CHAPTER 3:
The Ghost of Jack Steele
Tammy D @SMagnolia
Hey, guys, I need a definition. What’s a ‘portmanteau?’
Jack E. @Steelyeyed
@SMagnolia, a portmanteau is a combination of two words, with a meaning that combines both. Example: Biologic + electronic = bionic.
ChirpChat, November 2039
“No, Aunt Sally, I don’t think I’ll be there for Thanksgiving.”
. . .
“Yes, I understand that it’s Uncle Hugh’s eightieth birthday, too.”
. . .
“I appreciate that you have wheelchair ramps and wide doorways, but Doc Spruce was adamant. They’re still worried about infection.”
. . .
“That’s right. Stick a slice of Hoop’s cake in the freezer and keep it for me.”
. . .
“I love you too, hon. I’ll come visit you as soon as they let me.”
. . .
“Same here, Momma. You take care.”
Glenn sighed. His aunt worried over him so much, but then she’d taken him in when his mother, Rosemarie, died during his freshman year in High School. He’d been in fifth grade when his mother remarried, but his step-father, Vernell Hairston, never really connected with him, and was even more at a loss how to handle this extremely intelligent—and now extremely sullen—teenager. It was only through visits with Glenn’s Aunt Sally and Uncle Hugh that he had even learned much about his father. Sally’s brother Roland had been an Air Force officer. All he’d gotten out of his mother was that his father had cheated Death too many times, and Death won in the end.
Aunt Sally told different stories and filled in many of the gaps in his memories of his father. Sally and her husband still lived in the house where she and Roland had grown up, and his father’s old room became Glenn’s after Rosemarie’s death. Sally and Hugh had a daughter who’d grown up and moved away, so they funneled all their love to their grieving nephew and eventually rekindled his passion for science, math, and all things space-related. Rosemarie Shepard Hairston might have been his mom, but it was Aunt Sally who had comforted him and filled the void left by tragedy. She had earned the label of “Momma.”
Never one to take “no” for an answer, Sally insisted on visiting him, even though she’d have to travel from Virginia to Texas to do it. Marty was worried about infection, the therapists were worried about his mental state, and the San Antonio Military Medical Center, where he was being treated, was worried over security and the possibility of adverse publicity. What had happened to Glenn was not well known; Mars Mission Control—MMC or “double-M”—had reported only that he had been injured during a lunar training accident. There was the very real fear of protests and sensationalism if some of the more . . . graphic . . . pictures of his injuries came out. Glenn finally convinced Marty that the sister of a U.S. Air Force officer and wife of a Royal Air Force officer was unlikely to leak pictures to the media, so Marty browbeat the hospital into submission—as long as she maintained the isolation protocol.
Glenn was not having a good day. He’d been complaining that Marty and the team of doctors and technicians had gone to so much trouble to fit him with bionics, but hadn’t turned them on yet.
So last week, they had.
The sensory feedback had been intense; it felt like half his body was on fire. Sensory nerves which had been either unstimulated or pain-blocked for months now had input and the combination of sensations was simply too much. The motor nerves weren’t much better, and he’d thrashed about as if having a seizure.
Marty said it would get better and allowed the techs to keep the bionics turned on at regular power for an hour. By that time Glenn had screamed himself hoarse and broken everything within reach—including the exoskeleton. The bionics were turned off, and the neural engineers would have to rethink their protocol for activating the artificial limbs and organs.
Yesterday morning Marty had announced that he was reluctant to turn on the eye and ear prosthetics given the events of a week ago, but that he’d turn on the arm and legs at low power for the upcoming visit. That had been yesterday, and it still hurt, but was—barely—tolerable. Moreover, since Glenn needed to get used to the sensation, the bionics were left turned on overnight.
Glenn hadn’t slept at all, and the pain made him irritable. He lashed out at Marty, the techs, and the nurses. He’d even tried to throw his meal tray at the young lady from food services . . .
. . . and that was when Aunt Sally walked in.
“Glenn Armstrong Shepard! You behave! I raised you better than that!”
“Yes, ma’am!” The change in Glenn was immediate, gone was the forty-year-old angry man; in his place was the orphaned fifteen-year-old who’d finally found a loving home with his aunt.
“You apologize, young man!” Aunt Sally was the kindest, gentlest soul one could ever meet, but there was steel in her voice.
“I’m sorry, Miss Neville. I’ve not been feeling well and it got the better of me,” Glenn sheepishly told the food services orderly. “I apologize and we’ll get this cleaned up ourselves.”
“Sure, okay,” the girl mumbled and quickly left the room.
“That’s better, Glennie,” Sally said. “Now, how are you going to clean that up? You’re in there, and I’m stuck outside this glass. I feel like all of those movies where the mother visits her son in prison, and has to talk to him on a phone while watching him through a bullet-proof window.”
“Well, I’m not handcuffed to a table, so there’s that.”
Sally grinned, ruefully. “Yes, but maybe you should be after that shameful display. You be careful; I’ll smack you on the back of your head. You know better than to act out like that.
“Yes, Momma, but it hurts so bad.”
“You told me you volunteered for this.”
“I know, it’s just . . . I didn’t think it would take this long. They don’t even have everything turned on, let alone turned all the way up—and it hurts when they do.”
“Give it time, Glennie. You have plenty of time.”
“Do I? The Mars Three expedition leaves in a year. I don’t have time to spend months in recovery gaining only an inch at a time.”
“You don’t have to go, you know.”
“Yes, Momma. Yes, I do. It’s what I trained for. It’s what I’ve dreamed of.”
“Really? It seems to me that young Glennie Shepard only wanted to be a doctor.”
“Flight surgeon, Momma.”
“How well did that work out for you? Playing hero on the Moon?”
“I just did what anyone else on the crew would have done.”
“Nope, I’m not buying that. I know that being an astronaut was your father’s dream and you’re honoring that with your own career, but you went into a fire to rescue a patient. That’s not an astronaut . . . that’s a doctor.”
“It’s still nothing special.”
“Yes, it is, your Uncle Hoop said so—and he should know.” When he was very young, Glenn had trouble understanding his uncle Hugh Pritchard’s Welsh accent, and had first called him “Hoo Pitcher” and then shortened it to “Hoop” or “Hoops.”
“Yeah, he told me about the doctor who rushed in when his ejector seat malfunctioned.” Glenn became wistful for a moment. “Maybe . . .”
“Right. Now, that’s settled. I need to give him a report. I can still see the junctions for your legs. Are they going to cover that?”
“Eventually. The skin has to finish healing, then a polymer filler and a combination of synthetic and stem-cell grafted skin will cover the rest.”
“The arm looks good, although the skin looks darker than the rest of you—more like your mother.”
“Well, I’ve been out of natural sunlight for a while. Once I can get some sun, the skin color should match up.”
“Okay, I can understand that. Now, what’s wrong with your ear? You look like Hoop’s cousin Donny did after a lifetime of boxing.”
“You mean cauliflower ear? Well, it’s kind of like that. Every time a surgeon reattaches an amputation, or performs a transplant, they have to worry about getting the blood vessels and lymph ducts right. With tissue engineering, the vessels don’t even necessarily line up properly. Blood vessels leak, clots form, and the next thing you know it’s all swollen from accumulated blood and fluids and the doc starts talking about attaching leeches to drain the blood.” Glenn glared through the glass, past his aunt to Doctor Spruce, who had been hanging back at the nurses’ station.
“If only someone would invent nanomachines that could seal leaks and break up blood clots,” said Marty in a deadpan voice without even looking up from his computer screen.
“Yeah, you get right on that, Doc,” Glenn retorted. Marty just grinned. “Anyway, Doc tells me that the circulation is good, it’s just draining slow. It should resolve in another couple of weeks.” Glenn leaned back, put his right hand behind his head and rubbed the palm back and forth a couple of times over the short stubble of his hair. “Anyway, the skin seems to be doing okay, still feels a bit numb, but it does have feeling.”
“So, you said they haven’t turned everything on full power, yet, right?” Sally pointed toward his face, although it wasn’t clear if she was indicating the swollen ear or the patch over his left eye.
“Well, my bionic legs and arm are working, as you can see.” Glenn shifted a bit in his exoskeleton, moved his legs slightly and wiggled his fingers. “The electrodes are in place for eye and ear, but the interface has to be trained. Legs and arm first.”
“Bionic, you say . . . I’ve heard that term before.”
“Well, you know how you and Hoop taught me all about the space program and the Sixties? All of the important firsts—like Alan Shepard and John Glenn and Neil Armstrong’s ‘One small step . . . ?’ Well, this one starts in Nineteen-Sixty with an Air Force doctor named Jack Steele. He coined the term ‘bionic’ to mean bio-like or life-like, although it’s also supposed to be a short for biological electronics. Steele and colleagues also proposed that bionics and biomechanical enhancements would be essential for humans in space . . .”
The conversation would have gone on for hours if Marty hadn’t come over and interrupted. “That’s good for now, this brat needs rest. I’m going to turn up the nerve blocker, induce some delta rhythms, and make him sleep. Miz Pritchard, you’re welcome to come back, and as soon as we can drop the isolation, bring your husband as well.
“As for you, Mister Grumpy, nighty-night.” Marty reached out and touched a control beside the door.
“Night, Momma . . .” Glenn slurred as he faded off into induced sleep.
“How’s he really doing, Doctor?” Sally asked Doctor Spruce as she watched her nephew’s features relax.
“Glenn? Superb. He’s beating the odds every day.”
“Really? I didn’t get that impression when I walked in.”
“That’s just post-trauma adaptation—what they used to call PTSD. We now know it’s really the brain trying to reconcile an expectation that everything will be the same as before the accident, with the reality that everything has changed.”
“Post-trauma . . . PTA. He’s been a pain in the ass?”
Marty laughed. “Yeah, a bit, but that’s depression, too. He’s doing well, but it’s not fast enough for him. He’s going to be seeing one of my colleagues—a doc that specializes in people with PTA and chronic illness. Used to be a pediatric psychiatrist, now he treats wounded veterans.”
“He treated kids? That’s . . . somehow appropriate.”
“Yup. I thought so, too. Anyway, Nik—that’s Doctor Pillarisetty—should be a lot of help, and I predict that Glenn will progress much faster once he’s got his head on straight.”
“It’s going to hurt, Hoops. Hell, it already does, but then you know all about that.” Hugh and Sally Pritchard had driven down to San Antonio and were staying with some of Hoop’s Air Force friends. They’d been allowed to visit in person once the chief immunologist had relented and allowed Glenn to have in-person visits. The doctor had wanted to keep Glenn in isolation until the last of the grafts and therapy were completed, but Glenn was of no mood to comply. The compromise was masks, gowns, and gloves . . . and transferring Hoop to a hospital wheelchair instead of his custom-built powered chair.
“I know, Glennie, I can see it in the corner of your eyes. You look like I felt after my ejection seat fired.” His uncle was a Royal Air Force officer who’d been on liaison to the U.S. Air Force. A training mission had him seated at the navigator station on an old B-52 American bomber. The position was below the pilot, which meant that the only way to eject was down or to the side. An onboard fire caused his seat to eject while the aircraft was on the ground. Hoop had to be pulled out of the wreckage, but was able to walk—well, limp—away from the accident. Over time the injury had led to chronic pain and weakness; spinal implants would have helped keep him out of a wheelchair, but the deterioration was simply too much after forty years.
“Physical therapy is a bitch. Not the walking part so much as the flexibility exercises. I have to do yoga to prevent my new skin grafts from stiffening.” Unlike old-style grafts, Glenn’s burns had been sprayed with a solution of nutrients and stem cells—cells from his own body that had been “de-differentiated” so that they could become just about any adult-type of tissue. “I should be happy that I could regrow my own normal skin without scarring. For that matter, it’s good that they could make stem cells from me, instead of giving me skin that was too dark or too pale. My ear was grown from the same stuff, but they make me stretch, bend, flex—they even have a machine that presses on my skin, then releases, to make sure it stays soft.”
“So, how’s the walking?” Hoop had asked the question every time they’d talked, whether by phone or through the glass.
“I really thought that attaching the legs directly to titanium bones would be better. After all, I’m not rubbing the skin of my stumps raw in the socket of a peg-leg, but all it did was transfer the pressure to my hip joints.” Glenn lay back in the hospital bed with a sigh of relief. He still used the exoskeleton, but that morning’s four-hour therapy session had him taking about half of his body weight on his new legs, and even half was a strain.
“Hah! Maybe I should get myself an exo like yours, then I could whip your ass in therapy, challenge you to a race and then beat you at it.” At eighty, Hoop didn’t lack for enthusiasm. If anyone understood what Glenn was going through, it was Hoop.
The thought made Glenn smile. “Yes, and then you can terrorize the nurses on this floor for me.” He paused a moment. “Well, maybe not Lacey, she’s pretty nice, but you might want to teach Marty a thing or two about bedside manner.”
“Hey! I heard that!” Hoop and Glenn both laughed. Doc was never far when there were visitors. Something about making sure he didn’t overdo it.
“Momma, you’ve been pretty quiet.” Sally reached out but then she realized she had reached for his left hand, she recoiled slightly. Glenn moved the artificial digits enough to catch her fingers and pull her hand back. He didn’t have a lot of strength, but he was rapidly relearning hand and wrist control. “No, I mean it. I can read the calendar off of the nurse’s tablet even though the chief head shrinker thinks it’s a bad idea. I know what day it is.”
“We just didn’t think you should be by yourself today. We can’t help it when you’re on a mission, but lying here?”
“Yeah, well, I try not to think too much of February first. I know Mom loved me, and I know she loved Dad even if she did her best to bury the memories.”
“That was just pain and grief, Glennie,” Hoop said.
“I know, Hoop.” Glenn leaned back in the bed. “She held on the best she could. I just couldn’t she believe died to the minute, hour, day, and month the same as Dad. Do you think she knew?”
“The pain was bad; hon. Rosie was heavily medicated. You were there, as was Vernell.” Glenn grimaced at his aunt’s mention of Rosemarie’s second husband, but Sally continued. “It was better that way.”
“It’s funny, you calling her Rosie. That’s what Dad called her; she wouldn’t let Vernell call her that. He finally settled on ‘Em.’ She tried so hard to bury it all. She buried him, then worked so hard to eliminate every memory, even the fact that Dad actually survived the damned grenade that day.” He reached for the cup of water at his right side, took a sip and swallowed with an audible gulp. “Did you know he looked just like me? I mean, me after my accident. He tackled the bank robber and landed on top of him, so the bastard took the worst of it, but the grenade shredded Dad’s legs and left arm. His face was exposed and he took a piece of shrapnel in the left side of his face, peeled the skin from just under his left eye all the way past his ear. Even with that, he lived three more days.”
“I knew.”
“I know you did. And I know she made you promise. Mom told me all of it in the week after she got the letter from the oncologist.” He took a deep breath, and raised his left arm toward his head, but only made it halfway. He let it fall back toward the bed. There was a hint of wetness in the corner of his right eye. “I think she knew, Momma. I read that letter—the docs gave her six weeks to six months. Instead, she had three weeks. Eight-fifty-nine a.m., Saturday, February first. Nine years to the exact minute from when she turned off Dad’s life support.
“Twenty-six years ago, today.”
The three sat in silence for several minutes. There were the usual clicks and whirs of the ever-present intravenous infusion pump, as well as distant tones and announcements over the hospital public address system. It was a solemn moment, and Glenn was glad that neither of the others felt a need to speak. He knew he couldn’t. The tears he felt on his right cheek, and the lump in his throat said it all.
He could feel Sally squeeze his hand. There wasn’t much feeling there, although the electrodes to provide sensory feedback to the brain were in place and active. There was still so much to do to train his brain to work with the new inputs and outputs, that his doctors and therapists were not ready to simply turn everything on at full intensity.
He wiggled his fingers a little and felt the slight back pressure from his aunt.
“The skin—it’s a little cool. I expected it to be either hot or cold. It feels . . .” She was at a loss for a moment as she searched for the right adjective. “. . . not rubbery, but kind of like . . .”
Sally stopped. Her eyes went wide. Her face turned a very bright red.
Hoop just laughed; the tension of the last few moments seemed to lift.
“Yeah, Momma. It’s SymSkyn, the stuff they developed for ‘living dolls.’ I wanted them to just spray it with skin culture, but Marty said there was no way skin could survive without a whole network of blood and lymph vessels.” Glenn could feel the heat rising in his own face at the thought.
“Our boy, the sex toy,” Hoop said.
From the nursing station they could hear Marty coughing.
“Not to look at me, yet. The grafts are still puffy and my hair is just starting to grow.”
“You’re telling me, I haven’t seen peach fuzz like that since I taught you to shave, buddy.”
“It’s the new skin cells. It’s coming in jet black with no trace of the gray and white speckles that have crept in over the last ten years.”
“Just like it was when you were sixteen.” Hoop reached up a hand and touched Glenn’s cheek. “Soft, too. Just like a teen.”
Glenn was startled. He had felt that! Not only was the skin maturing, as shown by the fine hairs, the nerves were becoming fully functional.
“Yeah, the problem is, up until now, my beard has been salt-and-pepper. If I decide to grow it out, I may have to dye it.”
“Or just get yourself covered with more of this SymSkyn, then you’ll truly be a sex toy—the new Glenn Shepard doll!”
Aunt Sally turned red. “Hugh Nigel Pritchard!” she exclaimed, and slapped him on the shoulder. Hoop began to cough, and her expression turned to concern.
“As long as all his parts work,” Hoop managed between coughs.
Once it became obvious that the coughing was from holding back laughter, and not the slap, she turned stern again and alternated her glare between the two . . . boys.
Glenn laughed until tears streamed once again from his good eye. There was a faint sensation under the patch over his left eye, but he knew that it was too soon to hope for tears. Still, it felt good to laugh. Dredging up those memories had been a bit too melancholy.
The laughter led to coughing and then yelps of pain as his chest muscles spasmed. Marty looked up in concern, and he must have triggered an alarm, because the nurse practitioner—her name tag read “L. Charon”—bustled in, took control of Hoop’s wheel chair and shooed Sally out of the room.
Glenn managed a hoarse, “Goodbye, love you, see you next week!” before Marty came in and closed the door.
“Actually, I’m kind of glad you did that. Too long in bed leads to shallow breathing, and shallow breathing leads to pneumonia.” He placed a hand behind Glenn’s back and helped him lean forward slightly. “Laughter is good for you. Love, grief, and joy. It helps remind us all that you’re still just human.”
“And a little bit more, Doc?”
“And a little bit more, Shep.”