It would take an incredible amount of work to bring Eerin’s brother back into harmony. The work would be disquieting, and difficult, but he had never repaired anyone this badly damaged. The challenge pulled at him. He might never have another chance to perform a healing like this. Would Eerin’s brother let him try?
“I can feel my back again!” Toivo said as he awoke from the link. “I actually felt you bring it back to life!”
“Yes, I repaired a severed nerve,” Ukatonen explained.
“Can you heal him?” Eerin asked. Toivo’s jubilant face became a still, impassive mask as he waited for Ukato-nen’s answer.
“It will be difficult,” Ukatonen said. “And we may not be able to fully restore you, Toivo, but I think you will be able to walk again.”
“Really?” Toivo asked. He looked doubtful, as though he was afraid to trust this good news.
“The damage is extensive,” Ukatonen cautioned. “It will take some time.”
“Will I be in much pain?” Toivo asked.
Ukatonen turned purple and spread his ears wide in amazement. “Why would you be in pain?” he asked.
“Toivo, it will be just like what he did today, only more so,” Eerin explained. “You may feel an occasional twinge, but nothing more. Ukatonen is very good at this. It will not hurt.”
“When can we start?”
“I’m a bit tired, and in need of a bath and a meal. Would it be possible to wait until after dinner?”
Toivo laughed, his brown face creasing around the eyes. “I wasn’t expecting to start so soon!”
“Why wait?” Ukatonen said.
“Come on, let’s go tell Isi and Netta-Tati!” Eerin said, standing. “They’ll be ecstatic at the news.”
The days quickly fell into a pattern. Ukatonen woke, ate a big breakfast with Moki, Eerin, and her family. Then he went back to Toivo’s room with Moki and Eerin to work on healing Toivo. Toivo was staying with them while the Tendu healed him. They worked from the bottom up, straightening and strengthening Toivo’s poorly knitted foot and leg bones, then rebuilding the shattered pelvis and vertebrae.
Toivo remained in a coma during much of this work, allowing most of his metabolic energy to be channeled into healing. Ukatonen and Moki nourished him through their spurs, and filtered out the wastes from his body. Members of the Fortunati family took turns watching over him, though there was little to do except watch him breathe. Ukatonen found himself strangely moved by their patience, and the depth of their solicitude.
After the healing session, the enkar, Moki, and Eerin ate another quick meal. Then they donned shirts and wide-brimmed straw hats, and joined the family in the vineyard. The three of them picked grapes until the sun became too intense for them to bear. Then Moki and Ukatonen retreated to the cool shade of the forest. In the evening there was dinner, and afterwards they would check on Toivo to see how he was doing. After that, they would sit up with the family, reading, talking, or watching Tri-V.
Anetta, overhearing a discussion about Toivo’s progress at breakfast one morning, suggested that the Tendu take mineral supplements to help out. Ukatonen tried some, and found, to his delight, that the increased availability of bone-building minerals would speed up the work considerably. He and Moki began taking them by the handful at meals, and passing them along to Toivo through their allu. It was an idea that the enkar would have to take back to Tiangi. Surely there was some way they could make their own supplements to help speed healing.
It took nearly eight days to finish piecing Toivo’s pelvis together. At the end of that time, they had picked all but the late-harvest Riesling grapes. Ukatonen was concerned about Eerin. The healing on top of the hard work of harvest, had left her weak and exhausted. She was in danger of getting sick.
“We’ll take a break for the next few days,” Ukatonen announced. “We’re all tired, and I want to give Toivo’s bones some time to strengthen before we go on. Can your father spare us for a few days?”
Juna nodded. “Right now, he’s busy with fermentation and racking. We’d just be in the way. Weather Control has scheduled some hard frosts in a couple of weeks, and then we’ll be picking the late-harvest grapes, after they’ve been sweetened by the frost.”
“Good,” Ukatonen told her. “You need to eat well and rest. I have let you give too much of yourself to this healing.”
“I doubt you could have stopped me,” Juna said. “This is my brother we’re working on, and I want to do everything I can to make him better.”
“Rest then, so you will have more to give your brother when we begin again.”
Juna woke late the next morning. She lay there, grateful for the chance to rest. Every day it had gotten harder to get out of bed, and the strange nausea that had plagued her on the trip over had returned. A day in bed would be lovely.
She spent the rest of the day in bed, reading, and eating, and awoke the next morning awash in nausea. She barely made it to the toilet in time to throw up. Something was very definitely wrong. Normally, she would ask the Tendu to find the problem, but they were still tired from healing Toivo.
Besides, Juna thought with a smile, it would be a good excuse to see Dr. Engle. She could drop by on her way in to pick up Analin at the shuttle terminal. Juna had seen Dr. Engle briefly at the party, but he had been called away to see a patient, and they hadn’t gotten a chance to talk. He had been her doctor ever since she was a child.
Juna remembered how gentle Dr. Engle had been with her and with Toivo, after her father rescued her from the camps. He had come and sat with her, and talked of his own childhood. He had lost a beloved little sister to the wave of resistant typhoid that had swept through Miami during the unsuccessful Secession revolt in the waning years of the Slump. He understood her guilt, and guided her gently out of the swamp of grief she had been mired in.
In her teens, Dr. Engle had let her help out in the office, greeting patients, peering through microscopes, and studying anatomy and physiology in his old textbooks. His kindness had sparked Juna’s interest in biology, and started her down the path that led eventually to her degree in xenobiology and the Survey. She suspected that he’d always been disappointed that she hadn’t become a doctor.
She thought of her brother’s face, brown as a chrysalis in the cocoon of his bed, his bones knitting as he slept. She had become a healer of sorts. It was an irony that Dr. Engle would appreciate.
“Juna!” Howard Engle exclaimed. “It’s good to see you!” He threw his arms wide and enfolded her in a big hug.
As always, Juna was surprised by how small he seemed in person. In her childhood memories, he loomed over her.
Now she was a couple of inches taller than he was. “It’s good to see you too,” Juna told him. He held her out at arm’s length and looked her over. “You look great!” he said. “I guess the Tendu took really good care of you.”
“It was pretty hard at first, but once I got used to it— ” She shrugged.
“How’s your family?” he asked, taking her hand.
“They’re fine.”
“Your brother? How is he?”