Machine Man - Max Barry [6]
“Charles.”
“I’m Dave.” He rolled aside a hat stand of fluid bags. “I’m here to get you out of that bed.”
I looked at my bed. It had warm sheets. A few magazines near my feet. Foot. My phone nearby. I didn’t see the problem with the bed.
Dave’s eyes shone. He drank a lot of fruit juice, I could tell. He made me feel listless. “We’re gonna work hard together, Charles. I have to warn you. Sometimes you may not like me very much.”
He dragged over a chair. He stood there and grinned. I looked at the chair. I looked at him. “What?”
“Get into it.”
It seemed a long way away. It was a meter lower than the bed. What if I fell? Dave waited. His grin was permanent. I placed my phone on my bedside table and folded up my magazines. I rolled back the sheet. I leaned forward to check my dressing, the tubes.
“Don’t worry about all that. Just get your butt into this chair.”
You just get your butt into this chair, I thought. But I edged forward. My stump scraped across the sheets. It wasn’t terrible. But it wasn’t good. I felt itchy. I was thirsty. I looked around for a glass of water.
“Come on, Charles.”
I gripped the edge of the bed and swung my good leg over it. Then my stump. It made me want to cry, that little movement. It was so pathetic. Once entire limbs had jumped at my command. Now this.
“Almost there.”
I slid off the bed and fell into the chair. The shock of impact traveled up my stump and jangled the nerves there. My surgeon, Dr. Angelica Austin, had folded them up inside my body. I had learned this from a nurse. They were places they were never meant to be, wondering what was going on. Something dripped into my eyes.
“Yes! Great! Great!” Dave dropped to his haunches and slapped my arm. “You made it!” He laughed like we were friends. But we were not. We were not.
THE NEXT day Dave turned up in a steel wheelchair. It was pretty flash. I mean for what it was. The wheels gleamed. The seat, back, and armrests were green leather. Dave parked beside my bed and climbed out. “Hi-ho, Silver!”
“What?”
“Time to mount your steed, my lord.” He slapped the chair. “It’ll be great.”
It would not be great. We both knew that. It would be struggling and shaking and landing in the chair like a wet fish. And then what? Maybe Dave would push me around the hospital. Maybe he would make me wheel myself. Either would be difficult and humiliating. I chewed the inside of my mouth, because I am not good at getting mad with people.
“Let’s do this,” said Dave.
“I have to finish reading this.” I showed him my phone. He plucked it from my fingers and set it on the bedside table. I didn’t stop him, because I couldn’t believe what he was doing. Dave didn’t understand the intimacy of the phone. He couldn’t have.
“Mount up.”
He was trying to antagonize me so I would strive to prove him wrong. He saw I responded well to a challenge. He would needle me mercilessly and then, on the day I was released, tell me how he’d always known I could do it.
“Let’s go, big guy.” He drummed his hands on the chair. “Let’s tear this place up.”
That was how they justified it. Gym teachers. Personal trainers. Runners. Looking down on you, despising you, it was okay, because it was for your own good.
“Don’t make me come over there,” said Dave. “Ha, ha.”
I DREAMED I was back at Better Future and couldn’t find my leg. I hopped around the lab, searching. I spied it on top of the spectrograph. I filled with relief because now I could reattach it, then woke and realized no.
“TAKE IT in,” said Dave. “Ri-i-i-ight in. Feel your chest expanding. Hold it. Hold it. Now out.”
I exhaled. The sun came out from behind a cloud. I squinted and shifted in my wheelchair. We were outside. I was not happy about that.
“Three more.