Ace In The Hole

3:00 P.M.

"Although there was a small portion of the carpus remaining, I chose to amputate a few inches farther back on the radius."

Dr. Robert Benson's method of delivery was dry in the extreme. No bedside manner at all, thought Tachyon, staring with sick horror at the ungainly lump of bandages swathing his right arm. Perhaps he thinks I can take it being a physician myself… Well, he's wrong.

His arm throbbed in time to the beating of his heart. Tach glanced up at the IV mechanically clicking fluids into his body. They had inserted the needle into the big vein on the back of his left hand. Good, they noticed I was right-handed… no stupid, no right hand to put it in. He gagged.

"Feeling nauseous?" Benson held a basin under his chin. "That's natural, the aftereffects of the anesthesia."

"I… know. How… long… what time?"

"Oh, time. A little after three on Sunday."

"So… long."

"Yes, physically you're very run down, and the massive shock and blood loss," he shrugged.

"I'm hurting."

"I'll send in a nurse with another shot."

"I'm very allergic to codeine. Use morphine or-"

"Doctors make the worst patients. Always trying to take over their own treatment." But Benson smiled as he made a notation on the record. "Go back to sleep."

Tach felt his lower lip trembling. "My hand."

"From what I've seen of the news clips you're lucky to have gotten off so lightly."

"Doctor." Benson paused at the door, looked back. "Don't tell them."

Benson scratched his chin. "About the virus, you mean?"

"Yes."

"I won't."

Eyes closed, Tachyon evaluated his condition. The painful throat from the endotrachial tube, the overall sense of disorientation from the anesthesia, a painfully distended bladder, and, overriding all, the thundering pain from his mangled arm. The phantom fingers of his right hand twitched convulsively.

If he were at home, he could have a hand regrown in a matter of weeks. But would the wild card virus now twined lovingly in his DNA permit a normal growth? Or would it place some horror at the end of his arm?

It seemed the final and ultimate irony that he, who had killed his own kin attempting to prevent the release of the virus and spent forty years laboring among its victims as a means of atonement, should be forced to suffer so much.

"Just manifest and get it over with!" he cried aloud. Tears ran hotly into the hair at his temples, and matted in his sideburns.

The virus maintained its smug silence.