Re: [B&B: Dante & Holly]
He listened. I mean, even if this wasn't about his leg? He'd find it an interesting topic. Twilight Zone, right? It was in line with a bunch of his favorite YouTubers too, the ones that looked into all the new weird and impossible-seeming science stuff. So, yeah, he was rapt. It was a good distraction from the pain and the anger, too, to learn something new. Holly had never made it to college, but not from lack of interest. Which, at the end of the day, was how he even knew about her back in his timeline. She'd been featured heavily on the YouTube channels he followed, and he'd watched snippets of her TEDTalk in those vids. Anyway, yeah, he listened.
"Okay. Got it. So I'll feel it, like, adjusting? And it's gonna suck." Which, you know, he was expecting. He'd done some online reading now, right? He got that it was probably going to give him shit for the rest of his life, to some extent, and he'd never be graceful. But Holly was a big guy. 6'2-plus-ish, 200+, and he'd never been particularly graceful, so no problems there. Back to paying attention, this time to the straps, the emergency release, and how she flattened the thing once the pressure was gone. And it made sense to him. "So it basically, like, uses the balloon-pressure-thing to, like, compensate for the weak spots by filling them in... kind of." Not a particularly scientific description, again, but he thought he understood. And understanding was important, right? So he'd know if something was wrong.
He was watching as much as he was listening, so it made sense. And he already had his brace off, and the gauze wrapped around his leg was just protecting still healing wounds, so he figured that would stay? Though he did motion to it questioningly, and then he took the brace from her. "I think I got it."
And, okay, he didn't have it as much as he thought he did.
He definitely fumbled, cursed, and it hurt, you know? Just the maneuvering, handling it. He'd been mostly drugging himself and leaving the leg completely alone and in positions that didn't hurt. So getting the flexible brace on? Sucked. But he managed to get his leg up, to slide the brace underneath, and, okay, it took a few breaks between those two feats, and there was definitely sweat dotting his temple, but the straps were easier, though he kept them crazy-loose. Tightening them more than that hurt a lot. He knew he'd have to get there eventually, but, yeah.