Hello,
This might be a big 'ask me anything' so sorry for that in advance; I am just trying to clear some things up. I am not a native English speaker and sometimes struggle a little bit with meaning, so I have compiled the things I don't fully understand from chapter four and would really appreciate it if you could clarify those for me! (I have underlined them; otherwise it is the whole block).
Also wanted to say that I really like the story that you are writing; I had been on the lookout for such an in-depth story, and am delighted that I found it!
Pittsburgh in late July was already decided by seven in the morning. The heat came up with the sun and didn't negotiate about it, that thick wet warmth a river city wore in summer, the kind that got into your clothes and the back of your throat and the flat silver surface of the Monongahela if you stood at the right angle to see it. We crossed to the far edge, where we always went. Years ago we'd started climbing through the safety bar to sit on the outer ledge, facing the city, a single step from a very long drop, and neither of us had ever said a word about why two grown men who'd spent their lives keeping people off ledges chose to sit on one. Robby ducked under the rail and lowered himself down. I followed. The view had stopped registering as a view a long time ago. I'd have noticed instantly if it changed yet I almost never noticed it at all.
What do you mean by that sentence?
He looked at you like you'd said something faintly insulting, "when I lost my leg," he said, "I had someone. The whole way through. And it was," he caught your word and set it down carefully between you, "tough. But there was someone there every day for the practical things. The shower. The fit. The hundred small adjustments you make to a body that moves differently now." A brief pause. "That kind of help is not nothing. That was most of it, actually."
Like most of the help got something out of it for him?
I'd never tried to reach someone from this particular angle before. In Kosovo, Sawyer and I had been the surrogate parents of a young squad, not in that way, never in that way, more like a brother and sister keeping a household from burning down--and Sawyer hadn't exactly been a fountain of emotional technique. But Sawyer knew this woman down to the foundation. If anyone had a crowbar, it was her.
What do you mean by ‘noy in that way’. Like not in the way that they parent the squad, but more like siblings who don’t have a parent and take over the parenting? (don’t know how else to explain it).
"Oh, come on," another eye-roll then her eyes came back to mine and her face did something deliberate, a put-on softness, a mock-tenderness, "you need a waaahmbulance?"
Is it said in a mocking and/or childish?
Every head turned. Henderson's hands froze on the IV line. Ellis looked up from the airway. For one full second the only sounds were the monitor and the man's laboured breathing, and what I'd said sat in the air between us--not a military command, not a reflex, something more specific than that. A thing said in front of everyone that named exactly what this was and what it cost me.
Like what it took for Jack to become an attending, like him losing his leg and choosing to pursue being a doctor in a different setting?
I worked with the precision and care the moment required. Released the suspension and eased the socket off the residual limb slowly, supporting the weight of it, not letting it drop. Then I rolled the liner off inside-out the way you're supposed to, peeling rather than pulling. I took down the sock plies one at a time, then the sleeve rolling itdown.
How many layers does a prosthetic have? I am imagining, and with some research, that it has the inner lining and thesocket itself, which is attached to the pylon. Do you mean by the sock piles, one sock that has gotten bunched up when rolling it down or multiple layers?
Thank you so much in advance; I hope to get a response! Also, I loved the last chapter by the way; it was such a nice read!
