Mark had ignored his body as much as he could, but no longer. Today was day 31 post-coma. He had denied the Tutorial a second time earlier this morning, when the word appeared and woke him from sleep. And now, Dad had driven him to physical therapy for the first time.
Kevin was the name of his physical therapist, and he was calm and understanding.
Mark, on the other hand, was frustrated beyond understanding. He was currently lifting bright pink 2-pound weights in both hands, and he couldn’t do it. Fucking 2-pound weights! He had been benching 240 pounds! Squatting 300! He had been 180 pounds of muscle on a 5’7” frame, so he had had a lot of power. But now he was 95 pounds, and weak as fuck.
Mark shuddered, breathing hard, lifting the 2 pound pink weight as hard as he could.
“That’s it!” Kevin said, “You got it! Lift that weiiiight— yes! Let it down gently a—”
Mark’s left hand faltered, the weight falling out of his grip and onto the ground. The loss of weight on that side sent him rocking in the other direction. Kevin caught him before he fell off of the bench. With a deft hand he took the weight out of Mark’s hand.
With a smile on his stupid face, Kevin said, “That was great!”
Mark spat, “That was awful. Gods, I’m so fucking…” His eyes blinked for a long moment and everything felt floaty. He came back to himself with a vengeance, saying, “Weak.”
“I know it’s difficult. I was a coma patient too, when I was 12. I was only out for 2 months compared to your 4, but I know it’s difficult. It’s difficult, but you can do this, Mark. You had a rough time, but you can do this.”
Mark had only been a patient with Kevin for half an hour so far, but he liked the guy.
Mark steeled himself, saying, “Okay. Yeah. I can do this.”
Kevin smiled. “It’s not about perfection, just progress.”
Mark chuckled at that. He said, “Not perfection, just progress.”
Kevin smiled, asking, “I’d like to get you walking around the track today. Can you do that?”
“I can do that. I want to try it without a walker, too.”
Kevin grinned, saying, “Let’s try it! I want to be there to walk with you, though, if that’s okay.”
Mark almost laughed.
Oh gods, he felt so helpless.
Turned out he could not walk on his own at all. He almost fell twice, Kevin stopping his fall both times. It was Mark who had to ask for the walker, which he appreciated. Kevin didn’t judge him at all. Soon, Mark ambled along like an old man with feet that didn’t work right, who lost his breath every ten steps.
He tried his best anyway.
That night, as he stood in the bathroom, Mark really looked at himself in the mirror for the first time since waking up. He had avoided the horror of the bathroom mirror as much as he could, but he could avoid it no longer if he wanted to measure his progress, for real.
Mark was a skinny white boy at 95 pounds, and it showed. The forced healing while in a coma is what really ate through all his muscles.
His ribs showed through his skin. His skin was pale as fuck. His hair was buzzed and brown, and his eye sockets were sunken and a little purple. His eyes were bloodshot, and what used to be nice blue eyes seemed more muddy brown, but maybe that was just the light. His arms were twigs. His thighs were thin. His skin sagged around his belly, which was only possible because he had lost everything.
He used to have abs and nice arms, and he used to weigh 180 pounds, back when he could play rugby and swing a spear and—
Mark ignored his past as much as he could.
All he had was his future.
“Not perfection, just progress.”
- - - -
By the end of the first week of PT Mark managed to stand by himself on the track painted onto the floor of the PT room, without his walker. He even managed to walk the track, though he was the slowest one there. Old men who had suffered from strokes, or people in wheelchairs using their arms to wheel their chairs, all moved faster than him.
Kevin saw Mark judging himself. He said multiple times, “Don’t measure yourself against others. Just go at your own pace. You’re doing great, Mark.”
By the end of the second week, Mark was able to walk without a walker, but it was slow, and he was uncoordinated. It was still better than the week before.
Three weeks in and Mark was lifting 10 pound weights over his shoulders and walking the track at a normal walking pace.
At the end of his first month of PT, it had been 2 months since waking up and Mark was able to start doing pushups again. His appetite was back in full, and he was putting on weight. The scales read 115, and Mark was determined to get back everything he had lost. He’d need it in the Tutorial.
“Real talk, Mark,” Kevin said, kneeling beside Mark as Mark held onto the shoulder press machine, still recovering. Kevin helped Mark lower his hands to his sides, and then looked him in the eyes. “You’re not going to be ready for the Tutorial in under a year. It might take you four years to recover enough to take the Tutorial. The healing did a number on your physical power. You might be able to walk around like an uninjured person in a year.”
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Mark shook his head. “I can get back to Tutorial in a year. I know I can.”
“… I can help you with realistic goals, but you took the Tutorial training. You passed the False Tutorial. You know what it takes. You are not there, and you will not be there in a long time.”
Mark felt the weight of that truth try to settle upon his shoulders.
Mark threw off that weight, saying, “That’s what you believe. But I know what I believe. I’m going to do this in 6 months.” He looked to Kevin. “Can you help me get there?”
“… I’ll help you as much as I can, but…” Kevin breathed in, and then out, and said, “I’ve been doing this for 20 years, Mark. You are not the first kid I’ve helped who has suffered an accident before their Tutorial date. I’m telling you that even 4 years is not enough recovery time.”
“I’m still going to try. Not perfection, just progress. Up and up and up.”
Kevin looked in Mark’s eyes for a little longer, and then he said, “Okay.” He stood up, and said, “Then I’m going to start pushing you more, and you need to eat a whole lot more. You’re at 115 pounds. You’re skinny as shit and you can’t do more than 3 pushups before failing. You can’t hold a sword and you can’t even run a 30-minute mile. If you want to do this, I am going to push you hard, and you need to start taking nutritional supplements.”
Mark felt a flame start to burn in his chest. He said, “Yes. Yes to all of that.” He added, “I’m already taking some supplements.”
“More. Protein shakes. Creatine. Muskleaves, fish oil, and branched roots.”
“I know... some of those. What are muskleaves and branched roots?”
“The leaves aren’t entirely necessary, and you probably can’t get clearance for them while under Curtain Protocol, but we can ask. Rich noble kids take them after serious injury in order to regain functionality throughout the whole body.” Kevin said, “Branched roots are just branched chain amino acids from that Aluathan Empire company… I forget which. Everyone calls them branched roots these days. You can get those for sure, too. And then there’s fish oil, but you eat a lot of fish, right?”
“Yeah. I could eat more?”
“Yeah. Eat more. You’re not scared of getting fat, are you? Some people worry about that.”
Mark smiled. “I can get rid of it later.”
“Good.” Kevin slapped the side of the shoulder press machine, saying, “Come on, Mark! Give me 10 more!”
Mark gave him 5 more. 6, if he wanted to lie about it. That was as much as he could do.
Kevin put in the orders for supplements and Mark’s First Citizen designation paid for all of it, through Orange City. That system was how Kevin was getting paid in the first place, but this sort of order of stuff was beyond what Kevin could do for Mark on his own. Mark had to talk to a woman on the phone after placing the order, to make sure that this really was something he wanted, and that it was medically necessary.
It was more than medically necessary, in Mark’s opinion.
- - - -
Two days later Mark got a massive delivery at his house with a whole bunch of stuff. He couldn’t lift the giant containers of protein out of the cardboard box, but Dad could do that, so Mark focused on grabbing the smaller things.
Mom sat at the kitchen table and read off Kevin’s dietary plan schedule, saying, “He’s having you eat… a whole lot more, honey. And these supplements… You sure it’s okay for you to eat these… What are these? Muskleaves? Do you eat them?”
Turned out muskleaves were fine for Curtain Protocol people, when used in moderation and properly.
“You make tea out of them,” Mark said, as he pulled out the small box of leaves. He opened the box. It was packaged weird, but Kevin had already told him about how it would come and what to do with them. Mark pulled out a single clear plastic bag that was pretty much flat, except for one bright red leaf that had been dried and pressed and slipped inside the bag. “Each one is individually packaged. One leaf per day, crushed in a tea-cup-style mortar and pestle until it makes a paste, and then the mortar is filled with hot water and you drink it, refilling it with hot water until all of the paste is consumed as tea.”
Mom took the plastic bag with a frown. “Looks like drugs.”
Mark chuckled. “Yup.”
Dad laughed, too. “It is drugs.”
“Good drugs!” Mark said. “I can take 3 months of it and not have any adverse effects, so that’s what I’m going to do. It’s supposed to massively increase my appetite, too.”
Dad pulled the teacup mortar set out of a box on the table, saying, “I’ll make the tea for—”
“Nope!” Mom said, plucking the teacup mortar away. “I want to! You’re already making dinner almost every night, Markus. I’ll make tea.”
“Sure, Donna,” Dad said, grinning as he started to break down the first box.
Mom took the box of muskleaves from where Mark had set them down and grabbed the preparation instructions from inside. With quick hands, one small white square of waxed paper unfolded into one rather large sheet of paper with a whole bunch of drawings on it. “Uh,” Mom said, looking over all the little drawings. “That’s a… a little more complicated than I would have thought.”
Dad grinned. “Good luck!” He said to Mark, “I can make your protein shakes. Want one now?”
“Yeah, I do,” Mark said, even though he wasn’t that hungry.
Mom said, “Let me organize the pill boxes.” She discarded the muskleaf preparation instructions onto the table as she went back to Kevin’s dietary plan and other instructions, saying, “You’re supposed to take… Uh… Looks like a ‘branched roots’? With your powder? You're putting ‘branched roots’ in there, Markus?”
Dad was already scooping nearly-white powder into a blender, saying, “Yup!”
Mom shuffled through instructions fast, mumbling about ‘redline pills’ and ‘mana-channel cleaners’, both of which would counteract the mild mana flavorings that the muskroot would cause Mark. They were pretty basic pills that the noble kids of Daihoon would take when they needed intensive magical healing before their majority, so that they could keep their Tutorial options open, and Mark had qualified for them, somehow. It was that First Citizen stuff, for sure.
Mark didn’t do much aside from watch his parents work. For right now, Mark sat there, smiling softly, watching Mom figure out pills and Dad add some berries to the blender. It was love in action—
The blender started going, whirring loud, drowning out Mark’s thoughts.
Dad stopped the blender. “That’s pretty loud!”
Mark laughed.
Mom and Dad smiled at that, and Mom said, “I’m glad to hear you laugh again, Mark.” Her chin trembled, and then she went and hugged him, already crying. “We’re going to make you better. You’ll get better. I know you will.”
Mark teared up.
Dad was there with a hand on his back, just being there.
It was Mark’s first really good day since he woke up.
It was almost a month into kaiju season, the height of Summer, July 8th, and though no storms had developed off of the coast of Africa yet, it was only a matter of time.