Vignette #14
25 December 2021 – One Step at a Time
(Author's note: this chapter is dedicated to my son Sean and his continued recovery from Leigh's disease. Keep up the good work, Bruiser ...)
It was Christmas morning at the Stark residence – and as usual, Tony had spared no expense. The area surrounding the nine-foot-tall Douglas fir was inundated with well-wrapped presents. Or had been fifteen minutes ago; now, it was inundated with unwrapped presents, and the boxes, bags and bins that had once contained them.
"Okay, I'm gonna open this box now," Anthony Yensin Stark declared.
"Wait a second, A.Y.," his twin sister Anne Marie cautioned. "Let Jamey finish with hers first."
Tony smiled, patted Anne Marie on the shoulder, then wadded up another chunk of removed wrapping paper and shot a free throw into the garbage bag Pepper was holding one-handed. In the other hand was a half-eaten chocolate-covered pretzel, from a box of the same from Bloomingdale's that Tony had bought her for Christmas. (Okay, technically Natalie Rushman had bought it – on Tony's card, at Tony's behest. That's what personal assistants were for; close enough.)
"It'll just be a second," Jamey assured A.Y. – a debatable assertion, as it was a large box she was working on. But finally she got enough of the paper off to read the contents. "A racing bike! Oh, and it's not assembled – I get to put it together!"
"It was all I could do to keep your father from breaking out the tools …," Pepper drawled.
"Thank you! It's just what I wanted!" Jamey hugged Pepper, then Tony, before asking the latter, "can I build it later today?"
"Sure thing, kiddo – but use the lab downstairs. We don't want lubricant on the carpet."
"I know …," she said in her best put-upon ten-year-old voice.
A.Y., meanwhile, had needed no further prompting. He ripped the paper off his gift, to find a model engineering set. "Coolness! This is just like the one Jamey has!"
"Actually, that one's the latest version," Tony corrected. "It's a little bigger, more parts."
"Great – thanks!" A.Y. looked at Anne Marie. "Bet you're jealous …"
"Ha," she replied flatly. Anne Marie was surrounded by exactly what she'd wanted for Christmas: books, books and more books, including her own copies of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, A Young Person's Guide to U.S. History and (so she'd stop bogarting Dad's copies) the entire Ender Wiggin series. She was quite content to leave the inventing and tinkering to … well, to everyone else in the family except Mom.
Tony popped another wrapping-paper shot into the bag, then surveyed the remaining wreckage. "I … think that's everything. Time to start putting stuff away, troops."
"Oh, wait!" A.Y. declared.
"Did you spot one we missed?" Pepper asked.
"No, it's … um … I've got a surprise, but … it's in my room. I'll go get it." Quick as he could, he grabbed his crutches, stood up and levered himself out of the sunken living room and up the hall.
It had been an abnormally quiet June day at Stark Industries when Tony got the call. The number was Pepper's cell phone. "Tony, we've got an emergency."
Immediately, his blood froze. It had been a long time since he'd heard that note of panic in Pepper's voice. Clearly, this was no garden-variety problem. "What happened?"
"We were walking down to the beach, and A.Y. and Anne Marie ran ahead, and you know that cliff before the turn in the path … and I called out to him to be careful, but he didn't listen and he … he went over the …" Pepper started to hyperventilate.
Tony couldn't blame her – he knew that cliff, and would've fenced the portion of the path near it himself if it hadn't been public land. (He'd been tempted anyway.) It was about a forty-foot drop from that spot down to a rocky patch above the beach … "Pep, take a deep breath, hold it … hold it … have you called 9-1-1?"
Exhale. "Yes. They're sending the ambulance right now ..." She was clearly making an effort to keep herself under control.
"Okay, good. Did they say where they'd be taking him?"
"I … I think they said UCLA-Reagan."
"Okay, I'm on my way there. How's he doing? Are you with him right now?"
"Yes. But Tony …" The hysteria began to creep back into her voice. "Tony, he says he can't feel his legs!"
"Well … what can be done, Sam?" Tony asked dully. He and Pepper – and A.Y. – had just been given the doctor's findings. A.Y. had landed on the rocks below the cliff flat on his back. When he hit, a particularly sharp stone had broken through to knock one of his lumbar vertebrae out of alignment. Far enough that the bone had severed his spine.
"You know, Tony, if any other parent were to ask me that question, I'd be inclined to say 'nothing can be done.' But if there are two people on earth that can come up with a solution, I'd think it would be you and I." Dr. Samuel Bielecki knew whereof he spoke. Before joining the staff at UCLA-Reagan Medical Center, the neurosurgeon had been at Bethesda Naval Hospital, and was one of Dr. Jonah Goldman's assistants on the Pegasus Project. Pegasus had led to a new generation of fully operational replacement limbs for amputees, ones that linked directly to the patients' nervous systems. (And secondarily, to a lucrative new Medical Division at Stark Industries.)
Still, re-attaching a spinal column was another order of magnitude up from attaching a prosthetic leg to already-functional nerves … "Well … there's gotta be something we can do …" He glanced over at a red-eyed Pepper, who nodded and squeezed his hand.
"Dad?"
"Yeah, son?"
"You know the neural connectors you use in the prost … prostheses, right?"
"Yeah …" Tony thought he saw where A.Y. might be going with that question. Granted, the kid was only seven, but he was Tony and Pepper's kid, smart for his age …
A.Y. made his hands into fists, then put them together. "What if you connected two of them, like back-to-back?"
Tony's eyes widened. If he hasn't been so shell-shocked, he might have thought of it himself. Instead, his suddenly paraplegic son had spotted it. Translating the neural signals to electronic ones, and back again … "Ummm … it's not quite that simple. But … yeah, that's not a bad place to start ..."
Sam began musing aloud. "I'm no engineer, but that sounds like something that could work. It would have to be small enough to fit into the spinal column, but have enough processing power built in to …"
"No."
"What?"
"What's wrong, Dad?"
Tony was silent for a few seconds, then smiled. "Nothing's wrong, A.Y. I think … wait, I need to check some things." He grabbed his Stark FutureDesk tablet computer and moved closer to A.Y.'s bed, so they could both see the display, then motioned Sam to watch over his shoulder. "I've got an idea that might work – but I'm going to need you guys' help …"
"Tell me there's hope, Tony," Pepper pleaded.
"Oh, there's hope, all right," Tony assured her, then looked at their son. "Now … let's work on getting you back on your feet, dude."
Pepper looked toward the hallway where A.Y. had exited, and sighed heavily.
Tony waded through the discarded wrappings to sit beside her. "What's wrong, Pep?" He ruffled the hair at the back of her neck.
She sighed again. "It's just … every time I see him going around on those crutches or … or in the wheelchair, it's like I …" She couldn't go on. Instead she pulled out a tissue and began dabbing at her eyes.
Tony reached an arm around and pulled her into a hug. "Pep, he's gonna be okay. Look at the progress he's made in just six months. He's up and around, he almost never needs the wheelchair, he's … he's talking about how he wants to go back to school." They had made the decision, shortly after the operation, that A.Y. would have as much time as necessary to spend on possible recovery – including home instruction until further notice. He was a Stark; they had no doubt he'd be able to keep up with his academics.
"But how long will it take? How long until my baby is … is normal again?"
Now Tony sighed. Because there was no way to answer that question. No one had ever been in A.Y.'s position, because before A.Y. there was no recovery from having one's spinal column severed. Furthermore, all of the replacement limbs Stark Industries had built were external attachments for adults, people who had stopped growing. Putting something inside, inside a growing boy, was a whole different kettle of fish.
And then there was the "my baby" part. Jamey was very much "daddy's girl," but A.Y. (for all that he loved building things) had largely taken after Pepper, right up to the strawberry-blond hair. (Anne Marie … they couldn't figure out who she took after. A bit of both, wrapped around a whole lot of doing-my-own-thing.) Having something so terrible happen to the child she felt closest to cut Pepper to the heart. Over and over again …
Jamey came over to hug Pepper from the other side. "He's going to get better, Mom. Don't be sad. You watch."
"You watch," Anne Marie repeated from her fortress of books, and glanced toward the hallway herself.
In the end, Tony, with A.Y.'s and Dr. Bielecki's (and several other people's) help, had come up with a solution. The processing power, electrical power and overall hardware needed for a spinal implant could just barely be packed into and around the hole within one lumbar vertebra … of a full-grown adult. A.Y.'s were smaller, though, so they had to take a drastic step – hollow out the vertebra that had caused the problem, and hope the bone healed and grew around the implant. Furthermore, the juice to run the implant – a 5mm-diameter Stark Industries arc reactor, the smallest they made – was not only outside the spine, it was at skin level for both easy access and heat dissipation. That meant a plastic access plate on his lower back, which had to be made waterproof so the poor kid could take a bath. And to add one more problem on top of all the rest, UCLA-Reagan needed special permission from the FDA to put such a foreign object inside A.Y. Tony'd called in favors by the handful to make that happen.
The operation – all fourteen hours of it, once you added in reconnecting muscles, tendons and everything else that had torn loose in the fall or needed to be moved out of the way to put in the hardware – was a success. With a big dirty asterisk attached.
"Tony, we're now finished with the easy stuff." This was from Dr. Jonah Goldman, the former Pegasus Project lead M.D., whom Dr. Bielecki had called in to assist in the orthopedic aspects of the surgery. It was the day after the operation, a week after A.Y.'s accident, and Tony was sitting with the six doctors who'd taken part.
"The easy stuff?" Tony asked, incredulous.
"Well, the hard stuff for us. But this has, believe it or not, been the easy part for you. You've got a lot of work ahead of you – you, your wife, and most of all your son."
"Ah. I get it. I think."
"You've seen that Anthony can feel his legs and feet again, that he can move them a little. Clearly the new … spinal linkage is working. But now he has to learn how to use his legs and feet again. He had months in the womb, then years outside it, to do that. Now … now he'll have to start from scratch. He has an advantage – his brain remembers how to do it. But now he'll have to get the bones, the muscles, the tendons to obey those orders from his brain again."
"Well … that doesn't sound too difficult. I mean, as long as the signals are getting through …"
"I didn't say 'difficult,' Tony. I said 'hard'."
Tony looked around the table. Everyone else seemed to be following this but him. "What am I missing here?"
"Because it's not just a matter of getting the signals. It's a matter of working with Anthony for several hours every day, seven days a week, you and Mrs. Stark and whoever else you bring in helping him move his legs, stretching and manipulating them in a way that you and I don't have to do because we get that exercise and that reinforcement of our muscle memory simply by walking and sitting and … and living. Everything involved is fairly simple, so it won't be difficult. But it will be hard, because you're gonna have to take a big chunk out of your life and spend it on this – with no guarantee that your son will have a full recovery, or any recovery."
Dr. Goldman paused and shook his head. "I've seen people have nervous breakdowns while dealing with far less serious injuries to their children. I've seen couples divorce under the stress. I've seen folks become addicts because they drug themselves to try to get through the days. And I want you to know this ahead of time, Tony. Because there are going to be some dark times ahead for you and Pepper, for your daughters, and for your son too. You will need to be strong in ways you never knew existed – and I say that as someone who knows your bio better than most. I want you to be prepared for that. 'Cause this will not be fun."
Everyone in the room let the silence stretch.
Finally, Tony spoke softly. "Doc, he's my son. I'll do whatever it takes."
"That's the spirit." And the old doctor finally cracked a smile.
Dr. Goldman was right, for the most part. Once A.Y. was discharged, Tony and Pepper started working alternating days at Stark headquarters, so somebody would always be at home, working with A.Y. That changed to alternating half-days, as a physical therapist was hired to be with him and work him like crazy every morning. Pretty soon, they settled into a pattern, but the pattern usually included having no energy for anything by early evening. Jamey and Anne Marie had to pick up some slack around the house – doing chores and making sure they had their own stuff laid out for the next day, things that Mom and Dad had always done for them before.
But he was wrong on one point. After a while, it did start to become fun, sort of. And the person most responsible for that was A.Y.
Day after day, he endured all the exercises – those he could do and those he had to have done for him – usually with a smile. He pushed himself (and occasionally his parents) as far as he could, rested, then started back in again. He devoured books about people like Dennis Byrd and Wilma Rudolph who had overcome terrible disabilities, and shared bits of them with everyone around him. More times than he could count, Tony came home to a story from Pepper about how A.Y. had lifted her spirits; there were also a few times when Pepper arrived and got the same from Tony.
In addition to physical therapy duties, Tony found another way to contribute – by tinkering, of course. (That, and giving himself a crash course in physiology.) A programmable electronic pedal exerciser, an adjustable framework for holding someone who couldn't support their own weight upright while using a treadmill, range-of-motion robotic manipulators for ankles, for knees, for hips, even for toes – all these things came pouring out of the famous basement lab. Some of them not only got used by A.Y., they were also replicated for Stark Industries Medical, usually with a sticky note attached saying something like "think there might be a market for this? – T.S."
And slowly, the effects began to show. A.Y. moved from a wheelchair to a gait trainer, from a gait trainer to a reverse walker, from a reverse walker to crutches. Weekly follow-up visits to UCLA-Reagan became bi-weekly, then monthly. As fall came, he started venturing outside again under his own power, occasionally to the consternation of his parents. He kept up with his studies at home, with Anne Marie bringing home extra copies of the homework so he didn't have to worry about falling behind. He even took the time to write some letters – to the Malibu City Council, asking them to build a fence along the clifftop to prevent further misadventures (they voted to do so), and to the FDA in support of approval for clinical trials of what was now being called the Stark Implanted Spinal Linkage (still pending).
And somewhere in there, he also managed to read about twenty novels, most of them written for much higher grade levels. Not to mention being a general annoyance to his sisters, the birthright of any little brother worth his salt. (Though he did tone it down after he got a bloody nose – his reward from Anne Marie for purposely tripping her with a crutch.) But his primary focus was on one goal and one goal alone.
He was going to get better. Come hell or high water.
Tony continued to comfort Pepper as Jamey and Anne Marie began breaking down the empty boxes for recycling, each glancing at the hallway every so often. Once, Anne Marie looked that way for several seconds, then smiled and nodded – but thankfully her parents didn't notice.
They did, however, notice when he said, "okay, I'm back."
Pepper looked up – and gasped.
Anthony Yensin Stark was walking back to the living room – somewhat unsteadily, but without any outside support. He trailed one hand along the hallway wall until it ended, then simply held his hands slightly away from his body for balance. Coming to the steps leading down to the sunken living room, he took them one at a time – holding one foot out into empty space, then bending the opposite knee so his foot landed on the next step …
Pepper's mouth was hanging open as she made little strangled squeaking noises. But Jamey and Anne Marie were grinning like the cats who'd caught the canary. And Tony noticed. "Girls … something you want to share?"
Anne Marie giggled. Jamey spoke up for both of them. "A.Y.'s been asking us to help him practice. He didn't want you to know yet …"
"… 'Cause he wanted it to be a surprise," Anne Marie finished. "For Christmas!"
A.Y. reached the bottom step, let out a sigh of relief, and said "Surprise."
The noise Pepper made couldn't be translated into letters. She sprang up from her seat, tears streaming down her face, and ran to her son, enveloping him in a hug that threatened to cause both of them to fall over. She rocked back and forth for a couple of minutes, until finally she regained enough composure to let him free.
A.Y. smiled at his mom, accepted a high five from Anne Marie and a (gentle) fist bump from Jamey. Then he shuffled over to his dad, who'd watched the whole thing with a huge grin. "I'm doing it. I'm getting better."
"Knew you could." Then Tony, still beaming, stood up, took A.Y.'s hand and gave it a firm shake. The kind of handshake a man gives a fellow man. "Knew you could."