All I Want Is Everything

Independence Day

Blow,
Ill wind blow away
Let me rest today
You're blowing me no good
No good

Billie Holiday, Ill Wind

Ella spent quite a lot of time thinking about arms and talking with Dr Rhodes. It was a lot easier to get in touch with him than Dr Strange, but then Rhodes was also on summer break, not teaching anything that summer. She'd gotten some sensors from him to collect data and Gina Schock had volunteered to help. She drummed for an hour, varying intensity and speed, changing drumheads as well, giving as wide a sample as she could, and Ella recorded speed, force, velocity, and more; Rhodes had a much better grip on the physics of it all. She also sweet-talked Tommy Lee into participating; while he didn't really like Bucky, he did really like drumming and he liked Ella. His style of playing was closer to Bucky's, and two sets of data were much better than one. Afterward, she took Tommy out for dinner and drinks as a thank you; he could be charming and funny when he wanted, but she didn't really trust any of the guys in the hard-partying scene of rock and the night ended when she dropped him off at his home.

The more Ella worked on the problem of the arm, the more she was interested. Once they had a good idea of the forces at work on the arm, the demands the drummer placed on it, they'd start narrowing materials for the 'bone', but in the meantime, she worked on an armature that would give the synthetic muscles a place to attach. First she sketched, then she used a diagram of the natural shoulder and arm to guide her. She became more convinced that they weren't going to need to replicate the bones in a real arm. She was going to propose two rods, hinged at the elbow, with the wrist as a swivel joint. They could control the movement in the hand with the positioning of the "muscles" and she felt that simple was better in their work. The more complex, the more opportunities there were for errors and failure. This way, the hand part would still have full range of motion. It was the hand part that concerned her the most; there were 27 bones in the hand and wrist; the bones were all connected by ligaments and there was cartilage at each joint. And each joint had different degrees of movement. It was quite daunting.

In June, Bucky was discharged from the hospital. While Mrs Barnes was out shopping, Ella went over, hooked Bucky's right arm up, and collected data of his playing. He felt off-balance because of the missing weight, but it would help to position some of his data between the other two. Gina wasn't as showy as the boys were, but she played hard and well, and a lot of her data wasn't that different from Tommy's or Bucky's. Top-flight drummers had a lot in common, it turned out, and the doctors and Ella were pleased with that. Ella took it on herself to keep Bucky updated. He was quiet and rather listless, and it worried her.

For a break, Ella and Sam went to a party on July 4th. They hadn't seen much of each other lately, what with Sam doing studio work and Ella's project. He took her to dinner for her birthday and bought her some scores of classical guitar music as well as a book called "Guitar: The World's Most Seductive Instrument."** The party they went to was thrown by a big producer, and the guests were musicians, record label execs, and others in the industry. Fireworks were set off at ten, a nice touch, and it was a good party, crowded but there was a lot of networking going on. Ella drank Sprite with a lime wedge since she was driving, and she and Sam touched bases each half hour.

She wasn't too thrilled to see Steve and Nat there and managed to avoid them for quite some time. Clint was also there and he came up to say hi. Ella was over him; she'd figured out that he'd been more of a rebound guy than real love, and that made it easier to talk to him. They were casually talking when Ella felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned her head to see Nat there. She just stared at her.

"Happy birthday, Ella," Nat said, smiling.

"Thanks." Ella turned back to Clint.

"Introduce us?" Clint asked, and Ella felt put out.