The Descendant

I woke up wondering why I felt like complete and utter shit. Then I wondered where I was. The ceiling was not my shade of white, the light was all wrong. And why I couldn't move. I wasn't as panicked about that as I could have been. Should have been, probably. My mind was slushy. I heard some muted beeps increasing slowly, and I managed move my head a little to look around slightly. It didn't do any good, all I could see was partway down the walls, there was a generic door, no purple anywhere and the window coverings were slatted blinds instead of rich velvet draperies. What the fuck had happened?

The door opened quietly to the left, and there was a sound that suggested movement on my right. "Hello, Lys, it's good to see you awake," a brisk voice said, and I squinted suspiciously at the woman. She wore a white coat, so that had to be good. Right?

The movement on the other side resolved into a glowy ball, which freaked me out and I would have shied away violently but I still couldn't move. Then I remembered that that was ok for some reason, and turned my attention back to White Coat Woman as the glowy ball came to the side of the bed. Why was the glowy ball wearing clothes??

"My name is Doctor Sicora," WCW said, and I huffed a laugh. Who the hell names their kid Doctor?

"I'm a doctor here at Metropolitan General Hospital," she said after a disconcerted pause. "You were brought here three days ago following a traffic incident on one of the roads out of New York. You were with your family. Let me assure you now that everybody will be fine. You were brought here by emergency flight. Your injuries were extensive, you were in surgery for twenty-one hours. You had a fractured skull, brain swelling, a fractured cheekbone, damaged eye, broken nose, and several teeth were knocked out or loosened. Your ankle was fractured. Now, the soft tissue damage to your brain and eye were easily healed with medication and a tissue accelerator, the cartilage of your nose repaired and the swelling and bruising healed. Your teeth were replaced and treated to tighten the tissues around the roots again. The bone is the thing that has to be carefully monitored. We can only help that process along so fast. You still have the fractures in your skull and cheekbone, although they are cracks rather than completed, dislocated fractures, which will help them to repair themselves faster. Your ankle, though, is a completely different matter." She was checking things over my head as she spoke, then looked at me intently.

"We have you in a low-power forcefield to keep you from moving while you were unconscious and hurting yourself further. I'm going to release it now." She pressed a button on a remote and a light pressure that I hadn't really been aware of lifted. I moved my head back and forth, nodding forward, stretching those muscles, shrugging my shoulders, extending my arms, and trying to sit up. Ouch. Something hurt in my pelvis. "Don't sit up just yet," Doctor Sicora said hastily. "A catheter's been inserted."

...ok, whatever.

One foot flexed and rotated just fine but not the other. "Your other ankle is immobilized," Doctor Sicora said. She sighed, and the glowy thing took my hand. It was weird. It felt like hands on my hand. "Your ankle and lower leg were in eighty-two pieces when we started to operate. We repaired tendons, ligaments, connective tissues, and pinned the bone fragments together. You will recover fully from this and regain your range of motion again. To assist in your healing, your foot, ankle, and lower leg are in a lightweight but rigid cast supported with a small local antigrav unit to keep all pressure off your injuries. I understand that you're a ballet dancer." She paused, and for the first time, looked worried. "I regret to have to tell you that your days of being on point are over. Even when you're healed up, your ankle won't be able to support the strains of dancing on your toes. The damage and reconstruction were too extensive. I'm very sorry." Her eyes dropped and she bustled around checking things.

"Why don't I remember any of this?" My voice was raspy. Doctor Sicora poured me some water, and I noticed for the first time that there was an IV line in my elbow.

"Your concussion might have affected your memory slightly," she said. "But you've been given some medication to help with that, and it should return shortly now that you're conscious again. So what's going to happen next is that we're going to take you to x-ray to check on your breaks, and when you get back, we'll do some cognition tests." A couple of other people came in, wearing different clothes and different white coats, and I was decatheterized and placed in a wheelchair. There was a long trip to the room with the x-ray, and by the time I got back to the room, I was understanding what had happened a whole lot better.

And how I wished I didn't.

My eyes were overfilling, and after I was placed back in the bed, Dr Sicora gave me a box of tissues. The glowy thing that I now remembered was my mom stroked my hair. Then I got it together enough for the cognition test, which showed that the likelihood of permanent damage was low. I tested my teeth with my tongue and found everything to be ok. The IV line was removed since I was conscious, and further medication could be administered orally or with a pressure spray. Then the doctor left.

"Where's Deri? And Dad? What happened? I saw you in the car, you were unconscious."

"It was a kidnapping attempt," Mom said, her hand still stroking my hair. "They took Deri, but emergency services had been called and they intercepted the kidnappers before they got to the airport. Dad is also in the hospital, they rammed the pod's door. He had a concussion, a broken arm and leg, and some internal damage, but he's being released this afternoon. Deri is fine, and I was injured, but I have that healing factor."

"How did they do that much damage to the pod?" I said, and drank some more water. "It's one of Uncle Tony's, it has great safety features. Deri and I were shaken up but not hurt until we were dragged out of it."

"The kidnappers had modified their vehicles," was all that Mom would say. Then there was tapping at the door, which opened to show an anxious-looking Grandpa Mark and Aunt Amy.

"Honey," Aunt Amy said, coming over to take my hand.

"You're looking better, Lys," Grandpa said encouragingly. They looked over at Mom, whose head-blob nodded. "Dan is going to be released soon, Diana. We thought we'd come down to sit with Lys for a bit while you help get him discharged."

"Oh, thank you, Mark. Lys, dear, I'm going to get Dad and we'll stop by before I take him home to rest, but I'll be back later. He wants to see you."

As Mom left, I couldn't keep my eyes open any more. The next time I woke up, Aunt Natasha was in the chair. The sun had gone down and I had some dinner. It wasn't very good. She said that she knew what it was like not to be able to dance anymore and that anytime I wanted to talk about it, to let her know. Any time, day or night. I went back to sleep, woken up every few hours by a nurse performing some sort of wellness check or shooting me with the pressure injector; I'd rather that they'd left the IV in. The injector hurt more and I was sick of it. Grandpa Bruce was in the chair now, and I waited until the damn nurse left me alone again before hissing at him, "You're Batman, can't you make them leave me alone? How can I get some rest if they're always waking me up?"

He huffed out a laugh. "Even I can't do that, Lys," he said regretfully. "If we could spring you, we could put you downstairs, but they have a point; you're not ready to be released yet."

"Couldn't you lie, say I was being transferred to another facility?"

"Metro General is the best place for you to be right now, unfortunately, because the medication that will push the bone healing as fast as possible has to be very carefully monitored and the physicians here helped to develop and refine the medications. They understand its use better than anyone. But in a couple of days they'll have done all they can for you. The medications can only provide a boost to conditions making bone growth possible and help deal with the trauma, it doesn't actually make it go faster, and once the growth is perceptible, it has to be stopped."

"A couple days more? Promise?"

"Promise, Lys." So I went back to sleep.

The next morning, they sent a nurse in to wake me up and check... whatever the hell it is they check, I was so crabby from sleep deprivation by then I didn't care what it was they were doing. But she helped me to the bathroom and brought a breakfast (disgusting sludgy oatmeal, I'd kill for some damned bacon) so I tried to be nice. I don't think I succeeded very well, but at least I wasn't channelling Deri's princess airs. I did apologize, and she laughed it off, saying that given what I'd been through it was a miracle I wasn't more crabby. Then the doctor came in with a couple of specialists, I was taken off to be irradiated again, and the consensus was that the medication had to stop. The bone was showing the first signs of remodeling. I would be given a different medication to supply specific compounds helpful for bone growth, but those were pills that could be taken without medical supervision. I was given crutches and allowed to take a shower. The anti grav field that kept my lower leg hovering about an inch off the mattress at all times also repelled water from the casting material. It wasn't that the cast would unravel or anything, but it wasn't hygienic and could smell if water got trapped between the skin and the cast. In rare cases, a fungus could grow, gross. I felt slightly better after the shower; there were bars mounted on the shower walls that I could grab if I felt unsteady and I was relieved to find that I still had all my hair. I'd seen somebody with half a shaved head in the radiology department and it made me worry. The doctor said they didn't need to shave my head because the skull was just cracked and they got to me fast enough to keep my brain from swelling dangerously.

I went back to sleep. I was exhausted, which was weird after being unconscious for a few days, but there you go, and in any case, I didn't have anything else to do, so I might as well nap as much as possible. I didn't want to think about what they'd said about my dancing anyway.

I woke up for lunch, which was a vaguely flavored water with a few sad scraps of chicken and a noodle floating around. I poked at it dispiritedly with my spoon, then just ate the roll instead. Damn, we were rich, why wasn't I getting anything better to eat? The roll tasted like glue.

I woke up a few hours later to whispering; a nurse and Dad. I smiled for the first time in a long time, it felt like. The nurse went away after another one of those damned injections. Dad was in a wheelchair since he couldn't use crutches. He rolled closer and smiled conspiratorially, but the smile was strained. I didn't care though, because from his messenger bag he produced one of Alan's sandwiches. A cold steak sandwich on crisp toasted bread with lettuce and sauteed mushrooms and onions. I restrained myself from ripping it out of his hands (barely) and gobbled it down hungrily. I felt so much better after, having finally had something good to eat. I drank some water and sighed at the sight of a brownie, dark and moist and delicious.

"You'll be blowing this popsicle stand tomorrow morning, honey," he said, and I brightened up some. "We're installing some grab bars in your shower until you're healed up, and we've got the elevator, so you'll be able to move around some. And you won't be woken up all the time." We exchanged small smiles. "You won't be going to school for awhile longer, though. You'll have your assignments at home, but it'll take you some time to build up your strength enough to navigate the hallways. You'll be given a temporary pass for the elevator there until your cast comes off. We called your work to let them know, and they want you to call them when you're ready to come back. Your manager said that there are things you can do even with a cast."

"So how's Deri?" I asked, feeling sleepy again.

"She's fine. She tried to use her gift, but... She saw what happened to you and tried to help you, but they carried her away. She bit several people and was backhanded, but the cops caught up with them before they got to their airplane. They had a small, older private jet waiting. They're being interrogated, so hopefully the authorities will get some intel that will lead to whoever's behind the kidnapping."

"What about you?" I asked, yawning.

"I'll be fine, sweetie. They had modified their vehicles with rams that punched out to incapacitate whoever was in the front seats. It worked really well, but I'm like you, I just have to wait for the breaks to heal. There's one more thing. Your Uncle Tony has devised subcutaneous trackers that we'd like to have implanted in your hand. It's passive; it won't show up if somebody scans you looking for trackers. Somebody has to send a signal, and you're tracked with the pingback. It's not perfect, but the trackers that send alarms can be detected with a scan and we don't want you to be cut by anybody trying to take it out. Will you allow it? "

"I guess so," I said unenthusiastically. He nodded.

"It's easy to place; it's tiny, smaller than a grain of rice. They use a hypodermic needle to place it, then a second with a tissue accelerator, and you're done. It's placed between muscles in a low-friction coating, so you shouldn't feel it once it's placed."

After that, I took another nap, waking up a few hours later for more medication and a technician who came in with a syringe and Mom. Under her supervision, the little chip was placed in my left hand and it was as Dad had said, I didn't feel it, not even when I pressed on my hand to find it. She texted Uncle Tony when it was done, and he sent a ping to make sure it was working. It was, but it took a couple of minutes to get the test result back. The hospital was pretty well shielded from electronic interference, but the protection for the medical equipment sometimes interfered with communicator signals. "It's irritating," Mom agreed, "but you'll never know the pain of dial-up connections, dearest."

She'd brought some clothes with her so I'd have something to wear home the next day. "Steve is making you another skirt and blouse, Lys," she said. "Everybody sends you their best wishes." She'd also brought me my reader, and I read a little, but the upset about my ankle and dance kept at me, and Mom brought over a trash can for my tissues. "I wish that there was something I could do, Lys," she said, kissing my forehead. "You love it so much. I petitioned Apollo, but his priest said that even the gods have to bend to the limitations of the physical form. He did agree to help you heal, having abilities beyond mortal medicine, but this is the best he can do."

I had to be content with that. But I wasn't. I suspected I'd be mourning my loss for quite a while.