Honour Thy Father - Chapter 2
Chapter 2
Luke paced the waiting room in the medical ward on Home One. Lando had left hours ago to help finish up with the Imperials and Luke had long finished the pile of forms for his father. Those forms, sitting on the plasti chair behind him, essentially re-created Anakin Skywalker, on flimsy anyways.
“Commander Skywalker?” a voice asked.
Luke nearly jumped. He turned around to see a human medic in his late 50s with greying brown hair. “Yes.”
“Sit, please,” the medic said, guiding Luke to a chair and taking a seat himself. He picked up the forms and flipped through them. “My name is Doctor Kirak Sophka.”
“How is he doing?” Luke asked impatient. As an after-thought he added, “Sir.”
“He is a fighter.” He then looked at the form again and his eyes widened. “Anakin Skywalker? That man is Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker?”
Luke nodded, proud. “He’s my father. He was taken captive by the Emperor at the end of the Clone Wars and tortured for his powers for over two decades. I found him on the Death Star and rescued him,” he said, telling the truth from a certain point of view. Somewhere, old Obi-Wan Kenobi was rolling his eyes.
“Wow. Well, he was tortured alright. There is not much we can do for him right now - his body is too weak. The reason why he has been in surgery so long is that there is so much damage we need to rid him of before we can even think of healing and improving his quality of life. We had to remove all of his cybernetic replacements and put him on external life support.”
“When will I be able to see him?” Luke asked, suddenly feeling dizzy.
“Hopefully soon,” Sophka answered. After a moment he asked, “Are you feeling alright Commander?”
“Just tired, that’s all,” he tried to wave the doctor off, but winced when he tried to move his arm.
“Are you sure, Commander Skywalker? We think your father experienced a very high energy electrocution in the past hour. Is there any chance you were exposed to something like this as well?”
“Possibly. I think I just need to rest.” He tried to stand up. It took him two tries and when he finally got on his feet, his knees collapsed and he was sent sprawling on the floor. He winced in pain and humiliation.
“Can I get a hoverchair over here?” Sophka ordered calmly. He got up and knelt over Luke. “No more bantha shavit, Commander Skywalker. I outrank you here in the medical wing. I can make your life miserable,” he said, unamused. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Luke mumbled in agony.
A bulky male porter arrived with a hoverchair and helped the doctor lift Luke into it. He was horrified to realize none of his limbs were responding to him now. He felt like a rag-doll.
He was taken to exam room one where Sophka drew some of his blood. “Tell me what you are feeling,” the doctor ordered as he ran a test on Luke’s blood.
Luke had no choice but to cooperate because he could not get out of the hoverchair. “My muscles are so tight I can’t move them, not to mention they hurt like Chaos. I’m dizzy and I’ve had double-vision for the past half-hour. I also feel like I’ve had all the energy sucked out of me.”
Sophka finished his tests. “You have massive calcification of your skeletal system, like your father. Minerals levels in your blood have dropped severely and have gone into your bones.”
Luke was afraid to ask, “Is it permanent?”
“It will be if you don’t do as I say. I am prescribing you a week’s bed rest here in the medical ward.”
“That’s it?”
“The alternate treatment is three days in a bacta tank, but I am not giving you that option because you lied to me,” Sophka said, starting Luke on a hydration drip.
“Can I at least be put in my father’s recovery room?”
“If that is what will get you to rest, then fine,” he said, filling out a chart for him. “I will send a porter and nurse in here. I have to get back to your father now.”
Luke only waited five minutes before a human female in her mid-sixties, wearing purple scrubs with her brown hair back in a bun, came in along with a young male Barabel. The woman introduced both of them. “Hello Commander Skywalker, I am Nurse Kyran Hosima. This is Iean Arhmz. We’re going to give you a nice warm ripple bath and then get you in bed.”
The thought of being bathed by other beings horrified Luke. “I’m extremely tired. I rather just be put in my room.”
“Kirak warned me about you,” she said. Iean started to push the hoverchair. “Doctor Sophka was very adamant that you get a bath. It will feel nice, trust me,” she continued, walking beside the hoverchair.
When they got to the steamy bathing room, Iean started one of the ripple-tubs. Kyran started to undress Luke and saw him blushing as she took his heavy tunic off. “Don’t worry deary, I have a grandson your age, I am not interested in seeing you naked. I have been a nurse for over forty years. I’ve seen it all. But if you prefer, I can get some of the younger nurses in here to do this.”
“No, please, no,” Luke said, thankful he didn’t get one of those weird 50-year-old fangirls as a nurse. Kyran actually reminded him of his Aunt Beru. Still, he turned beet red once she took his boxer briefs off. Iean then lifted him and put him in the water.
Kyran started to wash him. “I am trying my hardest to be professional here, but is it true? Is the Emperor dead?”
“Yes,” was all Luke could say, suddenly not embarrassed.
She nodded and finished washing his body and hair in silence. She rinsed him and toweled him off. Iean fetched pajamas and boxers for Luke. She dressed him and Iean placed him back in the hoverchair.
“I know it must be hard for an able-bodied man such as yourself to have to rely on others, but we want to see you get better,” Kyran said as they made their way to his recovery room. They entered and dim lights flicked on. Half of one corner of the room had dozens of machines and monitors set up. The other side of the room had a medcenter bed with a half-dozen blankets and two large, plushy pillows. After the past 72 hours, it was a very welcome site to Luke’s eyes.
Iean pushed him to the bed and lifted him into it. Kyran helped Luke position himself and tucked him in.
“Thank you,” he said, very grateful for her kindness.
“Is there anything else I can get you?” she asked, putting his hydration bag on the stand beside the bed.
“Can you get any information on my father?”
“Sorry dear, I’m only a nurse. I am sure he will be out of surgery soon. ” She put a call-button by his hand. “Press this if you want me to come back. Now, I want you to rest.”
Luke was sound asleep before Kyran and Iean left.
* * *
Luke woke, what felt like days later, in agonizing pain. The room was dark, but light from the walkway spilled in through the viewing pane on one of the walls. He saw stars and knew they were still over the forest moon of Endor. He looked down to see his cybernetic hand twitching and jolting. He looked to his side to see that his father was still not there. Luke fought the pain and managed to flick his thumb on his left hand to press the call button.
He waited for a few moments, then heard footsteps approaching and the door opened. It was Kyran.
“Commander Skywalker?” she asked softly, turning on one of the light panels in the room, casting a dim glow on him. “How are you feeling?”
“Like shavit,” he moaned. “How long have I been asleep?”
“About four hours,” she answered. “Is your cybernetic hand annoying you?”
“Yeah, and everything else just hurts.”
She nodded. “I’ll get a droid in here to look at your hand and get permission to put you on a painkiller drip. Anything else?”
“How is my dad doing?”
“I’ll see if I can get any information for you.” She patted his arm, then left.
She came back several minutes later with a Too-onebee droid trailing her.
“I’m going to start you on a standard painkiller line into your hydration drip while Too-onebee takes a look at your hand,” she explained.
“Sir?” the droid said, rolling up to him and scanned his arm with one red eye. “Records and scans indicate a high voltage electrocution has decalibrated your cybernetic replacement. Treatment will require a recalibration. May I do this now?”
Half in a daze from the painkillers entering his body, Luke nodded.
Kyran watched as the droid did his work. Once it was finished, she gave Luke a smile. “Better?”
“Yeah.”
“Doctor Sophka will come back in a few minutes to check on you and to give you a report on your father.” She then left with the droid.
* * *
Luke, not even knowing he fell back to sleep, woke to see several nurses followed by Doctor Sophka pushing a bed and several more machines and monitors into his room.
“Dad,” Luke mumbled, pressing a button to increase the angle of his bed so he could see his father.
Anakin Skywalker, or what was left of him, lay still on the bed, his skin the same colour as the sheets. He was covered with several blankets tucked in around the neck, but it was clear that his arms ended at about the elbow and his legs at about the knee. Wires and tubes flowed into and out of him like waves. A white band, that was attached to tubes and a ventilator, went around his neck. Tubes also came out of his nose, though his mouth was free.
“Get that cap on his head,” Sophka ordered. “He’s going to have problems regulating his body temperature.” The doctor then looked at Luke. “You should be resting.”
“You should have warned me that I was going to get bathed,” Luke countered. “How is my father?”
Sophka sighed. “It was touch and go for a while and we had to restart his heart a few times, but he managed to pull through. Like I told you earlier, we had to remove all cybernetic replacements and put him on external life support. He is also going through calcification like you. Half his organs were barely functioning, but we managed to treat most of that and he is on medication to help. His heart is doing alright considering his condition; we are monitoring it closely. We may have to replace some of the muscle. His lungs are what worry me the most; they have massive, decades-old scarring. He was on an inadequate respirator for many years. We gave him a tracheotomy. A tube has been inserted in his windpipe below his vocal cords. While he can still breathe on his own, a ventilator will have to supply him with a special oxygen mix for the rest of his life. His vocal cords are also scarred, but he will be able to use them. There are two more things. He is deaf. His eardrums have been destroyed beyond function.”
This surprised Luke, as he and his father had conversed. Then he realized that his father had been using the Force to hear him somehow.
Sophka continued. “We can give him hearing implants once he is feeling stronger. According to our scans, he also has vision problems. He is actually considered legally blind, though we do believe he can see loose shapes. We will get an optometrist to see if anything can be done for him. For now, he needs his rest, as do you.”
Luke nodded, taking it all in. “When will he wake up?”
“He is on very heavy painkillers, so it will be a few hours. Get your rest, then worry about your father. I will be back in a few hours. Nurses will be checking up on you both and I had better get reports saying that you were asleep.”
Luke nodded. Once the doctor had left, he used the Force to move his bed closer to his father’s. In the darkness he continued to use the Force to move his hand. He brushed his knuckles along his father’s cheek. The motion tired him, so he set his hand down and gazed at his father - his father that he had always dreamed of having - as he fell asleep.