After several minutes the swish of the door sounded again. More than one pair of footsteps came toward the bed. Two men, probably doctors, looked down at him.
"How's the patient today?" one of them asked.
"Today?" Lin echoed. "How long have I been here?"
"Almost a week."
It came flooding in. He could remember hours of torturous pain during which he cried for them to put him out of his misery, of at least two terrible nightmarish scenes where he was surrounded by gleaming chrome things, and the awful odor of ether.
"I remember now," he said weakly. "Will—will I live?"
"If you'd asked us that yesterday we'd have said no," the doctor said, "but—" He shrugged.
"How badly am I hurt?" Lin asked the doctors.
"Pretty badly," one of them said with grave frankness. "Broken back. Severed spine. If you live you'll never walk again."
"But I probably won't live?" Lin said.