Gently, she reached for his left hand, which once again wore its signature glove. Carefully, she pulled the garment free, but the resultant flinch and a hissing intake of breath behind the mask made her pause.
“What’s happening?” she asked, concern knitting her brow as she looked up at him. “What are you feeling?”
“Not exactly pain,” he replied slowly, his eyes flicking downwards at the still pinkish skin of his restored hand. “But something quite akin to it. Where before I was almost numb, now it feels as though I can sense every thread. There are times when it feels as though the flesh itself aches.”
Careful not to touch his hand more than necessary, she tilted it slowly to visually examine it, noting with satisfaction that no new blemishes had surfaced in the time it had taken for the last of the leprous bacteria to be destroyed. It was only so fresh and taut it nearly shone in the light.
“Your peripheral nerves are reconnecting to your brain,” she remarked, her brow furrowing. “Do you remember experiencing a tingling or stabbing sensation before the numbness?”
He nodded. “I do.”
“The same thing is happening, but in reverse,” she explained. “You see, your nerves can regenerate and reconnect themselves, given enough time. One of the side effects of leprosy is damage to the nervous system, especially those of the limbs. But get rid of what’s causing that damage… and give it a little help, of course,” she tilted her head at the regenerator in the kit, “and those nerves have the chance of eventually rerouting themselves. You felt it when you were losing those connections – now you’re feeling them coming back.”
“I… believe I follow.”
Remembering how he understood her analogy regarding infection, she took a breath, and then offered another. “Think of it like a network of roads. Your nerves transmit signals of feeling to your brain. You touch this table, for instance, and the nerves in your fingers send a message to your brain that it is smooth, traveling along that network, just like pilgrims travel to this city – only much, much faster. But what happens if a bridge collapses, or rains wash away a road? That pathway is lost, but only temporarily, until it can be built back again or the travelers find another way around. Leprosy washed away your roads,” she finished with a wry smile, “but now the waters have receded.”
A distinct scratching sound could be heard, then, and Tabitha glanced over her shoulder to see Tertius furiously scribbling away with a quill pen at a piece of parchment he’d placed on a wooden tablet.
“It doesn’t always work,” she clarified, realizing the old man was taking notes on everything she was saying now, “but the tool I used repaired the very ends of those roads, which gave the rest a chance to reestablish the lost pathways and bridge the gap between.”
