Coming of Age: Volume 1: Eternal Life by Thomas T. Thomas Page A

his muscles growing slack from inactivity, his weight starting to creep up—even on the prescribed diet they fed him—and his joints tightening up. Three days ago he had developed his first bedsore. And if the waiting didn’t kill him, the boredom certainly would.
    “You look tired, dear,” he said. “Do you want to step outside? Stretch your legs?”
    “You don’t mind? I mean, I want to keep you company. …”
    “You go now. I’m really doing all right.”
    She dropped the magazine, gathered up her purse, and was gone before he could change his mind.
    * * *
    During Praxis’s third week in the hospital, the doctors on his team—this one with a nametag that read “Peterson”—were still coming in every morning to listen to his chest with a stethoscope.
    “Why do you do that, I wonder?” Praxis said. “If you want to know how my heart’s doing, lean over and read the dials on that machine.”
    Dr. Peterson stared at him for a long moment, clearly weighing some decision. “It’s not your heart I’m concerned about,” he said finally, “but your lungs.”
    “Is something wrong with them, too?”
    “No—that is, not that we can tell. But elderly people who have been only moderately active for most of their lives, and who suddenly become bedridden, are at greater risk for pneumonia and other respiratory diseases. So we’re keeping an eye on things. How do you feel otherwise?”
    “Lousy … but if you’ll unhook me, I’ll happily get up and dance.”
    The doctor stared at him again. “That’s one of your jokes.”
    “I’ve got nothing to do around here but make jokes.”
    “I see we’ve given you bathroom privileges.”
    “And I’m damned glad to have them.”
    “We should have started you on an exercise program by now,” Peterson said. “I’ll order a portable pump, one that rides along on a cart, and assign an orderly to accompany you.”
    “Where am I going—out to the golf course?” Praxis asked facetiously.
    “No, down to the basketball court, so you can practice your jump shot.”
    “What!”
    “That’s a joke,” Peterson said with the smallest of grins. “You can start by walking up and down the corridor. If you survive that and manage to build up your stamina, we’ll see about more intense activity and some physical therapy.”
    Praxis sighed. “How much longer until they find a heart?”
    “It might be any day now,” Peterson said.
    “Or it might still be months.”
    “Yes, that, too.”
    * * *
    In his fourth week of purgatory, with only two months remaining on his sentence, John Praxis had worked himself up to walking the corridors for twenty minutes at a time, three times a day, and believed himself stronger for it. But he still felt shaky each time the orderly, Marcelo, helped him back into bed. Whether all of this was helping to fight off pneumonia—if two rounds of golf every week for the past ten years hadn’t worked—was still open to debate.
    It was a surprise then, when his medical team of Jamison and Peterson, plus two men he didn’t recognize, came into his room, brought extra chairs, and sat down facing him with sober, worried looks. They reminded him of clients who had signed a fixed cost contract, changed their minds about some major specification, and didn’t know how much the change order was going to cost them. In such cases, the news was generally bad.
    “First, let me say,” Dr. Jamison began, “that we are continuing the search for a suitable transplant candidate for you.”
    “But you must understand,” Dr. Peterson went on, “that the waiting list is long—”
    “—and the situation is made more difficult, in your case, because the donor heart must match you in both histocompatibility and blood type—”
    “—blood type being more important, because we can compensate for most antigen incompatibilities—”
    “—and you have fairly rare blood, type B-negative—”
    “—meaning you receive from only O and B