Machine Man Read Free Page A

Austin wrote something on her clipboard. She was lowering my dosage. Before I could object, she put her hand on my shoulder. It felt awkward, for both of us. “I’ll come back when you’re rested. This is the darkest point, Mr. Neumann. It all gets better from here.”
    MY ROOM had windows. I could see all the way across the Gardens. At dusk, the skyscrapers flared orange. It was very quiet, this hospital. It was like I was the only person there.
    I HAD four nurses: Katie, Chelsea, Veronica, and Mike. Mike was the one who bathed me. That struck me as unfair. All I’d gone through and a man sponged me. It wasn’t a big deal. It was just another disappointment. Nurse Mike was friendly. This is nothing against Nurse Mike. He taught me how to unwind the bandages without pulling out a draining tube, which was something I did once and never wanted to again. He showed me how to fasten them so they wouldn’t unwind in the night. My dressings needed changing every four hours. That’s how much I was leaking, even before you counted what came out of the tubes. It was an alarming idea. Presumably if I disconnected the saline drip, I would deflate to a husk. I was a junior high physics problem.
If Charles Neumann is a human being with volume 80 liters, oozing bodily fluid at the rate of 0.5 liters per minute, how often must we replace his 400-milliliter saline bags?
I felt I should have been more sophisticated than that.
    The nurses were very familiar with my stump. They seized any opportunity to whip back the sheet and probe my flesh. “It’s looking fantastic,” they said. Especially Nurse Veronica. Nurse Veronica could not love my stump more. She smiled and opened my curtains and changed my bags and said it wouldn’t be long before I pulled on my dancing shoes. I knew what they were doing. They were teaching me not to be ashamed. It was a good hospital. But I was still ashamed.
    THEN CAME the physical therapist. The second he bounced in I realized I was back in gym class. He was fit and tan and worea hospital polo shirt small enough that his biceps strained the seams. Tucked beneath one was a clipboard. The only thing missing was a whistle. “Charles Neumann!” He stopped beside my bed and folded his arms. I had been watching TV, and felt guilty. “Is it Charles? Charlie? Chuck?”
    “Charles.”
    “I’m Dave.” He rolled aside a hat stand of fluid bags. “I’m here to get you out of that bed.”
    I looked at my bed. It had warm sheets. A few magazines near my feet. Foot. My phone nearby. I didn’t see the problem with the bed.
    Dave’s eyes shone. He drank a lot of fruit juice, I could tell. He made me feel listless. “We’re gonna work hard together, Charles. I have to warn you. Sometimes you may not like me very much.”
    He dragged over a chair. He stood there and grinned. I looked at the chair. I looked at him. “What?”
    “Get into it.”
    It seemed a long way away. It was a meter lower than the bed. What if I fell? Dave waited. His grin was permanent. I placed my phone on my bedside table and folded up my magazines. I rolled back the sheet. I leaned forward to check my dressing, the tubes.
    “Don’t worry about all that. Just get your butt into this chair.”
    You just get your butt into this chair
, I thought. But I edged forward. My stump scraped across the sheets. It wasn’t terrible. But it wasn’t good. I felt itchy. I was thirsty. I looked around for a glass of water.
    “Come on, Charles.”
    I gripped the edge of the bed and swung my good leg over it. Then my stump. It made me want to cry, that little movement. It was so pathetic. Once entire limbs had jumped at my command. Now this.
    “Almost there.”
    I slid off the bed and fell into the chair. The shock of impact traveled up my stump and jangled the nerves there. My surgeon, Dr. Angelica Austin, had folded them up inside my body. I had learned this from a nurse. They were places they were never meant to be, wondering what was going on.