Okay, so… I had this dream last night, and I just couldn't let go of it before it was on my computer screen…

Note: This is set in the future somewhere, maybe ten years up ahead (Okay not really sure when, but 10 years could fit… Say 10-15 for good measure…)

A squeal of joy was what woke him up, quickly followed by the overly excited and repeated word 'Grandpa'. So much for falling asleep on the couch.

Jack didn't even get the chance to brace for impact as his four year old grandson jumped on top of him.

He let out a low groan, but once his ribs stopped stinging from being prodded with pointy knees he smiled down at the kid who had lodged himself between Jack and the back of the sofa.

"Hey kiddo…" he said ruffling the kid's hair with his good hand. And cast a glimpse of the clock on the wall, it read 5:25. "What are you doing up already?"

"I woke up!" the kid beamed. "Can we go play?"

"You know what? I think grandpa needs his beauty sleep…" Jack chuckled, "But give me an hour, and we'll play. After we make breakfast for mom and dad…"

The kid stuck out his lower lip for a second, but then a new light lit up behind his eyes.

"Can I nap here with you?" he asked, and wiggled around to get more comfortable against Jack.

"Sure thing, kiddo…" Jack smiled and let his head fall back against the armrest. "If you lay still…"

He felt the little boy nod against his shoulder, and smiled.

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At 06:30 his phone started buzzing, and Jack almost jerked awake. He looked over at his phone, then down at Jacob.

Then he cleared his throat, "Hey, bear…"

The four-year-old woke up from his slumber, and looked up.

"You kinda have to move if I'm going to shut that alarm off…" Jack said with a nod towards his phone.

The young boy scrambled across Jack's torso and down to the floor, waiting for Jack to do something about the annoying sound coming off the phone.

Jack sat up, and reached for his phone with his left hand. It was a long time since he had reached out with his right by mistake, but the kid still watched him with wonder in his eyes.

"Grandpa…" he started, Jack nodded. "What happened to your arm?"

Jack smiled a weak smile and looked down at his right arm.

"I broke it a few too many times…" he shrugged.

"Like I did last summer on the bike?" the kid asked eagerly, then his expression changed into a more serious and maybe a little frightened one. "Will that happen to me if I break my arm again?"

Jack shook his head.

"Takes a lot more than that…" he reassured the kid.

"How many times did you break your arm?"

Jack let out a short, nervous laugh. "Kid, I honestly don't remember… But it was a lot of times…"

"But when did it get bad?"

Jack shrugged again, "It started hurting sometimes after I broke it in 1991, I was in the military. They fixed it up, and put some wires in it, but it started aching every now and then…"

"What's aching?"

"That's when it hurts, a special kind of hurting…"

"Oh…" the kid nodded, and looked at Jack's arm again. "But why did it get this bad?"

"That's because we flipped a car the twelfth time dad and I had a mission in Cairo. I was in the passenger back-seat, some local guy was driving. Mac was beside me…"

"Where was mommy?"

"She was home, here… With you…"

"I was born?"

"Yeah, you were only a couple of months…"

The kid nodded again.

"The car flipped, rolled a bunch of times, and when we came to a stop… I had my arm trapped under the outside of the door. The car was laying on my side…"

"Did that hurt?"

Jack swallowed, and nodded.

"What did daddy do then?"

"He wasn't awake… He had hit his head a little… And the driver was also asleep…" Jack thought back, "But it was sand, so I managed to dig my arm out… But it hurt, a lot…"

Jack offered a second look down at his right arm where scarring covered most of his hand and lower arm.

"But then I had to get dad out of the car, because it started smoking out of the engine…"

"But your arm was owie…" Jacob looked up at him with big eyes.

"My arm was owie, but I couldn't let dad stay in the car… Because that wasn't safe…" Jack smirked, "I managed to get us all out before the car started burning, and we called an ambulance. Then we traveled back home."

"But your arm was still bad?"

Jack nodded and lifted his right arm.

"The doctors tried to fix it as good as they could. They set in plates here, here and here…" Jack told as he pointed to the places along his ulna, radius and the general area of his wrist. "And they put in a lot of pins in my hand, to keep the pieces of bone in place… So that it would grow back together…"

"Did it grow?"

Jack nodded, "Yeah…"

"Why aren't your arm good? If it did grow?"

"Because there was so much damage, it didn't stop hurting after it was healed…" Jack shrugged, staring at his wrist. The only reason his wrist didn't hang limply was the plate which still fused his wrist.

"Does it hurt now?" the kid's eyes grew comically, like he was afraid that his grandpa hurt.

Jack shook his head. "No, they fixed that…"

"How did they fix that?"

Jack lowered his hand again, and pointed to a scar by his elbow.

"See this one?"

Jacob nodded.

"They opened me up there, and cut a couple of nerves. Do you know what nerves are?"

The kid shook his head.

"Well, when you want your arm to do something like this," Jack said and did a simple motion with his left, "The brain sends some kind of morse code through something called nerves. It goes dah-dah-di-di-dah-dah, and your arm does what the brain tells it to do…"

Jacob nodded.

"And that works the other way around too… When you touch something, a hot plate for instance, your hand signals to your brain di-di-di-dah-dah-dah-di-di-dit and tells you to remove your hand, because it's too hot." Jack explained playing that the table was the stove. "My arm was thinking that everything hurt, all the time… So the doctors suggested amputation, and I asked if there was another way… They suggested cutting off the nerves, so that my arm couldn't call up to my brain to tell that it still hurt…"

The kid stared long at Jack's right hand. "How does it feel now?"

"I can't feel it…" Jack said, pinching the back of his hand to prove the point. "Or when I think I do, it's like that feeling you have when your legs fall asleep. But I know it's not my hand, or lower arm… It's from the end of the nerve they cut…"

"And that's why you can't move your right hand?"

"Yep, you're just as smart as your parents…" Jack smiled, and reached out with his left hand to ruffle Jacob's hair again. "I can move my shoulder and elbow, but not my wrist and hand… Now… What do you want for breakfast?"

"PANCAKES!"

"Okay, let's go to the kitchen and whip up some pancakes. Then we go wake up mom and dad…"

Jacob nodded eagerly again.

Okay, so there is more…

If you're interested, I'll post it…