Chapter 11: A Medical Family (part 3 of 3)

  It was early afternoon by the time Lucy Tao woke up to an empty house.

  As dark-red ceiling beams swam into view, she was struck by a momentary disorientation. Then she remembered. She was back in her childhood room in the Tao estate, lying in her old too-small bed. She was here because they didn't know where else to put her, and she didn't know where else to go.

  A week had passed since she left the rehabilitation ward at Central Temasek Hospital to come live with her parents. A week. Seven days. Discrete measurements of time by which everyone else regimented their lives. But to her, time was meaningless. All the days blended into each other in a string of fitful sleep followed by waking pain. Sleep was the salve to the shapeless pain that dogged her every waking hour. And pain was the reprieve from her insomniac nightmares.

  Except today was meant to be different. Today was the day when she would go back to the hospital in preparation for the surgery that would give her a new leg. She must remember that. It was very important that she remember, because it was important to many people that she get her leg back.

  Just like clockwork, the pain came. It began as an itch, the kind that didn't go away no matter how much she rubbed or scratched the part of her leg that was now called a 'stump'. It soon changed to burning. This burning had no heat, no Igneous Quintessence for her to sense or quell. Something that shouldn't be flammable—because it no longer existed—was nevertheless on fire, and agony ran rampant through her missing left leg.

  She sat up with a start and looked down at the leg, a reflex she couldn't correct despite knowing full well she'd find nothing there—despite having known for more than a hundred days. Like clockwork, she began to take deep breaths, in and out, just like the rehab therapist had shown her. She was allowed to Induct if she wished, but she found on this occasion that she was too weak and groggy to do so. As she had been taught to do, she lifted her right leg and placed it over the stump—to make it look as though she had a leg on the left side. Then she began to slide the leg over the stump, up and down, while trying to move the stump in the opposite direction.

  Her breathing became rougher and uneven with the effort. Sweat trickled down her face and back. It was no use. With only the hip joint as a point of reference, she could barely tell which way her stump was moving, and the friction against the right leg only seemed to intensify the burning—as though she were raking coal within invisible flames. Grunting with pain and frustration, she stopped the exercise and flopped back on the bed, breathing hard.

  Medication. That was another important thing to remember. An Anaesthetist had visited on her last day in the rehab ward and left her with a bag of pain medications, along with careful instructions on when and how much to take. She couldn't remember much about the instructions; that didn't seem so important anymore. But she remembered that when the pain got very bad, she should take medication to keep it at bay. They didn't make the pain go away, but they did help it become... quieter. Just enough that sleep could slip back in and take its place.

  Where were they? She turned her head and looked at this stranger's room that had once been the fabric of her everyday life. A colourful stuffed doll of a lion sewn by her late grandmother and meant to bring good fortune sat against the mirror atop her dresser. On her desk, beside a neat stack of her old notebooks that Mother had painstakingly saved, was a decorative chessboard depicting the second move in the Central Cannon opening. These had belonged to a different person—a younger, hopeful girl who ran with her brother and the neighbourhood boys on two healthy legs. Presently, Lucy's vacant eyes looked past her old personal effects at the scattered pile of paper sachets that contained medicinal powder. They were on the far side of her desk, at least a good five or six steps away from her bed.

  She cursed, filled with loathing toward her thoughtless and irresponsible self from a few hours ago who hadn't bothered to bring the medicine onto the bedside dresser. The medications were so important for her to remember, yet there they were, torturously out of reach. Stupid, lazy, useless... Teeth gritted, she twisted herself toward the edge of the bed and pushed up to a sitting position. She should have paused here to catch her breath, but her burning left leg screamed at her to keep moving, to reach for the powder. She slid a pair of crutches under her arms and pushed off the bed. The effort, combined with the near panic she was already in, brought on a whirl of giddiness.

  Medication. Medication is important. Without giving herself time to recover, she tried to take a step toward her desk. She had misjudged the traction of her right crutch against the floor; when she lifted her only foot into the air, the crutch gave out under her. Unable to reach for anything to break the fall, she clattered onto the floor and felt the full force of the drop. For a few confounding moments, she was able to forget the burning in her phantom leg as fresh pain shot through her shoulder, hip, and the side of her head. Then she stopped. She lay there on the cold bamboo floor, no longer fighting the pain and fire that engulfed her. And wanting to forget everything.

  Why did she have so much trouble remembering the important things, yet couldn't let go of the things she did want to forget? She remembered every humiliating session in the rehab ward, being taught—and failing—to do things she'd known how to do since she was a toddler. She remembered the whispered gossips of the nurses after she had woken up and been transferred out of ICU—did you know, that's Michael and Rui's sister... did you hear what her brothers did? She remembered the visits from her Silver Crane comrades, their optimism and good humour ringing hollow in her ears. Most of all, she remembered Prisha. She remembered how strong and beautiful she looked, even in her casualwear, and how mortifying it had been to let the woman of her dreams see her like this—broken, disfigured, less than human. Her only solace was that Prisha wasn't here now to see her grovelling.

  She didn't know how much time had passed. It seemed the pain—physical, mental, phantom, all of it—had been too much for her conscious self to bear. When she came to, the light in the room had shifted to a darker hue of orange, and there was now someone else with her.

  Rui knelt beside her, his hand gripping her shoulder and his face clouded with worry. Upon seeing her eyes open, he hastily leaned down and dug his arms underneath her. Lucy let herself be carried upright by her skinny brother—who wobbled momentarily under her weight—before being set down on the edge of the bed.

  "What happened? Are you hurt?" Rui uttered in between pants of laboured breathing. Even in her despondent state, a part of her appreciated the irony in the question, and she felt herself smirk. Am I hurt? Let me count the ways.

  "It was nothing. Just slipped. The floor must have been so comfortable that I fell asleep," she murmured, then became aware of the the soreness on the right side of her body that had taken the brunt of the fall. She also remembered that she had been on her way to get the medicine. That was very important. "Could you grab one of those sachets on the desk? And that cup? Should be still some tea left."

  Rui hesitated for only a moment before doing as she asked. She unfolded the sachet, careful not to let the powder spill, and dumped the whole thing into the back of her throat in one motion. She quickly chased it down with the tea that had long grown cold, swishing her mouth to dissolve as much of the powder as possible before gulping it down. Nothing changed. She still felt acutely sore, and she knew that the burning would start up again, sooner or later. She could only hope that the next spell of sleep would arrive before the pain.

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  Lucy put on her best nonchalant smile before looking up at her brother, who possibly looked even sorrier than her. She must appear hale and cheerful for her brother, especially on the eve of her big operation. That would be important to him. "You here to pick me up? I'm packed already. Just need to get changed. If you just give me a minute—"

  "Lucy," her brother said, the worry in his voice becoming more urgent. "Are you sure you're alright? I've never seen you like this before. You look... unwell."

  She scoffed inwardly, though she wouldn't show it to Rui. If he thought this was 'unwell', he should have seen her this morning. She couldn't... wouldn't let any of her family and friends know that this unending cycle of pain and self-loathing had become her life. There had been nights where she lay in agony for hours—not even daring to toss and turn—for fear that the noise of her getting up and fixing herself medicine would wake her mother who slept in the next room. In front of her loved ones, she was determined to be the old Lucy that no longer existed—strong, driven, ready for adventure. This was important. Only today, as she lay on the floor wracked by immeasurable pain, she... had forgotten.

  "I'm fine, Rui," she recited, wincing as a stabbing ache shot through her right temple. "I always look like this when I've just woken up. Go on, wait outside while I change."

  But he didn't turn to leave. Instead, he pulled over a chair and sat down, facing her. Oh, Rui. Her stubborn, sometimes annoying, and always earnest brother. He'd never seen something broken that he thought he couldn't fix, never a wrong he wouldn't try to put right.

  "Tomorrow's procedure," he asked quietly, "are you sure you want to go through with it?"

  Lucy found it in herself to be genuinely surprised by the question. "Why wouldn't I want to? I'm getting a new leg!"

  Rui shifted uncomfortably in his seat before leaning forward. He fixed her with that serious yet sincerely hopeful look that he had, one that was unique to her brother. "I've been meaning to ask. All this time that we'd been carrying on with the preparations, never once did I sit down with you and... just talk about it. Really talk about how you felt about the whole thing."

  What was there to talk about? She was an amputee, and her brothers, her parents, her friends at Silver Crane, and so many other smart and talented people had poured months of effort into giving her a new leg, to give her back her old life. What reason—what right—did she have to be hesitant or doubtful? This was important to so many people.

  Yet beneath the veneer she had painted over herself, she knew she wouldn't be going back to her old life. Too much had changed. She had discovered what a weak and cowardly person she had always been. Some of the things she couldn't forget, try as she might, included the searing pain when the Jungle-hound tore into her flesh. Its snarling, drooling breath as it drew near to finish her off. The all-consuming fear as she lay shocked and dying on the back of a speeding wagon, under a vast indifferent sky. And now she was expected to carry on, to push down the fear and pain. She would accept a Maladous organ into her body. She would accept a second lease on life and go back into the fray, because that was what Lucy Tao would have done.

  But she doubted very much that she was still the same person everyone else believed her to be.

  In order to distract herself from these unimportant and forgettable thoughts, and to delay facing the question Rui had posed, she turned an encouraging smile toward her brother and prompted. "Tell me again about the science behind it? I think I might have been a bit too intoxicated the last time you and Michael spoke to me about it."

  Then she half-listened as Rui eagerly obliged her. The model case from Kemet that started it off. The experiments showing a powerful connection between the Apparatus and the prosthesis. Mr Seah's endorsement that this procedure could change the face of Magic and adventuring for all time.

  Just like old times, a part of her was delighted to see her brother be so impassioned about an idea or project. The other part of her was dismayed at her own inability to fully follow the conversation, her mind wandering as he delved into one technical detail or another. She hadn't always been like this. She was a medically trained professional, for Buddha's sake! Had the Jungle-hound taken a chunk of her brain along with her leg?

  During one of the junctures where she had lost the thread, she suddenly noticed that Rui had stopped talking, and instead looked at her with a warm indulgent smile. He must have sensed that she hadn't been listening—at least not listening well. She wasn't quite sure where he had left off but when he spoke again, it was no longer about the procedure.

  "Can I tell you something that's a little embarrassing?"

  Lucy nodded, her curiosity dragging a measure of clarity back into her mind.

  "In the beginning of last year, I... was kind of lost," Rui began to tell his story, slow and patient, allowing himself to stumble over some words, just as he had stumbled through parts of his life. "There was a time when I honestly dreaded going into work every day. I thought I was no good. Always second-guessing myself. Pretending to know what I was doing. I just couldn't fathom what made me worthy of being a doctor over any other bloke who could read a textbook and manipulate a Quintessence. What was my reason for being there, slogging through it when I'd rather be anywhere but the inside of a hospital? I never told anyone this, but I came this close to handing in my resignation. If I'd gone through with it, Michael and Father would probably never speak to me again.

  "It was around then that we met for dinner. No parents, no Michael, just you and me. We went to the Iqbal Inn, do you remember that? Best fish curry I've had in my life. Anyway, you were telling me you'd just come back from a rescue mission. A group of miners trapped in an underwater cave. Not everyone survived, but you guys managed to get most of them out, fought through an army of Mud-leapers. It wasn't exactly a happy story but... you said one of the miners was a kid no older than fifteen. He was barely conscious and severely hypothermic but you managed to maintain thermoregulatory support throughout the extraction and the transport back to the city. He made it out okay, just a few scrapes in the end.

  "When you told me about him, I could sense—pride isn't the right word—more like contentment? This knowledge that you'd been exactly where you were needed most, where you could be the best version of yourself doing the maximum amount of good you were capable of.

  "That's when I started looking into this stuff, you know. Started my research into adventurers and what they were coming into hospital with. At first, it was honestly just this simple notion... that I could help you. I saw you were doing such a great job, I just wanted to find a way I could assist in any way. That led me to finding that pattern of injuries, then to you getting me in touch with Mr Seah, meeting Prisha and the team... and the rest is history.

  "If it weren't for you, Lucy, I might not even be a doctor right now. Instead, I just passed my fellowship exam—barely—and I'm heading into my fourth year of Radiology training. And here I am, planning an experimental procedure for my adventurer sister, alongside some of the brightest medical minds in Temasek."

  Rui leaned in closer and took Lucy's hands into his. His hands were warm, and she was surprised to find that the backs of her own hands were wet, and even more shocked to notice tears flowing down her face. For all the pain and anguish she had endured, she had been convinced that crying was one of the unimportant things she had learned to forget.

  "Lucy. You are my inspiration. My hero. You always have been. Whatever you're feeling right now, whatever you decide about the operation, nothing will ever change that."

  He tightened his grip on her hands and pulled her into a hug. It felt awkward and unbalanced, her right knee knocking against his left, and her stump... hanging in the air. But she let herself be lost in the embrace, let her veneer crumble into a sobbing mess, let her brother console her—like when they had both been children.

  "I'm so sorry, little sis," Rui continued, his voice cracking. "I'm sorry I didn't ask you sooner. I'm sorry I wasn't there for you when you needed me."

  During a break in her sobbing, Lucy Tao sucked in a shuddering breath. With it, she felt a familiar warmth fill her chest, a warmth that she hadn't known since the day she lost her leg. Then along with the spreading warmth, an answer began to form. It was far from certain, far from daring, but it was her own choice. And that was important to her.