The Burning Wire

“Of anything.”
    “No.”
    “All I’m asking tonight is that you hear me out.”
    “I can do that.”
    “Now, Pembroke is the D-day of spinal cord treatment. They do everything.”
    There were many promising techniques to help people with severe disabilities. But the problem was funding. Even though the injuries were severe, and the consequences lifelong, the reality was that when compared with other maladies, serious spinal cord problems were relatively rare. Which meant that government and corporate research money went elsewhere, to procedures and medicines that would help more people. So most of the procedures that promised significant improvements in patients’ conditions remained experimental and unapproved in America.
    And some of the results were remarkable. In research labs, rats with severed spinal cords had actually learned to walk again.
    “They have a critical response unit, but that won’t do us any good, of course.”
    The key to minimizing spinal cord damage is to treat the affected area immediately after the accident with medications that prevent swelling and future killing of the nerves at the site of the injury. But there’s a very small window of opportunity to do that, usually hours or at the most days after the injury.
    As veteran patients, Rhyme and Susan Stringer could take advantage only of techniques to repair the damage. But that always ran up against the intractable problem: Central nervous system cells—those in the brain and spinal cord—don’t regenerate the way the skin on your finger does after a cut.
    This was the battle that SCI doctors and researchers fought daily, and Pembroke was in the vanguard. Susan described an impressive array of techniques that the center offered. They were working with stem cells, doing nerve rerouting—using peripheral nerves (any nerve outside the spinal cord, which can regenerate)—and treating the injured areas with drugs and other substances to promote regeneration. They were even building noncellular “bridges” around the location of the injury to carry nerve impulses between the brain and the muscles.
    The center also had an extensive prosthetics department.
    “It was amazing,” she told him. “I saw a video of this paraplegic who’d been implanted with a computer controller and a number of wires. She could walk almost normally.”
    Rhyme was staring at the length of the Bennington cable that Galt had used in the first attack.
    Wires . . .
    She described something called the Freehandsystem, and others like it, that involved implanting stimulators and electrodes in the arms. By shrugging your shoulders or moving your neck in a certain way, you could trigger coordinated movements of the arm and hands. Some quads, she explained, could even feed themselves.
    “None of that bullshit quackery you see, doctors preying on the desperate.” Susan angrily mentioned a doctor in China who’d pocket $20,000 to drill holes in patients’ heads and spines to implant tissue from embryos. With, of course, no discernible effect—other than exposing the patient to risk of death, further injury and bankruptcy.
    The people on the staff at Pembroke, she explained, were all from the top medical schools from around the world.
    And the claims were realistic—that is, modest. A quad like Rhyme wouldn’t be able to walk, but he could improve his lung functioning, perhaps get other digits to work and, most important, get back control of bowel and bladder. This would greatly help in reducing the risk of dysreflexia attacks—that skyrocketing of the blood pressure that could lead to stroke that could render him even more disabled than he was. Or kill him.
    “It’s helped me a lot. I think in a few years I’ll be able to walk again.”
    Rhyme was nodding. He could think of nothing to say.
    “I don’t work for them. I’m not a disability rights advocate. I’m an editor who happens to be a paraplegic.” This echo made Rhyme offer a faint smile. She continued, “But when Detective Sachs said she was working with you, I thought, Fate. I was meant to come tell you about Pembroke. They can help you.”
    “I . . . appreciate it.”
    “I’ve read about you, of course. You’ve done a lot of good for the city. Maybe it’s time you did some good for yourself.”
    “Well, it’s complicated.” He had no idea what that meant, much less why he’d said it.
    “I know, you’re worried about the risk. And you should be.”
    True, surgery would