Machine Man - Max Barry [8]
DR. ANGELICA Austin returned. It had been a week. I lay back and closed my eyes while she prodded at the disaster site.
“Very good.” She flipped back the sheet. “I couldn’t ask for a better result.”
I said nothing. I didn’t want to disrespect Dr. Angelica Austin. But I found it hard to believe she could be proud of this. Maybe I was being unfair, because she worked with living tissue and I worked with machine-fabricated metals. But if I ever produced something that ugly, I would be embarrassed.
“Have you felt sensation in the missing limb?”
“What?”
“Following an amputation, many patients report phantom sensation.”
“Uh,” I said. “No.” I had heard of phantom pain. I just never thought I’d hear it from a doctor. I thought it belonged in the same category as ghosts and auras.
“Don’t be ashamed to mention it.”
“I haven’t felt anything.”
Dr. Angelica eyed me.
“I feel what’s there. What’s there is itchy.”
“Painful?”
“Yes. It aches.” I waited for Dr. Angelica to pick up the clipboard, the one for writing down pain medication doses. She didn’t. “A lot.”
“That’s because you’re not moving it. I heard you stopped physical therapy.”
“Yes.”
“Therapy is essential to your recovery. Why did you stop?”
“I didn’t like Dave.”
“You didn’t have to like him. You just had to do what he said.”
Dr. Angelica frowned. She wore glittery earrings. They were a little extravagance in an otherwise austere outfit. She would have to remove those for surgery. You couldn’t have tiny jewels dropping into someone’s chest cavity. They were counterfunctional, which implied Dr. Angelica cared more about looking good than doing her job. I was possibly being unfair again. Maybe she didn’t have surgery today.
“It’s time you saw the prosthetist.”
For a second I thought she said prostitute. “Prosthetics?”
“Yes.” Dr. Angelica eyeballed me, as if I should count myself lucky I was getting a prosthetist at all. I got the feeling she did not think I had really deserved her surgery. “She’s very good.”
“I don’t need a prosthesis.” I was thinking about what that would mean: more gym class. Gripping wooden rails, struggling to coordinate parts of my body. “I can use the chair. I sit down all day at work. I sit down at home. I don’t play sports.”
“Do you drive? Does your house have steps? Do you ever catch an escalator? How many times a day do you stand?”
I said nothing.
“You’re not useless,” said Dr. Angelica. “You haven’t broken. You have a minor disability and you can learn to overcome it.”
I WAS sickly as a child. I guess that comes as no surprise. I was that kid who spent a whole summer inside, curtains drawn against the hoots and laughter of kids in the street outside. Glandular fever. Then complications in the lungs. When I got back to school, in gym class I handed the teacher the note that allowed me to be excused to the library. He made me show him that note every time, even though it said for the duration of the year. He was waiting for me to decide I was ready for gym class, and forget what my note said. That day never came. In the library, I read about trains and DNA and how they built the Hoover Dam. Walking home, I watched a boom gate descend across a railroad crossing and knew it did so because the wheels of an approaching train had dipped the track’s inductance below its preprogrammed level.
As a result, I threw like a four-year-old. I couldn’t catch. When I ran, my arms and legs flailed like I was drowning. If I had to play baseball, I swung at balls with hope but no faith and was not surprised. In soccer, people wove through me like I wasn’t there.
When I got older things started to change. I don’t mean I improved. I mean it mattered less. By senior year, most of the kids who could run and jump and throw balls like missiles had dropped out. Being smart became valuable.