As a normal biologically speaking vanilla human, Murphy is going to get older, at forty unless you are a wizard you begin to lose a step or two, you don't heal as fast as you did. Who knows age may have been a factor in how badly Nic was able to beat her up. That might not have happened to the Murphy of five years ago.
I realize this is canon and widely accepted, but it’s not necessarily true.
When I was 20, I was riding a motorbike down the Lea Bridge Rd in London. A nice wide road, approaching a car waiting in the central reservation for me to pass. I was doing about 25mph (There was a speed camera set at 30 just ahead). Just as I approached the car, it suddenly turned across my path. I’ll spare you the full details, but my right leg was twisted beyond it’s capacity, both lower leg bones were broken, and the flesh around my knee had an 18” tear in it - the Dr. said my leg just burst open at the knee. I do clearly remember flexing the muscles in my thigh and watching them in action. I also remember wishing I had a camera because this was so cool. Yeah. Totally in shock
Eight months later, and after a fair amount of physical therapy, I’m as good as new. Now fast-forward 25 years, and I’m in the US riding an e-bike at about the same speed (25mph) down a bike lane. You can see where this is going...
So a lady is waiting to turn into a side road, doesn’t look (or doesn’t judge the speed I’m going very well) and turns across my path. I have time for “Oh shi” and ....
we have impact. This time, my head and elbow break the windscreen (breaking my arm in the process), and my leg deforms the side of the car, breaking my right femur as it hits.
It took about the same amount of time (7 months) to fully heal. Just like before, it takes about 8 weeks to get some agency back, and then it just gets steadily better until it’s healed. It was complicated this time by me having about 60% of my body heavily bruised, which is a totally different thing (fluid sloshing around and gathering in places) than getting a small bruise. Still, even at 45 I recovered just fine given time. There’s no difference between either leg these days and it’s now 6 years later so I’ve had time for fallout to appear.
Summing up:
- As far as I’m aware, even as a Brit, I don’t trace my heritage to Merlin Human bodies are pretty good at repairing themselves even as you get older.
- That said, wear a bike helmet if you’re cycling, there was a girl arrived in ER before me wearing a climbing helmet when a car hit her. She died from head trauma. I didn’t even have a headache (although the cycle helmet was destroyed.)
- Mouse is obviously way more awesome than a vanilla human, he doesn’t need the months for recuperation.
- I really don’t have anything against my right leg, honest.
- I don’t ride anything that doesn’t have a cage of steel around me now. I think twice is sufficient, three times might be pushing my luck.
So sure, Murphy could recover if that’s what Jim wants to do; she could also have “complications” and she gets forced to take a different path, or suffer further consequences if she doesn’t. My only point is that speaking as one whom life has tried in this fashion, injury doesn’t *have* to mean permanent life changes. My own gut feeling is that when an author writes injury into a character’s arc there’s a reason for that, so I doubt she’ll be as fortunate as I, but it’s still Jim’s choice.
