by Andy Graham
“I’m here about my back, ma’am. I’ve been told one of the discs may be out.”
Stella folded her arms. Over her shoulder a thin sheen of rain coated the window. Bellows floated up from the parade ground, ordering the duck-walking recruits to hold their rifles out at arm’s length.
“As you wish. I was hoping it wasn’t you booked in today, or at least for a better reaction. We’re both professionals, Corporal. Let’s just get this done.”
Declining the offer of a seat, he told her what had happened. She let him talk for what seemed like an unduly long time, except to give an occasional prompt or ask for a clarification. Her eyes rarely left his face, only flicking to one side to tap short notes into her screen. As he spoke, his sentences became less terse, less truncated. The sting went out of his voice. He found himself talking about things he didn’t think were relevant, just to fill the gaps.
When he ran out of things to say, her questioning started: the whens and how oftens, how bad, how good, when better, when worse. She pulled up the scans he’d had done earlier in the week. Any uncertainty she may have shown at the start of their consult was gone. He undressed when asked, laying his clothes in a neat pile on the chair.
Yes, he could sleep.
No, he wasn’t getting any pins and needles.
Yes, he could go to the toilet.
Stella only faltered over one question, mumbling she was sure that wasn’t a problem. She tapped him with a small hammer, dragged a pin and cotton wool over his skin, and instructed him through a series of movements.
As she prodded and poked and listened and questioned, the sun crept out from behind a dull grey cloud. It bathed them in a tentative light. He could see the occasional grey hair hiding along her temples and the marks where the earrings should be. Whatever perfume she had on he recognised; it scratched at his memory but refused to reveal itself. Ray pointed at the posters on the walls. “I’ve probably got whatever that glowing red bit on the spine is.”
She grimaced and the questions started again: was he happy, what did he want, had he been ill, how was his family?
“There’s only me and my mother,” he replied, “and I barely see her.”
Stella reached for her screen to tap in some notes. He could still feel the cold band of her wedding ring in the small of his back. This was taking too long. “Look,” he said, keeping his voice level. “Tell me what’s broken and what you’re going to do about it. Give me a pill, crack it back into place or whatever it is you specialists do, so I can forget about this.”
She gave him a level look. “There’s nothing out of place, nothing broken, your back is—”
“Yeah sure, I’m just making the pain up. It’s all in my head. Is that what you’re saying?”
“No. I’m not denying you are in pain or you feel something is not right.”
“Then tell me what I need to do to fix it and I’ll be gone. I want a clean bill of health before they confine me to bed again.” Or discharge you, a dusty voice said in the back of his mind. Then you’ll never go to the mountains with Brooke and the others.
He pulled his T-shirt on, feeling unusually self-conscious. Stella had noticed his tattoos and was studying them. The latest one was still raw, the skin raised and red. “A guy I know had the same injury a while back,” Ray said. “Saw someone who fixed him in one session, goes back once a month to check his legs are aligned and he’s doing great.”
“Please, this story again? As diagnoses go that’s about as Skovsky as it gets.”
“What then?”
“Your muscles are bruised. I suspect the joints were inflamed and the nerves are irritated. Your brain is now trying to protect your body, protect itself. And those two things are part of a whole, not separate entities subject to a pecking order we impose on them.”
“Bollocks,” Ray said. “The disc is out. I can feel it. And my job’s nothing without a healthy back. Can’t you just fix whatever’s broken without the lectures?”
She stabbed her finger towards him, twisting it in the air like a screwdriver. “Listen, Corporal. Nothing is broken, blocked, torn, ripped, displaced, out of alignment, slipped, screwed or buggered.” Her voice was rising, irritation lacing the words she was firing at him. “You still have cartilage in your joints. Nothing is rubbing ‘bone on bone’. The scoliosis mentioned in your scans is not a disease. You’re as symmetrical as any normal asymmetrical human being should be, and if any of your vertebrae had dislocated, subluxed, moved or gone on bloody holiday somewhere, you’d be in a hospital bed or on a morgue trolley.” She signaled for him to get off the treatment table. “You’re young, fit, healthy and strong. You—”
“Why does it hurt then?”
“Because your body is trying to do what most bodies do after they’ve been injured — heal.”
“It’s not, though.”
“Because you aren’t letting it. We are not just machines with wonky parts which go out of place. That analogy doesn’t work. Even the most stupid person on the planet has a brain more subtle than the most powerful computer or screen or phone. Even you, Corporal Pedant Franklin.” She clamped her mouth shut, eyes wide. “I said that out loud, didn’t I?” she asked in a small voice.
Ray nodded, taken aback by her temper. The room was quiet save for the rhythmic tramp of feet coming from the parade ground.
“Sorry, Ray. That was out of order. You didn’t deserve that.”
“No, I didn’t. But I was out of line, too. I’ve never had an injury before that I couldn’t shake off within a few days. The hangover’s not helping, either.”
She poured two glasses of water. “Do you mind me calling you Ray?”
“It’s better than Corporal Pedant.”
Her laughter had the dull light of the Kickshaw written all over it. “Do you know how much I’ve wanted to give someone that speech recently?”
“Quite a bit, I’m guessing. Do you lecture your patients about tattoos and skinny legs as well?”
She cuffed him on the arm.
“Now we’re friends again, are you going to tell me how this is all related to my back?”
“Because despite our government’s attempts to crack down on myths, rumours and baseless opinions, we live in a post-fact world. Most people want what their neighbours say helped a friend rather than anything more substantial. Especially when it involves them facing up to something hard to accept or understand. They sift through authority figures until they find someone who’ll tell them what they want to hear, and ignore what doesn’t fit their internal narrative.
“Anecdotes carry more weight than evidence. It’s the same with these muse berries, the latest so-called superfood. It’s rubbish, a lazy approach to health care and life: someone else will fix it for me. And so we get exploited by the marketers and medics, quacks and cracks.”
“A lie told seven times becomes the truth,” Ray said. “The legions use it all the time.”
Stella pulled over a chair and sat him down. Then she stood him up. Down, up, again and again, guiding him slowly, gently, talking all the while. “You’re fine, Ray,” she said finally. “A graded return to movement is all you need.”
“I tried. I’ve got a friend, Nascimento, whose solution to any problem, physical or otherwise, is to squat.”
“And did you try and squat what you normally would, or did you make allowances by taking off only about 10 percent of your max?” she asked once he had explained what had happened when he broke parallel. “Don’t say anything,” she said, leading him around the room by the hand. “I can see the answer plastered across your face. It had nothing to do with this Nascimento you mentioned?”
Ray said nothing.
Stella cocked her head to one side. “He’s the one who told you your disc was out, isn’t he?”
He pulled his hand free. “This is dumb. I’ve come here to get better, not dance.”
“Listen, Ray, what you want to work isn’t always the thing that works. Sometimes just getting any
kind of treatment is enough. We’ve moved on from assessing an intervention’s efficacy on hearsay or the length of the beard of the wizened old monk who devised it all those millennia ago. Stories like yours about a guy who knows a guy who blah blah blah are usually just that, stories. It has as much credibility as self-confessed experts with no real world experience.” She scowled. “Like these child care ‘authorities’ with no kids that are still spamming my life to a standstill. Keep it simple: eat, sleep, move, laugh and love. Normally, that’s all you need. Sometimes you need something more specific. Sometimes you need drugs. Sometimes you need the knife. Most of the time you just need time and common sense.”
“So if you’re not going to fix me,” he said, “what can I do, other than think myself better?”
She gave him a flat stare. “Have you been listening to me? Do something you can tolerate and build up from there. If you want to squat, start with air squats, prayer squats, box squats, or even, light squats.” She ticked the list off on her fingers as she reeled off the names.
“Since when do doctors know anything about squats?”
“Since I sit down every day of my life.” Stella shrugged. “The pattern is universal; being able to squat the equivalent of a small car with a family inside isn’t. It’s about time we stopped using extreme examples to catastrophise normal behaviour.” She muttered something and put down the screen she had been holding. “And my husband used to lift, before we had kids. I wasn’t sure what to think when Dan told me he had a problem with his buttwink, so I looked it up and have kept on reading about it since then. Some of the articles are quite entertaining.”
“Kids?”
She met his gaze. “Two. We’re one of the lucky couples allowed more than one child. But after a late night like yesterday and today’s early morning, it doesn’t feel that way.”
Ray sat down to put his shoes on, wincing as he bent forwards. His mother had the same problem. Some of his early memories were of her wincing when she picked him up.
There was a crash. A yelp. A screen skidded across the floor. Stella was falling towards him. Leaping forwards, he caught her. “What happened? Are you OK?” he asked, checking the room. Her breath came in short, ragged gasps. Ray stroked the hair back from her face. “Stella?”
She opened her eyes and stared up at him. He lifted her onto the bench.
“I’ll get a medic.” He reached for the alarm buzzer.
“No need. I am one. How’s your back?”
“It’s fine, I...”
Stella was combing out her hair with her fingers.
“It’s fine,” he repeated.
“I’ve wanted to do that for years but never had the guts to do it, or the right patient to try it on.” She grinned. “I wasn’t sure you would catch me, either. It was more of a mistrust fall at first, but you came through.”
Ray stared at her in disbelief.
“Do you believe me now?”
His back still ached but in a different way. “You’re unorthodox. What other tricks do you know?”
“Not many. I told you I’ve never done this before; it was a gamble. Not the most ethical way to practice medicine, I’ll admit, but it gets results.” She sat down behind her desk and examined the cracked screen she’d dropped. “Your tech guys might not be so pleased, though.”
“The army doesn’t always do a slow and progressive return to active duty.”
“Neither do athletes, parents, or business people who think the world will end if they can’t sit at their desks, punching away at their ever-so-important work. I want longevity, not instant gratification.”
“What if I want results now, believe there’s a magic technique you can use to help?”
She looked straight at him. “And there’s the problem. A clash of expectations will hamstring any intervention, no matter how reliable the data supporting it. Medicine, like government, is there to help and guide, not dictate or absolve you of the responsibility for self-care. That’s not always possible, granted, but it’s more possible than not. The Old Lady, Mother Nature, always catches up with us, remember that, Ray.” She stood up from her stool. “You’ll have a follow-up with Dr Neufeld in two weeks, assuming he’s back. I hear he’s ill a lot. If you have any questions, contact me. I’ll send you my details. My professional contact details,” she added, watching him button his shirt.
As he did up the last button, Ray crossed to the window overlooking the parade ground. It was chaos below. Rifles and riot shields cracked into each other as the drill sergeant shouted random instructions at the tired recruits. Stella stood beside him, her doctor’s tunic brushing against his uniform.
Ray gestured to the soldiers who were trying to manoeuvre their shields into a protective formation, another one of General Chester’s ideas. All sides of the square were supposed to be protected by their shields, leaving no surface exposed. This attempt looked like half a snail.
“They were easy days, exhausting, thousands of details to memorise and murderous discipline, but that was it. The joined up thinking came later. That’s when it started getting hard,” he said.
“Sounds like med school. Except the dots keep moving as new evidence overthrows the old, and you still have to try to connect them. It’s endless. ‘The king is dead, long live the king,’ cries the usurper.’”
The snail on the parade ground disintegrated under the verbal attack.
“What are they doing now?” she asked, genuine puzzlement in her voice.
“Up-downs.” He knew the drill well. “It feels like you can cruise it at first – some even joke at this stage. Then the jokes fade as the burn starts to kick in. So you try and stretch out every second of the jogging. Some people stand still for a second. The other trick is to lie on the floor for a fraction to stall the pain.” He leant on the windowsill as the minutes passed. A few recruits were now on all fours, others using shields for help. “This is when the burn becomes a blur. Your body stops responding. Your legs refuse to support your weight. Your lungs can’t get enough air. You start choking. That’s the moment when—” A bellow from below brought an understanding look to his face.
“Right on cue.” He’d never known how the drill sergeants managed to time it to perfection. “I can’t watch anymore.” He turned away from the recruits, still doing up-downs but now trying to hold their gear above their heads. Glancing at Stella’s desk screen to check the time, something caught his eye. Shuffling over, he scanned the family section under his service number: father, mother and brother, each with names. He’d memorised the sections on Rose and avoided most of the sections about his dad, but brother? That had to be a mistake.
“Ow,” Stella whispered behind him. She was still transfixed by the display on the parade ground. “Poor things. Why do you do that?”
Checking Stella wasn’t watching, Ray tapped the entry marked brother. A click and it changed colour. The black letters faded out to be replaced with a red code: X517. He tried double-tapping. The same thing happened. Ray tapped again. Harder. No change.
“One more thing,” Stella said behind him. She turned round, tucking a stray hair back in place. He stepped in front of the screen.
“I won’t be going back to the Kickshaw. I’m rearranging my work hours so I can spend more time with the kids. Thank you for today. I hope you found it as useful as I did. That’s one of the things with therapists, doctors included. It’s never a one-way street.”
He didn’t see her, didn’t hear what she was saying. He just wanted to get to the nearest terminal, pull up his details and see what was there. Stealing another look at the display just before it winked off, he saw the words clearly: Brother – Franklin, Rhys.
10
White Plague
Ray’s head hit the roof. Seconds later his teeth rattled as the ageing military vehicle hit yet another pothole. The closer to home he got, the worse the roads became. They were a far cry from the intelligent roads in the Gates. Those had miles of wires buried in them, relaying
all kinds of information to CenCom. Hamid had explained how some of the newer roads were capable of mending themselves. It was something to do with a filament mesh and bacteria, but that was as far as Ray remembered.
He wasn’t hopeful the roads outside the city would see anything more advanced than a fresh layer of cement poured over whatever wasn’t quick enough to get out of the way. Ray eased his foot off the accelerator. He didn’t have enough favours left to survive bringing back a wrecked vehicle, and the more damaged your vehicle, the more likely you were to be singled out by the border guards that protected the city gates.
All military personnel were allowed double the usual allocation of Visit Passes to leave the city. That and regular meals were a rare perk of playing war games against whichever enemy the government currently thought the most newsworthy. Unfortunately, the passes only seemed to make the petty tyranny of the border guards twice as intense. Unlike the Praetorians, General Chester’s personal guard, who reserved their bile for the 10th Legion, the Gate Makers were much more generous with their dislike. They had driven many to the verge of violence, just like today.
Ray had tried diplomacy, then bribes, but soon found himself hurling threats at the stunned gate sergeant with a ferocity that had left him quivering. The rest of the journey had been spent trying to extract some kind of meaning from what he had seen on Stella’s screen that morning: X517 and Rhys Franklin. The more he thought about it, the less he liked it. Someone was lying to him.
He reached the edge of the orchard, the landmark signalling he was almost home. He had spent a large part of his youth there, along with the other kids from the village. It galled him when he saw apples rotting on the ground, trampled by the horses. Less and less fruit was harvested every year, partly due to a lack of time and hands, but mainly because of new directives on appearance which favoured the food factories. Just around the corner from the orchard was Settlement 9, the Free Town of Tear. His home.
There were new bins and the notice board had been reinforced and rearmoured. His stomach turned as the smell of an overflowing septic tank hit his nostrils. The blackened circle of stones in the centre of the village green, now more of a muddy brown, was more cracked than he remembered. Above the firepit, the branches of the wolfbark tree stretched out in ragged lines.