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“Does anything feel wrong?”
“Of course it feels wrong.”
Edward and the doctor stared each other down across the exam table as Ed went through the instructed series of motions with his right arm. They were over two weeks out from the Promised Day, and he had finally been given an appointment with a doctor to discuss The Arm.
To his credit, Dr. Tavish had been upfront about not having a real idea of how to tackle Ed’s right arm. “People don’t usually regrow their limbs,” he’d said frankly at the start.
Ed had tried to play the cover story Mustang had fed the press: Ed had never really lost the right arm; it had not been automail, but instead transmuted metal that functioned as armor for combat. It helped that Ed had usually kept it covered with clothes, and that his more disastrous destructions had been hush-hush. There were very few eyewitnesses outside of the inner circle to Ed being fully arm-less.
But because Ed’s luck was a joke at this point, Dr. Tavish had just happened to be the doctor who had checked him out after his first run-in with Scar and knew damn well that Ed had been missing the limb for years.
“Well, fine. But I didn’t regrow it,” Ed insisted as Tavish began his exam, pinching and squeezing what felt like every inch of his arm. “It was reattached. I bet my clavicle’s a mess.”
His clavicle did indeed look like a mess. There was an actual, visible seam on the x-ray where the arm had been severed from the rest of him. Tavish ordered two more x-rays, which showed the same dark line cutting straight down the bone. There was the already visible scarring on his skin from both the amputation and then the surgery; Ed had to wonder if the muscles on his right shoulder also bore a mark from where they’d been cut through.
Tavish finished writing what looked like an entire dissertation about Ed’s musculoskeletal history. He shuffled the papers into some sort of order, put them in a folder, and slid it across the table to Ed. “Give this to your mechanic.”
Ed opened the file to an alarmingly detailed sketch of a cross section of muscle and quickly closed it. “And do what?”
A shrug. “No idea. Your mechanic will have a better idea of what’s going on in there than I do. But I am worried about that seam.” The doctor tapped his own right shoulder. “I imagine that will be more brittle than the rest of the bone. Easy to break. I’d be concerned about circulation as well.” The surgeon who’d removed most of the automail shrapnel from his shoulder had raised that issue as well. When the arm had come back, and the bone and muscle (blood vessels included) had simply reformed again, twisting straight through the shrapnel in some places. It had taken hours for the surgeon to cut each piece free without Ed bleeding out on the table.
In the end, they decided to just have Ed do regular physical therapy as planned – strength, flexibility, and circulation. Almost all of it was with Al; Izumi had tracked him down before leaving Central to impart her own version of the routine for him. Weeks later, Winry devoured the doctor’s notes and had her own additions to his regime. All in all, it seemed to work. The weird pulling and twinges slowly petered off, and by the end of the year, he didn’t have any problem hauling in the half ton of firewood Pinako demanded for her fireplace.
The one holdout had been his pinky, which sometimes didn’t uncurl like it was supposed to. Occasionally, when he leaned on his right arm for too long, it went numb. Annoying, but nothing catastrophic.
He and Winry were sacked out on Pinako’s ancient sofa, a plate of leftover apple crumble balanced between them. Pinako had been invited out to someone’s New Year’s party, and Al had been happy to go with her. Ed had complained at length about his knee being too stiff to go tromping around Resembool all night in the winter until Pinako had given up. Winry had simply declined without a fuss.
They’d ransacked the leftovers from dinner and eventually ended up on the couch under about five layers of blankets. The fire was going, Ed was half asleep with Winry pressed up against his right side, and he was politely ignoring the part of his brain that was pointing out that the two of them would be alone all night.
Under the blankets, Winry had started to fiddle with the fingers of his right hand. With the automail arm gone, it had become the focus of Winry’s obsession. Ed tolerated it with the aplomb of a mildly annoyed cat.
She tugged on his pinky and Ed hissed, sitting bolt upright. “Sorry!” Winry said, letting Ed shake his arm out and flex his fingers. “Is it still bothering you?”
Ed shrugged and tugged the blankets back over them. “It’s fine. I was probably just sitting weird.”
Winry frowned, but followed suit and curled back up under the blankets. “If you say so. But we should probably do some more of the stretches. We can start tomorrow morning.”
“‘We’?”
Winry smirked and snaked her hand back into his. “Well, I have to make sure you’re doing them right.”
Rush Valley was mostly arid, but every year had a couple weeks of its own personal rainy season. Every so often, the hurricanes coming up from the southern Aerugan coast were strong enough to push inland to southern Amestris and Rush Valley was inundated.
This was the first one to hit since Ed and Winry had moved to the Valley. Nothing had been totally destroyed, but there had been enough rain to flood the streets and even push into houses. The same had happened to them, but thankfully their first floor was the shop: easy to clean and anything valuable had been moved ahead of time.
With the storm blown out and everything drying out, the clean up work had begun. Ed had been pulled to rebuild a retaining wall and Winry had gone down to Mr. Garfiel’s shop to help him put it all back together. It had promised to be a pleasant enough day: the storm had cooled everything off, she and her old mentor had time to catch up, and there was lunch afterwards. The kids would be at the school all day, helping with whatever little tasks the teachers could trust them with. She had all day to herself.
The phone rang and Mr. Garfiel stepped over to his desk to answer. Winry was locked in on the nerve connectors she was calibrating and started when her mentor tapped her shoulder.
“Winry, you need to get down to the hospital.” When she opened her mouth, he waved a hand. “Edward broke his collarbone.”
“WHAT?”
Garfiel handed over her bag without being asked, already ushering her towards the door. “The nurse didn’t seem concerned, but it sounds like a scaffolding fell on him.”
Thankfully, Garfiel was right. The fear she’d felt on the way abated almost instantly when she stumbled into the hospital room to find Ed sitting up, ready to go. The nurse was adjusting the sling for his right arm while giving him a run down of exactly all the things he could not do for the next three months.
“Winry,” Ed whined as they hugged. “The stupid scaffolding fell on me. I was just standing there!” He groaned and leaned over to whisper in her ear. “I think it broke on the seam.”
Winry squeezed his fingers in reassurance. She’d have to look at the x-rays later, but now that she was coming down from her earlier panic, that made sense. The scaffolding wouldn’t have been particularly tall or heavy; it would have bruised badly, but a full break was odd. But if it had hit Ed right on the seam between his shoulder and his returned arm, it easily could have snapped it.
It did indeed break on the seam. Ed’s recovery dragged on for months, much to his frustration, and the injury aggravated his pinky again. And for years after, his flexibility and range of motion with his right arm took a hit. Winry could tell Ed was trying to be a good sport about it, only complaining when it was mildly inconvenient or to get out of doing something. But there were times where he had to tell the kids no to a sparring match or would dodge Al’s questions about it over the phone, and she could see it eating away at him.
Things had seemed to settle out since the break, with only issues popping up here and there over the years, but Ed had started having issues grabbing and holding things with his right hand. Winry had determined it was circulation issues and they both decided it was time to get a second opinion at the hospital.
Dr. Marchen tapped her pen against her desk as she thought. “I’ll talk to one of my physical therapists,” she told them, “I think we should try reworking the rehab routines we have for stroke patients and general automail therapy. That should help improve blood flow and flexibility.” If that didn’t show any improvement, they’d go back to the surgery plan to see if operating on his tendons and muscles would improve circulation. An extreme choice, but they were starting to come up against a wall.
She glanced at the calendar at her desk; it was Thursday. “It’ll take a couple days to get that together, so come in first thing Monday and we’ll get started.”
It turned out the arm wasn’t interested in waiting that long. Winry woke up early Sunday morning to Ed all but heaving his guts in the bed next to her. She managed to get him sitting up at the edge of the bed, whispering apologies as she tried to get a look at his arm.
The first thing she noticed was how hot it was. Ed had sweated through his shirt, but it was almost like the fever was centered on his arm. “Ed, make a fist,” she urged, squeezing his wrist as he panted. She knew this was bad, but she needed to know how bad. Ed was barely cognizant when he had a fever, and she had to be able to talk to the doctors about what was going on.
Ed had slumped over to lean on her, his breath hot and erratic on her throat. His arm jerked at the elbow and he groaned. “I can’t,” he finally forced out.
Panic welled up in Winry’s chest at the confession. “Are you sure?” she asked. “Try again.” She pinched the inside of his wrist, but Ed didn’t even flinch. And – Winry stopped, then squeezed his fingers again to be sure. The fingertips were ice cold.
Hospital. That had been a given the second she’d woken up, but now there was a hard certainty to it. This had gone from medications and observation for a couple of hours to surgery and amputation. Her mind balked at the word and she almost pushed Ed off of her in a reflexive need to get away from it. But if Ed couldn’t move or feel his hand at all, then…
“I need to get us a ride to the hospital,” she said. She needed to focus on right now, and worry about what came next later. It was something Pinako had taught her: in the heat of surgery, focus on the steps and work through it. She couldn’t solve Ed’s problem right now, but she could work towards the solution, in whatever form that took.
The door to their bedroom opened and Addison stuck her head in. Her hair was a mess and she was still in her pajamas, but her eyes were alert. “I called Aunt Bunny, she said she’s bringing her car over.” She licked her lips, staring at a spot over Winry and Ed’s heads. “I heard Dad uh,” she faltered for a second, “wake up.”
Winry had never been more thankful that her daughter was practical to a fault. “Go downstairs and wait for Paninya. We’ll be down in a minute.” Addy nodded and bolted, relieved to have direction.
Getting Ed down the stairs and out the door proved a challenge. He was nauseous and disoriented, and without the ability to use his right arm to balance, he kept stumbling into walls. Winry all but carried him down the stairs to the shop and out the door to the waiting car.
Paninya had the back door already open and waved away Winry’s thanks. “I told Addy to call Sarah and the rest of your pack,” she said.
Addy nodded as she held the car door open. “We’ll meet you at the hospital,” she said and Paninya pulled away from the curb, barely giving Winry a chance to close the door. Ed groaned at the movement, eyes closed, as Winry kept him upright. She squeezed his right hand, hoping to get a response. She did not.
At the hospital, Ed was taken right into the surgery and Winry was left to wait for the inevitable.
Dr. Marchen found her, now joined by Sarah and Addy, in the waiting room not even an hour later, with the news that Winry had expected but dreaded. The surgeon had found several ruptured blood vessels in Ed’s elbow and blood clot in the shoulder. The surrounding muscle was already dying. The best thing they could do was save Ed and not the arm.
Winry decided hospital protocol could kick rocks and slid into the hospital bed. Ed cracked open his eyes and shifted over, taking her hand in his once she was settled.
The room was quiet, and Winry let it be. Sarah and Addison had gone home for the night, and she knew the rest of the pack would be arriving in Rush Valley tomorrow. Ed had closed his eyes again, but she could tell he was still awake. “The rest of the kids should be in tomorrow,” she said after a pause. Ed had asked about them when he was coming out of the surgery but probably didn’t remember much of it.
“That’s good,” he replied, voice still scratchy.
They shuffled around a little more as Winry reached across him for the water on the other bedside table. On his right side. Winry tried not to think about it. Ed clearly wasn’t in the mood to talk about it.
The night dragged on, neither of them sleeping. The noise outside the hospital room had all but stopped and Winry couldn’t help herself anymore.
“The surgery’s a lot better now than it was last time,” she whispered. It was still awful, but sometimes Winry looked back at her early years in automail and almost considered it barbaric.
Winry knew what Ed was thinking about: the operation, the pain, the rehab. All the aches and pains that would follow, weighed up against being closer to fifty than not. He sighed, his head resting against her neck. “I’ll think about it.” But Winry was sure she already had her answer.