Chapter 78: Paradise

The sound accompanied her through the dark places. A rushing swirl of breath followed by a low, booming retreat, and then back again, something she heard even when her consciousness hadn’t returned to her. As she lay with her eyes closed, trying to piece together what had happened to her, Lex heard the sound and realized she’d heard it in the background for some time.

She opened her eyes to a room that she’d never seen before, one just large enough to fit the double bed she lay on, a nightstand by her elbow, the IV stand next to it, a chair in one corner, and enough room to walk around them all. A moment later, she heard the sound again and recognized it as she looked out the screened-in doorway at the foot of the bed to see a few feet of lawn change to rocks that dropped off to show the sea.

Breathing in, she could feel the difference in the air from where she’d been. Salt and freshness seemed to permeate everything, and although she could see some storm clouds in the distance, they looked to be retreating into the blue horizon. The grass outside shone with what might have been the remnants of raindrops, but the ocean sparkled in the sun as the waves rolled into shore.

As she began to become aware of the rest of her body, Lex moved her right hand the slightest bit, feeling a dark bite of pain but nothing as much as she’d felt before Lily showed up with the group that had rescued her. She moved her arm from the elbow, then, trying to bring her hand clear of the sheet. When she had, she saw each fingertip wrapped in gauze, and the IV needle farther up her arm. With tentative motions, she moved each of her fingers in turn. Pleased to find that the motions didn’t bring up nauseating waves of pain, Lex looked out at the sea for a moment then, trying to gather the necessary courage to look at her other hand. The calming sound and shine of the waves had helped, but as she turned her head back, movement caught her attention instead.

“You’re awake!” Rolf came into the room bearing a tray, which he put down on the bedside table, then leaned across the bed, avoiding Lex’s arm, to kiss her. “How are you feeling?”

“All things considered, not too bad,” she replied, leaning forward to rest her forehead on his. “Where are we?”

“We’re in about the last place anyone would think to look for us,” he replied with a smile.

Lex looked at him for a moment then, letting it sink in that they’d gotten away, and that she’d ended up someplace beautiful with her husband. She let out a long breath and returned his smile, and raised an eyebrow, still waiting for an answer.

“Serena brought us to Easter Island,” Rolf said after a moment, then leaned to kiss her on the cheek again.

“Really?” Lex said, unable to help raising her voice. “I’ve always wanted to visit here!”

Rolf, who’d been about to answer, looked to the door instead. As she followed his glance, Lex spotted Riss’ head just inside the door frame.

“Welcome back,” she said to Lex, then turned towards Rolf. “Do you want me to…”

She trailed off with one eyebrow raised, to which Rolf nodded. “Yes, thanks,” he replied.

Looking up at her husband as he gazed back at her, Lex watched him smile. “She’s going to get Lily, who’s going to explain everything we did while you rested. In the meantime, Lily told me to tell you not to move that arm, as much as possible.”

“OK,” Lex agreed, nodding. “So, can we go and see the statues?”

His smile got wider as he leaned down to kiss her on the cheek. “Yes, but we can’t all go at once. There aren’t as many tourists in this season, so we need to do what we can not to be noticed.”

She fidgeted in bed as she grinned back at him and looked out the window again, now anxious to be out exploring. After a moment, however, she turned back to her husband and asked, “So, what happened to that facility they were holding us at, and the people there?”

“Just awake and already asking for answers,” Lex heard a voice at the door say, and turned to see Lily entering the room with Riss. “I know you must be feeling a little better, then. Let me have a look at that hand.”

Lily pulled back the covers and Lex realized for the first time why her shoulder had been feeling uncomfortable. Her arm had been pulled out to its full extent and had been tied to the bed frame with a piece of sheet that it looked like someone had ripped up. “Sorry about that,” Lily said, untying Lex’s arm with gentle motions. “We wanted to make sure you didn’t move your arm around in your sleep, so this seemed like the best way to do it.”

Once Lily had Lex’s arm free, she sat with her back against the bed frame and drew Lex’s hand into her lap with care. Lex could see that they’d tied her hand to something flat that supported all of her fingers. “All right, now it’s really important that you try not to move your fingers at all,” Lily explained. “In particular, your first finger.”

The doctor glanced at Lex again, but her gaze fell to Lex’s hand as she started to speak again. “When we got back here and I started treating you, I found that they’d done a number on your finger. He did break all of the bones in it, badly enough that just shards were left in the middle. We took an X-ray of your finger first, and I showed it to a colleague who does hands.” She paused for a moment to gaze at Lex, then continued, her voice grave. “She took one look at it and said that it would take months of surgery that may or may not be successful, and recommended what they usually do. She said that as shattered as they left your finger, the usual course of action is amputation.”

Lily paused for a moment to look at Lex, who sat listening to the doctor, still not quite feeling like she’d arrived back in her body and wondering how Lily had solved the problem, because although her finger shone a number of unpleasant colors, it remained attached.

“So what did you do?” she asked after a few silent seconds.

Sighing, Lily continued. “Well, I did think of something, and I talked to Victor about it, since we’d discussed it before. When we worked together on Art’s body, we came up with some other ideas for things, and one of those things was this gel. It’s partially living and a good conductor, and it’s something that starts more liquid and hardens over time into something like a flexible plastic. We thought, at the time we worked on it, that we might be able to use it in the future to make a new limb, like the ones we built for Art, link to a human and work like a normal limb.

“In this case, we found somewhere I could operate on you, and then I cleaned out all the small bone fragments. He injured your joints, but they didn’t seem so bad they couldn’t be healed, so I got Victor to custom make me some titanium implants to fill in for your finger bones. I used the gel in your joints when I put the implants in, and what I’m hoping will happen is that the gel will anchor the implants to your joints, which it seems has already begun, and that after a while, the bone will grow back around the implants. That remains to be seen, however, and is going to take time.”

Pausing again, Lily studied Lex for a moment. She smiled at the doctor as if to encourage her, and Lily sighed before going on. “This all might not work, though, because it’s untested, including the gel. If anyone found out what I did, I might be arrested. I took you away from the lab where they wanted to experiment on you and did it myself, instead.”

Lex glanced over at Rolf and he met her gaze, his expression serious. “If the experiment involves a chance for me to keep my finger, then I’m satisfied,” Lex said in a firm voice. “I’d rather you tried what you could to help me keep it than to just give up at the start.”

Lily looked up at her, startled. “All right, then,” she said after a long moment. “I’m going to need to work with you a few times every day in order to speed up the healing, make sure your body isn’t rejecting anything, and to make sure you’re not getting an infection. I’ll let you know what’s going on the whole way through, and any decisions that need to be made are yours from here on out.”

Lex nodded in agreement and Lily gave a weak smile before looking back down at Lex’s finger. “We’ll need to work together like that for the next couple of weeks or so. I’ll work on healing the damage to your joints, stabilize the implants, and grow your bones back. With any luck, in the next couple of weeks everything should be stable enough so that you can start moving around more, but until I give you the OK, I want you to stay in the house most of the time and sleep as much as you can. The more you do, the faster you’ll heal up, all right?”

Frowning at the idea of spending multiple days in bed, Lex nodded again nonetheless, staring at her purple and green index...