Oscar Goldman watched from his seat high in the observation room above the operating room. Steve was laying on his stomach, unconscious. A tube protruding from his mouth was attached to a ventilator, which was breathing for him. His back and buttocks were uncovered by the nurses as they prepped him for surgery. This was the first surgery to take place in Rudy's new operating room. Now that it was finished, Rudy had decided to stop using the hospital's operating room and use the one in his lab. It would be easier to maintain security in this new lab.
Rudy had the hospital's top spinal surgeon, Dr. Ross, working with him on this surgery. It was tricky surgery. Any mistake and Steve could be paralyzed or worse, killed.
Oscar grimaced as he watched Dr. Ross push the blade into Steve's skin and cut a straight line down the middle of his back and buttocks. Skin was peeled back until Steve's spine was revealed. A bowl of liquid cirosium was nearby and Oscar watched in fascination as Rudy coated each vertebra with the liquid metal. It was painstaking work. It was even more fascinating to watch the liquid disappear as the bone absorbed it into its structure, the bone turning from white to a shade of grey. Hours later they were done.
Next, a clear bottle was brought into the room. In it was a mixture of cirosium and a special type of plastic polymer that wouldn't harden but, instead, would maintain elasticity while greatly increasing durability and strength. Rudy let Dr. Ross handle this part of the procedure as it was especially delicate. Filling a large syringe with the mixture, Dr. Ross carefully injected a small amount into each intervertebral disk.
Twelve hours later they were finished, and they sewed Steve's back up. Oscar was exhausted and he had only watched. He couldn't imagine how tired Rudy, Dr. Ross, and the rest of the surgical team must have been. Rudy looked up at Oscar and gave him a tired nod. The surgery had been a success.
A circo-electric bed was wheeled into the operating room and Steve was carefully moved on to it. Once he was strapped in, the power was turned on and the bed rotated to the prone position. This took the pressure off Steve's spine as it healed.
Steve groggily opened his eye and found himself staring at the floor instead of the ceiling. He groaned when he felt pain radiating from his back. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw two pairs of legs standing next to him. One pair belonged to a man and the other pair belonged to a woman. It was Rudy and Carla. They quickly got down on the floor and looked up at Steve.
"Welcome back, Steve." Rudy smiled at him as he grabbed Steve's wrist and took his pulse. "How are you feeling?"
"Back hurts."
"We'll give you something to make you more comfortable," Rudy replied.
"Where am I? Why am I facing down?"
"You're in my lab's operating room. We decided to keep you here for a while on the circo-electric bed to help your spine heal,"
"How long have I been here?"
"About a week," Rudy replied. "I want to keep you here on this bed for another week before we let you go back to your room."
"How did the surgery go?"
"It was a success," Rudy assured him. "Once your spine has finished healing it will be ready for your bionic limbs."
A week later Steve woke up in his room. This time he saw the ceiling when he opened his eye. He didn't remember much of the past week. They had kept him so medicated he drifted in and out of consciousness the entire week. When it came time to move him into his room, they knocked him out with a sedative.
Carla walked in and smiled when she saw that he was awake. "Good morning. How are you feeling?"
"Confused. How did I get here?"
"We brought you here last night."
"I don't remember that."
"Well, you were sedated so you wouldn't remember," Carla replied. "Are you hungry?"
Steve suddenly realized that he was. "Yeah, I am actually."
"Great! I have a nice zero-residue liquid protein mixture for you," she said as she raised the head of the bed and then picked up a glass of the milky-white liquid.
Steve groaned. "Can't I get something solid to eat?"
Carla gave him a sympathetic look. "Sorry, this is it for a while."
Steve took the glass from her and took a sip. The vanilla flavoring made it passably palatable. "I'd rather have some bacon and eggs," he said as he took another sip.
Rudy walked in just then. "Ah, glad to see you're awake and eating!"
"You call this eating?" Steve replied.
"C'mon, it can't be any worse than the squeezable tubes of food you ate in space, right?"
Steve sighed and took another sip.
"How are you feeling?" Rudy asked.
Steve thought about it for a few seconds. "Strange."
"Oh? How so?"
"Well, I have a backache. But it's different from anything I've ever felt."
"How different?"
"Well, my bones actually ache and they feel...heavy. I noticed that same heavy feeling in my hips when I woke up from my catatonia but this feels even more pronounced."
Rudy nodded his head. "That's your spine getting used to the cirosium that it absorbed. The cirosium hardens within the pores of the bone; and since cirosium is heavier than bone, it will feel heavier. You'll get used to it and eventually won't notice the few extra pounds."