed my bedding and went to bed until 8pm Saturday.

There was a sandwich deli across Linden Avenue from the L station that I walked to for hot meals. I ran from home east on Linden to Sheridan Road (Point Obo), then back west to the train tracks, which was 1.2 miles, then back home again was 2.4 miles total, and the deli across from the L station was one block from home. It was dark outside long before I got back. On the run home I knew the wind was out of the east because I could smell Lake Michigan. It had sort of a dead fish/seaweed odor sometimes, or maybe it came from the beaches. I saw old photos of this area taken from an airplane back around 1912 and most of this area was one giant sandy beach back then. Just trees and sand. You wouldn't know it today.

I stayed up Saturday night to 2am. I surfed the net and caught up on my emails. There was a new store online I really liked called Amazon.com, they sold new and used books, including college text books. Too bad it didn't exist when I was in school so I could have saved a ton of money at the campus book store. Back then I might have purchased my books from Amazon.com just out of spite for the campus book store prices and the lazy/rude employees.

Two yeas after I graduated from WIU, as a graduation gift my parents paid off my student loans, which meant I was bringing in way more money than I needed to live. My car was my dad's old work car, I bought it from him for a fraction of its value, he wanted $750 bucks but the car was worth thousands being a classic old BMW 320i sedan. I think he sold it to me because he couldn't bare to see it actually leave.

From time to time I saw mental images of Patrick's flawless body and wished I could have taken a picture of him for something to have in the computer to jerk off to. Even though he was almost 19 he was gorgeous. I didn't know if he realized how beautiful his body was. He'd probably needed to hear that from his best friends to truly believe it.

I enjoyed my four day weekend then worked another three days with the same routines. We had burn patients all week. Some of them had burns caused by something falling off the stove. We never got kids because the hospital wasn't licensed to admit pediatric patients, only 18 and over. Sometimes they admitted people down to age 16 but it depended on the diagnosis and size/weight of the kid. We also saw an occasional workplace burn injury, mostly from restaurants.

The other hospital in Evanston had the big burn unit so most of our cases came from ones closer to the city of Chicago. Patients from Chicago tended to stay in Chicago hospitals. Northwestern was a smaller (75 bed) teaching hospital but they taught doctors, not nurses. And we didn't take major specialty cases, no organ transplants, no gender surgeries, no plastic surgery, and no cancer surgery either. We only had two specialty clinics (GI and ortho) because those were offered to student doctors. The hospital was sort of a freebie clinic for Northwestern students staffed by family practice med students.

Eight days after he left the hospital Patrick called my cell number on Saturday morning, but I had it forwarded to my home landline. We talked on the phone for over an hour (even though I was tired), the weather, his burns, and movies. When it seemed like our conversation was nearing an end I asked him if he had wheels (an informal way of asking if he wanted to get together). He said sometimes he did but he could take the bus in Skokie too. I asked if he could get ride the L, he said he could ride his bike there, they had a huge bike rack. His parents place was about 3/4 miles north of the Skokie Swift L station on Dempster Street. So we discussed him taking the train today and where to switch trains. He agreed, I planned to meet him at the L station by my house. I suspected he lingered on the phone because he wanted me to invite him over.

He'd get on the L at the Dempster Street station and ride it to Howard and get off, cross over the platform and ride north past eight stops to Linden Ave, I'd meet him outside the station.

I think his trip and transfer might take an hour or slightly less. He'd chain up his bike at the station in Skokie.

Looking like Humphrey Bogart at the end of the movie Casablanca I stood outside in the dark in the fog waiting on the train not knowing if Patrick would actually show or not. I had serious doubts. Then I heard the screeching of the approaching steel train wheels as the 7:07pm train pulled into the station. About ten people walked out the antique looking front doors and scattered into the foggy darkness around the train station. I started to walk home when the doors burst open again, out came Patrick with a broad smile on his face. Even in the street lights I saw the red patches on the side of his face and hands. He looked around the area then our eyes met, he smiled broadly then he looked down and walked towards me.

<>

We briefly shook hands then turned in unison to walk down the sidewalk. I reached my arm over his shoulders and pulled him into me for a brotherly hug. I was very excited to see him.

"What? You think I wasn't gonna make it?"

"Well, I don't know you really well, everyone else had left the station so I was starting to walk home." I said honestly.

"It took me a bit to get off the train because I was in the back car and the doors didn't open."

"I'm glad you made it okay, your burns look better even in the street lights I can see they look better."

"It still itches and they're super sensitive to heat."

"You're gonna have to be very careful about sun exposure for a year or two because you lost a partial layer of skin," I reminded him. We slowly walked down the block, it wasn't far to the corner, maybe 500 feet. We crossed Third Street, I felt the chill in the air because we were only a few blocks from Lake Michigan and the Baha'i Temple (aka: Point Obo).

On the way down the block he told me his mother contacted a lawyer about suing the company that made the stove and propane tank. He said it had a gas leak he didn't see that was like a flame burning the outside of the propane tank that caused it to burst. I cringed at the thought of what it must have been like for him in those first few minutes. He said he felt no pain until a couple minutes after the fire, then it hit him all of a sudden and it hurt really bad, worst pain of his life, that was followed by the sickening stench of his own burnt skin and hair. He said it took the ambulance about 12 minutes to get there, they loaded him in the ambulance and started an IV and gave him pain meds. His final comment made me a little emotional, "When my clothes were on fire I sort of stood there amazed by the sight, but being on fire didn't hurt but it was terrifying, then someone tackled me."

My place was the second house on the right after the intersection. We walked down our driveway into the back yard, then down my steps and into my basement apartment. Our house was very old, built in the 1890s, they used the basement door for delivering coal into the basement becaus the house was built before electricity or natural gas.

Inside I gave him a short tour and turned on lights and told him to make himself comfortable, then I offered to cook us dinner. After telling him what I had at home he decided to bake a frozen pizza and add our own toppings, (pepperoni, cheese, j-pepper chunks, olives, and crushed peppers). I asked if he could slice veggies and he said yes but slowly.

Our evening was mostly spent talking and being ourselves. He seemed much more animated and fun now that he was no longer on morphine and no longer in pain. He was almost the same height as me, maybe an inch shorter, but he was way more muscular. We talked for the thirty minutes it took to bake the pizza. I showed him the sofa and we sat at opposite ends. But I sat with my legs crossed facing him, so he turned to face me and crossed his legs too, our knees were only inches apart.

He told me about the ambulance ride to the ER and the ride to our burn unit and how mad his father was that the accident would actually cost him money. I laughed at the idea.

Slowly, the room smelled more and more of pizza and I was getting hungry. We talked about jobs and the future and movies in the theater and how he was adjusting to post-high school life without any direction in his life, which really bothered him. He said his life felt like he was floating in the ocean after the ship sunk and needed help but couldn't get that from his parents. I was going to ask why but decided not to. Then the timer dinged and the pizza was done. We both got up and went to the kitchen.

When I got ready to remove the pizza pan from the oven he asked me again if I was gay since I couldn't answer at the hospital. I said, "Uh huh," but acted like it was no big deal. I slid the pizza off the stone and onto the metal pan and sliced it into six pieces and set it on the table with cans of 7-Up and a roll of paper towels, crushed red pepper, and salt.

When we sat down to eat he took off his sweatshirt and hung it on the chair back. Under it he wore a skin-tight black tank-top and a pair of tight blue jeans. His tank-top was short and fully displayed his pale hairless belly and his beautiful round belly button. I noticed his butt a few times was quite shapely and looked large and muscular. The tank-top made his chest muscles look big or maybe he weight lifted just before he left his parents house. I also saw his nipples bulging out on both sides of his chest. He was obviously trying to show off his bod to me, or maybe it was a tease, or maybe he had no clue what he was doing. I also noticed he didn't expose himself until after his 'are you gay' question was answered yes.

Contact the author: borischenaz gmail.