The Price of a Wish

James had arrived early by at least an hour, probably two. His friend was not due to be home soon but James didn’t really feel like going anywhere else to pass the time. So, he parked his car out front of his friend’s home and waited. It was warm enough out that he had the sunshades up in the windshield and kept the car running with the AC blowing gently to keep cool. He had a few CD’s of MP3’s in the car to listen to on his in car MP3 player and he settled back and tried to get comfortable to wait. It was not the easiest thing to do as the casts on his legs made getting comfortable in the cramped drivers seat difficult at best. He would find a seemingly easy position to put his feet in but soon the top edge of one cast would start digging into his knee, or the ankle bone of the other leg would be resting against the hard inside of that cast at just the wrong angle and be causing undue pressure at that point. He would shift around in the small amount of space available in the driver’s position to relieve the offended body part, but a few minutes later the other leg would find a new annoyance and make its discomfort known.

Looking over at the passenger seat for the third time, James decided he would definitely have more room for his legs on that side of the car. He lifted himself up out of the drivers seat enough to raise his right leg up and maneuvered his immobile foot out from under the steering wheel, over the gear shift, and carefully dropped it down into the other side of the car. He then shifted his body part way over which gave him enough room to get his left leg moving out from under the steering column and bend his knee far enough to allow that casted foot to be pulled up above the drivers seat while he moved his torso on over to the passenger seat and then moved his left leg on over to complete the move to the other side of the car. Once there he happily stretched out his legs in the freedom given by not having all the pedals under the dash over here. He leaned the seat back as far as it would go, relaxed to the music currently playing from the car’s sound system, and allowed his mind to drift.

Somewhere in his idle musing James has what he considered to be an idle thought, a simple flight of fantasy. He wished that casts would become self-animated. That way, the two casts on his legs would grow of their own accord and completely encase him from head to toe in ‘extreme medical bondage’. It was a brief thought that left his mind only slightly slower than it had entered. But unbeknownst to James, that thought was heard by ‘something’ at the moment it was formed, something with the power to make a wish real. And James’ wish was granted.

It has long been said, “Be careful what you wish for, because you just may get it.” Well, EVERYTHING that was behind that wish James made got included in that one simple wish. The being/entity/power that heard it heard it all and didn’t differentiate between the wish itself and the secret underlying yearnings that caused the wish to be made. In a grand coincidence of the universe ‘it’ just happened to be paying attention at just that moment, and chose to grant a lower life form what it comprehended as a gift.

Of course, James had no idea his ‘idle thought’ had been heard, let alone granted. He just sat there and got comfortable enough that he half-dozed off listening to his music. He came out of it a short while later to the feeling that something was different. He wasn’t quite sure what it was though and sat up a little to look around. At first he didn’t see anything different from before, then his gaze strayed down to his feet where he found the subject of ‘difference’. The casts on his lower legs had been made with toe-plates to protect his toes from being rammed into obstacles, but now he couldn’t see his toes at all. Or even wiggle them in the slightest. The ends of both casts had grown and completely encompassed his toes, encasing them and leaving no opening at all. Attempting to wiggle his ankles showed that both casts were now tighter as well. He had been wearing the casts on his lower legs for eight weeks now and there had been a tiny bit of loosening occurring due to muscle atrophy. They weren’t excessively tight by any means, instead they were now perfectly form fitting leaving his limbs no room for movement inside them anymore. Looking closer he noted that the odd bumps and folds that had been left around the heels when making the casts had disappeared as well. Both casts were smooth and, for lack of a better term, perfect. There was not one fold or bump showing on the surface of either one now, and the portion of each cast visible below the cuffs of his pants displayed symmetrical loops of glow-in-the-dark fiberglass perfectly aligned with each other. He started to pull up his pant legs to see the entire length of the casts and that is when he realized that they no longer stopped about 2 inches below his knees. Now they were at the most only an inch below his knees, probably less.

James stopped and watched as the outline of the hard upper edge of each cast was displayed as a slowly moving ridge under his pant legs that was inching its way UP over both of his knees. He reached down to his left leg as the edge of the cast covered his knee completely. The edge of the cast was hard and unyielding, just like it should be. But it was still growing up his leg. Both legs. James sat back again and just watched as his legs were slowly encased in fiberglass. He was afraid to a small extent, but he was also overjoyed at the same time. Somehow, some way, his wish had been heard and responded to. How much of his wish he did not yet know, or to what extent. Nor was he aware of how far-reaching that response would go.

For the next hour and thirty minutes James watched as he was slowly encased. The casts continued up his legs and when they reached his crotch he wondered about his underwear. The casts were tight and form fitting, he couldn’t move anything that was covered at this point. Not his knees, not his ankles, or even his toes. So, would the casts go over or under his underwear? James waited and as the casts continued to grow he was mostly sure that he could still feel them in direct contact with his skin as they began to cover the areas of his hips and buttocks. And then James realized he could feel them beginning to cover his crotch as well. He sat up enough so that he could see down to his groin and could see his pants being stretched by the fiberglass growing underneath them. He could also see the seams of his underwear being pressed between his pants and the fiberglass, verifying the casts had gone under his briefs. James could also see that the plural form of cast was soon going to be incorrect. He watched as the closest edges of the two casts came in contact between his legs and seemed to merge with each other and then begin filling in the section over his private area. James got a little concerned at this time, as the fiberglass that was continuing to encase him was not creating a ‘form fitting’ shell at this point. Instead it was pushing his genitals gently but firmly up into his crotch and leaving what appeared to be, from the outside, a smooth unblemished shell of fiberglass. James even reached down and felt the area through his clothing and confirmed what he was feeling from the inside and seeing on the outside. His penis and testes were being mildly crushed up against his body by the ever-growing cast. It was uncomfortable, but not painful, and James really didn’t have much choice in the matter since he had chosen to stay in the car and not run around. His legs were now immobilized with the knees bent at about a forty to forty-five degree angle, and the two separate casts had now merged into one unit making it difficult to shift his legs around at all. He leaned back again and continued to watch.

Before too long, the cast had reached his waist. The part covering the front of him had seemed to slow down even more while the part covering his back and sides continued to grow up over his hips and buttocks. The sensation of the hard fiberglass working its way underneath him as James sat there was unusual; his skin never got pinched between the cast and the seat although a few hairs did get pulled. Once it had encircled his waist the cast again continued to rise upwards evenly in the front and back as it worked its way up his torso. As James sat there in a reclined position and enjoyed the sight and feelings of the cast growing to encase him he had a flash of intuition. How was he going to get out of his car? He was already encased from the toes up to his belly at this point. His cast was so form fitting that he couldn’t move his legs at all, not one little bit. James tried to sit up enough to reach the door handle, but the cast had grown high enough by this point that it was now restricting his ability to sit up far enough to reach the door handle. He couldn’t reach it no matter how much he tried, but he was able to reach the electric locks and unlock the door. The cast was still growing and had actually pressed in on his gut some creating a flat, trim view of his lower torso. This was slightly uncomfortable as James had a bit of fat around his belly that gave him a ‘small spare tire’ look to his waistline. James gave up trying to reach the door handle and lay back again, hoping his friend would come home while he could still talk and move some of his body. He watched now as the cast continued to slowly crawl up his chest underneath of his shirt, tightly hugging him in its protective embrace. The cast was tight enough around his chest that James was feeling his breathing to be somewhat restricted, but not to the point of feeling unable to breath.

A knock on the window next to his head startled James and he looked up to see his friend standing there. He motioned for his friend to open the door and once the door was open his friend greeted him and invited James in. By this time the cast had grown up to the level of James’ armpits, he couldn’t even sit up anymore let alone get out of the car and walk into his friend’s house. James told his friend he couldn’t move and knocked on the fiberglass encasing his chest to emphasize his point. When asked what happened James said that he had fallen asleep while waiting and when he woke up he was already encased up to his waist. He explained that since waking up he had watched helplessly as the cast had inexplicably continued to grow, further encasing him in its embrace up to where it was now and it was not showing any signs of stopping. How this was happening he had no idea, but he needed to get out of the car before it got to the point where they would have to cut the car open to get him out. His friend reached down, James reached up and they gripped each other’s wrists. His friend pulled and began to lift James up and out of the car. James’ entire body from the armpits down moved as a single unit, and they did not get him moved far at all before his left foot wedged up against the middle console and his right foot hit the front of the floorboards effectively stopping any progress towards getting him out of the car. His friend dropped him back down onto the seat and let go of James’ arms. They talked and considered how to do this for a minute and James’ friend got an idea. He then leaned into the car and, grabbing James under the armpits, began pulling him up out of the foot well and partially into the back of the car. Using his arms, James helped the best he could to move the dead weight that was now his body. Once they had gotten James pulled up far enough that his right foot was clear of the foot well his friend began to rotate James around so that his feet were aimed out the door of the car. As soon as both feet were clear of obstructions, his friend switched and pulled James out of the car. He then dragged James up the short walk to the front door, inside the house, and onto the couch in the living room.

By the time James was placed on the couch the cast had grown up to the point where it had covered his chest and back completely and was working up over his shoulders. Already there was only about a two-inch gap between the front and back edges of the cast. In just a few minutes the edges met on top of James’ shoulders and merged into a solid piece leaving an edge of the cast gently pressing against his neck. The changes in restricted movement from the cast being under his armpits to going over his shoulders seemed small from the outside, but to James it was a big difference. Now he could not twist his shoulders at all, and when he tried reaching a hand over to the opposite shoulder he could only just barely get the tip of his index finger to the edge of the cast on that side.

His friend decided that professional help was best so he grabbed the phone and called nine-one-one to get some help on the way. Once he got the operator he explained that his friend James had fallen and aggravated a previous injury that was still healing and he needed transportation to the nearest hospital immediately. He was pretty sure that if he had told the operator that his friend was being slowly encased in a self-expanding cast they would have laughed at him and by the time he had convinced them to send someone out to his residence James would be a fully encased statue. The operator verified his address and informed him an ambulance and paramedics would be on their way and should be there within 20 minutes.

During this all James could do was watch the cast continue to grow. Now, the cast had stopped its upward growth and started working down both arms at once. When James’ friend came back out to the couch James asked him to turn him to a more upright position instead of laying on his side half-on half-off the couch. They got James turned so that his heels were on the floor and his shoulders were up against the top edge of the back of the couch. After getting him positioned, James’ friend commented that there were two lumps on the inside of James’ legs, one per leg, about an inch below the knees and pointing at each other. About that time there was a ripping sound as the seams of James’ pants could no longer take the stress of the lumps stretching his pants and the ends of the lumps were revealed. The lumps turned out to be about two inches thick and after watching them for a couple of minutes James’ friend confirmed they were growing towards each other. James realized that this was a spreader-bar forming between his legs but he didn’t say anything to his friend about it because he didn’t want to show just how much he knew about casts which might make his friend wonder some more how this was happening in the first place.

The ambulance and paramedics actually took a good 45 minutes to arrive. By that time the spreader-bar had fused together into a solid unit and had actually forced James legs further apart a little bit and appeared to be spreading them even more. The fiberglass around his hips and crotch still seemed solid when knocked on, but it was adjusting to keep the cast smooth and form fitting even as James’ legs were being spread further apart. Also the cast had grown down his arms far enough that it had emerged out from his sleeves and reached to just above his elbows. If James were standing up, his upper arms were now held immobile in a position as if he were pointing down and out to his sides at about a forty-five degree angle.

James’ friend brought the paramedics into the living room explaining that they had to see it for themselves. When they saw James resting on the couch they were amazed to see someone his age confined in a body cast that extensive. A quick examination confirmed that James really was encased in a fiberglass cast from his neck down to his toes that included his upper arms as well. When they were told how James had wound up in such a predicament the paramedics claimed it was a lie and they almost left. Even the evidence of James’ clothing being correctly in place and the spreader-bar actually extending through his pants couldn’t make them believe. It took making them stand and watch as the cast extended down to encase James’ elbows to make them believe that it wasn’t an elaborate hoax. Of course this meant that now James couldn’t bend his elbows anymore either. They had held James’ hands up while watching the cast grow so that his elbows were bent at a ninety-degree angle, that way they could prove the cast wasn’t growing but that James was just pulling his arms up into the cast. Of course the paramedics were wrong and his forearms now pointed forwards so that his hands were positioned in front of his belly at about the level of his lowest set of ribs would be with about a twelve-inch space between his hands.

Once the paramedics were convinced this was real, they quickly decided they did not have the equipment to try and cut the cast off of James with them and that he needed to go to a hospital. They quickly got a stretcher out of the ambulance and placed James onto it and loaded him into the ambulance. The sirens were turned on and the conversation over the radio on the way to the hospital was anything but incredulous. On arriving at the closest hospital they met a small crowd of doctors and nurses who immediately wheeled James into the orthopedics department and into a procedure room. While a couple of nurses moved to get the two cast saws in the room setup the paramedics were again telling the doctors what they had witnessed. A third nurse pulled out a pair of bandage scissors and in a couple of minutes had cut off all of James clothes exposing the entire cast for the first time. She immediately commented on how there was no perinea opening and James told her that his toes were enclosed as well. The doctors present were all standing watching as the cast continued to grow at its slow pace while it encased James’ arms. Once the doctors were also convinced this was not a hoax the cast had grown halfway down James’ forearms, further encasing him in its grip.

Two of the doctors took a cast saw each and began cutting away at the cast starting down at James’ feet. The nurses had affixed fresh blades on the saws so they were cutting through the cast fairly quickly, each one working up the outside of James’ legs. About the time they reached his knees one of the paramedics called for everyone to look at James’ feet. The cuts in the fiberglass were re-sealing themselves starting from the feet and following the progress the doctors had made up James’ legs. Everyone watched as all the work the two doctors had done was quickly erased and in less than two minutes the cast was once again whole. The doctors were frustrated and some of them began discussing methods of possibly getting the cast off without injury while others began documenting the growth of the cast as it continued to encase James’ arms. The cast followed its own form and in the space of about thirty minutes completely encased James’ arms and hands, leaving no opening at all. The doctors told James to hold his hands in a neutral position with the fingers partially curled and the thumbs gently spread out away from the palms as that would be the most comfortable position for them to be held in. Also, even though nobody noticed, the spread-bar had stopped expanding as well; leaving James’ legs spread with about a forty-five degree arc between them.

Once James’ hands were sealed up tight it appeared the cast had stopped growing and the doctors began trying to get samples of the cast itself. They did not have a problem cutting small pieces off of the cast, but after a short time the samples seemed to disappear and the cast would re-seal the hole that had been made in it. After twenty minutes of trying to get a sample of the cast to study, a nurse noticed new growth on the cast between James’ arms and torso. Lumps were growing out from the cast at each forearm and on the waist. It took only a couple of minutes for everyone to realize that abduction-bars were forming between the arms and body to further support the cast. It took only about thirty minutes for the abduction-bars to complete their growth and become fully formed.

About one minute later James called out to the doctors and informed them the cast around his neck was growing again. One of the doctors quickly gathered the rest together for a hurried conference and when they parted there was a lot of activity from everyone. Nurses were going to different parts of the room or out of the room and gathering supplies from different drawers, cabinets, and cupboards. The doctor who had called the huddle came over and explained to James that they had to have a way of keeping him alive if the cast fully enclosed him as was suspected. So, they were going to be inserting tubes down his throat to keep James fed with proper nutrients and breathing without obstruction. They were also going to try opening the perinea region to allow James to eliminate wastes, but if the cast started sealing itself shut again they were going to insert catheters for that. By the time he was done talking doctors and nurses were standing around waiting to begin doing what was planned.

James was tilted so that his feet were above his head giving the doctors easy access to his crotch and buttocks. Two of them immediately went to work on cutting out a section of the cast to reveal those areas. They cut out a section of the cast from James’ abdomen, around the insides of his thighs, and about 5 inches wide up along the middle of his butt. They quickly pulled the piece of fiberglass away and cut through the cast padding and stockinette beneath revealing James’ privates. One doctor watched closely and sighed when he saw the cast was already beginning to re-grow what they had just removed. Letting James know that it was going to be unpleasant they quickly inserted a triple-lumen Foley catheter into his urethra and a double-lumen bowel catheter into his rectum. While the catheters were inserted James simply grunted and winced until the insertions were completed, a single tear rolling from the corner of his eye as the Foley catheter was seated in place and inflated. The cast once again re-sealed itself from the damage that had been done to it, but this time there were two tubes protruding where there had been none before. The cast just formed appropriately sized openings around the catheters just big enough to allow the tubes to extend out through the cast and it once again squeezed James’ genitals back up against his crotch but without kinking or blocking the flow through the Foley catheter.

While that was taking place the cast was continuing to grow up around James’ neck, still at the same slow pace as before. James’ feet were lowered back down so he was lying flat again and the doctor closest to his head told him to open his mouth. A tracheal tube was inserted into James’ throat and down into his windpipe. Then a long flexible tube was brought over that had already been lubricated and this was inserted up James’ nose, forced through his nasal passage into his throat, and down his esophagus to his stomach. Inserting the breathing tube caused some gagging and coughing as it went in, but the feeding tube caused several tears to roll down James’ face when it was inserted. The doctors then proceeded to tape the tubes in place to hold them until the cast covered up James’ face. About the time the tubes were taped down a nurse returned pushing a respirator before her. A blue tube was connected between the breathing tube in James’ windpipe and the respirator, knobs were adjusted, and the respirator was turned on. Having done that, everyone could do nothing else other than stand and watch the last exposed portion of James be encased in the cast.

It took about an hour for the cast to grow up around his head. The cast grew up around his neck and over his chin, and then it stopped its advance on James’ face while it grew up the back and sides of his head. It covered the top of his head and came down to about the level of James’ eyebrows where it stopped again. The edge of the cast down on James’ chin resumed growing and began filling in the space left open from the bottom up. Again, as with the catheters, when the breathing and feeding tubes were encountered the cast simply left an opening just big enough for the tubes to fit through. Finally all that was left exposed of James were his eyes. For about ten minutes it seemed that they might remain uncovered, and then the cast slowly closed that opening as well. James was now sealed inside a complete full-body-cast. From head to toe, the only openings in the cast were holes just barely big enough to allow tubes to fit through that allowed for breathing, eating, and waste elimination.

          Part Two

James was now completely unable to move a single body part. The most movement he could get was to press against the padding on the inside of the cast that allowed him maybe a couple millimeters of movement. It was the best sensation James had ever felt, and one he had never had hopes of experiencing. But here it was, and he was thrilled. Even the tubes inside of his body, while being uncomfortable, were a part of the experience he was feeling and he figured his body would adjust to their presence in due time.

While James was on the inside of the cast being thrilled about his situation, the doctors and nurses on the outside were frustrated by the event and discussing what to do. They had a living person encapsulated inside of a fiberglass cast that would not allow them to remove it. They had been successful in temporarily removing portions of the cast so they had been able to insert the catheters that allowed James to eliminate bodily waste, but the cast had then resealed itself around the tubes. They decided to admit James to a private room so they could keep him for observation, and a study would be done of this impossible situation. Some phone calls were made and although the people on the other end of the calls could not believe it, once proof had been made a grant was extended to study this phenomenon a couple of weeks later. Events that occurred shortly after James was taken to his room made the giving of the grant happen much faster than would normally have taken.

Before taking James to his room his friend was questioned thoroughly as to what had happened prior to James arriving at the hospital and they were able to get his personal information so as to properly admit him under his own name instead of as a ‘John Doe’. Also, one more attempt was made to alter the cast once it had finished sealing James away from the rest of the world. The doctors thought that it had possibly been the fact that the cast was still growing that had kept it healing itself from the cuts that they had previously made in it. They were correct in a way. The continued growth of the cast had affected the cuts and removals they had made, but not in the way they had assumed. Now, when they cut into the cast it repaired the damage even faster than before. The continued growth of the cast as it encased James had actually slowed it from repairing their earlier damage to it. They did manage to get a couple of life-sign monitors in place so they could watch James’ brain-wave activity and heartbeat. He was then taken up to his room and placed on the bed with IV’s, monitors, the respirator, and all sorts of equipment surrounding him. And there he lay, nothing more than a fiberglass statue to all appearances if not for the monitors and tubes attached to him showing through their ‘activity’ that there was a living person on the inside.

About an hour after James was placed in his room a code blue, the signal for a patient in respiratory arrest, was signaled from the orthopedic ward. When the team arrived with the crash cart in the room the signal had come from they found a frantic nurse standing over a bed with a patient in it who was in skeletal cervical traction for a motorcycle accident, had a cast on her right leg and her right arm. The nurse was pointing at the leg cast and screaming that it was not supposed to be that big, it was only supposed to be on her lower leg. The girl on the bed had been admitted the day before and she was on medication for pain that made her extremely sleepy so she was not aware of what was going on and was fast asleep. The news about James had gone through the grapevine fairly quickly, but it had not circulated to everyone in the hospital yet. Two of the people on the emergency response team had heard it though and immediately one of them ran out to alert the doctors who had been present with James about this new case. When the doctors had arrived the patients chart was gone over and the leg cast was confirmed as having been applied as a short leg cast. It was most definitely a long leg cast now, but it did not appear to be getting any bigger. It seemed to have stabilized at the point it was now. They did a check of the rest of the apparatus and noted the arm cast WAS getting bigger. It had extended up the rest of the girl’s arm and was in the process of becoming a shoulder spica cast. As her arm had been held up in a sling the fingers of her hand were pointed straight out in front of her in a classic ninety-degree bend at both the elbow and shoulder. The doctors and nurses just watched as the cast completed forming around her body. Then they got another surprise when the support structure for a HALO-cast began to grow up from her chest and back out of the cast and extended upwards towards her head and the HALO ring that was currently being used to apply the traction to her neck. In about an hour a complete HALO structure had formed and attached to the ring around the girls head completely immobilizing her head and neck, the traction clamp that had been attached to the ring had been forced off and was pulled away with a clang by the weights on the other end. After watching the girl for about fifteen minutes it seemed that nothing more was going to expand or grow on her and the new casts appeared to be stable as they were. A portable cast saw was brought up and an attempt to cut off the leg cast was made with no better results than what had been achieved on the cast encasing James.

One of the doctors had an idea and checked the position of the girl’s room to James’ room compared to the other patients on the floor. He verified quickly that this patient was physically the closest one to James, her bed being against the same wall that James’ bed was next to. He warned the other doctors and the rest of the staff on the floor that he believed this was going to continue to spread and they all needed to watch the rest of the patients closely. Not too long after that he was proved right as other patients on the floor began complaining of increased restriction from their casts. By the end of the day about eighty percent of the patients in the orthopedic ward had experienced some form of alteration in their casts. Some simply got bigger and encased the entire limb then stopped growing. Others had their cast somehow multiply and a second cast appeared on the opposite limb in the same form as the original cast. Yet others had a cast or casts that extended and grew until they combined into different forms of body/spica casts to one extent or another. Of the twenty percent that appeared to have no changes occur, a closer examination showed that those casts had become better fitting and much better formed. Only one other patient wound up in a full body cast like James. Unlike James though, that patient was not completely sealed up in their cast. They still could wiggle their toes and fingers, had an opening around their crotch and anus, and their face and ears were still visible. In every case on every single patient odd folds or wrinkles in the casts were gone, and the casts no longer showed looseness at any point due to either poor application or muscle atrophy from extended wear. Where a patient had been in a cast for a while and the muscles were beginning to shrink the casts had simply become tighter and now hugged the persons body tightly. And every single cast checked showed the same ability to repair itself from any damage that was done to it.

One patient had become nearly psychotic and taken apart the IV stand beside their bed and tried to hack the bilateral hip abduction (or double hip spica) cast they were now encased in. The cast had simply repaired itself from any damage done until the doctors had managed to forcibly remove the instrument of destruction from the patient. After stitching up the wounds that had been caused the doctors applied restraints to keep them from further injuring them self. The doctors and nurses had their hands full dealing with the rest of the patients’ reactions to this phenomenon, but that was luckily the worst they had to deal with.

It took about a week before the entire world knew about this new change as it continued to spread outward from where James lay in an ever-increasing circle that eventually encompassed the whole planet. News stories appeared in every newspaper and magazine, and every news channel had broadcasts concerning the strange phenomenon. Psychics, religious zealots, government officials, TV evangelists, conspiracy theorists, just about everyone had some ‘new’ explanation for what was happening or why. Eventually most of it died away and only the tabloids continued to run stories trying to explain what had happened. And the world adjusted and continued to go on. Nations did not crumble, although initially a few tried to blame each other for the occurrence and tempers flared almost to the boiling point. But even that was curtailed by the actual facts of where it had started and how every single nation was affected in the same way. Eventually there was a notable core of government officials and scientists who quietly continued to monitor one lone individual who continued to remain sealed up inside a fiberglass glow-in-the-dark full body cast in a private room in a North Texas hospital.

Tests were conducted and it was found that a roll of casting tape that was opened and left to sit did absolutely nothing but cure and get hard. Nor would a roll of tape opened and held in a hand or placed on a body part do anything other than get hard. It was only when a new cast was applied with the usual layers of stockinet padding and cast tape that things would happen. Sometimes the cast simply corrected any mistakes made and then do nothing else. Other casts would grow to some extent and then stop. The process for determining what would happen with a cast appeared to be completely random and there was no way of telling what would happen when a cast was applied. The only similarity amongst every single one was the correcting of mistakes and the ability to repair any damage done as well as the cast would shrink over time to continue to provide complete support and immobilization. It was also found that once the injury that had prompted the cast to be applied had healed most casts could be cut off. A few even dropped off of their own accord. Some casts though resisted any attempts to be removed even after x-rays or MRI’s showed the bones underneath had fully healed and remained in place for much longer than was necessary. Eventually though, even these casts began to show signs of wear and once that happened it was possible to cut them off and remove them and the person wearing said cast then had to deal with the rehabilitation required and any lingering effects of the long term immobilization they had endured.