Anakin woke up feeling
rotten.
His entire body ached, from the tip of his toes to the top of his head
a dull pain seeped through him. A few parts of him hurt differently,
his neck, his right arm and both his legs were filled with a sharper,
brighter pain, while the skin on his face felt as if it had shrunk and
was now stretched too tight, a dull ache pulsated somewhere in his
stomach and his head felt as if it was filled with cotton wool.
It seemed that they had reduced his medication.
Anakin opened his eyes and started at the ceiling of this hospital
room. He should probably regard it as a good sign that the doctors had
decided to cut down on painkillers and sedatives but he wished they had
not.
He did not want to feel just how badly damaged his body was. He did not
want to feel anything. He rather wanted to be dead.
A continuous wheezing sound, like an asthmatic android was the only
sound in the room. Then he could here somebody move on his left side,
and a sound like a page being turned over.
“Tastag pulled his hideous features into a grotesque masque
of anger. ‘Kill the blasphemer!’ he cried pointing
with his staff of office at me.”
Automatically he looked in the direction from where Dr
Hadasht’s voice came from. He did remember that she had read
the Space Travellers series to him so far, but she
must have been through with them. This was the second chapter of The
Warlord of Warhoon.
A small, detached part of him was amused by the fact he recognised not
only what she was reading but also which chapter she had reached just
from one sentence. Well, he had read the trilogy quite a few times.
He could see the blurred outline of something sticking in his nose.
Beyond that was an expanse of white cloth that was either a blanket or
his hospital gown. The grey shape stretching over his chest must be
part of the machinery that kept him alive. Next to his left shoulder he
could make out a strange, white shape he could not recognise. Perhaps
it was some part of the medical equipment.
Dr Hadasht paused her reading.
Anakin realised that he could not sense her presence at all. If he had
thought earlier that he was cut off from all feeling of the force he
realised now that he had been mistaken. At least he had still felt the
presence of the people around him, had sense vaguely what they were
feeling, now there was absolutely nothing. He could not even sense his
own body. The absence of any connection to the force was a far from
pleasant sensation. He felt closed in, as if the world had shrunk
somehow, and it gave him a stuffy feeling in his head.
“There was no chance I could escape the clutches of my
captors,” Dr Hadasht continued her reading. “Twenty
of them were standing behind Tastag, all armed to with the wicked
blades their foul race favoured. And I, bound and unarmed, was now to
suffer for standing up against the tyranny of the high priest of
Rastoun.”
Did she know he was awake, Anakin wondered. She seemed to have known
before when he came round, and he felt more awake this time than he had
the last two times.
He could feel the crisp blanket he lay on, every fold of it pressed
uncomfortably into his skin. At several places on his left arm and
chest small, cold objects were attached to his skin, sensor of some
kind perhaps. He wondered whether he could lift his head now, but the
memory of the of pain exploding through his spine and into his head
made him reluctant to even try.
“One of the high priest’s creatures pushed his
dagger through my shoulder. ‘If you beg forgiveness, I
promise to kill you quickly,’ he snarled at me, his foul
breath assaulting my nostrils. But I knew better than to trust a Bera
warrior.
“I was a master of the army of Warhoon, I was not to plead
with scum like these.”
Dr Hadasht sighed and Anakin could hear her shifting again.
A movement at his left shoulder caught Anakin’s eyes, and he
realised that the blurry, white shape must be Dr Hadasht’s
feet she had propped up on his bed. Fascinated he stared at the two
pointed forms, shifting as she curled her toes.
“Gods,” Dr Hadasht mumbled.
He could see her feet, Anakin realised. He could see them even though
they were on his left side where he had lost his eye. He could also see
the darker square of the door outlined against the white wall.
For a moment he lost track of what Dr Hadasht was reading. He blinked
and with some effort managed to close his right eye to make sure he was
not mistaken.
He could see with his left eye again. Everything was looking slightly
wonky and off colour but he could see again.
But how? He remembered the stinging sensation as
she disinfected the gaping hole where his eye had been. He also
recalled her memories of examining the destroyed eye and judging that
the retina was probably destroyed as well but the nerve may have
luckily have escaped undamaged.
Without thinking, Anakin lifted his right arm to touch his restored eye
or tried to as an explosion of pain shook his entire body, the world
blacking out for a moment. The pain screamed through his head, blocking
out the voice of Dr Hadasht, but it seemed to be moving closer, calling
his name.
Perhaps he was imagining it or perhaps he passed out for a moment, when
the pain had subsided enough to think past it, Dr Hadasht was again
reading.
The stinging pain along his spine and the dull throbbing in his stomach
seemed to have gotten worse, but Anakin thought that he really could
not tell the difference. He might just imagining it.
He tried to see beyond the machine under which he was trapped. He
wanted to look at Dr Hadasht and ask her why she was torturing him like
this. He wanted the pain to go away, he wanted more drugs. Better still
he wanted to be unconscious or dead.
“I laughed in the face of the Bera,” Dr Hadasht
continued, “and answered with the sentence that has been my
support in many a difficult situations.”
“I’m not dead yet,” Anakin recited the
motto of Safad Haad, Warlord of Warhoon along Dr Hadasht.
Dr Hadasht stopped reading and said with definite amusement in her
voice. “No, you aren’t.”
No, Anakin thought, I’m not dead
yet.
He wished he was, though. He did not want to be here. He did not want
to hurt so badly. He did not want to know he had ruined his life
completely.
“I thought you were awake,” Dr Hadasht commented
and judging from the direction her voice came from, she stood up. The
blurry shapes of her feet had also vanished from his bed.
“How do you feel?” Her voice now came from where he
thought his feet must be.
“Horrible,” Anakin answered, his voice squeaking as
he breathed in instead of out.
He did not really breathe at all, somehow air flowed in and out of his
lungs but he had no control whatsoever over the process.
“I’m sorry,” Dr Hadasht said, her head
appearing bending over him on his right side. “We had to cut
down on the painkillers, I’m afraid.” She stared
into his face for a moment. “How’s the new
eye?” she wanted to know.
Anakin waited a moment and said as the machine made him exhale,
“fine.”
Dr Hadasht held her right hand, index finger pointing, over his face
and moved it from side to side. “Looks like it’s
tracking alright.”
They must have operated on him since he was last awake, Anakin
realised. He remembered from his blundering search through her mind
that he had already had been through more than a dozen operations
before he came out of the coma and through several more after that.
“How long…,” he managed to ask before he
ran out of breath again.
“How long since your accident or since you woke up
last?” she queried but continued before he had time to
answer. “Thirty-six days since the crash and three since you
were conscious last.”
Oh gods, Anakin thought. Thirty-six days!
Dr Hadasht frowned and put a finger on his left cheekbone.
“Hm,” she made and applied a little pressure.
Pain shot through his face, bringing tears to his eyes.
“The bone just doesn’t want to mend,” Dr
Hadasht told him as she straightened up. “Not good.”
Anakin stared at her, wanting to shout, that he cared not about his
bloody cheekbone. What was wrong with his lungs? And why
couldn’t he move? What about his hand? Why was he here all
alone? Where was Shura? He remembered Diam being there but he seemed to
be gone too.
“My wife?” he squeezed out finally.
Dr Hadasht heaved a long sigh. “I’m afraid your
wife is missing. Since the day after your crash.”
Shura was missing? All the gods, what had happened.
“It seems that she cleared out her bank account and left in
her own ship, so - so far - it is assumed that leaving was her own
choice. No foul play is suspected.” Dr Hadasht looked down on
him for a long while, the she said, “I’m really
sorry.”
Perhaps she was sorry. At least she her face bore the appropriate
expression, but cut off from the force as Anakin was he could not tell
and it disturbed him. Other people had to go through life like this all
the time, but he was not used to it.
Shura had left and vanished without a trace and nobody thought it might
be anything but her bailing, Anakin wondered. Why should she do that?
“Your friend Senator Palpatine was here, remember?”
Dr Hadasht asked, her attempt to drag the conversation onto safer
terrain all too obvious.
“Yes.”
Of course, he remembered. He also knew - again from Dr
Hadasht’s own memories - that it had not been his first visit.
“He had to leave,” Dr Hadasht continued.
“Since we had to keep you under for a good while anyway,
there was no reason for him to stay, but he said, he’d be in
this sector anyway day after tomorrow, so he will be visiting you
then.”
Anakin blinked and tried to suppress the panic that threatened to
overwhelm him. Was he going to lie here in excruciating pain until the
day after tomorrow? He wouldn’t be able to sleep like this.
If he could only use his powers to calm some of the worst pain, but he
was completely cut off from the force.
“Why...?” he asked, running out of breath again.
“Why what?” Dr Hadasht frowned deeply.
“Why is the Senator coming to see you?”
“Force,” he managed to say. He waited for the
machine to inhale and added as it pushed the air out of his lungs
again. “I can’t feel anything.”
“Ah!” Dr Hadasht grinned at him. “We had
to give you some force repressing drugs. You did quite a bit of damage
the first times you woke up. Mostly to my head.” She put a
hand to her forehead. “Nothing permanent, I assure
you.”
“How?” Anakin asked.
“You don’t know about this?” Dr Hadasht
asked in return, but answered her own question at once. “No
surprise there. Well, you see, Senator Palpatine and myself had a very
interesting talk with a jedi doctor who happens to work here. It seems
that there are a number of drugs that stop a patient, if he is
delirious for example, to access the force and do damage to himself or
others. Very interesting indeed. A whole new field of medicine we
common doctors never knew anything about. So, we are now doing some
reading up and research on it.” Dr Hadasht grinned again.
“Perhaps this is just one of many new fields of medical
research.”
She seemed to be genuinely excited about this all. New research, new
possibilities.
But what the hell did he care, Anakin thought. He was the one who was
stuck here, wrecked with all kinds of aches and not able to move, and
all she saw was a possibility to experiment with new drugs.
“So why do you think the jedi kept these force suppressing
drugs under such tight wraps?” Dr Hadasht asked.
“I couldn’t care less,” Anakin managed to
say.
“Oh,” the doctor made.
Anakin stared at her standing there next to his bed. She was fine,
wasn’t she? She could walk out of here any second. She could
do whatever she wanted. What did she care about him being in pain? Why
was she here anyway?
He tried to find an answer in the jumbled memories he had accessed when
he had so rudely burst into her mind, searching only for her name.
There were snatches of memories from her childhood, of her years at
school and university, a lot of detailed information about what had
happened to his body during the accident, most of which he could not
make any sense of, some of which he would gladly not know about,
memories of operations he had undergone. There were also memories of
this room, of her sitting watch over him, desperate to ensure that he
was going to get well again. He could not figure out why she was so
determined, perhaps she did not know herself, but the feeling was so
strong, it drowned out all other emotions.
“Anakin,” Dr Hadasht said, bringing him back to the
present. She had taken hold of his right arm, he could feel her fingers
around it. “Please, I know this is hard for you, but you have
to hold on. I cannot promise you miracles or that it will all be
alright in a week’s time, but I know I can make you well
again.”
“Can you?” he asked.
She nodded and gave his arm a squeeze.
His arm, since he did not have a right hand.
“My hand,” he stated. The accusation in his voice
brought a frown on Dr Hadasht’s face.
“I’m sorry, we haven’t gotten round to
that yet.”
Other operations had always been more pressing, her memories told him.
Other operations had been necessary just to keep him alive. That and
the fact that a certain Professor Cagliari had vetoed to purchase a
prosthetic hand.
Another of her memories suddenly added itself to the previous one, a
memory of the shock on Lee’s face when Dr Hadasht told her
about Anakin’s fight with Kenobi.
Lee had been here to visit?
“Lee has been here?” he wanted to know.
For a moment Dr Hadasht looked perplexed as if she wasn’t
sure what he was talking about, then she nodded. “Your jedi
friend? She brought your belongings. Your books, your
decorations.”
Which explained the presence of both the Space Traveller and
Warlord of Warhoon books.
“Who else?” Anakin asked.
“Your mother-in-law, and this General,” Dr Hadasht
replied, “can’t remember his name.”
General, Anakin wondered, General Kenobi? Surely they would not allow
Kenobi to visit him, not if Diam had any influence here.
“He sat here for almost two hours, never saying a
word,” Dr Hadasht continued. “He was quite old,
bushy eyebrows, moustache.”
“Mulcahy,” Anakin said.
Dr Hadasht nodded eagerly. “Yes, that was his name. He said
if he was to replace you he had to see for himself that you
wouldn’t be able to take up your post any time
soon.”
Anakin closed his eyes. A new wave of desperation washed over him.
They had taken away his command. The thought should not come as a
surprise, he knew. He had almost died. For weeks it had seemed certain
he would die still. Of course, they had to find a successor to take
over command and Mulcahy was the perfect choice.
Still - the New Forces were his project and now they had given it to
somebody else.
What did you expect, Anakin asked himself. The New
Forces needed an able commanding officer, not a wreck like him. He
would never ever be able to command anything anymore. Not even his own
body.
Was there anything left for him to life for? His wife had dumped him,
his body was a ruin and now they had also taken away his job.
“I want to die,” he muttered.
“No, you don’t” Dr Hadasht contradicted
him.
“Yes, I do,” Anakin insisted. He opened his eyes
again to glare at the doctor.
“No, you don’t,” she stated,
“and you know why?”
“I have no idea.”
“Because Diam has promised to bring a complete set of the
Loggox action figures of the Space Travellers. He said he found one on
Nagamasa and that you always really liked to have them.” Dr
Hadasht smile at him broadly.
For a moment Anakin couldn’t decide whether she was serious
or had a really sick sense of humour. As if the promise of a few - in
fact, quite a few - action figures made up for all the pain and misery
he was going through!
But she seemed to be serious about this.
Suddenly, he was overcome by the urge to laugh hysterically, about this
weird doctor who thought some stupid action figures could make up for
all he had lost, about himself lying here wallowing in self-pity. But
if talking had been difficult with a machine controlling his breathing,
laughing proved to be impossible.
He managed a few gasping yelps that sounding so strange even in his own
ears that he stopped again. Instead tears of frustration shot to his
eyes.
“What was that?” Dr Hadasht asked.
“I can’t even laugh,” Anakin answered,
from the deepening frown on his face, he was not really comprehensible.
“Laugh?” she repeated. She frowned again and then
pointed at the grey machine over his chest. “I see whether I
can fix that.”
“You can?”Anakin asked.
Dr Hadasht shrugged. “I’ll try.”
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