| Volume 3, Issue 1, February 28, 2008 | |
 Image ©Cile Bailey | Silvermesh by Simon Cooper |
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The hospital appointment card floated into the bin like a mini Concorde. The envelope it came in had URGENT written in red letters front and back. I scrunched that into a ball and flung it with the other rubbish. It was four thirty. Katie was due home in an hour. I rolled up the dressing gown sleeve on my right arm, picked up the loaded syringe and pressed the needle against the flesh above my wrist, just past the Silvermesh join. Silvermesh--my perfect hand, like a mercury glove. After the operation, I thought of it as my bad hand, as if the mashed remains of my bones hid under the metallic sheen. I couldn't move it, just lay watching it twitch for a week. The doctors said full sensation should return. They were right about that at least. Then it became my good hand, my stronger, better than new, superhuman hand. I could crush a three-by-four beam, yet still feel the soft hairs on the small of Katie's back rise up at my touch. Now it wasn't good or bad, just spreading. I pushed the needle into my vein. Heroin loaded my system and I dropped back on the bed. Junkie Joe saves the Silvermesh kid again. "Clint? You home?"
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