“Sparine,” he said. She was sharp; he knew that already. She came in moments later, walking as quietly as she could. But Steve heard her. He opened his eye, looked up at her. He went white.
“Get out!”
“Quickly,” Wells said, grasping his arm. She moved as swiftly as he hoped she might. In an instant the needle went into his arm, the plunger moved, and the sparine was in his system. The mild hypnotic would calm him within seconds, start to send him back to sleep. He had to hold Steve just long enough for that. He stayed with him, Jean Manners watching closely until the spasms subsided.
Her voice came from a great distance to Wells. “He’s asleep, Doctor Wells.” He released the pressure, stood on shaky feet.
“What doctors are on duty now, Miss Manners?”
“Doctors Horowitz and Baker.”
“See if they can come here immediately.”
“Yes, doctor.”
She moved out of sight. Well, no other way now. While he was under they must start to rebuild his strength. If they didn’t get into surgery quickly Steve would retreat even farther into his mind. It could be too far for him to return. Wells made his plans. They would keep Steve under, at first with the sparine, then back to the electrosleep equipment. No question but that Steve would refuse to eat, even if he could with that jaw wired shut. They could get a straw through his teeth but it wasn’t enough, because he would refuse it. They would need to get him high protein intravenously. They would use steroids; use the male hormone in the steroids. He thought about the effect on protein metabolism. It would be wise to go to tubal feedings, a tube directly into the stomach. They could use foods of zero residue to prevent the need, for a while, anyway, for bowel movements. He disliked having to leave the indwelling catheter for urine disposal, but there was no way out of that for now.
Doctors Horowitz and Baker were there within minutes, and Wells discussed with them and Miss Manners what had to be done in the next several hours. He planned to meet with Dr. Killian in the morning. Whatever must be done . . . well, time was now critical in the psychological sense. He looked back at Steve, tossing fitfully despite the sparine. Almost impossible to prevent even subconscious disturbance now without either massive drugs or the electrosleep machine. But the sparine would hold him for a while.
Wells left soon afterward. He could no longer help Steve with his presence and it would be necessary to start the more detailed plans for immediate corrective surgery, and, as soon as possible after that, the recovery and . . . the rebuilding phase. Thank God Steve was as strong as he had indicated tonight.
His strength nearly killed him.
Dr. Horowitz called shortly after four in the morning. Wells was instantly awake. Jean Manners had gone off duty at three, and Horowitz and Baker, the damned fools, had left Steve unattended. Just for a few minutes they said, their voices shaken when it was all over and he had personally attended to Steve.
Wells had only two or three times in his career cursed another doctor. He did it this morning, slowly, bitterly, with a fine cold rage. For Steve had very nearly succeeded in his one great overwhelming desire.
He had emerged from the calming effect of the sparine. They had not yet placed the electrodes on his head for the electrosleep machine. Just a time span of a few minutes. Steve came awake, saw he was alone, somehow, incredibly, with one arm and hand, unstrapped himself, dragged his body from the surgical table. He fell heavily to the hard floor, nearly battering himself unconscious again. Somehow he hung on to his wits. Using his one hand, hard against the floor for friction, he had dragged himself across the floor to reach a cabinet. He smashed the glass, grabbed anything with steel within his reach. He had managed to wound himself in the stomach region only superficially. But inside his mind . . .
Steve was never to be left alone again, not for an instant, no matter what was being done, had to be done, no matter how personal. Not until Wells could judge that Steve’s most devout wish was something other than death.
CHAPTER 8
For a long time Steve never saw her as a person. Except in rare moments, and few of those were pleasant enough to be willingly recalled. She was an efficient, crisp worker, a nurse to delight her associates. Steel nerves and a bitter history of her own had molded her to her present level of control, and it was not something she would yield easily. Jean Manners had a devastatingly effective smile. You just couldn’t get through it to discover whether she was personal with that smile or simply courteous.
They knew her inside the laboratories as a woman of rare intelligence. She also had an understanding, an empathy that established almost an electric bond between herself and her patients.
Except for one man. She could not reach Steve Austin.
At first she made certain not to attempt this contact of feeling. It would have been both foolish and useless. For a long time after that first night when Steve tried to kill himself in an incredible display of courage—and it was that—she held herself almost as a nonperson in all her contacts with the man. Her presence mattered to Steve. Not her; not Jean Manners. Only the nurse. There were things to be done, and Rudy Wells had decided it was infinitely better for Steve to become accustomed to the sight, the sound and feel, the repeated presence, of this one woman rather than a group of nurses or medical attendants. Lost in himself, enduring a new kind of shock with the continual, incessant realization of what had happened to him, Steve never truly saw Jean Manners but was in some remote fashion simply aware of her presence. She was a shadow moving barely within the limits of his restricted awareness. During those moments in between the almost weekly surgery, she tried to reach down to him, to offer her hand even as a faceless guide. When he responded it was wholly instinctive, as if the subconscious found it necessary to link with human warmness what the conscious had rejected.
And then, as he moved away from the numbing sameness of repeated excursions into the stupor of drugs and the electrosleep machine, as the surgery to restore his internal systems passed, he could not prevent himself from examining what he had become. Whatever Jean found in him before, this was worse; he no longer showed even the bitterness she was so familiar with. He had become utterly indifferent. He could not fight the surgery being conducted on his person. So be it; he went along because there was no way for him to resist. But Jean Manners and Rudy Wells feared most of all that at the first opportunity, when he had regained strength and his wits, Steve would do whatever was necessary to end his life.
The months passed, and he became her life, day in and day out, with relief for her from the caring for him only when he was in electrosleep or beneath drugs. Those periods of relief were her rare moments of trying to find herself again, for the world had four walls, close about her, and in their center lay the maimed body of Steve Austin.
Who finally broke through his own indifference. It was the first, long-awaited sign, the opening wedge in forcing himself back into life. It could hardly have been more personal for Steve, more impersonal for her.
“Get out of here. I’ll do that myself.”
The sound of his voice caught her completely by surprise. Her hands stayed where they were, at his groin. She looked up, startled. He had never spoken to her before, not a good morning or go to hell or anything. Not for nearly four months. As he emerged from each session in surgery, numbed and withdrawn, she had resumed the care of his body in the personal as well as the medical sense. For months he had used the catheter for urination. Irritation to the sensitive skin was of course impossible to avoid and now at the moment she was exercising particular care in removing the device.
“You can let it the hell go,” he said angrily.
She took a deep breath. “As you like, colonel,” she said smoothly.
“And I’ll do it myself from now on,” he went on with the same tone. “I’m old enough to go to the bathroom.”
“If you won’t take offense, Colonel Austin,” she said, her voice deliberately calm, “that hasn’t been the case for the past severa
l months.”
He dropped his head back to the pillow. “You the one?”
“Yes.”
“Just you?”
She nodded. “No one else. Dr. Wells’s orders.”
He watched her. My God, it’s . . . it’s like an explosion inside him, she thought. Like someone threw a switch and he’s back to life. He cares. He actually cares again . . .
“I wondered about that,” he said. “Somehow it doesn’t seem so bad now.”
“I don’t understand, sir.”
“Don’t ever call me ‘sir.’ Ever, understand? That’s past history.”
“Do you prefer ‘colonel’?”
“I have a name. Use it.”
“Delighted to. First or last?”
He looked at her as if seeing her for the first time, which was most likely true, she judged. I’ve been only background all this time. He raised himself up on his elbow, grunting with the effort. For a moment he squeezed his eye shut tightly, fighting the sudden dizziness. Then he opened it again.
“You didn’t try to help me just then,” he said.
“You didn’t want me to.”
He nodded. “Yeah. I guess you’re right.” He rested on the elbow, awkward, trying to find his balance points. “Am I that goddamned clumsy?”
“No, St—” She shook her head. “I still don’t—”
“Steve will do fine.” He glanced at himself where he was still exposed to her. “A first-name basis seems to be in order. What’s yours?”
“Jean. Jean Manners.”
“Jean all right?”
“Yes. It will do fine.”
“You’ve been, uh, taking care of me, everything?”
“Yes.” She wanted to say more, tell him it was her duty as a nurse, but she held back the words. Why say what he must certainly know?
His face was going white slowly. “I’m weaker than I . . . thought . . . whew. Dizzy. Wow, that came on quick.”
She was by his head immediately, cradling it in her hand, pressing him firmly down with the other. “Please. Lie back. It will take a while.” His head sank down against the pillow.
He stared at the ceiling as she finished carefully but quickly and moved the aluminum frame over his hips, drew the sheet to his chest.
“Thanks.”
He chewed on his lower lip. The surgery to his jaw had been a marvel. Thin white lines were the only marks of the special wiring and braces they had needed. A month ago Dr. Wells had ordered dental work. He felt false teeth as vital to Steve’s attitude as it was to his system for chewing. There was no evidence that the jaw had been smashed and most of the teeth on one side broken free. Killian decided for plastic surgery as a concurrent activity and it had paid off well.
His hair had grown back sufficiently to give him the crewcut he’d always worn, and a single dark patch replaced the heavy bandages that had obscured not only his left eye but nearly half his face. Along the side of his cheek there were still the thin white lines of scar tissue but these were leaving slowly. Within a few months they would be gone entirely. He—
“This bed raise up?”
“No. But we can take care of that if you like.”
“I . . . I think so,” he said.
“Water?” He nodded, and she brought him a glass with a straw. “Take that thing out of there.” He struggled to a sitting position, half crouched, using his leg stumps as balance counterpoints. He managed the glass in his hand, drinking slowly, closing his eye as if this was the first time in months he had actually tasted liquid. He gasped suddenly for air, extended the glass to her.
“What about food?”
“Most of the time you refused to eat,” she told him. “Your intake has been largely intravenous, and also some direct tubal feeding. That’s introducing the food directly to—”
“You the one who’s bathed me?”
She nodded.
He laughed without humor. “Closer than a damned wife, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t believe it,” he said suddenly, “but I’m damned if I’m not hungry.”
She moved cautiously. “Anything in particular?”
“Uh, yes. It’s crazy. Steak. Steak and orange juice. Fresh orange juice. I suddenly feel as if I could drink gallons of it.”
“It’s been a long time,” she said.
“Uh, yeah. Just how long, by the way? I mean, since they brought me here.”
“Four months.”
“Four mo—!”
She sat with him in silence as he digested the loss of time.
“Let me ask you something else,” he said, breaking slowly from his reflections. “This bed. You said I can get something that will let me sit up?”
“Of course. Power bed’s the answer. Just about any position you want.” She glanced at the flat sheets where his legs would have been, then up at him. “There’s no use pretending anything, is there?”
“Christ, they’re gone, aren’t they? What’s there to pretend? Then there’s something else I’ll need. Some way of my being able to do things for myself.” His expression was fierce as he concentrated. “From now on, if you please, I’d like to go to the crapper by myself. I’ll need an overhead brace bar of some kind. Leverage, that’s the answer.” He bared his teeth in a mock smile. “Simian leverage. Have to do with one arm. Tricky but I think I can hack it.” He ignored her for the moment, moved his right hand about the stump of his left arm. “Not too sensitive. Surprised at that,” he murmured, as much to himself as to her. He looked up suddenly. “Can you get me a large drawing pad and some pencils?”
“You need rest.”
“I’ve been dead for four goddamned months!” he shouted suddenly. “As long as I’m still alive, quit fighting me, for Christ’s sake and get me what I need, or get the hell away from me completely.”
He closed his eye, lost to her. “I’ll get it for you. Just as soon as I get someone in here to relieve me.”
He reacted slowly to her words, to the sudden catch in her throat. “Relieve you?”
“Yes. I—I’ll get Miss Norris. Kathy Morris. She’s a nurse, but she’s been working on . . . your case as a lab technician. She’s—”
“Why the hell do you need someone to relieve you?” He made a sweeping gesture to take in the stumps of his legs and his arm. “Do you think I’m planning on going anywhere?”
“No, it’s not that. I—”
She couldn’t hold it down. “It’s not a game,” she said, far more sharply than she intended. “Orders.”
“From who?”
“Doctor Wells.”
“Doc—” He was honestly perplexed now, his expression showing the pained confusion. “But why would doc . . .” He let it trail off, almost completely exhausted, staring up at her.
“You want me to be honest with you,” she said. He nodded, his face vacant. “We did that . . . some time ago . . . right after Doctor Wells first brought you out of it. You tried to kill yourself, Steve.”
“I don’t believe it.”
He stared off at the ceiling, into space. His voice came from far away. “Do what you have to,” he said. And she knew he was lost to them again.
Kathy Norris was there a few minutes later. By then Steve was fast asleep. “Watch him closely,” Jean told the other woman. “Don’t leave his side for a second, understand?”
Kathy looked at her in surprise, held her question. “Of course,” she said.
Rudy Wells found her in the nurses’ lounge, face buried in her hands.
“Just like that,” she said, the disbelief still evident. “For months he’s had his mind turned off, shutting us all out, and now, my God, now he’s shouting and giving orders and . . . it’s too much, Rudy. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go on like this, but he’s been dead all these months, and now he’s alive and demanding and wanting, and he’s planning on how to make things better for himself, and it just doesn’t seem possible, does it? I mean, well, do you know what he’s doing
right now? This minute? This same man who’s been so withdrawn he’s been the same as unconscious . . . he’s got Kathy holding a drawing board for him, and he’s making engineering drawings. He’s—”
For the next hour Wells questioned her, grateful it was Jean in the room when he snapped out of his withdrawal and plunged back into living. There could have been no other way for Steve Austin to have made the return journey. There was still danger, however. Steve would soar to new heights of promise and adaptation, and then there would come, inevitably, the plunge to black, when he would become so morose with the realization of his shattered body that self-destruction could again become a serious danger. It was imperative, then, that he begin the next phase of Steve’s rebirth. Sit with him, spend hour after hour with him, fill his waking moments with a complete backward journey into the last four months, let him know every detail of what had happened, and from the near impossibility of medical miracles they had already performed, there could be created a belief that more miracles lay within their grasp. That was the key. Steve was starting to ride high now; he would stay that way for a while. But when he realized the surgery that lay ahead, the crippling, enervating tests, when he was made aware of the pain, the heartbreak, the experimental nature of things, the specter of one failure after the other—they would be pioneering—well, he might go either way.
Everything depended on Steve’s accepting what lay ahead as a challenge. If he succeeded, he would become a man, a being far beyond the wildest reach of his imagination . . .
“Tell me about the drawings he’s making,” he said to Jean Manners.
She looked up. “It’s a frame,” she began. “Oh, I’m not an engineer, Doctor Wells, but I get the general idea.”
He told her that would be fine. He would get the details later; right now he wanted to know how it came about.
She explained his reaction when she had been removing the catheter. “Was there any direct sexual response?” Wells asked.
She looked at him in surprise. “No. Nothing I could detect,” she said uncomfortably.
“Jean, no wife could be closer to that man than you are right now.”
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