Bernard Cornwell by Wildtrack

Author:Wildtrack
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-02-01T16:59:13+00:00

PART THREE

The doctor turned out to be a woman of my own age, but who seemed older because of her brusque and confident manner. She was a neurologist whom Angela had met during the filming of a medical documentary. Doctor Mary Clarke had a hint of humour in her green eyes, but none in her voice as she briskly put me through her various tests. At the end of the performance she led me back to her private office overlooking a rose garden, where Angela had waited for us. Doctor Clarke asked me to describe the exact nature of my wound. She grimaced as she took notes, while Angela, who had not heard the full story before, flinched from the gory details.

"I wish," Mary Clarke said when I'd finished, "that I'd had you as my patient, Mr Sandman."

"I rather wish that, too," I said gallantly.

"Because"—she pointedly ignored my clumsy compliment—"I'd have kept you strapped down in bed so you couldn't have done any more damage to yourself."

Silence. Except that a nearby lawnmower buzzed annoyingly.

"What do you mean?" I asked eventually.

"What I mean, Mr Sandman, is that your do-it-yourself physiotherapy has undoubtedly aggravated a fairly routine and minor oedematose condition. There's no medical reason why you shouldn't be walking normally, except that you forced the pace unreasonably."

"Bollocks," I said angrily, with all gallantry forgotten. "The bastards said I'd never walk again!"

"The bastards usually do." Mary Clarke half smiled. "Because a spinal oedema routinely presents itself as a complete severance. Naturally, if your spinal cord was cut, you'd be paralysed for life. It's only when some degree of mobility returns that an oedema can be diagnosed."

"Oedema?" Angela asked.

"A bloody swelling," I answered too caustically, and immediately regretted the tone. I might have lived too long with the doctors and their vocabulary, but Angela was new to it.

"Very literally a bloody swelling," Mary Clarke said to Angela, "which presses on the spinal cord to induce a temporary paralysis, but which can usually be expected to subside within a matter of weeks."

"Mine didn't," I said stubbornly, as though I was proving her wrong.

"Because you'd been severely traumatized. There was extensive burning as well as the bullet damage. In essence, Mr Sandman, you have a permanent oedema now." She paused, then gave a grin that was almost mischievous. "The truth is that you're a very remarkably scrambled mess. When you die they'll probably put your backbone in a specimen jar. Congratulations."

"But what's to be done?" Angela insisted, and I was touched by the look of real anguish on her face until I realized that she was probably just terrified for the future of her film.

"Nothing, of course," Mary Clarke said happily.

"Nothing?" Angela sounded shocked.

Mary attempted a nautical metaphor; explaining that my body had somehow lashed together some kind of nervous jury-rig that gave me control of my right leg. The problem was that the jury-rig sometimes blinked out and, though further surgery might help, the risks were too frightening. "Are you determined to sail round the world?" Mary asked me at the end of the bleak explanation.

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