I get out of my car as fast as I can. “You got your arm!”
“Yeah! And Tom got the batting attachment. You gotta come out back and see.” His obvious excitement bleeds into every word and I’m so fucking happy for him.
I follow Charlie back into the house where music isplaying, some candles are lit on the coffee table in the living room, and an enticing, savory aroma fills the air.
“Damn, what’s your mom cooking? It smells incredible,” I ask Charlie as I close the door behind me.
“Dunno what it’s called, some chicken thing with these weird, shriveled tomatoes. It’s good, though.”
“They’re not shriveled, they’re sun-dried,” Isla says, walking into the room barefoot. She comes right up to me, and to my surprise, kisses my cheek. “Hi.”
“Okay, so remember, that’s as much kissing as you’re allowed to do in front of me. Got it?”
At Charlie’s disgruntled statement, Isla spins and smiles sweetly. “Listen kid, you’re gonna have to get used to a little bit of kissing. Especially if you’re going to insist on dragging poor Luca right back outside into the freezing cold to hit some balls before dinner. It’s still February, you know.”
Charlie huffs and rolls his eyes. “Fine. Oh, did you warn him about?—”
A loud hissing sound interrupts Charlie and all three of us turn to see a very large cat with its back arched, tail puffed, and yellow eyes staring into my soul.
“Gus,” Charlie finishes. But before he can move, the cat suddenly relaxes its posture, then saunters over and weaves between my legs, even rubbing its head on my prosthesis underneath my jeans.
“Um, Mom? Is Gus okay?” Charlie whispers.
When I look at Isla, her mouth is open in shock. “I…I…I don’t know.” She turns to me, eyes wide. “That cat hates everyone except Charlie. Even me. What is happening right now?”
I give up on fighting my smile and shrug. “Guess I’ve been accepted.”
Isla’s the first one to start laughing, then Charlie and I join in. And it’s quite possibly one of the best moments of my adult life.
Eventually, Gus stops lavishing me with attention and wanders off, his tail in the air.
“C’mon out back, Luca. Mom set up a net so I can practice my swing with some wiffle balls.”
I dutifully follow Charlie through the kitchen, where Isla has returned to the stove and is putting on some vegetables to cook. In the backyard, sure enough, there’s a tall net set up with a batting tee in front of it.
I zip up my jacket for protection against the cold, damp air as Charlie picks up a bat and clicks it into the attachment on the end of his prosthesis before taking a batting stance. He swings, connecting with the light-weight white ball and sending it flying into the net. He does it a few more times, each time hitting the ball on the tee, but I notice how he’s having to compensate with his posture and adjust his prosthesis every time.
After four or five swings, he turns to me, a hesitant smile on his face as he rubs his elbow with his hand. “It’s pretty cool, right? I don’t know how to make it so it doesn’t slip if I swing hard, though. I can hit the wiffle balls, but a real baseball would need more power, and I can’t seem to get that.”
I nod thoughtfully, my mind spinning with disjointed ideas and thoughts. “Do you have a real ball here? Can we try a soft toss approach so I can see?”
Charlie nods and jogs over to the patio where he grabs a couple of baseballs out of a bucket. He hands them to me and takes his stance again. Moving into position, I look at him. “Don’t worry about power the first couple of times. Just let me see you swing at an actual toss instead of a tee.”
“Got it.”
I throw the ball. He swings and misses, just barely. The second toss, he chips the ball with the edge of his bat. I watch him take a deep breath in and out before retrieving the balls and bringing them back to me.
I grab some of the wiffle balls as well, just so we can do more tries without pausing to get the balls. “Keep trying. I see what you mean about the prosthetic slipping. It could be the grip or the angle that you’re swinging.”
“Or I just don’t know what I’m doing ’cause I’m not used to swinging with two arms.” Charlie sounds frustrated but also determined. “I know I need to keep practicing, but it’s hard not knowing what I’m doing wrong. Tom said we could mimic batting at our next appointment, but it won’t be the same as doing it for real.”
That’s when it hits me. I designed GaitSync so I could have real-time feedback on my gait and adjust as needed to avoid pressure sores and overuse issues. What if there was something similar, but for arms? Specifically, for athletes who need to understand how to adjust speed, torque, and pressure. Amputees can’t rely on real sensory feedback from their skin and muscles, so we need the technology in our prostheses to give it to us.
My idea snaps into place. I can see it clearly. All the steps needed to develop the right type of microchip. Or if something similar already exists for professional athletes, how to adapt it for kids like Charlie.
I can do this. I can build this for him. But not here. I need the lab back in Toronto, at the university. I need my old mentor from university and the access he has as a professor to all the equipment and materials.
Most of all, I need time. The early days of developing GaitSync were long, solitary, and often sleepless. Fine, it didn’t have to be that way, but the technology would’ve taken years longer to produce if I hadn’t given it everything I had. Back then, I didn’t have anything else competing for my time. Even when I was with my ex, I still spent anywhere from ten to fourteen hours a day in the lab. But now? Now, I have the Thunder. I have my parents. I have Isla and Charlie.
