Boston—two days later
Johnny Givens took a deep breath, then lowered himself on his haunches in a squat. He put his two hands on the bar, closed his eyes briefly, then lifted.
The bar with its plates weighed only twenty-five kilos, not a lot of weight; before his injury he was doing military presses with eighty easily.
But this was different.
He came up out of the squat slowly. So much of this was done with your legs, yet he felt nothing there, only a very slight strain in his shoulders.
Hardly any strain.
Up. Up!
He cleaned the bar, pulling it from his waist to his chest with a quick jerk. Too quick a jerk, really; bad form, but he had it and this was no time to critique technique. He paused a moment, then pushed up slowly, shoulders doing the work.
Easy.
He felt a slight tremor at his back, the muscle weak. He fought against it, remembering what the doctor had said about how it would feel. This was all very strange. It was his body and yet it wasn’t his body.
I’m still who I am. Still me. Still Johnny Givens.
But who was Johnny Givens? An FBI agent? No—the Bureau had already put him on permanent disability, the bastards. The one time the bureaucracy actually worked expeditiously, and it was to screw him out of a job.
“Oh don’t worry,” said the idiot HR person, “you’re on full disability. Losing your legs does that.”
He wanted to scream at her. But some inbred courtesy kicked in, and all he did was hang up—gently.
His mother would have been proud; he’d controlled his temper.
But, Mom, you just don’t understand. Being polite, being reasonable—that’s not always the best way to do things. Sometimes if you don’t yell at people, they think what they’re doing or saying is OK.
The world is not a reasonable place. If you’re reasonable, you’re at a disadvantage.
Johnny lowered the weight to his shoulders. He took a deep breath, then slowly lowered himself. He could feel the strain in his thighs.
Really? Strain in your thighs?
You have no thighs! You have no legs! You’re metal and carbon and wires and digital crap and fake stuff. You don’t exist from a few inches below the waist.
He knew he had nothing there, and yet he felt it. He was sure he felt it.
He let go of the weights and stood straight up, head swimming.
“You’re not supposed to be in here!” said Gestapo Bitch.
He glanced up and saw her in the mirror at the side of the room. She had her arms crossed and was staring at him with a look of disgust.
“Who says?” he snapped. He didn’t bother to look at her.
“It’s not on your rehab program. Weights—no.”
“Yeah, well, here I am.” Johnny squatted back down, grabbing the bar.
Up, up up!
He held the bar straight overhead, then lowered it slowly to his shoulders, then pushed back up.
Six reps.
Six—you can do it.
Six.
“Your form sucks,” said Gestapo Bitch as he returned the bar to the ground. “Your tush is too far out. You’re going to strain your back. Then what are you going to do?”
“Bench presses.”
Straightening, he walked over to the dumbbell rack, still refusing to look in her direction.
“You hate me, don’t you?” she asked as he selected a pair of dumbbells.
“Bet your ass.”
“Good.”
Johnny made a fist and slammed his right hand down on the twenty-kilo barbell.
“What turned you into such a bitch?” he shouted, turning to confront her.
But she was gone.