"Feel the sides of your waist," Schiller said. "There's a protruding bone on each side, the anterior superior iliac spine."
Clark instinctively felt the front of his waist. Just above the tops of his legs, he could feel a hard bone protruding forward.
The term was a little complicated. Clark had never heard it before, but he knew this might have something to do with that bone.
"The injury was here," Schiller said. "This is below the spinous process of the fourth lumbar vertebra. There's no spinal cord here, only the cauda equina."
There were too many technical terms. Clark seemed to understand, yet not understand, and asked, "What's the difference?"
"The spinal cord is one solid piece," Schiller said. "Its texture is like unbaked pudding, while the cauda equina is loose, like a clump of grass squeezed together."
"If a bullet directly hits the spinal cord, it could indeed cause paralysis. But if it only enters the cauda equina, the nerves it can affect are limited. Judging from the angle at which the bullet entered, the harm would not have been severe. It might have made his right leg inconvenient to use, but it could not have directly caused paralysis."
Clark's mouth had been hanging open the entire time. "So Professor Xavier wasn't paralyzed because of this?"
"He wasn't paralyzed."
After saying that, Schiller's expression gradually became animated. He looked at Clark and said, "Well? Found any clues?"
Clark hesitated. "What exactly is going on? If Professor X wasn't paralyzed because of this, then what caused it?"
"Perhaps he was never paralyzed at all." Schiller smiled and offered an absurd possibility. "He sat in that wheelchair for decades only because Erik believed he wouldn't come."
"Ah??????"
The expression on Clark's face could no longer be described as merely complicated.