The sound of the heart rate monitor was the first thing that registered in Jake's mind. Carefully he opened his eyes, the light seemed too bright, but after a few moments he'd gotten used to it and opened them fully. He was lying flat on his back. Hospital, he was in a hospital. How, why, when?
Suddenly memories started surging back. The jump, the tree, the pain, the paralysis. Unbidden tears started flooding Jake's eyes and he lifted his right hand and pinched the bridge of his nose. He heard the door open and the footsteps of someone walking into the room on soft soles. The monitoring station must have alerted someone to the fact that he was awake. Before Jake was able to wipe off the tears with the back of his hand, a nurse stepped into his field of vision. She was a heavyset black woman maybe in her early fifties. "Hello, good morning sunshine, nice of you to join us on this glorious morning."
Her mood was cheerful and uplifting. Jake managed the semblance of a smile. She took a tissue from somewhere off to the side of his head and wiped away the rest of Jake's tears.
"Now, now—it's not as bad as it seems."
Jake didn't quite share the same optimistic assessment, but he had to concede that he felt barely any pain at the moment although feeling still only seemed to emanate from the upper half of his body.
The nurse carried on. "My name is Janice. I'm sure we'll get to know each other pretty well. I think you'll be here for a while longer".
"How long have I been here?" Jake's voice was raspy and his throat was dry.
"Bit over a week—would you like some water? Let's see if you can swallow, but try small sips at first, one at a time" She brought a container from a somewhere outside his field of vision that reminded Jake of a baby's feeding bottle.
"You got to be joking" he rasped "you're gonna feed me like a baby?"
"No honey, you're gonna feed yourself. Your arms and hands are working just fine. It's only that I can't raise you up yet and I don't want you to splash yourself full of water. Not right now anyway, 'cause otherwise I need to change you and the Doc is about to pop in any minute now" she handed Jake the bottle.
Jake held the feeding bottle up so that he could see it. "I thought I had outgrown this stage, but oh well, here we go" He put the bottle to his mouth and took some tentative sips. Small ones, like there was anything else to be gotten from a baby's bottle. It tasted somewhat bitter. "What's in this, painkillers?"
"No, honey, just some extra electrolytes. I know the taste's a bit revolting, but it's good for you." She patted his cheek. She was definitely way too maternal for Jake's liking, but then again it also felt good to be cared for.
"Is this standard hospital issue or your own idea?" Jake asked, holding the bottle up between them.
She smiled down at him "my own, from years of experience".
"So I've been here a week—what's happened to me here since I arrived?"
"The Doc will explain all this to you just now. I'll check back on you again later." She smiled down on him once more. "Just don't try anything brave." Then she turned on her heels and walked away from his side.
Jake raised his head and let his gaze follow her on her way to the door. He let his head rest back and took another sip from the bottle she'd left him with. Then he turned his head to the right. There was a table by the bedside and he managed to set the bottle on top of it. He turned his head to the left. No IV lines in the crook of his elbow, but he noticed the lines above his left clavicle. He raised his left hand up to his face and then proceeded to lift his elbow to check the rotation in his left shoulder. It was still sore, but nowhere near as painful as he remembered. He slid his left hand and forearm under his head to raise it without having to rely on his neck muscles to do the work.
He looked towards his feet—still no feeling, let alone movement. His legs were elevated, but they were covered by a loose sheet. He contemplated pulling the sheet off, but decided to wait for the arrival of the doctor. He stuck his hand under the sheet and felt his sternum and the lower end of his rib cage. So far, so good. His fingers moved tentatively towards his navel. Below the navel the sensation was less pronounced but seemed to extend pretty much all the way down to his groin in the middle of his body. He moved his hand left and right. The border of sensation and non-sensation wasn't a straight line but pulled up over his hips. He also had no sensation in the upper thighs as far as he could reach. Tears sprang up in his eyes again. He pulled both hands over his face and sobbed. He'd been here for a week already and he was certain that whatever procedures were necessary to repair spinal damage needed to be affected as soon as possible after the injury. He realized that he had firmly believed that by the time he'd wake up in hospital at least some of the sensation would have returned. They fix spinals all the time.
After a few minutes the stream of tears subsided and he wiped his nose on the back of his hand again.
The door opened and another woman, maybe in her mid-forties, walked into the room. She stepped up to the bed and Jake saw that she was wearing a uniform with Captain's insignia under her open lab coat. He saluted halfheartedly and then self-consciously wiped away the traces the tears had left on his face.
"At ease, Corporal."
"Yes, ma'am," his voice was still a bit shaky. Jake regarded her for a moment but wasn't sure what else to say. There were so many questions he needed an answer for, but he couldn't find the words to say them out loud. He realized he was afraid of what the answers might be.
"I'm Doctor Lassiter, your neurologist" She smiled encouragingly. "I would like to have a chat. Do you feel up to it?"
He didn't, really, but he answered "yes, ma'am," anyway.
"Good. You've been with us for eight days and for that period we have kept you in an induced coma. The degree and multitude of your injuries is such that we decided to give your body some time to heal before tapering off the medication. Now I think you're in a position to tolerate the pain with a less potent cocktail of sedatives. Am I correct?"
Jake simply nodded. All he felt at this point was a noticeable but nonetheless tolerable amount of dull pain, mostly in his chest.
"How is the pain? Can you describe it to me?"
"It's dull—manageable."
"That sounds promising. You are still receiving pseudo-morphine through your IV line and the nurse will show you later how you can adjust the dosage yourself. Do you remember what happened?"
"I remember bits and pieces." He paused for a moment. "Is this for the official report?"
She smiled and pulled a chair up next to his bed. She didn't sit down, however, just placed it with the backrest facing his bed and leaned against it, folding her arms across her chest. "No, this is not for the official report. I'd just like to fill in some gaps on my side."
Jake sighed. "I was on a high-altitude insertion. I got shot at and one round ripped up my canopy. I remember being flipped up over the canopy. That must have been when it caught the branch. I was flung backwards and crashed into the trunk of the tree."
"Did you fall to the ground?"
"No I was suspended about four meters above ground." Jake inhaled deeply and winced when his broken ribs didn't take too kindly to the added expansion of his lungs.
"And then? The medics reported they found you on the ground."
"I must have hung there for a couple of hours. Time is a bit of a blur and I was in and out of consciousness. My pack had been dislodged and my HUD wasn't functioning. So I figured I needed to get down on the ground to activate the beacon on the radio if I ever wanted to be found." He paused and closed his eyes tightly fighting back the emotions that came with the recollection. A single tear escaped from his eyes. Jake wiped it away angrily then carried on. "So I released the clips. I lost consciousness when I hit the ground, but I came to eventually and was able to activate the beacon."
"You are one very lucky man to be alive, Jake Sully."
Jake's voice was no more than a whisper. "I don't feel so lucky now."
"I understand. At any point in time were you aware of your injuries?"
The tone of his voice changed and became hard and cold. "Don't patronize me, Doctor. If you are afraid to break the news to me, don't bother. Yes, I knew from the first time I came around that I had broken my back and that I am fucking paralyzed. Add to that some broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder and after I hit the ground at least a broken leg and some torn ligaments in the other. How am I doing Doc?"
Dr. Lassiter raised one of her eyebrows. "I'm impressed. That's a pretty accurate assessment I must say."
"I'm a Marine, doctor. Whatever you may think, I'm not some stupid, dumb-wit infantry grunt."
"I didn't think any of that … Okay, let's cut to the chase." She pushed away from the chair and pulled back the sheet that was covering Jake's body. "There's a lot of fight left in you. That's good because you're going to need it."
Jake slid his arm under his head again so that he had a better view of his legs. His lips compressed to a thin line of grim resolve. His left leg was in a brace extending from his ankle to the middle of his thigh. The right was bare, but he could see surgical sutures on the inside of his leg.
"Broken right tibia and fibula, surgically aligned and pinned. Left leg—torn exterior and cruciate ligaments as well as a torn meniscus, no surgical intervention on the left, yet."
Jake wanted to know what that meant, but even more he needed to get to the issue of his paralysis. He decided to ask questions about the knee later.
She pulled the sheet back over his legs. "Put your head back. It's better if you don't strain your neck at this point. So now let's talk about what's wrong with your back." She walked up to the top end of his bed and keyed something into the monitoring system. A translucent three dimensional projection appeared in the air above Jake. "This is a before image. I mean this is what your spinal column looked like when you arrived."
Jake stared at the image. It showed a cranium, spinal column, rib cage and pelvis, the vertebrae labeled and shaded in sections of different colors. The white band inside the vertebrae he recognized as the spinal cord inside the spinal canal.
Dr. Lassiter pointed to the top section "C1 to C6, the cervical spine. Just some minor issues here—whiplash more or less, won't cause any lasting problems." She shifted her hand down indicating the middle section. "Here we got the thoracic vertebrae—as you can see five broken ribs, some fractured spinous processes and spinal bruising in this region. Again, nothing of any major concern until we get to here…" she paused.
Jake was mesmerized by what he saw—in the lumbar section, L2 was clearly shattered into several larger pieces and flattened but where L1 should have been, there was just a jumble of bone fragments, minced soft tissue and hollows. It looked like the vertebra had gone missing altogether—it didn't make sense to him.
Dr. Lassiter resumed her explanation "When I said this is how you looked when you arrived, that's actually not quite correct. This is what you looked like after we stretched you out again. When you arrived your lumbar spine was severely compressed. L3 was literally touching T12. Normally compression fractures from a height of four meters shouldn't be this severe, especially since your legs absorbed a lot of the energy. But from your account I gather that you were already paralyzed before you hit the ground. This injury was caused by the collision with the tree then and aggravated by the impact on the ground. It is still curious though, because you said you hit the tree squarely with your back and the lumbar spine would have been curved away from the trunk. I would have rather expected the fractures in the thoracic section to be more severe."
"There was a broken off branch" Jake shuddered involuntarily as he understood the amount of damage the protrusion had caused.
"Hmm. That would explain it. Long enough to pulp L1 and break L2, but not long enough to skewer you." She smiled.
"Yippy-i-fucking-yay. So what's the prognosis, Doc?"
She sighed "Okay. Let me show you this first." She made a sweeping gesture within the pickup range of the projector and the image changed slightly. "This is what we did."
She pointed at the lumbar section again, this time showing L1 and L2 restored, shaded in a metallic tint. "We cleaned out all the bone fragments and nonviable tissue. Then we replaced L1 and L2 with two custom titanium alloy vertebrae. These L1 and 2 are articulated meaning they are connected to each other yet movable, but L1 is fused with T12 and L2 with L3. That will help stabilize your back. Here is the crux of the issue. Your spinal cord was completely transected at the level of the L1 vertebrae and the nerve tissue was shredded in its range. The good news is that both peripheral nerves that emerge between T12 and L1 are intact, but all the nerves exiting below were transected as well. Because of the extent of the damage we couldn't reconnect them and even though we did standard treatment to prevent scarring and encourage re-growth you are missing a good two inches of your spinal cord and peripheral nerves in that area." She was silent for a moment. Jake regarded her warily. "Do you understand what this means?"
"Yes. I know it means I am paralyzed and I'm not going to walk anywhere soon." Angry. "But what I don't know is if I'm going to walk—" his voice broke "ever again."
She turned away from him and deactivated the projection. Then she turned back and regarded him for a moment. "Theoretically? – Yes. Practically? – Highly unlikely. Not unless you have a large amount of cash stashed away somewhere. Spinal re-growth treatment is very expensive and takes a very long time—average is about an inch per eight months and on top of that there are about twenty peripheral nerves to regrow and reconnect. But more importantly it's not covered under the military's medical benefits."
Jake turned his head away from her.
"Unfortunately this is where our employer screws us and shows us just how expendable we all are." She walked around the bed, pulled up another chair, again facing it backwards. She sat astride with the hands on top of the back rest and rested her chin on it. For the first time she was at eye level with Jake. "When I said earlier that you had a lot of fight left in you, I meant it. You will need it—but I also think that you are the kind of person who doesn't give up easily—the Marine Corps sent over your file." She sounded almost apologetic.
"So the paralysis as it is now, that's how it's going to be?"
"Yes. Your abdominals and back muscles will be weak initially but will recover and be mostly unaffected. It may not seem that way now, but the supplying nerves should resume normal function. If you're lucky you will experience some further sensory and/or motor improvement maybe as far as the front of your upper thighs, but that's it."
"How long till I can get out of this bed?"
"Hmm. It depends. It's only four days since the surgery on your spine. You will start some physio later today. But at this point in time it's more about maintaining your range of motion. The second scan I showed you earlier was from this morning, before you were awake. I think it safe now to elevate your upper body up to 20 degrees for today—over the next week we'll increase it gradually. In a week's time I expect that all the bone, soft tissue and ligaments will be sufficiently stable to allow you to sit up. Once your rib fractures are healed sufficiently you should start working out."
"I suppose the leg press will be off limits." Sarcastic.
She chuckled quietly "Not off limits, strictly speaking, but I'd call it a miracle if you can make it work."
"You are not very PC, you know? Where's your 'I'm so sorry for you and I'll do everything I can to make things right for you' act?
"Never worked for me and never will."
Jake started to like Dr. Lassiter. He liked her no-nonsense approach. He was sure he'd experience some periods of intense grief and denial in the time to come, but at least at this point in time dealing with hard facts seemed to be like a life raft he could cling to, to not allow himself to be drowned in a flood of depression and self-pity.
She carried on speaking. "You are going to have a tough time ahead of you, no doubt about it. Initially you will find it hard to maintain your balance when you sit up, but that will improve over time. I know you'll be reckless and try to sit up even though you're not supposed to, yet. Just be warned that if you try to sit up now it could cause a severe drop in blood pressure causing you to black out and fall out of bed. It would set you back weeks. I want you to take the initiative for your recovery, but give it another week, otherwise I'll have you put back under." The tone of her voice was teasing, but Jake understood the warning that was contained in the words.
"I'll try to heed your advice, then. Not that I feel I could accomplish much at this point anyway."
"You'd be surprised what people can do when they set their mind to it. You should know that better than anyone." She got up from the chair and walked to the other side of the bed, checking readouts on the status monitors. She seemed to be satisfied with whatever she saw and turned back to Jake, placing a hand on his forearm. "I am sorry that I can't give you your legs back, but I don't feel sorry for you because your own decisions brought you here and I respect your decisions. Just remember that the reason you are here is the culmination of all of your decisions. It is your path and your choice where you go from here." Then she turned and walked toward the door.
"One more thing." Jake called after her.
She stopped and turned back.
"What about my knee?"
"We'll discuss that tomorrow. There is someone else here who would like to see you. I'll send the nurse in first, though to raise the bed. It'll make you feel a bit more dignified. Nothing worse than seeing visitors when you're flat on your back," and with that she walked out the door.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Where am I going from here? Jake felt utterly adrift. Any certainty that he had had about his life was lost and replaced with a great sense of emptiness. He acutely felt a loss and he realized it was not just the loss of his physical ability that he was mourning. More than that it was the loss of purpose and of his identity; of what it meant to be Jake Sully, marine corporal, outstanding marksman, special ops commando, recon expert, extreme sports and adrenaline junkie that now demanded redefinition. Who am I?
The door swung open and Janice walked in saving him from his thoughts and beginning self-incrimination.
"Hello, sunshine. The Doc says I can lift you up twenty degrees. Just tell me if you feel lightheaded, uncomfortable or pain at any point." She keyed something into the monitoring station and Jake felt the top half of the bed incline slowly and stop. Twenty degrees wasn't a whole lot, but it also didn't make him feel uncomfortable.
"This is okay for me, Janice, thanks".
Janice swung a touch-screen display unit into his reach. "Here is a control interface for you. Right now you're only given control over pitch—zero to twenty degrees and sedatives. You're currently receiving maximum dosage equaling the limit the Doc has set for you. The computer will dose you down gradually over a period of time, but you can increase the dosage again if it becomes too painful. However, every time you increase it you can only go back up to a max of ninety percent of your previous limit, you get it?"
Jake nodded.
"Good. If you feel that ninety percent is not enough or you need anything else, you can also call the nursing station through the control interface. Then we'll make a plan."
"Cool." Jake liked the feeling of being given back some control, however limited it might be. "The Doc said I have a visitor. Do you know who it is?"
"It's your brother. He's been waiting for about an hour already. He looks a lot like you"
Jake's expression fell. "We are twins."
"Oh, I didn't realize, I guess it's the hair." She paused and regarded Jake for a moment. "You don't seem particularly pleased that he's here."
"We don't get along and I don't particularly need a lecture in morality right now."
Janice seemed to be surprised. "That's unusual in twins, isn't it? What is he then, a priest?"
"No, he's a biologist, but sometimes I wonder where the difference is."
"Do you want me to send him away?"
Jake contemplated that for a moment "No, the fact he is here is somewhat of a surprise itself. Send him in. I'll get through it somehow. Nothing a man can't do if he sets his mind to it, isn't it?" he attempted a smile, but it didn't quite reach his eyes.
"No there isn't" Janice said and walked out the door.
Jake closed his eyes. He hoped that Thomas Sully, PhD wouldn't embark on a lengthy diatribe about how humanity had raped and pillaged this planet and how Jake had played a significant part in it. Somehow their conversations always seemed to end up at that point. Jake felt diminished as he was, so what he wanted right now was no more than quiet acceptance of who he was, of who he had become. "Thanks, Dr. Lassiter," he whispered.
The door opened slowly and Tom stuck his head into the room. "May I come in?"
Tentative, he's not sure how to handle the situation. "Hey, Tom."
"They called me and told me you were injured. They said your injuries were severe, but they didn't tell me what's wrong. Are you going to be ok?" Tom walked slowly towards him.
"Pull up a chair." Jake didn't want his brother staring down at him. In fact, when Tom sat down next to his bed, leaning towards him with his elbows resting on his knees, Jake noticed that his own eye line was slightly above Tom's. Good. Maybe I can keep him from being patronizing this way.
"I'll be okay—even though it may depend on the definition of okay."
"What do you mean?"
"I am paralyzed."
Tom swallowed hard. "You mean as in you're not going to be walking again paralyzed?"
"That's what the word means, isn't it?"
"But they fix spines all the time, I'm sure it's just a matter of time…"
Jake cut him off, a noticeable edge in his voice. "No! It's not a matter of time, not unless you have a lot of money holed up somewhere and you felt generous enough to spend on me."
"You know I don't." Tom looked at the floor, pained, subdued.
Jake regarded him for a moment.
Tom looked up again. "What happened?"
"Jump gone wrong. I crashed into a tree. Broken spine and some other injuries."
"Technical failure?"
"No, I was shot down."
"Oh" He looked away again and started fidgeting with a loose piece of thread on his jacket. "Where?"
"In Venezuela."
"No I mean, where in your back ...?" Still tentative. "I haven't seen you move anything other than your head." Slight panic crept into his voice. "Is it you're neck? Can you move at all?"
"My neck is fine. Here," Jake lifted his hand and drew a line back and forth in the air across his navel "about here".
"I am sorry". Tom got up and walked to the window at the other end of the room, staring at the concrete and brick landscape outside. Without turning around he carried on speaking. "I got a new job—I was actually hoping to tell you under better circumstances." He turned around again but didn't walk back towards Jake. "I was hoping…" He lifted both hands, palms forward in a placatory gesture "that it would help somewhat bridge the gap between us." His hands dropped back down, defeated.
After another minute or so Jake broke the silence. "Please sit down again."
Tom did as asked, but kept avoiding direct eye contact.
Jake contemplated helping his brother out. Helping him to get through this awkward conversation, but then he decided against it. He didn't want to give Tom an easy way out. If Tom wanted to patch things up between them it would have to be his effort; Jake remained silent.
Tom finally looked up. "I have accepted a research mandate from RDA. I started the training program last year already and two years from now I will leave for Pandora."
"Good for you." Jake failed to keep the sarcastic tone out of his voice.
Tom shot a pained look at Jake. Then he looked down again.
"Where will you go when you get out of here?"
"Don't know. Haven't given it any thought, yet."
"You could stay with me – for the next two years that is."
Jake was about to refuse outright, but then he realized that his brother was still trying to reconcile. So instead he said, "I'll think about it."
"Good." Tom got up. "Sorry, Jake. I am really sorry for what has happened to you. I have to go now, I'm sorry." He was backing away towards the door.
"You are sorry an awful lot." Jake's lips compressed in a grim line and his eyes narrowed while he regarded his brother.
"I mean it—I'll be in touch." He reached the door, pulled it open and left with a haste that betrayed just how uncomfortable he felt.
Jake closed his eyes and tried to control the anger that had risen up in him. I don't need your pity and I don't need your help. He felt resentment towards Tom. He resented that Tom had been so uneasy just now; that Tom just wouldn't take him at face-value whatever the circumstances. He resented that Tom had been able to escape, to walk out of the room, when all he had ever used his body for was to carry his head from one scientific conference to the next or to stand around labs all day long, staring through microscopes. He resented that Tom would go to Pandora, the magical place of their childhood dreams. Angry tears rose in his eyes again, he closed both hands into fists and slammed them into the mattress as hard as he could.
After a while, Dr. Lassiter's words came back to him. Remember that the reason you are here is the culmination of all of your decisions. She was right. It wasn't Tom's fault that he was here and that he was unable to walk. He relaxed somewhat.
Jake felt tired. The whole episode with Tom had exhausted him and on top of that the medications probably made him even more drowsy. He had been at the receiving end of a morphine drip once before in his life, just about ten years earlier, before and after the surgery to fix a broken arm. He hadn't liked the feeling then and he didn't like it now. He reached for the control interface and dialed down the dosage. He'd rather feel a bit more pain than feeling drowsy all the time.
Jake noticed the phone option on the display. It also had a built in camera. He activated the phone. The camera light came on and his face appeared on the screen, a prompt for a number to be entered and a directory function. He looked at his image on the screen. He looked thinner than he remembered from the last time he'd looked into a mirror ten days ago. He was a bit pale, too, but maybe it was just the camera distorting the colors somewhat. Otherwise he looked like the Jake Sully he remembered. He noticed the stubble on his normally clean shaven face. Someone had obviously given him a shave the day before.
Overall he looked the same, and he was still the same and yet he was different; he felt sad and broken. He throat constricted and he swallowed hard. He watched his brows drawing together and tears appear in his eyes. He closed them and waited for the feeling to subside. After a while it did. When he opened his eyes again, the screen had gone black. He touched it and the picture resumed.
Jake sighed and entered his friend JJ's office number on the touchscreen keyboard. When JJ accepted the incoming call from Walter Reed, Jake's image was replaced by that of his friend.
"Captain Sharpe, Marine Corps Legal…" He began the standard sentence he used when answering the office phone, but then he recognized Jake on the other end. "Jake." His hand went to his mouth.
"Hi JJ" Jake's voice was a strained. "I guess you haven't heard, yet."
"No, I haven't. Shit—Jake, are you okay? They only take the serious cases to Walter Reed." The concern in JJ's voice was evident.
"No, I'm not okay and I won't be for a long time," he paused for a second, "or rather make that never."
JJ ran a hand over his shaved head. "What happened?"
"Lots of things, but the gist of it is that my spinal cord is severed and that I'm paralyzed." Jake closed his eyes for a moment.
"Jeez, Jake—fuck—that's…" He couldn't think of the right word.
Jake looked at the camera again. "Yes, it's bad."
"How bad?"
"First lumbar—below the navel, basically means no legs—no walking, no running, no snowboarding—ever." He sighed heavily.
"Can't they fix it over time?"
Jake shook his head. "They can technically, but it won't happen." Jake felt himself choke up again.
"Why not?"
"Not now, JJ" Jake's voice was horse. "I'll explain some other time." He heaved, but then managed to get his throat to relax.
"Okay. Is there anything I can do for you?"
"Can you please send over some of my stuff from storage? T-shirts, shorts, sweaters, the cargo pants, boxers and—my Skechers?" Jake flinched when he mentioned the shoes.
"I could fly over and bring your stuff." JJ offered.
"No, JJ. Please don't come. Maybe in a couple of weeks. It's hard enough for me already to talk to you on the phone right now."
"I understand, but then let's keep talking on the phone at least. You can call me anytime—day or night."
"Thanks JJ."
"I'll send your things over tomorrow."
"Appreciated. Bye." Jake closed the feed and closed his eyes again. He couldn't remember if he had ever dreaded a phone call as much as the one he'd just made. After a few more minutes he fell asleep.
JJ sat at his desk with his head in his hands. After a while he sat up and stared at the screen in front of him. He knew he would have access to Jake's record at Walter Reed. He sighed then he connected to the Walter Reed mainframe and pulled up Jake's file. He read the time line first.
Time of incident: 1 August 2146 approx. ZULU 0950 local 0520. Extraction call: ZULU 1655 local 1235. Extracted: ZULU 1734 local 1314; assessed severe/life-threatening; dest WRAMSC. TOA WRAMSC: ZULU 2156 local 1706 EDT.
So Jake's mission had been over before it had even really begun. JJ scrolled through pages of detailed medical assessments. He skipped over most of it, just picking up words here and there. Severe spinal compression fractures, induced coma, scheduled surgery 5 August 2146 0700 EDT. Four days ago. He slowed down and scanned the surgery report. They had first pinned both bones in his lower right leg, then moved on to the back surgery. The words made JJ cringe as he read them. They had removed two vertebrae or whatever was left of them and replaced them with artificial ones, transplanted pieces of dura to recreate the fibrous sheath around the spinal cord, reattached nerves, muscles, ligaments and blood vessels wherever possible, but despite the fifteen hours of micro surgery it sounded like Jake had lost a whole section of nerve tissue from his spinal cord.
JJ leaned back and rubbed his eyes. Fuck. His best friend—paralyzed.
He scrolled further until he came to the prognosis. He scanned it until he found the words he was looking for: Complete and permanent paralysis at L1 level due to transection of spinal cord and descending peripheral nerves. Iliohypogastric, ilioinguinal and genitofemoral nerves partially enervated from T12 on both sides. He read on. There it was: Treatment option: Stem cell based spinal regrowth treatment—declined, beyond standard treatment protocol.
JJ closed the file and leaned back in his chair pinching the bridge of his nose and muttered. "Jeez Jake, you of all people, how are you going to cope with life in a wheelchair?"