After they touched down at the depo and Jake had handed the kids off to a trusted medic on the crew, he headed straight for the showers and, directly from there, to the gym.
The doc had said all the exercise was overcompensation for what Jake had lost. He was probably right. Jake had gained nearly 20 pounds in muscle over the last five years. He'd been fit and in shape in his late 20's; the rigors of a career as a firefighter called for a good physic. But now in his early 30's, people were comparing him to WWE wrester John Cena. His neck and chest were thick and ropy with muscle, his arms and legs as wide around as small tree-trunks, and his abs were so flat and hard that Mark had almost broken his hand by punching Jake in the stomach once.
He carried it well and wasn't grotesque like the bodybuilders on TV. The ladies seemed to like it. Amy Hicks seemed to like it.
Jake would rather have been a skinny computer nerd and whole rather than a ripped fireman who lacked the one thing that would make such a man the complete package.
It had been a stupid accident. He'd gotten wound up in an old barbed wire fence during the wild-fires of '15 and everything around him was just burning like hell. His team-mates couldn't have been more than 300 yards away, but the thick smoke had made communicating his position impossible. Then his oxygen ran out and he remembered something like falling asleep while in the middle of a nightmare. He woke up in the hospital with third degree burns where the wire wrapped around his waist had been hot enough to sear through his gear, leaving damage muscle deep wherever it had touched his body.
Oh yeah, there too. Especially there.
Recovery had sucked. Therapy had sucked. The last five years in which he'd basically had a soft, dead weight hanging between his legs really sucked. Oh, he still got turned on all the time still, big time by the likes of Dr. Amy Hicks, but his libido might as well have been dead for all the effect it had on his groin.
The doctors said it was muscle and nerve damage which caused a certain paralysis. He'd tried little blue pills, testosterone checkups, "guaranteed" medicine ordered off the internet, a high-quality pump; nothing helped. So he'd thrown himself into his job, worked out harder, and avoided the subject of sex and kids… and mice. Mice were just creepy.
