Chapter 10
Walking into work the next morning, Alba unlocked her office door and then headed to the dining room for coffee.
Dennis looked up from setting out an assortment of clean utensils for everyone, and he smiled immediately. “You look much better.”
“Yeah, a couple days off helped a lot,” she admitted. “I picked up a couple books, and I’ve just been lazing around, enjoying life.”
“Good. I approve.”
She chuckled. “How about you?”
“Hey, it’s all been good,” he replied.
“Yeah, when was the last time you took a day off?”
“I take them off,” he said, with a shrug, “but not very often. I would rather take half days all the time instead of being here every day.”
“Oh, I hear you. I still think it’s a good break, though, to get away from here. I’m feeling much better.”
“And that’s huge. Do you want a cinnamon bun to go with that coffee?”
She looked at him and smiled. “Okay, if you’ll twist my arm, fine. I’ll let it be twisted.”
He chuckled. “Might tell Dani that they just came out of the oven.”
“Don’t even bother,” she replied. “Give me a plate for her too.”
With that, Dennis went into the back and brought out two plates with a warm cinnamon bun on each. Carrying them awkwardly and the coffee cups, she headed back in the direction of the offices. As she came around the corner, she saw Wesley talking to Shane. She carried on without saying anything, and, as soon as she made it to Dani’s office, she kicked her door gently with her foot.
Dani opened the door, took one look and grinned. “I had a meeting this morning, and I was worried I wouldn’t get one.”
“Well, here’s yours,” Alba said, with a smile.
“How were your days off?” Dani asked.
“Excellent,” she said.
“You look better.”
“I am better. I feel a lot more balanced, so it’s all good.” And, with her cup and plate, she returned to her office.
As she sat down, Shane poked his head in. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she said, with a smile. “What’s up?”
“Wesley has his fitting for his prosthetics today.”
“Good. Let’s hope there’s some grace in that for him today.”
“Exactly. Did you want to be there?”
She shook her head. “Nope, I sure don’t, and I’m fully booked.”
“Okay.… Just so you know, I think he wanted you there.”
She frowned at him. “I don’t think so,” she countered cautiously.
“But I do,” he said. “I’ll see how it goes. Don’t be at all surprised though if you get an unexpected phone call, asking you to come down.”
“Why would that happen?” she asked, studying him carefully.
“He’s tried to find you several times over the weekend.”
“Interesting,” she murmured, staring off into the distance.
“Why? Is there a problem between you two?”
She shook her head. “No, not necessarily. I just had to do my job and mentioned a few things that needed to be said.”
Shane looked at her with that way-too-perceptive gaze and smiled. “I don’t know if it was a good thing or not, but he’s not holding anything against you.”
“That’s good,” she said. “It’ll make it easier for our work together as we go forward.”
“Are you trying to put him back into a work slot?”
She winced. “Is that what it looks like?”
“Yeah,” Shane admitted. “And I can see why you would want to do that to a certain extent. However, I’m not sure it’ll work in this case though.”
“Why not?”
“Because, as a general rule, I would say his progress, and a lot of that progress, is because of you.”
“Not so sure about that,” she argued, with a gentle smile. “It’s not always the best position to be in when I have to sometimes be the bad guy.”
“And here I thought you were always trying to get them to be the bad guy themselves.”
“Sometimes, when they don’t get it,” she admitted, “I do have to nudge them in the right direction.”
He smiled at that. “Whatever nudging you did hasn’t been a negative. I can see that maybe you guys still have some things to work out, but today’s likely to be an emotional day for him.”
She frowned at that. “That’s true,” she muttered. “If you need me, call me.”
“Will do.” And, with that, Shane disappeared down the hallway.
*
Wesley waited anxiouslyfor his prosthetics appointment in a completely different area of the center than he had been in before. When he finally rolled his way in, he was surprised to see a couple guys already here. They had an assortment of prosthetics—legs, parts, pieces—and a big tool kit. Wesley rolled up and greeted them. “Hey. I think it’s my appointment next.”
One of the men looked up and smiled. “Wesley, by any chance?”
“Yeah, that’s me,” he said, with relief. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve been waiting for this leg.”
“We’ve made some adjustments to it,” the other man added, speaking from behind the laptop. He poked his head out and greeted him too. “Hey, Wesley.”
“Oh, Stephen, I’m glad to see you,” Wesley said. “Any luck with that back section?”
“Yeah, we’ve taken out the hard material and put a completely soft backing on it, so there won’t be anything hard pressing against that part of your leg. How is it healing?”
“It’s much better,” Wesley shared.
And, with that, the next hour was all about taking new measurements, testing the muscle, testing the nerves. As Wesley waited with bated breath, the prosthetic leg came out, ready for use. Then baby powder was put all over his partial leg, and a new stocking went over his stump and then onto the leg portion. The stocking was a weird netting material, different from the one he’d had before. Then the new prosthetic went over his stump and up part of his leg portion. Once secured, Wesley raised and lowered his leg to get a feel for his new prosthetic and smiled. “It feels pretty good. It’s sticky, isn’t it?”
The men laughed.
Stephen added, “Hey, once we get your prototype done, you can get as fancy as you want. Now, the moment you’ve been waiting for,” he said, and he reached out a hand.
Wesley accepted the help onto his new leg and stood, not putting his full weight on it.
“You still have to put your weight on it,” Stephen pointed out, eyeing him carefully. “We won’t know how it works otherwise.”
“It feels high,” Wesley said. “Did you guys adjust it?”
Immediately one of the men, the first guy, dropped into a crouching position in front of Wesley and made an adjustment. “How’s that?”
Wesley nodded. “I think that’s better.” And he slowly, with his full weight on it, stood free of help. His grin was a mile wide. “God, I remember how this felt before. Nothing like being back on your legs.” His spirits rose the higher and the stronger he stood. “Oh, thank God,” he muttered.
“You know it doesn’t matter to everybody,” Stephen said, looking at him.
“It matters to me,” Wesley stated. “I understand that I’ll always be missing the leg, but it doesn’t… It won’t show the same.”
“And appearances bother you the most?” Stephen asked.
“No, but I would like to get rid of the wheelchair,” Wesley admitted. “It’s definitely cumbersome and a hindrance.”
“And yet nice to have,” Shane added from the doorway, “for when you’re tired.”
He looked over at him, grinned, and agreed. “Absolutely. But you can bet I’ll work at not being tired enough that I have to go back into it again.”
“Understood,” Shane replied. “How does the new leg feel? You’ll have to take a few steps and test it.”
He took a tentative step, his arms out in case he fell. “It feels good,” he murmured. “I don’t know why I’m even acting like it’s,… as if I’ll fall over,” he admitted. “I had this prosthetic leg, or something like it, before, and without any problems walking, except for the lesion. But it feels…” He hesitated to say it. “I don’t know. It feels different.”
Shane nodded. “Your muscles are different now. They’re much more developed. But you should feel more stable, not more insecure.”
“I don’t think I’m feeling more insecure.” He hesitated, trying to explain what he was really feeling. “I guess it’s just the different part that makes it hard for me to explain it to you,” he murmured. “But last time I do remember that it was hard to get used to it. It always felt as if I would fall over. I didn’t trust it. But this doesn’t feel the same.”
“And maybe that’s more so because you can trust yourself now a little more. If you do start to lean over or start to fall, you know that your other leg is strong enough to jump into action and to help rescue you.”
“Maybe.” He frowned at Shane. “How does it look?”
“It looks high,” he suggested. He walked around to the front and squatted, eyeballing it. “I think it needs to come down a little bit more.” He looked at Stephen. “I’m thinking an eighth of an inch.”
Stephen stepped back, took a look at his leg, and nodded. “Let’s get some measurements going on the knee and the other side,” he suggested to his helper. “And we’ll line them up.”
It took a little longer than Wesley had expected, but then he was back up again on his new leg and walking ever-so-slowly. Just able to get vertical again and to know that this would be with him and that there were no problems with it and that he could keep it for now, all made him feel so much better. He sighed happily. “You guys have no idea how much I appreciate this.”
“It’s what we do,” Stephen stated, with a bright smile. “Now, what about that arm?”
“I was going to ask you about that. Are we done with the leg?”
“We’re done for the moment, until you tell me if anything sores up, if anything like that is going on,” Stephen explained. “So I want you to walk around while we talk and get comfortable with the new leg and let me know what you’re feeling, how it feels. Is it freely moving? Is it stable? And then we’ll take it off, and we’ll take a look at any sore spots.”
And that’s what they did. While they walked around and gave him time to process the weight and the feel of the new leg, he asked them what was available for his arm.
“Nothing’s really changed,” Stephen admitted. “Until you develop more muscle in that arm, we can’t hang very much off of it that’s usable.”
“So a chest strap and something popped over the top is what you guys have in mind temporarily?” Shane asked.
“Yep, but, if you can get those arm muscles back and the nerve tendons firing, that would help a lot. We haven’t even gotten close to testing that,” Stephen noted. “You did have corrective surgery on that stump, didn’t you?” he asked, looking at him suddenly. Wesley nodded. “Then we can take a look at the nerves and see what’s an option. If we’ve got something, we might do surgery and put in something a little more permanent. At least something that can trigger fingers opening and closing, arms raising and lowering, things like that,” Stephen detailed. “So there is potentially quite a bit that we can do.”
“That would be good,” Wesley said, feeling such a huge sense of relief.
“Feels as if maybe there’s hope after all?” Shane asked Wesley, with a knowing smile.
“It really does. I know it’s stupid, and I’m grateful to be alive and to have all my faculties right now,” he acknowledged, “but I need two working arms.”
“And a working leg apparently,” Stephen added, with a smile.
“Definitely,” he murmured. “And, laugh all you want, but nothing quite like looking and acting like the rest of the world around you. Being normal is when you’re healthy and happy and confident in your physical body,” Wesley declared, “and is something that people joke about all the time. However, being normal when you’re not normal, when the world looks at you differently and sees where you are different and how you look different,” Wesley added in an impassioned speech, “it can become something that you crave.”
“You’ll feel—and look—a whole lot more normal now,” Stephen said gently. “With that leg you can already walk and hold yourself completely differently, and that will be worth a lot.”
At that, Wesley grinned again. “You’re not kidding. I’m not trying to be greedy here, but, considering we’re talking arms, it would be really nice to get that dealt with too.”
“We can start the process, but only if Shane here thinks it’s healed enough.”
“I don’t think it has,” he replied. “Neither do I think the time and effort to get that arm where you want it to be is something we should put into a prosthetic at this point. We need to get you stronger first.”
Wesley looked over at Shane and frowned, not liking anything he had to say.
Shane nodded. “Otherwise you’ll just have to make adjustments afterward as you improve in strength, and those will be costly,” he reminded him.
Wesley nodded. “I guess so,… but you’re dissing on my dream. You know that, right?”
Shane laughed. “No, I’m not,” he argued. “I’m not even postponing it. I’m just putting a realistic restraint on it for the moment. You’ve got your leg, and, as long as it’s good to go, we’ll work on strengthening up your related muscles so your walking gait doesn’t favor one leg over the other, which right now you are doing,” he pointed out to everybody.
“Really?” Wesley asked, looking at him in surprise.
“Yes, you are. So we have that to deal with, and I would just as soon deal with that before we even get started with adjusting your arm strength to account for an arm prosthetic.”
Wesley sighed. “Right, so we always have to be the sensible ones.”
“It’s your body,” Shane said. “You want to sore it up and be off the prosthetics again for another what? Four, six, eight weeks, if not months?”
“No, I don’t,” he stated, “so fine. We’ll work on it. But Stephen can still do some tests on the nerves and the muscles of my arm today, couldn’t he?”
“Absolutely,” Shane agreed. “And that’s a start.”
Stephen nodded. “We’ve got another forty minutes here,” he noted, looking down at his phone. “Then we’ll have to call it a day, but we will be back. We do come here on a fairly regular timeframe.”
“Good,” Wesley said. “Do you guys know a woman named Kat out of New Mexico?”
“Yeah, sure do,” Stephen said. “We deal with her all the time.”
“Any particular work that you do with her?”
“She has some techniques that are slightly different than ours,” he said, looking up from the computer. “And some of her stuff works better for some of our people, and some of hers works better with our style,” he added. “It all depends what we have to work with as to who can give you the most mobility,” he stated.
“Ah, I guess that makes sense. Never thought of it from that point of view.”
“Nope,” Stephen agreed. “You’re just looking at getting the best deal that you can get for your body, and believe me that we understand that,” he said, with a big grin. “That’s why we do what we do because, it really brightens our world to see you guys doing so well with our tools and equipment,” he murmured. “Now, let’s sit down and get through some of this arm testing. Then we’ll have to run.”