Emergency Medical Dad

X: 8:10 pm, present

JORGEN

I decide to keep my prosthetic on even though my nerves are tingling wrong and I'm sore from this morning. Luckily, it's my left side so I don't have to worry about how it's going to affect driving. So I take Jessie back to the Barn with the intention of staying a few hours before heading home and crashing for the night even though my body is begging for rest now.

"Mom!" Connor sprints into the kitchen as she kicks off her shoes and I hang up my thin overcoat. "Oh! Jorgen! Jorgen, guess what?"

"What, buddy?"

He skids to a stop, big grin looking up at me, "we played cops and robbers today."

I rack my brain, then smile, "you convinced him?"

He gives me a rather enthusiastic nod, shaking his hair too.

"And were you a cop or a robber?" I honestly don't remember how to play that game so hopefully he doesn't expect me to know.

"Robber, obviously. Luka says cops are evil and kill people. Robbers just take stuff." He says it with such a matter of fact tone that I can feel a bubble of pride in my chest despite the look Jessie has.

"Now, Connor, not all cops are evil, there's bad apples beca-"

"Nah," Luka sticks his head out of the back room, "they're pretty much all bad because they're not changing their inherently fucked up system and being complacent with it despite the death toll."

I keep my mouth shut. Technically, I worked sorta with law enforcement for a few long years there.

"Language, Luka," Jessie scolds. "Connor, don't talk like Luka."

"Why not?"

I purse my lips, looking over at Luka who's sharing the same look as me, stifling a laugh in his chest.

"I'll explain later."

Connor shrugs it off, turning his attention to me, "Luka says you're a pirate."

It catches me off guard to say the least, "does he?"

"Yeah he says you have a peg leg, like a pirate."

I puff out my cheeks, avoiding laughing, "I do have a peg leg, but it's not like a pirate's."

"Well you look like you have two legs so I think he's lying."

I rap my knuckles against the outside of the plastic casing on my prosthetic, "nope."

His eyes go huge.

"I can show you, if you want." I'm in loose enough pants to roll them up to about my knee, he can see that if he wants.

"Really?"

"Yeah, totally. I have to sit down, though."

He manages to get me into the living room where it looks like Luka was assembling an outrageous lego building with curved walls in some spots.

"Here," I roll up my pant leg, showing him the end of my boot and then the start of the prosthetic.

"Cool," he immediately reaches out a hand to put on it, little fingers poking at the space where the titanium rod stops and the shin-shaped casing that protects the knee joint starts. "How does it work?"

I can feel Jessie's eyes on me as she sits down next to Luka assembling legos.

"Well," I reach up and scratch the back of my head. "It has a couple different little mechanics in it, so when I lift my leg, it bends like a knee, and when I drop it, it pulls out again." I can't really give him my preferred specs: poly-centric, manual lock, variable friction, hydraulic, he wouldn't know what to do with that information, normal people don't know what any of that even means.