Now, Joyce started, “See if you can lift your left leg.”

“I can’t. It’s not my leg. It’s just a fake one.”

“TRY. Think you want the leg up. It’s hooked to your muscles. You called it your leg yesterday.”

Kathy looked and saw the left leg shake as it came up to horizontal.”

“Put that down and raise the right one.”

Kathy smiled as she saw the right one come up. She put it down as instructed.

“Don’t try to use the muscles in your legs to pull yourself into a standing position yet. Give them time to heal. We don’t want you to tear anything. Use your arms to lift yourself for now. Let’s get you over to the parallel bars so we can see if these will work.”

Patty helped her into the wheelchair and wheeled her to the parallel bars. At first her movement was a stumbling gait but as she proceeded, it became smoother. The big problem was with her feet, the metal ones, were stiff and didn’t help any but having knees that would bend on demand made the movement much easier and smoother. After a while, they helped her into the wheelchair.

“That’s enough for today. Don’t try to walk until you come back except to get in and out of the chair. Remember. Don’t use your legs to lift your full weight, use your hands and arms. Have a good day. See you tomorrow.”

Kathy went to the office and began to review the data on the chips in her stumps. They were really simple. This would take about a day.

Dr. Western came in about two. He had been up to see the new patient.

“How are you doing?”

“Fine,” Kathy replied. She wanted him to ask about the therapy.

“Did you see Joyce? How is she?”

“She has a bad cut on her hand. She cut the tendon. They did surgery on her yesterday.”

“That bad?”

“Yea. She cut her hand really bad.”

“How’s the programming going?”

“I think I have an idea. Do you have a couple minutes to listen?”

“Go ahead.”

“I need to find what signals are sent by the nerves in my stumps and the signals sent by the nerves in the upper end of my legs. I need to see what causes them and then see if I can transmit the impulse from one sensor to the corresponding driver.”