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BlinAI
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Dataset card Data Studio Files
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His back went "pop."
Somewhere down in the lumbar, somewhere just above his tailbone, a deep and unforgiving *pop*, ominous as the cocking of a revolver. He put his hand there and it felt OK, so he cautiously lay back. Three-quarters of the way down, his entire lower back seized up, needles of fire raced down his legs and through his groin...
He *barked* with pain, an inhuman sound he hadn't known he could make, and the rapid emptying of his lungs deepened the spasm, and he mewled. Linda opened a groggy eye and put her hand on his shoulder. "What is it, hon?"
He tried to straighten out, to find a position in which the horrible, relentless pain returned whence it came. Each motion was agony. Finally, the pain subsided, and he found himself pretzelled, knees up, body twisted to the left, head twisted to the right. He did not dare budge from this posture, terrified that the pa...
"It's my back," he gasped.
"Whah? Your back?"
"I -- I put it out. Haven't done it in years. I need an icepack, OK? There're some headache pills in the medicine cabinet. Three of those."
"Seriously?"
"Look, I'd get 'em myself, but I can't even sit up, much less walk. I gotta ice this down now before it gets too inflamed."
"How did it happen?"
"It just happens. Tai Chi helps. Please, I need ice."
Half an hour later, he had gingerly arranged himself with his knees up and his hips straight, and he was breathing deeply, willing the spasms to unclench. "Thanks," he said.
"What now? Should I call a doctor?"
"He'd just give me painkillers and tell me to lose some weight. I'll probably be like this for a week. Shit. Fede's going to kill me. I was supposed to go to Boston next Friday, too."
"Boston? What for? For how long?"
Art bunched the sheets in his fists. He hadn't meant to tell her about Boston yet -- he and Fede hadn't worked out his cover story. "Meetings," he said. "Two or three days. I was going to take some personal time and go see my family, too. Goddamnit. Pass me my comm, OK?"
"You're going to *work* now?"
"I'm just going to send Fede a message and send out for some muscle-relaxants. There's a twenty-four-hour chemist's at Paddington Station that delivers."
"I'll do it, you lie flat."
And so it began. Bad enough to be helpless, weak as a kitten and immobile, but to be at the whim of someone else, to have to provide sufficient excuse for every use of his comm, every crawl across the flat... Christ. "Just give me my comm, please. I can do it faster than I can explain how to do it."
In thirty-six hours, he was ready to tear the throat out of anyone who tried to communicate with him. He'd harangued Linda out of the flat and crawled to the kitchen floor, painstakingly assembling a nest of pillows and sofa cushions, close to the icemaker and the painkillers and toilet. His landlady, an unfriendly Chi...
He was giving himself a serious crick in his neck and shoulder from working supine, comm held over his head. The painkillers weighted his arms and churned his guts, and at least twice an hour, he'd grog his way into a better position, forgetting the tenderness in his back, and bark afresh as his nerves shrieked and siz...
Two days later and he was almost unrecognizable, a gamey, unshaven lump in the tiny kitchen, his nest gray with sweat and stiff with spilled take-away curry. He suspected that he was overmedicating, forgetting whether he'd taken his tablets and taking more. In one of his more lucid moments, he realized that there was a...
His landlady let Linda in on the fourth day, as he was sleeping fitfully with a pillow over his face to shut out the light from the window. He'd tried to draw the curtains a day -- two days? -- before, but had given up when he tried to pull himself upright on the sill only to collapse in a fresh gout of writhing. Linda...
"Art. Art. Art. Art! You're a mess, Art! Jesus. Why aren't you in bed?"
"Too far," he mumbled.
"What would your grandmother say? Dear-oh-dearie. Come on, let's get you up and into bed, and then I'm going to have a doctor and a massage therapist sent in. You need a nice, hot bath, too. It'll be good for you and hygienic besides."
"No tub," he said petulantly.
"I know, I know. Don't worry about it. I'll sort it out."
And she did, easing him to his feet and helping him into bed. She took his house keys and disappeared for some unknowable time, then reappeared with fresh linen in store wrappers, which she lay on the bed carefully, making tight hospital corners and rolling him over, nurse-style, to do the other side. He heard her clat...
"Come on, time to get up again," she said, gently peeling the sheets back.
"It's OK," he said, waving weakly at her.
"Yes, it is. Let's get up." She took his ankles and gradually turned him on the bed so that his feet were on the floor, then grabbed him by his stinking armpits and helped him to his feet. He stumbled with her into his crowded living room, dimly aware of the furniture stacked on itself around him. She left him hanging ...
"No tub," he said.
"Look down, Art," she said.
He did. An inflatable wading pool sat in the middle of his living room, flanked by an upended coffee table and his sofa, standing on its ear. The pool was full of steaming, cloudy water. "There's a bunch of eucalyptus oil and Epsom salts in there. You're gonna love it."
That night, Art actually tottered into the kitchen and got himself a glass of water, one hand pressed on his lower back. The cool air of the apartment fanned the mentholated liniment on his back and puckered goose pimples all over his body. After days of leaden limbs, he felt light and clean, his senses singing as thou...
He propped several pillows up on his headboard and fired up his comm. Immediately, it began to buzz and hum and chatter and blink, throwing up alerts about urgent messages, pages and calls pending. The lightness he'd felt fled him, and he began the rotten business of triaging his in-box.
One strong impression emerged almost immediately: Fede wanted him in Boston.
The Jersey clients were interested in the teasers that Fede had forwarded to them. The Jersey clients were obsessed with the teasers that Fede had forwarded to them. The Jersey clients were howling for more after the teasers that Fede had forwarded to them. Fede had negotiated some big bucks on approval if only Art wou...
You should really try to go to Boston, Art. We need you in Boston, Art. You have to go to Boston, Art. Art, go to Boston. Boston, Art. Boston.
Linda rolled over in bed and peered up at him. "You're *not* working again, are you?"
"Shhh," Art said. "It's less stressful if I get stuff done than if I let it pile up."
"Then why is your forehead all wrinkled up?"
"I have to go to Boston," he said. "Day after tomorrow, I think."
"Jesus, are you insane? Trying to cripple yourself?"
"I can recover in a hotel room just as well as I can recover here. It's just rest from here on in, anyway. And a hotel will probably have a tub."
"I can't believe I'm hearing this. You're not going to *recover* in Boston. You'll be at meetings and stuff. Christ!"
"I've got to do this," Art said. "I just need to figure out how. I'll go business class, take along a lumbar pillow, and spend every moment that I'm not in a meeting in a tub or getting a massage. I could use a change of scenery about now, anyway."
"You're a goddamned idiot, you know that?"