The Arm and Flanagan

by David Dvorkin

Jimmy got to the VA hospital with half an hour to spare. He spent the extra time sitting in his car in the parking lot and thinking about what he wanted to say.

  The artificial hand had attached itself to the steering wheel again. He left it there while he thought about his speech.

  He realized that he had to be careful. Surely he wouldn’t be alone with the other vets. Saxon or some other VA official would be there to watch him. If Jimmy said negative things about the arm as soon as he was introduced, he’d be silenced and hustled away. So he had to start off with some meaningless trivia, something that wouldn’t alarm the watchers.

  I’ll talk about how it doesn’t hurt at all, he thought. Because that’s true. And it is kind of amazing. There are no side effects. No physical side effects. Yeah. That’s what I’ll say. Saxon or whoever it is will probably smile and nod and feel really happy when I say that.

  Then I’ll say that I had gotten used to having just one arm much quicker than I expected to. I was convinced that was the way I would always be. When they told me about this new, high–tech arm, I wasn’t sure I really wanted it. I’ll tell them about the way the end of the arm looked when the doctor was about to attach it to me — like the mouth of some kind of monster that wanted to eat my stump.

  Saxon would be alarmed at that point, Jimmy thought. Jimmy would have to quickly say something about the arm turning itself on and operating properly as soon as it was attached. It would be best to skip the part about his own horror and fear, and the teeth biting into his skin, and blood oozing out of the bites, and the blood disappearing again as the arm sucked the blood in like some kind of mechanical vampire. No, he’d skip that.

  They’d probably ask him to demonstrate the arm, to show them how he could use it just like a real one. He could do that, of course. It seemed to be fine right now. A couple of times during the drive over, he had unconsciously put the arm’s hand on the wheel and driven two–handed, the way he used to — at least until he realized what he was doing and put the hand down in his lap again. So he could demonstrate his control of the arm, but he wouldn’t. If no one asked him to demonstrate the arm, he’d offer to do it. Then he’d make it stay down by his side, hanging there uselessly, and he’d act alarmed and frightened, and he’d say that it didn’t seem to be working. That keeps happening, he’d say. He’d tell them, I guess there are still some bugs to be worked out.

  I’ll say that sometimes it even moves by itself and does weird stuff, and that scares people. I’ll say that quickly, and I’ll say that I feel like a fucking freak, like some kind of monster, with this useless, scary machine attached to me.

  Saxon will probably try to stop me then. I’ll shout that it’s driving me crazy, and I was hoping that I could convince the doctors to cut the damned thing off me again.

  He realized that that was exactly what he really did want. He wanted to frighten the wounded vets out of the idea of getting the new prosthetics, but even more than that, he wanted to leave the hospital that same day with just a stump on his left side. He wanted to be a human being again.

  He leaned back in the driver’s seat, smiling. He felt happy and sure for the first time since the explosion.

  Ten minutes later, Fred Saxon was ushering Jimmy into a room filled with silent men and women sitting on folding chairs and wheelchairs. Some had a missing arm, others a missing leg. Some had lost two or even three limbs. They stared at him dully, hopelessly.

  Jimmy realized suddenly that he had another reason to discourage these people from getting the new prosthetics. It wasn’t just because of his own feelings about the arm attached to him. For most of these people, possibly for all of them, the high–tech artificial limbs would be their tickets back to combat.

  The need for cannon fodder was immense, never ending, never diminishing. The war machine had eaten Jimmy and had spat him out with one arm gone. He had been one of the lucky ones, or so everyone had told him. The machine’s appetite was unlimited. It wanted these men and women again. He could save them from it.

  Saxon introduced Jimmy and then, as Jimmy had anticipated, stayed next to him.

  “Hi, guys,” Jimmy said. “Like Mr. Saxon said, I got this new arm — ” he rapped the arm with the knuckles of his right hand “ — yesterday, right here in this hospital. You know what the most amazing thing was? That it was no big deal. There was no pain. It wasn’t like an operation. There wasn’t even a nurse. The doctor just put the thing on me in an examining room. Just like that, and there it was, attached to me.”

  Saxon nodded approvingly. The dull expressions faded and the injured vets seemed interested.

  “There are no physical side effects,” Jimmy said. Saxon didn’t react to the emphasis, but Jimmy was sure that the audience would pick up on it.

  “It didn’t hurt at all?” a young woman asked. Both of her arms were missing at the shoulder, and a heavy dressing covered one side of her face, including her eye. Jimmy wondered what was beneath the bandage. He was sure there was no high–tech replacement for eyes.

  Jimmy shook his head. “Not at all. I haven’t felt anything since then, either. I guess there’s no healing time.”

  He saw skepticism on some faces. That was what he was looking for. “You know, I wasn’t really sure about it at first,” he said. “I mean, when they first told me I could get this fancy new machine attached to me to replace my real arm.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, he glimpsed puzzlement on Saxon’s face.

  Jimmy laughed, “And I’ll tell you, when I saw the arm itself, before the doc attached it, I really wasn’t sure. All I had was a stump. It ended about here.” He put his index finger on his left upper arm. He tried to find the right place, the line where he ended and the machine began, but couldn’t. He pressed on his arm high, near the shoulder, and low, near the elbow. It all felt the same.

  The arm was part of him. It was really part of him!

  Jimmy froze, unable to move or speak. The vets stirred, frowned, stared at him. Saxon took a step toward him.

  Jimmy forced himself to speak. “Here, I mean.” He poked his upper arm roughly in the middle. He was guessing. “So there I was, with the dressing off and my stump exposed to the air for the first time. I was feeling pretty vulnerable. And then the doctor took the new arm out of its box — ”

  “It came in a box?” someone asked.

  “Yeah. I don’t remember if it was UPS or FedEx.”

  There was nervous laughter.

  “So the doctor took it out of the box and pointed the business end at my stump. It was like a big mouth with metal teeth. Like some kind of monster that was going to eat what was left of my arm.”

  The audience stirred uncomfortably.

  Saxon said, “I think that’s — ”

  Jimmy raised his voice, speaking over him. “The teeth bit down on my stump, but I didn’t feel any pain.”

  Saxon tried to interrupt again, but this time one of the vets in the audience talked over him. “What about blood?” He was in a wheelchair, with both legs missing. “I saw a lot of blood,” he said, staring into space.

  “Yeah, there was blood. I guess the arm sucked the blood in, because it went away.” The horror in the faces of the audience was just what Jimmy had hoped to see.

  Saxon took advantage of the momentary silence. “That’s probably enough about the procedure,” he said. “As you can all see, Sergeant Flanagan has adjusted very well to his new arm after just one day. It’s well integrated with his body now, and he can already use it at least as well as the arm he lost. Sergeant, why don’t you demonstrate how well your new arm works?”

  “Sure,” Jimmy said. He hoped his fake enthusiasm was convincing. “How about something simple?” He looked around. Against one wall stood a small bookcase with a few magazines and paperback novels lying flat on its shelves. He walked over to it. “This’ll show you how much control I have over the arm after just one day.”

  With his right hand, he picked up one of the books and held it up to
show the crowd. “That’s my real arm,” he said. “That’s the way this is supposed to work. Now, I’ll do the same thing with the fake arm.”

  This was the moment. He would pretend to be straining to lift the arm and pick up a book with the hand, but nothing would happen. He’d grunt with the effort, and then he’d act distressed and say that this happened sometimes, and sometimes the arm moved when he didn’t want it to.

  He was ready to pretend. He was ready to enjoy himself and the audience’s reaction.

  Without his volition, the arm rose smoothly. The hand reached out, picked up a book, and held it up in the air for the crowd to see.

  There were oohs and aahs and smiles from the audience. Jimmy watched, stunned. He felt detached, in a dream state.

  The hand replaced the book and waved to the crowd. They cheered.

  Jimmy wanted to tell them that this wasn’t normal, that the arm was unreliable, that they should refuse to have one of these abominations attached to them.

  He stood before them, trying to speak, but unable to produce a sound.

  They didn’t notice his efforts or the expression on his face. Their attention was focused on the arm, that wonderful arm. They walked or limped or wheeled themselves up to him and touched the arm tentatively and then with more enthusiasm. They exclaimed at its firmness, at its strength, at how indistinguishable it was from a real arm. He tried to pull the arm away from them, but he couldn’t move it.

  Jimmy knew that the arm was enjoying the attention. He could sense its smugness. He felt like an appendage. The arm was the star, and he was merely a thing attached to it.

  Eventually, Saxon freed him from the crowd. “Make appointments, all of you,” Saxon told them. “You may not get a limb as advanced as Sergeant Flanagan’s arm. The supplies of the newest prosthetics are still limited. But we’ll do what we can for you.”

  The crowd responded with shouts and cheers and clapping.

  Saxon motioned Jimmy to follow him and left the room. In the hallway outside, Saxon shook Jimmy’s right hand warmly and said, “Thank you, Sergeant. You gave them all just what they needed. Thanks to you, a lot of those people will be as good as new in no time.”

  “I want to have this damned thing taken off me,” Jimmy wanted to say. “I want to leave here without it. I want to go back to the way I was the day before yesterday. I want to be just a human being again.” But when he tried to say that, he couldn’t speak. He couldn’t even exhale. After a long moment of tense silence, he gave up. Wordlessly, he turned away from Saxon and walked back to the main entrance.

  He breathed hard as he walked across the parking lot to his car, unlocked the door, and got inside. Then at last, as he sat in the driver’s seat with both hands on the wheel, he was able to make a sound again — a long, hopeless moan.

  He started the car and drove away, still attached to the hated arm. He let it share in the driving. He didn’t have the strength to remove its hand from the wheel.

  * * * * *