Coming of Age: Volume 2: Endless Conflict by Thomas T. Thomas

entirely happy with the results, Wells wanted that to be private, too.
    “Now I’m going to set you up with a mirror here,” Bellows said. “Right in front of you, about a foot and a half away.”
    Wells touched it for reassurance. “Xhank you, Doctor,” she murmured around the mouth tube.
    As Bellows removed clips, cut through tapes, and unwrapped the bandages, she explained what would happen. “You eyelids will be red and a bit puffy. That’s to be expected, because you haven’t opened them in nearly a week. And your lips will be dry at first, because you haven’t been able to lick them.” The woman continued to cut, unwrap, and peel away the cloth layers.
    During the past week, Wells’s face had felt heavy and numb. She always assumed this was due to a residue of the anesthetic or the weight of her bandages and their pressure against her skin. But as the layers of bandage came off, the feeling did not return.
    “One other thing you’ll notice,” Bellows went on, “is a tiny, almost invisible seam around your face and neck where the implant is attached to the rest of your skin. It will generate a small, keloid-type internal scar. At your age, such scars are largely composed of collagen. They are relatively inflexible and lack any kind of blood circulation. This one will present as a faint white line, hard to see in most lights, but difficult to eradicate surgically.”
    “Xhat doesn’t sound xhery good,” Wells said around the tube.
    “Don’t worry about it,” Bellows said. “It will hide easily with makeup.”
    With a last few snips and turns, the doctor lifted the last bandages away. Her fingers plucked the straws from Wells’s nose and massaged it gently. Her touch felt distant and muted. She unwound the tape around the mouth tube, and Wells felt no pull as the sticky surface peeled away from her skin. Finally the doctor removed the tube and stood back so that Wells could see herself in the mirror.
    The new face was beautiful—the smooth, glowing skin of a twenty-year-old. She turned her head to admire the firm planes of her cheeks, the fine sculpting of her cheekbones, the clean line of her jaw.
    Wells smiled at herself, but the face in the mirror didn’t smile back. The lips retained their vague, upward curve. She tried again, but she could not make those lips move. Her eyes went wide and she blinked—so thank goodness her eyelids still worked. But she could not open her mouth except by working her jaw and pulling it down sharply, and then her lips parted with a dry pop.
    “Xhu-at’s this? ” she husked through immobile lips, unable to form the W sound.
    “I—I don’t understand,” Bellows said. She turned Wells in the swivel chair and felt across her face, fingers probing the skin and muscles. “Can you feel that?” the doctor asked.
    Wells could feel only the force pushing against her bones, the deep pressure against her skull. But the doctor’s fingertips, as they touched and brushed the skin under her eyes, might have been manipulating a mannequin. “Unh-uh,” she said. “Like xhy xhace is asleexh.” There went her M s, F s and P s, too. “Xhix this!” she commanded.
    “I’m not sure what went wrong,” Bellows said. “It would appear the nerves did not connect properly during the attachment surgery. I’ve … I’ve never had that happen before.”
    No, not in your vast experience of just three cases, Wells noted silently.
    “We did everything correctly,” the doctor went on. “Perhaps your neurons need time to adjust and learn to pass signals through the ligations in the axons. I expect the nerves will grow in with time. … That sometimes happens.”
    “I can’t lih like this,” Wells husked, having lost her V s as well.
    The import of what had happened rushed in on her. She would be an invalid. She couldn’t eat in public without embarrassment, because she would have to pry her lips open and seal them closed with her fingers while chewing. She couldn’t