Celia stood at the mirror. She was bare to the waist. She turned from side to side,
leaning forward for a closer look at her shoulders. Their usual smooth roundness was
interrupted by a small, fleshy protuberance on each, where a normal person would have
arms.
“It’s like a womb,” Doctor Valens had explained. “The new limb grows within, much like
it would in a foetus. Only it starts out already connected to your skeleton and
nervous system. So you will start feeling it and gaining control of it as it develops.”
Celia had heard the explanation several times during all the briefings. But the reality of
it still took her breath away. In each of those mounds, about the diameter that her
upper arms would be and half as thick, was a colony of stem cells, already busily dividing
according to the epigenetic instructions preprogrammed into them. In just two weeks,
rudimentary hands, shaped like tiny ping-pong paddles, would already be distinguishable under
ultrasound; a week after that, the shapes of fingers would already start to appear,
still joined by webs like some aquatic evolutionary ancestor. The arms will lengthen
and bones will form over the next month or two; then fingernails; and after just six
months, the new limbs will have reached the size and development of a new-born baby.
At that point, the protective “wombs” will have served their purpose, and will be
removed and discarded, exposing the limbs so further growth of them happens as they start
to be used as normal, albeit initially undersized, body parts.
Celia sat on the floor so she could slip her top back on with her toes. Then she
stood up and, standing on one leg, reached round with the other to place the handle
of her small overnight bag onto a hook on her belt, so it would follow her, a little
personal trailer, on its wheels.
“Ready to go, dear?” asked the waiting nurse.
Celia nodded.
The nurse embraced her and kissed her on the cheek. “Good luck, dear. I hope it goes
well.”
“So do I,” replied Celia, in a soft voice that hardly trembled at all.
Celia had learned to manage all her adult life, and much of her childhood, without arms.
Since the electrical accident that completely destroyed them and almost killed her at
the age of ten, she had to figure out how to manage with her remaining limbs, using her
feet as hands. She did so well that she barely remembered what it was like to have normal
arms and hands. But soon, those long-dormant nerve pathways would be stirring again, and
she would feel again what shoulder muscles were for...
And so it was back to normal life, apart from the waiting. Every week she returned
to the clinic for a brief examination, but there never seemed to be anything eventful
to report; Doctor Valens would smile and send her on her way again.
But gradually, the arm-“wombs” elongated as their delicate contents took shape.
She was in a supermarket one day when she felt the first sensations of her new fingers;
she almost dropped the cereal box she was holding in her foot at the time, the surprise
was so great. She rushed home in a fit of distraction, and spent the rest of the day
flexing her new little fingers, and trying to count how many she could feel.
It was now two months since the implantation. Celia’s arms, still in their fleshy
covering, were now almost the length of an adult forearm. They were big enough to
to start getting in the way of her dressing and undressing herself, but still wrapped
up as they were, and as unaccustomed to having them as she was, she could only flail
them about clumsily instead of using them to help the process.
I-day plus 3 months: halfway through term. Celia had managed to develop some skill
in maneouvring her new still-enclosed limbs, though they were still too weak and delicate
to exert any pressure on. Already there was a noticeable asymmetry, the left one being
distinctly longer than the right one.
At the next clinical examination, Doctor Valens took a careful look at the ultrasound
scan, noting the clear delineation of the elbow joint on the left side, and the absence
of such—no upper arm, just the forearm and hand—on the right side.
“It’s all going splendidly,” he said to Celia, and she smiled back.
The last three months settled into a fairly dull routine. And then came the day.
Celia lay back on the operating table. “We just need to put you under a light general
anaesthetic,” explained Doctor Valens. “But the actual procedure won’t take long, and
you’ll be all right to go home after just a few hours.”
Celia nodded lazily as everything went black.
She woke up in a hospital bed, the nurse watching her attentively. “How are you feeling,
dear?” the nurse asked.
Celia glanced at the bandages on her shoulders. “I feel fine,” she replied.
“Don’t get up unless you feel up to it,” cautioned the nurse.
Celia slid her legs to the side of the bed and rose to a sitting position. She
reached up one foot into her hospital gown, and gingerly felt the bandage covering
her shoulder with her toes. There was nothing there: the “womb” containing the new
arm was gone, and so was the arm. The same on the other side. She got carefully
to her feet, being careful about feelings of wooziness, having no arms to balance
herself should she start to fall. Luckily nothing like that appeared.
“Can I see the patient?” she asked.
“I’ll ask the doctor,” the nurse replied, and hurried out.
Celia stood beside the bed with Doctor Valens and the nurse. The woman on the
bed had her arms swathed in bandages: the left one completely covered right from
the shoulder, the right one from the elbow. Her entire left arm seemed curiously tiny,
like that of a baby; the right upper arm was of normal size, but the bandaged
part of the limb was similarly small.
“Are you the donor?” she asked in a weak voice.
“Yes,” replied Celia.
“You don’t know how grateful ... I am for this. Since the accident, it’s been so
hard ... to have hands back again ... oh, I would hug you right now if I could!” Her eyes
filled with tears. And then the brilliant smile in that wan face faded. “But you are
now ... how do you manage ...?”
“It’s all right,” replied Celia soothingly. “I’m used to being like this. You’re
not. Now you rest, and the nice doctors and nurses here will help you develop your new
arms so they become nice and big and strong.”
And she walked back to her room, with the doctor and the nurse in tow, to
pack up and go home. Five years she had been doing this: the doctors took cultures
from the patients’ own cells, and implanted them on Celia, letting her body nourish
them as they developed into full-fledged functional limbs that could be removed and
reattached to their new owners. And five times now she had seen the joy she brought to
someone by giving them back their lost hands and arms. It was like being a surrogate mother,
in a way. Except she felt no desire to hang on to the “babies”. And of course, it was
a job that paid rather well, because not that many people could do it. Some
peculiarity of her metabolism or immune system or something, that helped the growing
limbs through a critical stage when they would invariably fail if this growth technique
was tried directly with the actual patient—she never quite understood the details. Hence
the need for a surrogate.
Celia could now look forward to a six-month holiday before the cycle started
again. She flexed her empty shoulders lazily. It was good to have them unencumbered again.
At least for a while.