BAD ATTITUDE

Jean had great resistance to writing the story. It was supposed to be about 'Doctors You Can Trust' and she didn’t know that there were any doctors she could trust. She ripped the piece of paper out of the typewriter, crumpled it up and threw it in the general direction of the trashcan. She pulled a Marlboro out of the mother-of-pearl cigarette box that sat within hand’s reach on her desk, packed it angrily, then stuck it in her mouth.

"Fuck. Where's the goddamn cigarette lighter?"
She searched the cluttered desk frantically and found a book of matches, struck a match and held it to the cigarette, inhaling deeply and reveling in that burnt tobacco-sulfur smell. Her lungs came alive. Ah, yes. A cigarette would help get the mental juices flowing.

She looked at the matchbook cover.

It was bright red with a black dragon, the logo for the China Bar.

"Maybe if I hadn't gone here last night I would’ve made my story deadline."
She dismissed the thought, tossed the matchbook toward her desk-mess and watched as it somersaulted behind a yellowed stack of Zoetrope magazines. Leaning back in her wheelchair, Jean took another deep soul drag.

Yeah, Jean knew all about doctors. She had spent a year and a half in a body cast at Central City General Hospital. Not exactly the place she had planned on spending her teen years. While all her girlfriends were attending parties and losing their virginity, she was stuck in that adjustable bed looking out the window on a world in which she couldn't participate. They said she'd never walk. Alright, so they were right. But what kind of hope is that to give to a fifteen-year old?

“At least I'll still be able to fuck, Doc," she shot back at them.
They laughed uncomfortably and filed out of her room, huddling together in the hallway to discuss her bad attitude.

Jean had considered herself an optimist back then. But finding a boyfriend when you’re handicapped wasn't as easy as she thought. Yeah, guys were always nice. She had plenty of guy "friends" but that's not what her hormones were screaming for.

The irony was that she finally ended up losing her virginity to a doctor. It was during that seventh month after the accident, when the steady flow of visits from high school friends had dwindled to an occasional ‘thinking-of-you’ card. He was a sympathetic intern whom she trusted. For her, it was an incredible moment that awakened in her a passion for sex beyond her ability to feel it. For him, she later discovered, it was an experiment; perhaps a challenge to his sexual ability to find a way to make her feel - to heal her from the inside out - to bang against dead nerves and try to force some kind of life into them with his magic caduceus. Yeah, Doctor Julius Rosen was definitely trying to prove something. Whatever, it created a thirst that wasn’t easy to quench. She had loved it all; the sweat, the grunts, the smell, the taste.

But again, here she was procrastinating instead of writing the pack of lies her editor wanted to read. She gripped the arms of her wheelchair, sat up straight and rolled closer to the desk.
"Okay, let's get this over with."
She was going to finish this piece. She needed the money. Boy, did she need the money.

Jean put another piece of white bonded paper into the typewriter and sighed, “Paying a guy to fuck a crippled doesn't come cheap.”