"That an order?"
"Nothing else but. Official order from the medical council. You'll play or else we'll have an interne take out that appendix."
Keg realized the sageness of the doctor's order by the time he reached the hospital. He was doubled over with pain and they did not permit him to walk from the car to the front door, but came out and got him on a stretcher. He was whisked inside, leaving Linna to straighten out the details at the incoming desk.
He went up to the operating room immediately, and the anaesthetic blacked him out from both pain and consciousness.
The days that followed were hazy; they kept him drugged because his energetic nature would have prevented rapid healing. It was four days after the operation that they gave him a quick shot of counter-drug that brought him out of the fog immediately.
There were people there.
Don Channing, Walt Franks, Wes Farrell, and Dr. Hansen.
"Hello," he said, looking up with a wry smile. "How many car washings do I owe you?"
"Plenty, brother. I tinkered for three hours over that frame of yours. Why did they have to run through an engineering change when they got to hanging your appendix in? I had to dig for it."
"That's the trouble with this system," Keg mumbled to Don. "He'll get the same credit for tinkering with me as he would for removing the cat's appendix."