Give Me a Hand

OVER THE COURSE OF THE NEXT FEW WEEKS, Dr. Donnolly, Ms. Berry, and the prosthesis specialists had taken measurements for Ski, Moose, Bobby Mac, and Earl Ray’s new limbs. One by one, they were measured, fitted, and set up with their temporary arms and legs. Sgt. Bobby Joyce got a shiny new glass eye and a really cool life-like rubber hand.

“Ain’t this some shit!” he howled. “Hey Shoff, look at this, man.”

The artificial hand was made from a plaster cast of his thumb and stump. Bobby Mac’s real thumb slipped into the hollow thumb of the soft rubber hand, fitting over his thumb and stump like a one-finger glove.

A “skin” portion went about a third of the way up his forearm and was secured with a zipper on the underside, pulling the hand tight around his arm. It was complete with fingernails, hair, and veins. Once he had the thing on and a shirtsleeve covering the arm and zipper portion, it was hard to tell it was fake.

“I can’t fucking wait ’til Halloween!” he laughed. “Take my eyeball out, put this hand around my neck, and I’ll win best costume, hands fucking down!” And look at this!” he laughed as he stuck his thumb out. “I can hitchhike anytime I want.”

“Let me see that thing,” I said.

“Here you go,” he said as he reached up and took his glass eyeball out and tossed it at me.

“Shit, man, you’ll break this thing,” I said as the wet ball of glass almost slipped from my hands. “I meant I want to see that hand.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” he laughed. “Here, I’ll swap you.”

It was one of the neatest things any one of us had ever seen. The fingers were pliable enough to form into shapes and still rigid enough that Bobby Mac could hold small objects.

I curled the two inside and two outside fingers down toward the palm, leaving the middle finger sticking straight up.

“Hey, Bobby,” I said, raising his new hand up and giving him the finger. “You’re the only guy I know that can say ‘go fuck yourself’ and mean it!”

“Son of a bitch! If that ain’t some shit!” he cried. “Look at this!” he said to everyone.

Doc Miller just shook his head. “Guess you won’t need much training with that thing, will you, Bobby Mac?”

“Not as long as I’ve got Shoff around. Shit, I think we should get him one just to play with.”

“Let me see that thing,” Ski said.

“Oh, you want to hold my hand, huh, Ski? That’s awfully sweet of you,” Bobby Mac howled.

“Keese my ass,” Ski said calmly. “Geeve it to me.”

Ski looked it over, zipped it, unzipped it, folded the fingers, and like everyone else, tried to put it on. It was like the glass slipper.

“Dyou better be careful where you put this thing. Somebody may not like it eef you don’t keep your hands to yourself.” Ski smiled at his own wit.

“Shit, man, this works better than my left hand,” Bobby Mac laughed.

Bobby Mac’s left hand had gradually gained muscle tone and strength with every passing week. The progress had been slowed by the surgery Dr. Donnolly had performed in an effort to save his left arm.

Bobby Mac’s left forearm had been sewn to his stomach, just about three inches above the belly button. A large incision was made across the left side of his gut, and his forearm had been spliced into the skin. Over the course of a couple of months, new skin from his stomach had grown, forming a pouch that slung between Bobby Mac’s stomach and his arm. It sagged between his arm and stomach like a bowl of thick pig fat. Once the pouch had grown about six inches wide, Dr. Donnolly used his magic to cut an incision along the base of the pouch near the stomach. The sheet of skin left hanging from the outside of his forearm was sewn to the other side, giving Bobby Mac a new patch of skin on his forearm.

Bobby Mac Joyce never joked about the pouch of skin stretching between his stomach and forearm. The threat and fear of an infection that could kill him within a week was enough to sober even Bobby’s totally don’t-give-a-shit demeanor.

The afternoon he returned from the surgery with the sagging pouch of skin covering his left forearm, Bobby Mac could laugh about it. “Hey Doc, you got any Alka-Seltzer back there? I’m hurting pretty bad.”

“Alka-Seltzer? What is it, Bobby?”

Holding up his left arm, he howled. “I’ve got one hell of a stomachache!”