Worth the Trouble Read Online Free Page A

bed, please ," he grated then tried to sit up and gasped as pain shot down his legs then disappeared. 
    He didn't want to hear any more of his mom's logic, it was too logical.  All Ethan wanted to do was wallow in the funk he'd been in for two months, embrace it as his new reality.  He didn't need her telling him he was a pathetic loser.  Ethan knew.
    "I'm not helping you do a da rned thing if you're gonna cuss at me, except wash your mouth out with soap!"
    "I'm sorry mama," he said and closed his eyes then huffed out a breath fighting off the burning behind his closed eye lids.  "I'm feeling sorry for myself, and taking it out on you.  Thank you for helping me," he told her.
    He heard her walk across the room, then felt her hand on his shoulder, "Ethan honey, you've got to try.   The doctor didn't say therapy wouldn't help, he said you'll get as much out of therapy as you put into it, but ultimately your body will determine where you wind up."
    Looking up into her worry-filled blue eyes, he begged, "Please, just leave it alone, mama, I don't want to do it."
    If he tried and failed, Ethan knew he wasn't going to be able to survive it.  Staying in the place he was now and accepting things was best for him.  She just didn't understand.
    "Come on, let's get you up."  His mother was petite and he knew lugging him around and lifting him wasn't good for her back, but what choice did he have?
    "Maybe we should look into getting a nurse ," Ethan suggested. 
    The insurance he had would pay for it, he was sure.  They were going to pay for the therapy he wasn't taking. 
    He'd also have his disability payments, as soon as he worked up the motivation to get that set up.  Totally disabled and basically bedridden at thirty years old was not something he ever imagined being, or wanted to admit to.  Swallowing that final bitter pill was something he hadn't worked up to yet. 
    Ethan was an athlete, cocky and overconfident at times.  He'd taken his physical ability and his mortality for granted all his life.  He sought out risks that would turn most people's stomach, because he lived for those adrenaline rushes. He had saved quite a few lives, but he had ruined his own in the process. 
    For thinking he was invincible, he was paying the ultimate price, which wasn't death, it was living like he was dead until he quit breathing. 
    Even if his legs did start working again, he would never be able to work as a fireman, or a Spec Ops Paramedic again.  His work with the Texas Task Force 1 Search and Rescue Team both in the state and in response to national emergencies was over.  Hell, he couldn't even be a regular  paramedic with all the bending and lifting that was required. 
    All the skills he'd worked so hard to learn and perfect, advanced life support techniques for swift water and flood rescue, cliff rescue, confined space rescue were as useless to him now as his legs.
    His mother pulled his upper body toward the edge of the bed, and Ethan gritted his teeth against the pain that shot through his back, then used his hand to shove his dead legs off the edge of the bed, while she helped him turn.
    When he managed to sit, Ethan looked up at the doorway and his sister Terri was standing there, right in front of her husband, Joel.  Both wore disgusted expressions and Terri's hands were on her hips. 
    "What the hell, Ethan?" she asked and shook her head.  "Mama said you were being a slug, but I didn't believe it."
    "A slug?" Ethan repeated then laughed sharply, before shooting his mother a look.  "What am I supposed to be doing, mom, running laps round the house?"
    Terri walked across the room to the bed and stopped to say angrily, "What you're supposed to be doing, brother, is getting out of that bed and getting your life back.  You didn't die, Ethan, stop acting like you did!"
    Emotion shot up to his throat and he cleared it.  "I wish I had died, sis...this is my life," he told her darkly and waved his hand toward the walls