Len Vey pushed his right palm against the maple butcher’s bench and forced his torso upright.
The shift from level to upright was a violent nerve shock. The kitchen tilted thirty degrees to the left. A sickening, spinning carousel of whitewashed stone vaults, copper lamp hoods, bubbling lentil kettles, and steam pipes that blurred into a gray vortex before his eyes. A wave of cold nausea crested in his throat, his blood pressure dipping as gravity pulled the leftover blood from his brain down into his legs. The room smelled of hot vinegar, scorched flour, and harsh cleaning acid. That skin-burning cocktail bit into his raw nostrils.
He closed his eyes, drove his chest muscle down, and locked his pelvic floor.
Surefoot.
The milestone didn’t need two hands. It was an earned nerve reflex residing in the half-round canals of his inner ear and the body-sense nerves of his ankles. His cerebellum adjusted to his altered balance point within three heartbeats, recalibrating his balance to account for the four-pound dead weight of the cedar splint and canvas sling hanging across his left ribs. The asymmetry was deep. His body naturally wanted to list toward the heavy wooden block on his chest. But the milestone forced his right spinal erectors to fire. He pulled his spine bones back into an upright weighted drop-line.
