Cured [ManxMan]

Chapter Eleven

They moved me onto a gurney and wheeled me out for scans the next day. 'They' being Mattie and Ajay, with direction from Kiara, as none of the nurses who should have been doing such things would come anywhere near me, not that I entirely blamed them.

I was still settling back into the bed after our return, Mattie helping me readjust the blankets over me, when an unfamiliar man walked in, rapping his knuckles against the open door as a greeting. He wore a white coat over blue scrubs like Kiara, though his were more filled out; this was not a man who did a lot of physical activity. His hair was more gray than brown, and a pair of glasses hung around his neck on a cord.

Like the nurses, he eyed me warily, though he hesitated only a moment before approaching the bed. He carried a clipboard, further reminding me of Kiara, but he also held an x-ray he held up to the light. Unlike Kiara, when he started to speak, he didn't make a lot of sense, talking about the different ligaments and muscles in my arm and what they were connected to and which ones were damaged and going into more detail than I was really interested in on what the surgery would involve if he attempted to fix it.

"But you can fix it," Mattie said, interrupting the man mid-sentence, and not looking the least bit sorry when the man lowered the scan to narrow his eyes at him. My chest grew warm, gratitude surging, as I still had trouble finding my voice when I was around people I knew, let alone strangers.

"Yes," the doctor said. "It'll take some rehab, and I can't guarantee full function will ever return, but I can certainly make some improvements."

My lips quirked up, baring my teeth in what must have been a rather grotesque smile, as my muscles still hardly remembered how to move, and twitched at the effort. The man's upper lip curled up in what was definitely not a smile, and then he was gone.

I stared down at my damaged arm, flexing my hand. I didn't remember a time before the scars, before the weakness in my grip, before the awkward motions, so I could hardly imagine what it would be like to be able to use it like I used my right.

Mattie sank into the chair on my left, tentatively reaching for my hand. Though he was one of the few people willing to touch me, he did so sparingly, so I cherished each opportunity. My hand tightened around his, as much as it was able, hoping to hold him there, though I knew he would be able to break the weak grip if he wanted.

When my eyes moved up to his face, I found him staring down at the scars on my forearm. His free hand came up to trace the raised white skin, his eyebrows drawing together.

He sighed, covering the scar entirely as if he couldn't stand to look at it any longer. "Do you remember how you got this?" he asked.

My dreams had brought a handful of memories back to me, mostly of the two of us together in similar mundane moments as the first. In all of them, there was no sign of any weakness in my hand or arm. I held Mattie's guitar, or the handle of a pan while cooking dinner, or steadying my gun while I taught Mattie how to shoot—the only one of my memories that seemed to be from after the virus started—with no problem. And all my memories as a zombie, jumbled as they were, included my bum arm.

"No," I finally responded, "but I also don't remember a lot."

Mattie nodded but didn't respond, his eyes still trained on his hand covering the scar. I'd had the thought before that it looked about the right size and shape to be a bite mark from a zombie, and from how bothered it made Mattie, I had the thought... "Do you know how I got it?" I asked.

He didn't respond at first, but his face paled, turning almost green. When he responded, he sounded choked. "I do."

I wanted to ask what he knew—this was something that had bothered me for years, plaguing my life for as long as I could remember, not including my handful of pre-infection memories—but the memory upset Mattie just to think of it, and I'd upset him enough since I returned, so I didn't want to push him.