Paris’s hand reached out to his. “It’s okay. You’re an amazing man. Having a prosthetic limb doesn’t change that.”
“You say that now, but you haven’t seen my leg or the scars on the rest of my body.”
“You don’t have to be perfect for me to think you’re wonderful.”
With trembling hands, he unzipped the lower half of his jeans and showed her the prosthetic limb.
Paris’ eyes widened. “It looks like a real leg.”
“BioTech Industries spends a lot of money making their prosthetics look as real as possible. The band that connects the top of the limb to my leg can be any color or material I want. It’s what’s underneath that’s the miracle.”
“Can I touch it?”
Richard moved his leg closer to Paris. He didn’t have to feel the gentle caress of her fingertips to know she was impressed by what she saw. Whether she liked the rest of his leg was another story.
“It feels like normal skin. How does it work?”
“Two transmitters were implanted into my brain. One is in the frontal lobe and the other is in the cerebellum. When I move, a signal travels from the transmitters to the neural gel inside the prosthetic. The gel activates another layer of technology that replicates muscle, bone, and tendon movement. The entire process is so fast that it’s almost the same as how a normal limb would react.”
“That sounds complicated.”
“It is. Most prosthetics are created for one type of movement. If you want to run and then walk, you have to change the prosthetic. With this technology, it doesn’t matter what I want to do. The transmitter and neural gel work together to make my leg work as well as my other one.”
“Do you take the prosthetic off or leave it on all day?”
“I take it off at night and use my crutches to get around.” This was the part he’d been dreading. The part that made the reason for the prosthetic as tragic as the body it was attached to. “I’ll show you how it attaches to my stump.”
He rolled the wide band down his leg, then pushed a button on either side of the limb. “This disengages the lock inside the leg.” Before he pulled the prosthetic off, he glanced at Paris. “When my first prosthetic was attached to my leg, I felt like Frankenstein.”
“Did you tell your medical team how you were feeling?”
“No. They were trying to help me, but I was still coming to terms with what had happened.”
“How do you feel now?”
“Usually, a lot better, but today’s different. I don’t want to scare you.”
“You won’t scare me.”
Richard looked at his leg. “With the lock disengaged, all I have to do is twist the prosthetic to the right, and it comes off. Like this.” He didn’t dare look at Paris. “There’s another gel sock over my stump. That’s there for comfort and not movement.”
“The bottom of your stump has to support a lot of weight.”
“And sudden changes in direction and movement.” He placed his hands on either side of the sock. “There are lots of deep scars on my leg and up this side of my body.”
“You don’t have to show me if you don’t want to.”
“I need you to see the real me, not the technologically enhanced version.”
Paris frowned. “Do any of these technological enhancements make it easier for you to skip stones?”
His eyebrows rose. “You won the last competition. You don’t need any advantage.”
“That’s what you say now. But what if your bionic leg gives you superpowers?”
“Like what?”
“You could be faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.”
