Oscar Goldman looked at his watch. It was 11:00 a.m. Rudy Wells and his team had started surgery on Steve four hours ago. Shouldn't they be done by now? How long does it take to repair a fractured pelvis?
Oscar hated waiting and, yet, a lot of his job entailed waiting. Sending his agents out into the field and waiting for the results. Giving the green light to a scientific project and then waiting for its completion. Yes, there was a lot of waiting with being the director of the OSI. Maybe that's why he was such a hands-on director. He liked being out in the field coordinating the work. It was much more preferable to sitting behind a desk all day.
But on days like today, all he could do was sit behind his desk and wait. Wait for the news that Steve had made it through yet another surgery, hopefully. He really shouldn't be worried. He knew he had the best medical team in the country working on Steve; and Steve had made it through much tougher surgeries than this. Yet, it was surgery; and surgery always came with risk.
He put down the report he was reading. He gave up trying to concentrate on it.
Oscar had managed to be at the Colorado facility for each of Steve's surgeries. In fact, Oscar had made his Colorado office his primary office for the indefinite future while Rudy and his team worked on the Six Million Dollar Man Project, that's what everyone involved had started calling it. It was definitely more challenging scheduling his appointments these days and Oscar still had to make frequent trips back to his Washington DC office to take care of business. But it was all worth it to him to be near the action. He knew, of course, that they could manage just fine without him. But Oscar was never one to just sit back and let everyone else do the work. If there was anything he could do to help, even if it was just to facilitate something or offer support, he would be there.
Oscar was no scientist, but he loved science. That love of science coupled with a background in naval intelligence and law had made him the perfect candidate for running the OSI. Oscar had overseen a lot of exciting projects during his time at the OSI, but none captured his imagination more than the Six Million Dollar Man Project. The thought of creating the world's first fully-functional cyborg excited him to no end. He had a hard time understanding Steve's objection to becoming bionic. What man in Steve's position wouldn't want to walk again? Oscar could have gone to any veterans' hospital in the country and there would have been men lining up and begging for the opportunity that Steve was getting. And yet Steve wanted no part of it. That baffled Oscar.
One of Oscar's talents was the ability to size a person up quickly. That ability gave him another talent, the gift of persuasion. Because he was able to size up people so quickly, he could figure out what they wanted; and once he knew what they wanted, he was able to get what he wanted. It was a gift that had served him well during negotiations and peace talks. From reading Steve's file, Oscar had a good idea what Steve wanted and what motivated him. And that's what made Steve's resistance to becoming bionic so puzzling. From everything Oscar read, Steve should have been jumping at this opportunity, and yet he wasn't. Yes, he knew what Rudy had told him about Steve's mistrust of the OSI, but he felt there was something missing…some other reason for Steve's resistance. Of course, Oscar hadn't been able to talk to Steve yet. That was frustrating. But he knew that once he was able to have a conversation with Steve, he would be able to get down to the bottom of what was bothering him.
The phone rang. It was Carla.
"Yes, Miss Peterson." Oscar listened, then, "He's out of surgery? That's great. I'll be down shortly. Thank you."
Steve was asleep when Oscar walked into the room. Wires from Steve's forehead attached him to the electro-sleep machine. Rudy was standing next to the bed checking the instruments.
"Well that took longer than I thought it would. Is he okay?"
"Yes, the surgery went very smoothly," replied Rudy. "Because we had waited so long to repair his pelvis, it had started to heal in the wrong position. But I was expecting that. We had to do an osteotomy, realign the bone and then reattach it with plate and screws. But it took longer because, while we were in there, I decided to go ahead and reinforce his entire pelvic girdle, which includes the hip bones, with cirosium."
"Why did you do that?"
"Well, we'd have to do it anyway when we make him bionic," Rudy explained. "You see, normal human bones can't handle the heavy lifting and the impact of high jumps that comes along with bionics. If we didn't reinforce them, they would simply break under the pressure. Now, normally I wouldn't have done this until after we have his permission to make him bionic, but I was in there anyway and it didn't make sense to have to open him up twice so I went ahead and did it. It did require opening him up even more to reach all the bone structure, but I can tell you this, he'll never break those bones again."
