Worst. Timing. Ever.

Issac grunted. “Sorry kid,” Nyavi said without a trace of apology in her voice. “Connecting nerves is tricky and I’m not a real doctor. If I anaesthetize you completely you’re not gonna feel it when I do something wrong and you’re gonna want to feel that. Don’t want to connect your pinkie nerve to your robot thumb now, do we?”

They were in the Swamp Hag’s med bay, the autopilot slaved to Nan’s ship with every dampener available set to full. Issac lay on the table, his shirt stripped away, and Nyavi hung over his shoulder in utmost concentration. The stump of his arm was turned up towards her and locked into a clamp that restricted blood circulation and, more importantly, made it impossible for him to twitch his arm as she attached the individual nerve converter pieces. “Okay, ulnar nerve seems to be connected… Try and flex your phantom pinkie finger.”

Gritting his teeth as the Twi’lek worked, Issac focused on her words and, on instruction, tried flexing his missing finger. The pain he could bear, since his experiences in the temple and the station, he had gained a reasonable degree of control over his hatred, anger and pain. Learning to embrace it, to use it, had made its weight feel significantly lessened, and unleashing it at the station probably helped too.

Looking down at his stump, now with various bits of electronics sticking out of it, he wondered what it would be like to have a synthetic arm. He had seen many being with them, and they did not seem to be greatly inhibited by the loss of their natural limb, but still, he felt nervous. “How soon will i have full use of my arm again?” He asked, looking Nyavi directly in the eye, hoping his nervousness didn’t show through too much.

Nyavi looked content as various lights lit up in sequence. “Full use is a vague term. Everything go as planned, you can attach a hand to this and use it in an hour or so, but it’ll hurt to move the first week, and you’ll probably be clumsy with it for another couple of days after that as you get used to it. Two weeks though, you’ll be flipping off Jedi like this never happened.” She looked at a small screen that was hovering nearby, mouthing the words as she read them. Then she returned her attention to his open wound. A scalpel, thinner than a razor by tenfold, and a clamp hovered off the tray next to them. “Now hold still, I gotta splay your median nerve to give you control of your individual digits and you’re not gonna enjoy it.”

She had just started this part of the procedure when she felt her weight shift forward for a moment. In her peripheral vision, a red light had begun glowing on and off. There was no way she could let her attention lapse right now, though. Staring ever intently at the stump as she worked, she asked: “Did we stop?”

He had to admit, the thought of his sword arm being clumsy was not something he liked the sound of. His skill with a blade had always been a talent he could rely on, far more so than the force, and the potential of losing this ability scared him ever so slightly. But no, he thought as he forced these ideas from his mind, he had overcome far greater challenges than this, he would overcome this too.

As Nyavi asked if the ship had stopped, Issac was jarred from his thoughts by the familiar pulse of energy from the Sith holocron. Lifting his head a little he looked around, and upon noticing a few of the panels in the room go dead, asked in a concerned tone. “Never mind that, is the power going out?”

“That would be concerning,” Nyavi said. She was barely moving her lips, making her hard to understand. “Lucky for you I got my own lights. Best you look away.” She gave him a moment to avert his eyes before activating the floodlights in her seat. “Keep me posted of what you can see and hear,” she said, trying but not daring to work a little faster. Four nerve connectors lifted from the tray and moved towards his exposed flesh. “I have to finish this now, but it’ll be only 10 minutes or so. I think we have that long.”

A blaster drifted towards them and landed neatly in Issac’s lap. “If we’re boarded, don’t miss.”

Gripping the weapon and getting a feel for it in his off hand, he simply nodded before training it on the door. Gritting his teeth again as Nyavi went back to work, all Issac could do was wait.

(Joint Post GardensTale and Farrell)