Killswitch

by Cliff Hedley

  “Yes, ma’am.” He was still trying to watch what Carlton was doing. “See you, Doc.”

  Carlton didn’t turn around, clearly engrossed. “See you in a few days, Chase.”

  Chase padded barefoot after Harris, who held the door open for him and followed her back to his room. As he walked in, he immediately noticed something out of place. He had spent so much time staring at the four walls of his room that any change stood out immediately. There was a long cardboard postage roll in the corner, like the kind used to send rolled-up plans or posters.

  “Would you mind helping me with that, please?” he asked.

  “Sure.” She picked it up. “It has a note on it. It says, ‘Renshi, heard you were in rehab and getting some new arms. Figured you’d need something to practise your coordination with.’” She scanned to the bottom. “It’s from a Sergeant Collins. Want me to open it?”

  “Yes please.”

  She pulled off the sticky tape from the end of the roll, which held on a plastic cap. She tipped the container over and nothing came out at first, so she gave it a shake. With a little encouragement, a dark wooden sword slid out, swathed in bubble wrapping. After the note, Chase had suspected as much.

  “A wooden sword?” she queried, looking puzzled.

  “Yes. A bokken. It’s a practice sword and it’s my one sent all the way back from Afghanistan.”

  “You want me to leave it sitting here for you?”

  “Yes please.”

  She placed it in the corner, leaning so that it wouldn’t easily fall over. “I’d better go. Try not to hurt yourself with that.”

  “I’ll try. Thanks for your help.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  With that, she was off again, striding away at her usual urgent pace. Chase looked down at the basic claw on the end of his right arm and wondered how long it would be before he could actually use the bokken. He was glad to see it but at the same time, it reminded him that he had a long way to go. He walked over to the corner and tried to pick it up. It slipped from between his hooks and clattered to the floor. He felt a moment of anger and frustration but took a breath. He used his foot to hook underneath it and lean it back against the wall. He decided that it should be more of a goal that he use it again, rather than letting his frustration get the better of him today. Collins was probably right. Using it with some kind of functioning hands would be the ultimate test of the new technology and his ability to adapt to it.

  Leaving the bokken alone, he pushed the door open with his foot and headed for the gym. His legs still worked fine and he was looking forward to smashing the bag.

  ***

  Three days after his visit with Doctor Carlton and his array of machines, Chase was scheduled in for surgery. He lay in his bed wondering how the day would turn out, knowing he was powerless to influence the outcome.

  “Hey, Will.” Frank pushed his way in the door. He still wasn’t very good at knocking after all these years.

  “Hey, Dad. Glad you’re here. I’m going back under the knife today.”

  “I know. They told me. You OK?”

  “I guess. I’ve been told a bunch of times by Doctor Carlton and the rest of the medical staff that this will be fairly minor in terms of recovery time and pain. Can’t be as bad as what I’ve been through already.”

  Chase figured that relatively speaking, it was nothing compared to the agony of losing his hands and dealing with the burn spots and healing amputation scars, so it barely bothered him. Frank sighed in response, nodding in reluctant agreement. He clearly still hadn’t gotten used to seeing his son this way.

  “You know, what worries me more is whether I can reach the kind of optimal nerve response threshold that Carlton is looking for. That’s the difference between new robot hands and crappy old-school prosthetics.”

  “That you can’t control. Worry about what you can.”

  Chase was determined to do everything in his power to be the first one to get the new technology and to work alongside Carlton to develop it further. It was his only option and falling short did not bear thinking about. “I’ll sure as hell be putting in whatever work they ask me to. Including this.”

  “Well, I’ll be right here when you get back. If anybody can do it, I have little doubt you’re the guy.”

  Chase resigned himself to working as hard as he could on his end and letting go of what he could not control. By the time Harris knocked at his door he was calm, centred and ready to face whatever the day brought.

  “Morning, Chase. Are you ready to go?”

  “Morning,” Frank smiled.

  His son responded after a quick sideways glance at his father. Frank still seemed to be sizing up Harris as daughter-in-law material. “Good morning, Nurse Harris. Ready as I’ll ever be. Let’s do it”

  Frank stayed back while she led him to a prep room. She helped him onto a bed and set about putting an IV port in his arm. There was a medical green curtain hanging from the ceiling, which ran around the bed for privacy, so he figured it was a pre and post-operative recovery room. For the moment, they were alone. The room was empty apart from a row of similar beds and hanging curtains.

  The bed had a metal rail at the end of it, presumably to stop him sliding that way during surgery. It made it a little too short for him to lie down comfortably. He managed to hook his feet underneath the rail and out the other side, which gave him more room to stretch out. He wondered why the VA didn’t have extra-large hospital beds, given that the army liked to grow big soldiers. He decided against modifying this bed as he had the one at Bagram.

  “We’ll be giving you a nice cocktail of drugs to knock you out. You shouldn’t remember a thing.”

  He was a little disappointed by that. “So I can’t stay awake and watch?”

  She laughed. “I like your enthusiasm but this will be delicate work. We don’t want to risk the slightest movement, so we’re making sure that doesn’t happen by knocking you out and immobilising you. Which reminds me — it’s unlikely to happen but if you wake up feeling paralysed, it’s just the drugs wearing off. It will pass quickly as we bring you out of it.”

  “So don’t freak out?”

  “So don’t freak out.”

  Soon Chase was in the operating theatre, surrounded by a surgical team. The anaesthetist pushed a solution into the port on Chase’s arm and he immediately felt woozy. The room began to swim and he felt tired.

  To him, no time had passed at all before he became aware of people moving around him. He couldn’t move and for a second he wondered if something had gone wrong, before his body slowly responded. He was conscious enough to realise that he was still heavily drugged, so he relaxed back into the bed. He was vaguely aware that his arms were heavily bandaged. Before long, he was being wheeled back down the hallway to the recovery room.

  He looked down at his arms, which were indeed bandaged but didn’t feel too bad. Somewhere underneath the painkillers swimming through his bloodstream, he was aware of the cuts made by the surgeons. Even now in his drug-addled state, he could tell that they were precise and small. They still had a sting, like a bunch of tiny paper cuts but he knew this surgery had been far less brutal on his body than the amputations.

  Around ten or fifteen minutes passed and Doctor Carlton appeared through the curtain surrounding his recovery bed along with one of the surgeons. His father followed them in. He was smiling.

  “Hi, Chase.”

  “Hi, docs. Everything go OK?” He was looking at his father for reassurance rather than the doctors when he asked the question. He got a slow nod in return.

  “Yes, actually,” answered the surgeon with Doctor Carlton. “We’re pretty happy with the results. I think we’ve got a good all-round level of improvement in your nerve conductivity and everything is sitting where it should interface with the external electrodes of Doctor Carlton’s prosthe
tics, without making you over-sensitive. So I’m pretty confident.”

  “Great. So what now?”

  “For now, you just need to rest. That’s all you can do. Let everything settle down, then Doctor Carlton here can start to measure how well the procedure has really gone in a couple of weeks’ time.”

  Carlton had stayed silent so far, letting the surgeon do all the talking. He was smiling broadly though, so that gave Chase a decent level of assurance. Now he spoke up. “Once you’re ready, we’ll run the same tests that we did a few days ago and see where we’re at now. I think we should see a good level of improvement. You wouldn’t find anyone better to do the surgery for you.”

  The surgeon bowed his head, acknowledging the compliment.

  “So you think I’ll be a useful lab rat for you still?”

  “I thought we agreed on guinea pig,” Carlton chuckled. “And yes, we’ll keep moving forward. Like I said at the start, you’ll need to be patient. Let everything heal and take it easy. That will give you your best chances.”

  Chase nodded. It meant more sitting around watching re-runs and less smashing bags and footwork for a while. It was going to be a long couple of weeks but he felt he had just taken another step forward.

  ***

  His Dad kept him company from time to time as they watched re-runs together in Chase’s room but there wasn’t a lot else for them to do. Two and a half utterly boring weeks later, Chase found himself hooked back up to the machine in Carlton’s lab with his arms covered in the little metallic electrode discs. He ran through a series of tests again, though this time they were more thorough and seemed to be taking longer. Chase didn’t mind because it gave him a break from the routine and he was interested in learning more about how it all worked. He was sure that, as a former electronics expert, his father would like to see the lab too. He would ask Carlton to give him a tour when the time was right.

  Carlton was ignoring both Chase and Harris for the time being, hunched forward and staring intently into his computer monitor, while Nurse Harris was keeping an eye on the machine. Chase was trying to send impulses to his nerves, so that the electrodes would show a spike on the monitor. He was pretty pleased with himself every time he saw the graph spike. I’m getting better at it. He had a vague feeling that the spikes were a little clearer, or bigger on the graph than a few weeks ago when he was last hooked up to the machine. That had to be a good thing.

  Carlton looked up from his monitor. “Good news, Chase. You’re right in the zone. I couldn’t have asked for a much better result on either side.”

  “Are you saying I’m perfect, Doc?”

  “Ha. Not quite but good enough to be a passable guinea pig.”

  “Damn. Way to burst my bubble.”

  “How about we celebrate? It looks like we’re going to be working together for a while yet but I need to get away from these machines for a bit and I could use a coffee. How about you?”

  “Great. I could use some caffeine and fresh air. Actually, I don’t think I’ve been outside in the real world since I got back.”

  “You must be ready to climb the walls.”

  “As soon as you give me the tools to do it,” Chase fired back.

  “If that will be all, doctor, I’ll leave you to it,” Harris said as she began to remove Chase’s electrodes.

  “Sure. Thank you, Jane,” Carlton responded with a smile as he began to log out of his terminal. Chase raised an eyebrow. He didn’t think he had heard her first name before.

  Carlton wheeled around to Chase and started shutting down the machine he was connected to. Harris continued to pluck the little discs off of Chase one by one, careful not to create too much of a bird’s nest out of the numerous wires as she did so. Once Chase was completely unhooked, she helped him into his temporary prosthetic. He gave it a little test, opening and closing the hooks that formed his right hand and nodded that the fit was OK.

  “I’ll see you gentlemen tomorrow.” With that, she hurried off.

  “That woman is a dynamo,” said Carlton. “I don’t know what I’d do without her. She’s the only assistant I’ve found that actually likes the workload.”

  “She’s certainly efficient.”

  Carlton laughed. “She is that. How about that coffee — are you ready to go?”

  “Hell, yes.”

  Carlton rolled out of the room, Chase following behind him. He was thankful that today the nurses had given him some sweat pants, a T-shirt and slip-on footwear: he wouldn’t need to go and change out of his hospital pyjamas before his first re-entry to society. Carlton slowed to a pace that let Chase comfortably walk alongside him and led the way to a side entrance of the hospital. “I usually come out this way. It’s a lot quieter than the main entrance, as well as being closer to my lab. That, and—”, he paused to concentrate on descending the slope to street level, “—one of my favourite little diners is just around the corner and they have a brilliant barista. I think they even imported the espresso machine from Italy.”

  Chase nodded, impressed. Carlton sounded like he knew his coffee and Chase was hopeful that he had good taste. They passed a woman walking with a young girl, who turned to stare at Chase. He gave her a smile, then looked down at his arms. The left one was exposed: the tiny cuts were all but gone, though he knew that his general appearance would be a bit of a shock to anyone who wasn’t used to seeing it. It had been a while and he still wasn’t quite there himself. He suddenly felt more self-conscious. The medical staff at the hospital were the only people he had met in the last few months and they were unfortunately accustomed to seeing injuries like his. The general public were another matter altogether.

  Carlton seemed to read his mind. “Don’t worry. Yes, people will stare but you’re still you. The new look is just something to get used to.”

  Chase wondered if Carlton had needed to go through the same readjustment phase himself.

  “Here we are.” Carlton held the door open for Chase, who caught it with his foot and pushed inside. They were in a small, cosy neighbourhood diner, with tables in the middle and booths set along the outer wall.

  “Hey, Dennis,” Carlton called to the barista as he rolled towards an empty table in the corner. The man was tall, lean and dark-haired, with just a hint of grey starting to show. Chase figured he might be of Italian descent: Italians took coffee seriously.

  Dennis smiled in response. “Hey, Rob. The usual?”

  “Yes please.” Carlton turned to Chase. “What can I get you?”

  “Uh, a long black please. Double shot, with a little hot water.”

  Carlton grinned. “Make it two, please.”

  “I’m impressed,” Chase said. “I couldn’t find anywhere in New York that knew how to make a long black last time I was here. I got sick of trying to explain it.”

  “Like I said, Dennis is good. And he’s fairly well-travelled, so he knows how to make pretty much every kind of coffee there is.”

  Chase pushed out a seat with his foot, then hooked it back in as he sat down. He rested his arms on the table, leaning on his elbows.

  “I might need a straw as well, please.” He held up his arms for Dennis to see.

  “No problem, sir.”

  The coffees came quickly and Chase was glad he had asked for the straw. He could hold it up to drink through it but he was pretty sure that the small cup would end up on the ground if he tried to lift it off the table. He took a long sip.

  “This is very good. Any chance we can make this our regular meeting spot?”

  “I told you so. And yes, I don’t have a problem with that.”

  Chase took another sip, admiring the crema on the surface of the coffee. “Mind if I ask you something?”

  “I’m pretty sure I know what it is but go ahead.”

  Chase nodded. “I have to ask. Were you always in the chair? It’s just that,
back there, with the little girl, you seemed to have some pretty first-hand experience going through something like this yourself. Getting used to the looks, I mean.”

  “You’re right. No, I wasn’t.” His expression darkened. “It was a mugging gone bad when I was in my early twenties. A guy tried to rob one of my friends. I tried to intervene and got beaten almost to death with a baseball bat. The guy took a swing at me and like an idiot I raised my arms to protect my head. The bat broke both of them.”

  Chase grimaced. He knew that people often instinctively protected their heads with their hands but a baseball bat beat the bones in a human arm every time. You had to catch the bat early in the swing or get out of the way. He had practised a lot for that in his training but he figured Carlton never had.

  Carlton looked away for a moment. “Then for good measure he took a swing at my back. That’s what crushed my spine. I went down like a sack of cement and I never walked again.”

  “Damn. I’m sorry.”

  “I’ve always been the skinny little weed that you see before you. If anything, the wheelchair has improved my upper body strength and let me fill out a bit. I don’t know why I tried to jump in. The mugger was much bigger than me, though I hadn’t seen the bat at first and hey, my friend was in trouble. Maybe it was the couple of beers in me that made me misjudge the situation, or maybe I just wanted to help my friend and jumped in without giving it a thought. Either way, here I am today.”

  Chase nodded, taking it in. “That’s noble and pretty brave what you did. You were trying to do the right thing. Not everyone would run in to help a friend like that.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I keep telling myself. It’s also how I can relate to what you must be going through — and at least in a small way, to the loss of both arms at once. I had to get a lot of help until I could use mine again — not that I can really compare of course,” he added quickly, seemingly worried that he might offend Chase. “At least I could use them again after a couple of months.”

  “I think you’ve gone through enough yourself, so I wouldn’t beat yourself up about it.” Realising his faux pas, he quickly added, “So to speak.”