plete before it
crossed the joint. The first waves of that particular pain were coming
at intervals and I knew that within a few hours the pain would become
waves of agony so deep that I would not be able to stand it.

Ultimately, Farrow got her brother James to come out from town with his
tools, and between us all we rigged up a small manipulator for my hand.
Farrow performed the medical operations from the kit in the back of her
car we'd stolen from the Medical Center.

Then after they'd put my hand through the next phase, Nurse Farrow
looked me over and gave the opinion that it was now approaching the time
for me to get the rest of the full treatment.

One evening I went to bed, to be in bed for four solid months.

* * * * *

I'd like to be able to give a blow by blow description of those four
solid months. Unfortunately, I was under dope so much of the time that I
know little about it. It was not pleasant. My arm laid like a log from
the Petrified Forest, strapped into the machine that moved the joints
with regular motion, and with each motion starting a dart of fire and
mangling pain up to the shoulder. Needles entered the veins at the elbow
and the armpit, and from bottles suspended almost to the ceiling to
provide a pressurehead, plasma and blood-sustenance was trickled in to
keep the arm alive.

Dimly I recall having the other arm strapped down and the waves of pain
that blasted at me from both sides. The only way I kept from going out
of my mind with the pain was living from hypo to hypo and waiting for
the blessed blackness that wiped out the agony; only to come out of it
hours later with my infection advanced to another point of pain. When
the infection reached my right shoulder, it stopped for a long time; the
infection rose up my left arm and also stopped at the shoulder. I came
out of the dope to find James and his father fitting one of the
manipulators to my right leg and through that I could feel the darting
pains in my calf and thigh.

At those few times when my mind was clear enough to let me use my
perception, I dug the room and found that I was lying in a veritable
forest of bottles and rubber tubes and a swathe of bandages.

Utterly helpless, I vaguely knew that I was being cared for in every
way. The periods of clarity were fewer, now, and shorter when they came.
I awoke once to find my throat paralyzed, and again to find that my jaw,
tongue, and lower face w