Notes: This fic contains a brief, glancing reference to another fic - "Gargantuan Insect Mastication" by SSJAlhazred, which, I believe, takes the grand prize as the Most Unlikely Speculation Fic this summer. It's strange but good, in a thoroughly geeky way, and it's up here at at FF.N. Thisfic is not dedicated to anyone, but it was written with the memory of someone in mind: my grandfather, who served as Lt. Colonel in the Air Force during World War II, and who lost the lower part of a leg to diabetes much later in life. Although I was very young in those last few years, and did not get to see him often, the time I spent with him remains sharply drawn on my memory.
The hospital was cold and smelled strongly of chemicals, the way all hospitals did. He was so used to the noise and bustle outside his room's door that he hardly noticed it anymore. The last time he'd been in one, apart from the jaw thing, it had been with a badly twisted knee - the result of slipping on a wet dock - and he remembered very clearly how much he'd thought it had hurt, and how convinced he'd been that it was a terrible injury.
He remembered limping around stiffly with a brace and a cane, then limping around not so stiffly without the brace or the cane, and then that wonderful day when his knee had suddenly healed and no longer hurt at all, except when the barometric pressure shifted or it snowed. He'd walked without a single hitch from then on. He'd even run without the slightest twinge of pain from his knee - although any twinge might have gone unnoticed beneath his more desperate need to force oxygen into his lungs.
Most of all, he remembered how hard it was to play with little AJ before his knee had healed. There was an image that kept sticking in his mind, and it might have been lodged in there with giant barbed thorns, because right now he very much doubted that he could ever duplicate the scene again. How strange it was, that the thing he should most regret would be the inability to pick up his son and toss him in the air. AJ was getting too big for that anyway.
"So... uh... the doctor said they, uh, saved your knee," Mikey said, fumbling for words in the chair beside his bed.
He nodded. "It's still pretty mangled, but they think it'll be able to bend and support my weight."
"That's good," Mikey said immediately, then added a tentative, "Right?"
He nodded again, even managing a small smile for his little brother, who looked pale and drawn but at least wasn't crying unceasingly like Harriet had. She had cried, and cried, and eventually it had grated so sharply on his nerves that he'd told her, in no subtle way, to leave. At that point she'd burst into more tears, and he had been so glad to see her go that it almost buried the pain he felt from hurting her further. He'd thought that the loss of baby Sarah had wreaked havoc on their relationship, but it looked like this would surpass it by a mile.
He'd had other visitors aside from his wife and brother - his father, for one, who dropped in often, every time with a variation on the same speech about duty and sacrifice and manhood; he thought his father was more proud of him now ("my son the war hero, got his leg blown off saving an Afghani kid") than he'd ever been. Commander Rabb and Colonel MacKenzie had been in several times, looking guiltier each and every time, and Admiral Chegwidden had also shown up, along with the better part of the JAG staff. They had all brought him things like balloons and flowers and cards, but he'd had the nurses get rid of most of it. I'm fine, he'd told them; give these to someone else on the floor, someone who needs the reassurance. The truth was all the well- wishes made him feel even worse.
Little AJ had been in to see him once - a fifteen-minute ordeal of keeping the pain off his face. He'd told Harriet not to bring him back until Daddy was able to sit up without wanting to faint or vomit. In the meantime, he had a picture of his son next to his bed.
After a small hesitation, Mikey asked, "So are they going to give you a, a prosthesis?"
He shifted slightly, in a futile attempt to ease the pain that seemed to stay with him constantly these days, and said, "As soon as the swelling goes down, and the sutures heal, and they're sure that the... stump is not infected, then I'll get fitted." He cursed himself for stumbling on the word. He was going to have to get used to saying it, to thinking it, because there was no way around it. "And after that is rehab... a lot of rehab."
Mikey nodded, taking it all in, and then offered up an uncertain grin. "Hey, maybe it'll be like that show, remember, with the cyborg guy? He made that chi-i-ing noise when he ran, and it was always in slow motion?"
He had to laugh. "The Six Million Dollar Man. I can't believe you remember that."
"Well, you had that poster on your wall for years," Mikey said, clearly pleased that his attempt at lightening things up had been successful. "And I got your old lunchbox."
"Gentleman, we can rebuild him," he quoted, thoughtfully, then shook his head, chosing to continue to be amused by the whole conversation instead of being depressed or angry or bitter - although, he had to admit to himself, he was all of those things. "Yeah, too bad life isn't like science fiction. I mean, otherwise, I might have been rescued by aliens and been saved by their advanced medicine."
Mikey laughed a little at that, but it was hesitant laughter, as if he wasn't sure if the joke was still funny. Then he sat up straighter and picked up the bag sitting at his feet - his two good feet, that would carry him through the world with a symmetry that was easy to take for granted - saying, "Oh, I almost forgot - I brought you something!"
He waited, curious, until Mikey placed a thin silver object in his hand with a ceremonial flourish. It was a little different from the bulky machine he'd had in college, once upon a time, but the words stamped across the top were unmistakable. "A GameBoy?"
"A GameBoy Advance," Mikey corrected. His smile had returned full force, and showed no hesitation this time, just eagerness. "And a whole bunch of games. I thought it would be good, you know, to have something to keep you busy when there's no one here. I mean, I know I would want something, and-"
"Thank you, Mikey," he said, firmly, and managed to push himself up from the bed enough to give his little brother an awkward hug. The movement tugged at the IV line in his arm. "It's great. But these are like sixty dollars - and the games are even worse. Don't tell me you bought them
all..."
"Oh, no," Mikey said quickly, "everybody at JAG gave some money - you know, five dollars here and ten dollars there... Even Lt. Singer. She actually donated the most. I think she paid for the entire Masters of the Universe game."
He chuckled, fingering the electronic device. It was probably a "glad you're out of my way" gift, but he was still willing to give her the benefit of the doubt and chalk it up to a latent sense of actual human feeling. "Wow. Be careful; any more bombshells like that and they may have to put me back on the ventilator."
Mikey smiled again, then shuffled his feet. "Um, Bud? Are you... are you really going to be okay?"
He looked at his little brother and saw, instead of the petty officer on the verge of going to the Naval Academy, the kid with goofy hair he'd spent the better part of his childhood trying to protect from the cruel world. And it was with that same protectiveness that he now gave Mikey a reassuring smile and lied: "Yeah, Mikey, I'm going to be fine."
End
Bonus note: For those who don't know, the phrase "a man barely alive" comes from the opening
theme of The Six Million Dollar Man, along with the phrase "gentlemen, we can rebuild him."