After a moment, he decided to wear the same shirt and undershirt, too. He draped those over the pants and then set the crutch aside so that it was leaning against the wall by the head of the bed.
Careful not to aggravate his bad leg, he lifted it onto the bed. He had to admit the splint did a good job of keeping it still. He shifted down the bed and then brought his other leg up beside him. Then he settled back on the bed and put his head on the pillow. All of the work he’d just done had made him break out into a sweat, so he didn’t bother pulling up the sheet or blanket. He’d do that later.
He closed his eyes and released his breath. Another day done. Four to six weeks to go. Four weeks was twenty-eight days. Six weeks would be forty-two days. He grimaced. How he hoped it would be twenty-eight days instead of forty-two! This whole thing of doing nothing all day was wearing him out.
He heard Isaac yell, “Don’t touch that,” followed by Adam’s shrill cry and Rachel screaming for Mary. Dave shook his head and brought the pillow up to his ears to block the ensuing fight out of his mind. He was sure the children made it a habit of spilling things, yelling, and crying on a regular basis. He just hadn’t been used to it because he was always busy. He honestly didn’t know how Mary put up with this all day long.
Finally, things grew silent, and he relaxed. What he had to do was sleep. Sleep was the quickest way to pass the time. He folded his hands over his stomach and released his breath. When he was a child, he used to run the alphabet backwards in his mind. Usually, after he did that a couple of times, he dozed off to sleep.
This evening, however, he wasn’t falling asleep. He shook his head. He never should have taken a nap on the porch. Now he was going to have a terrible time sleeping tonight.
He heard Mary as she tucked the children into bed. First, she put Adam down, and then she helped Rachel and Isaac get settled for the night. He had gotten used to this process over the past two weeks. Once everything was quiet, she would go downstairs and work on her sewing. Which was fine since Dave had managed to fall asleep during this time, if not sooner, but he didn’t want to spend any more time bored in this room.
“Mary?” he called out.
At first, he thought she had already gone downstairs, but then he heard her come across the hall. She opened the door. “Do you need something?”
“I can’t sleep,” he told her. “Will you come in here and talk to me?”
“I wondered if you were going to be able to sleep right away when I saw you dozing off in the chair after supper,” she playfully chided him. She stepped into the room and closed the door behind her. “You have to get over your resistance to reading books. You can’t spend the next month just watching the clouds go by.”
“I hate reading.”
“Well, I can tell you’re losing your enthusiasm for playing cards, too.” She started to unbutton her dress. “If you were to read the right kind of book, you’d find reading interesting. What kind of stories do you like?”
“I don’t know. They’re all stories about other people. Why should I care what those people are doing, especially since those people don’t even exist?”
Her eyes lit up. “You should read nonfiction. Why not read a biography about someone’s life?”
He nearly gagged. “Again, that would be about someone I don’t even know. I have no reason to care about someone I don’t know.”
“Alright. Then why not read about a topic? Before I came out to Nebraska, I read books on life out here. Why not read about farms, animals, or crops?”
“I already know about that. I’m surrounded by it every day of my life.”
She paused for a moment as she reached the last button. “Then read about something you don’t know anything about. Read about how trains work or how things are further out west.”
“Why would I need to read any of that? I’m not going to build a train, nor am I going to live anywhere but here.”
She groaned. “I give up. You’re impossible, Dave. When you’re confined to a chair all day, you are exasperating. Your pa has played cards, checkers, and other games with you. The kids have each spent some time with you. Your ma and I have sat down and talked to you. I don’t know what else any of us can do to keep you from being bored.”
She removed her dress, and the remaining sunlight coming in through the window gave him a nice view of her in only her chemise and bloomers.
“You know,” he began, “there is something we haven’t done since my injury.” He patted the spot on the bed next to him. “And I’m wide awake.”
To his surprise, she shot him a bewildered look.
“What?” he asked.
“The last time we tried it, you said it hurt your leg.”
“That was because I moved it. I should have stayed still and let you do the work.” He wiggled his eyebrows playfully at her. “Won’t it be fun to see if I can stay still the whole time?”
“I don’t want to irritate your leg. You’re already driving all of us insane because you haven’t done anything for two weeks. I don’t know how much longer I can take this. I’m eager for you to heal.”
“I’m eager for me
