To Walk Again - II
This time the light into which Nooj stared was in his own room of the hospital. Since the surgical intervention was to be minimal, Gaing had seen no need for the strictly sterile surroundings of the operating theatre and had opted to bring in portable work lights and get the task done without undue fuss. He had peeled back the synthetic flesh that covered the stump of the thigh and was probing deeply into the neural sockets he had installed, the ones meant for the reception of the nerve bundles intended to activate the mental controls of the machina leg.
"There! Can you feel that?"
The man on the bed closed his eyes and concentrated. "Only faintly, move again. Yes, there it is. Pull back and let me try."
Gaing made note of the faint motion in the cables running to the knee. "All right, that's the right path. Try again." Again the cable moved, this time more strongly and the knee began to flex. "Stop! Let me tighten the connection. That one's working."
Nooj felt the hot flare that signaled the act of sealing. Then he prepared his mind to detect the next group of neurons.
Much later, Gaing looked up and wearily took off the heavy magnifiers. "That should do it. The connections are all there and wired right; it's just a matter of training them to respond automatically. This limb is much weightier than the arm and won't move as easily. I'm afraid you have a long hard job ahead."
"Not before I get some sleep," the man's response was almost too soft to hear. "I'm ready to call this day a loss and start over tomorrow."
"That's not a bad idea. You'll be sore anyway with all this poking around and there's no sense exacerbating the situation. Take the rest of the day off and recover; there's not much left of this day anyway. I'll check in tomorrow and I'll tell ... Gilden, is it? ... to leave you in peace for the time being. She seems a competent and sympathetic woman." There was the hint of suggestiveness in his voice.
"Yes, she is. I always appreciate and recognize competence. And I am accustomed to skilled women; most of my female crèche-mates proved to be excellent warriors." Nooj was not too tired to scotch the hint.
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He was no longer physically tired but exhausted in a way that left him unable to either move or think. The preceding day had been devoted to locating and sealing the connections between the machina leg and the neural pathways that would control it and he had expected to wake this morning refreshed and ready to begin the tedious work of actually using those paths. Instead, he was lying inert and dull, staring at the ceiling without the will to struggle out of bed and get started with the prescribed exercises. This was in sharp contrast to his attitude two days before when he had threatened to disobey his therapist and continue working on his own. Even before the completion of the last surgery, he had felt this sense of malaise, this reluctance to make any effort at all. He seemed to himself to have given up, to have abandoned the battle to regain his competence, to walk again, to return to the arenas where he had spent most of his life. He didn't think he had become a coward at this advanced date, but there seemed to be no logical explanation for his feelings. Perhaps he was experiencing some sort of delayed reaction to all that had happened in the past week or maybe Gaing was right and he was tumbling headlong into a depression precipitated by doubts unacknowledged in his own mind. He didn't know the answers to these questions and was far too tired to take them on.
Nooj was unaccustomed to doubting himself but quite used to self-examination. It was a routine exercise among his kind, this delving into the deepest parts of the psyche in search of errant thoughts and unacceptable habits. Now, he began to look. When he opened his eyes again, he had found nothing to cause his soul-weariness, nothing to excuse his lassitude.
With an abrupt movement, he heaved himself up in the bed, groping for the rails as he prepared to begin the day's duties whether he felt inclined to do so or not. He was nothing if not disciplined, he assured himself. He was no weak, puling infant to lie abed until it was convenient to rise.
Once upright, he contemplated the problem of dressing. Usually an orderly would help him manage the job but he felt instinctively he must do as much for himself as possible in order to conquer the strange exhaustion which had possessed him. The chief problem was, naturally, involved with the leg. It was difficult to work the clumsy unbending limb into even a shortened length of breeches and to tuck the material smoothly under the sheath so it both stayed put and didn't chafe. Since the arm was responding better every day, he anticipated no difficulty with his shirt, not even with the studs and other fastenings.
He sighed in resignation as he realized sitting on the edge of the bed was not getting anything accomplished and reached for his cane. Painfully limping to the cabinet which held his possessions, he selected the most loosely tailored uniform available and struggled into it. He was sweating and flushed by the time he had the last scrap of the fabric distributed about his person in the proper fashion. Dark shapes hovered at the edges of his vision and he heard the ambient noises around him as though they echoed in a vast emptiness.
Not daring to pause, lest he not be able to get started again, Nooj began the long journey to the door when Gilden suddenly loomed in front of his dimming vision. He heard her call something he couldn't understand and then it was all dark for him. And silent. He felt himself falling, collapsing in sections like an imploding building.
"Get him up and on the bed! Quick, now." Gilden snapped at the attendant who had trailed her into the room. "Be careful. Don't hurt him any more." Had she not been an Al Bhed, she would have been wringing her hands in panicky distress.
Nooj swam back into awareness. He was recumbent again, again looking into the face of Gaing. The surgeon had an uncommonly grim expression as he directed a narrow beam into his patient's eyes.
"Awake, are you? You know it's not a surgeon's job to do this sort of routine doctoring and if you weren't such a unique monster I wouldn't be here." The bantering note seemed to hide something. "Are you trying to undo my work again?"
"No..." It came out a croaking whisper and Nooj tried again. "No. I woke up with a sense of exhaustion and was trying to ..."
"Be the stoic and the overachiever, as usual." Gaing finished the sentence. "You're not healed yet. Your injuries are beyond the scope of the spells we have and we must wait for your body to do what it can. You can't keep pushing this hard and not pay for it. Have you any realization what the last few days have required from your internal resources? Of course, you woke up tired. You've emptied your glass and have to wait for it to fill again. Gilden! Have the orderly undress him and keep him in bed for the day."
"No! I can't waste the time. I'm all right now – ready to continue to work on moving the leg." Nooj tried to push himself up and was humiliated to realize the Al Bhed was restraining him with one hand in the center of his chest.
"Shut up. Do you want me to sedate you or strap you down? This is going to be a day of rest for you one way or another." Gaing was neither angry not brusque, only calmly certain.
The room was spinning and the dark shadows gathering again before his eyes when Nooj grudging acquiesced, accepting he had no choice. He relaxed back against the pillows and closed his eyes again as he felt the competent hands of the attendant begin to remove the clothing which had cost him so much effort to don.
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Then it was another dawn and another awakening. This time he was not alone. Both Gilden and one of the more burly orderlies was in the room closely observing him.
"To what do I owe this honor?" he asked. "Have you been here all night?"
"Just an attendant was with you through the night. I came early this morning. You are accorded the honor because of your history of violent reaction to being forced to do things you don't want to do. How are you feeling today? Your color's much better." Gilden appraised him at length.
"I'm rested and eager to get on with it. Will you either turn your back or step outside so the gentleman in the corner can help me on with my clothes?"
When he was dressed and installed in the wheeled chair with his coarse waist-length hair pulled up into its customary style and the cane tucked at his side, the therapist returned to take charge. "You can work here in this room as we did last time. Or in the therapy room. Your choice."
"If we can have the therapy room to ourselves, I'd rather go there. I'm tired of the scenery here."
"Then off we go." She beckoned to the aide who pushed the chair down the corridor at a rapid clip.
Once in the therapy room, the attendant moved into position to lift the crippled man from the chair, only to be waved away. "I have to learn to do this on my own, stand back."
Placing the cane with infinite care and manually straightening the left leg, Nooj pushed up with his right arm until he was standing astride the footrests of the wheeled chair. Gilden pulled the chair back and her patient, bracing himself with the cane and the immobile left foot began to slowly slide his right foot over until he was in position. He let out a long sigh of relief and straightened his spine so that he was properly balanced and ready to take a step.
Gilden touched his elbow lightly, "Today, try not to use the physical muscles alone; concentrate on the mental controls. It will be easier that way. Remember how you did it with the arm. Think of the way it felt to move your foot; search for the nerves which bent the knee."
He nodded silently to indicate his comprehension. Closing his eyes in order to channel his concentration, he located the controls he had found two days before and had quietly practiced finding during his enforced bed rest yesterday. At first, there was no response. Then he realized he was placing too much weight on the leg and shifted his balance minutely. There was a twitch and the cables running across the knee began to slowly retract. The aide moved to hold him steady as the knee bent and the machina foot lifted from the floor.
With a grasp, Nooj released the control and the leg returned to its original position more quickly than it had raised. He would nave fallen from the sudden impact had he not been supported by the man at his side.
"I think I can combine the mental commands and the physical muscle motion." He turned to Gilden. "Is there any technical reason I shouldn't try?"
The therapist shook her head and said, "Not that I know of. Go ahead, just don't fall back to using only the muscles you used before. You do understand the controls are making the rods act as surrogate muscles?"
"Yes, Gaing made it very clear what is happening." He furrowed his brow and bent to the exercise. "And it's the same thing as in the hand."
With aching slowness the knee bent, the foot lifted to just clear the floor and Nooj swung the entire machina leg a few inches forward then carefully lowered the foot in order to stand upright on two limbs again with the left one slightly to the fore. Shifting his weight to the cane and left leg, he lifted his right foot and placed it about the same distance in front of the left. A full step taken! With increasing confidence, he continued to move about the room as he had done three days before except with more certainty and speed. The use of the mental controls substantially lessened the burden on the remaining muscles and was far less painful. It still hurt but he was convinced more exercise would take care of the problem; in his experience, it had always been so.
After two full circuits of the therapy room, Gilden called a halt. "Enough for the morning. Now, let's have lunch and see what can be done this afternoon."
Before he could protest, Nooj felt himself lifted by the attendant and firmly placed in the wheeled chair, his feet lifted for him and set on the footrests. He was too tired to fume and accepted the service with grudging if silent gratitude.
When the midday rest and refreshment was over and Nooj had waken from a brief doze, it was time to begin again.
This time he was able to swing both legs to the side and exit the chair without the clumsiness of the earlier try and to begin walking immediately. His mind had integrated the two sets of disparate movers into a single efficient whole. He still limped badly and was impatient with his gait.
"Why won't this damned knee bend better? It's barely flexing at all no matter how hard I try." He snarled tiredly.
Gilden motioned the orderly to take his arm and help him stay upright. "The design of the leg was complicated. If the engineers gave the knee the entire range of movement you're accustomed to, the leg would lack stability. Don't forget the main purpose of your lower limbs is to hold you up. If you were always falling and unable to stand on your own, you'd have little use for even the most fully functional knee. This is a compromise, the best our best were able to come up with."
His response was a string of muttered curses in which the maternal lineage of the Al Bhed engineers was described in precise and profane detail. Then aloud, "If it can't be helped, I'll have to accommodate it. Let go of me."
He made his way, slowly and haltingly out the door, where he paused. "This is the first time I've been out of a room under my own power since I woke to this nightmare. My next goal is to get out of this charnel house and back to my real life. Lead on, Gilden."
Gilden smiled more than strict professionalism might have warranted and patted his arm. "Down the hall, turn to the right and straight on to freedom."
The leg stilled dragged heavily and the knee would flex only marginally, but he was walking and the future stretched before him like a path leading from the shadow of defeat back into the sun.