Machine Man (3 page)

The nurses were very familiar with my stump. They seized any opportunity to whip back the sheet and probe my flesh. “It’s looking fantastic,” they said. Especially Nurse Veronica. Nurse Veronica could not love my stump more. She smiled and opened my curtains and changed my bags and said it wouldn’t be long before I pulled on my dancing shoes. I knew what they were doing. They were teaching me not to be ashamed. It was a good hospital. But I was still ashamed.

THEN CAME
the physical therapist. The second he bounced in I realized I was back in gym class. He was fit and tan and wore
a hospital polo shirt small enough that his biceps strained the seams. Tucked beneath one was a clipboard. The only thing missing was a whistle. “Charles Neumann!” He stopped beside my bed and folded his arms. I had been watching TV, and felt guilty. “Is it Charles? Charlie? Chuck?”

“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. I want you to let the relaxation in, Charles. Let it in.”

“I’m hot.”

“No you’re not.” Hospital people walked by, entered the lobby doors. Dave sucked in breath. “Three more.”

“This isn’t helping.”

“It’s not helping because you won’t let it help.”

“It’s because I’m missing a leg. Breathing doesn’t help with that. It doesn’t help at all.”

Dave’s eyes held no pity. “Feeling sorry for yourself?”

Dave was wearing shorts. I had been trying not to let that bother me, but he was wearing shorts, with two fit, tan legs bursting out and running down to socks and sneakers,
and wasn’t that a little unfair to a guy in a wheelchair with a bloated, mutant, itching stump? I didn’t want to be that guy. That angry cripple guy. But I was a cripple and Dave’s legs were making me angry.

“Just another chapter, buddy,” said Dave. “A new chapter in your life waiting to be written.”

“It’s not a chapter. It’s a loss. It’s a regression.”

“All in how you see it.”

“It’s not. It’s objectively verifiable. I’m
less.
”

Dave squatted. He put a hand on my left wheel. “Let me tell you about a guy who came through here about five years ago. He’d had an industrial accident just like you. Lost both legs. Right up to the hip. Used to be a water skier. Professionally. But day one, when he came out of surgery, he decided,
That was my old life
. He said,
Now I start my new life
. I told him to write the next chapter, man, and he did. You know what he’s doing now?”

I pushed Dave’s hand off my wheel, got my hands on the grips, and shoved myself away. People stood aside to let me wheel by, one furious revolution at a time.

“He’s winning medals!” Dave shouted. “In the Paralympics!”

I WOKE
from an afternoon nap to find a woman in a chair beside my bed. The chair hadn’t been there before. She had brought it. She had a large black case, like a portfolio. She was neat and corporate. Her facial bones were prominent and symmetrical. She was blond. “Hey, you.” Her lips twisted sympathetically. “How are you?”

“What?”

“I’m Cassandra Cautery. From the company.” Her head tilted. “We miss you, Charlie. I hope they’re taking good care of you. Are they? Your comfort is my priority.”

“Um,” I said.

“Good.” She smiled. She was very attractive to be giving me this much eye contact. I felt strange, as if I had been mistaken for someone else. She handed me a business card. It said,
CASSANDRA CAUTERY. Crisis Manager
.

I said, “It was my fault. The accident.”

“Would you mind signing a statement to that effect?” She flipped open her portfolio and handed me a paper. It was a letter, from me. “I’m sorry. This may feel abrupt. It’s just … well, as you say, it was your fault.” She popped a pen and offered it to me.

I wondered if I should get a lawyer. It felt like that kind of situation. But the letter was true. I raised the knee I still had, positioned the paper, and signed.

“Thank you.” She made it disappear into her portfolio. “I appreciate that. Now let’s talk about you. About what you need to get back on your feet.” Her smile wavered. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“That slipped out.”

“It’s …” I shrugged.

“Ramps. Leave. We’ll make it happen. We’re that kind of company.”

“Okay.”

“Are you sure everything here is perfect? There’s nothing at all?”

“No,” I said. “Well. I don’t like my physical therapist.”

I NEVER
saw Dave again. That afternoon I was visited by Nurse Veronica, who fiddled with the flowers by my bed. “Would you … what would you like to do this afternoon, Charlie?”

“Stay here,” I said.

“In bed?”

“Yes.”

“Okay,” she said.

I DIDN’T
get up for two days. I’m not counting bathroom visits. I did have to leave the bed for those. I had to shuffle into my wheelchair, steer onto the tiles, and drag myself onto the toilet. Then there was nothing to do but look at my stump. The stocking was off and the draining tubes removed. I no longer leaked. I was nothing but pink skin and black stitches. I didn’t like the bathroom visits because I didn’t like the stump.

But in bed, things were okay. I had my phone. I had wi-fi. I logged on to my work account and wrote notes. I streamed movies. I got addicted to a game. I won’t say I was happy. Every now and again I reached to scratch my right leg and realized it wasn’t there. Or I shifted my weight and found it unexpectedly easy. But I could see this might not be the end of everything.

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. No
girl came up clutching textbooks to ask if I could help with her homework, but I could see it might happen. The likelihood of such an occurrence was on the rise. I attended MIT, and in mechanical engineering no one cared about sports. There was a girl in wave propagation, Jenny, and one time when I was presenting a paper on hydrodynamics she kept nodding and smiling. I spent a week thinking how to ask her out. Then I came to class and there was a guy kicking a little sack in the air, doing tricks, and Jenny was watching him in a whole other way, and I realized things were not so different after all.

THE PROSTHETIST
walked in with a bunch of artificial legs under each arm, like a Hindu goddess. She dumped the legs onto my bed and ogled me through glasses. Her hair was brown and limp and dragged into a merciless ponytail. Her shirt was white and huge. “Hi! I hear you got a transfemoral.” Before I could respond, she lifted up my sheet. “Oh. They weren’t kidding. That is a clean stump.” She rolled the sheet up to my waist and put her elbows on the bed, so she could look at it from up close. “Some kind of machine accident, yes?”