Читать книгу Wildfire - P.Z. Johns - Страница 9

Chapter 2

A Medical Miracle

My head was pounding! God, there’s a pain that started at the back of my neck and rolled to my forehead. I felt like my brain would explode. That’s what must have woke me up. My head’s my first problem. I guess my second problem was where the hell I was.

My sight was fuzzy, but I could tell that I was lying in a bed, and it looked something like a hospital room, but not quite. Chimes were going off somewhere above my left shoulder. It must be something attached to the wall behind me. I’d got an IV stuck in the back of my hand. No, not one IV, there were three, no make that four tubes running into the same needle in my hand. My left arm and hand were in a sling resting on my stomach. I tried to raise my good hand to my head to check that it hadn’t split open and felt that my head was all bandaged too, even down over my right eye.

The door to the room was on my right side, and on the left side was a workbench that looked like a computer station. I recognize it because…I don’t know why I recognize it. Had I been near one before? How is it I can remember something as stupid as a computer worktable but I can’t remember who the hell am I?

Then I heard footsteps at my door, and it quietly opened. A young orderly walked in and looked over at me. He was not in typical hospital scrubs. He wore white shoes, white slacks, and white sport coat with ID tags and a photo card hanging from his top pocket. After checking the IV tubes, he looked at me. “Well, you finally decided to join us. My monitor told me you woke up. Welcome to the land of the conscious. How do you feel?” He did something with some kind of TV remote thing that stopped the chime that was going off over my head.

I stared back at him and must have looked groggy and only half in this world. He smiled and spoke again, “I’m sorry I don’t mean to press you. Can you talk?”

I opened my mouth, but it took a while. “Head hurts…bad.” My left eye started to water.

“Okay, let’s see what we can do here.” He went to the tree of IV hoses and fiddled with a pump. He kept talking. “Let me know if this helps. My name is Chris Broker. I’m your nurse.” He wiped my cheek with a tissue. “Dr. Philippe is your lead physician. He is not on the grounds right now, but I’ve notified him that you’re awake. There are others too, and they are on their way. We weren’t expecting you to wake up so soon; that’s why nobody is here.”

“Where…here?” was all I got out, and I laid my head back in the pillow.

“We’re in the med research facility on one of the Storm Islands.” He must have been able to see that his answer meant nothing to me. “The Storm Islands are south of Aragain, the northern continent. Goldenridge is straight north of us.”

A one-word question came out of me: “Bode…?”

He could tell much of what he said didn’t register on me. “Yes, we’re in the Bode Galaxy. You’re on Hera, the main planet in this sector.” He smiled.

“We…made it?” It was more a statement than a question, but he could tell from my tone that I was unsure of myself.

I saw he was stuck for an answer. “Yes, you made it. You were in bad shape when they found you. You were dead actually, and we almost lost you a few times, but Dr. Philippe will tell you more about all that later. Right now, you need to rest.”

“How long…when?” Wow, I’d been almost a regular chatterbox now.

Chris looked at me and got serious. “Four months; they brought you here in April. It’s now August. But please rest; we’ll catch you up later. I’ll leave you be for now, but don’t worry, I’ll be watching from the main desk. All the monitors are on.” He fiddled with his TV remote thing again. “There is a sedative in the IV. It will relax you. You should sleep.”

“Head’s better, thanks.” I smiled and then said, “Others, the others, did they rescue the others?”

He looked concerned. “No, just you. Sorry.” Then the sedative knocked me out, and I fell back to sleep.

*****

When I woke in the morning, Chris and a middle-aged woman were both in my room. They fiddled with the machines and tapped on the handheld remote. They passed the remote back and forth to each other. Neither spoke, but Chris looked nervous and edgy. The woman stepped to the side of the bed and asked with a kind expression, “Feel better this morning, honey?” I looked at her and smiled. She looked like she was about to say something else, but the door opened again.

A man and a woman came in. The man, dressed in casual clothes, went straight over to the computer bench. For some reason, computer techy geek types all seemed to look alike to me. The woman came up beside my bed, and the nurse stepped away. This new woman was quite a contrast from the computer tech. She was in a very expensive dark blue business suit with a red silk scarf. She carried herself with a lot of poise. She smiled and looked at me. “Hello, it’s good to see that you are awake. I’m Jane. Jane Dietrich.” She sat on the side of my bed and touched my hand but didn’t disturb the IV tubes. There was a connection between us, a warm connection that I didn’t understand. I looked down at her hand, and I thought I saw a glow, but there was nothing to see. I must have imagined it. She smiled. “I will help you get your life back together. To get you back out into the world.”

The computer guy was starting up his machines. Lights and beeps went off on his bench, and the two monitors beside me came to life. Then there was a soft tingling in my left arm, and I gasped and jerked my head toward him.

“I’m sorry, I should have said something. The boot up here can affect your sensory networks. I didn’t mean to startle you. Again, sorry!”

At the same time, the door flung open, and two men burst in. The first man was a tall, lanky, skinny-type old guy, and the other was a younger black guy. Both wore lab coats. Tall and skinny stepped up to the foot of my bed. He had a hook nose and stared down at me. He had long white hair pulled back into a ponytail. I thought to myself, I’m sorry, old guys with white hair should act their age. They don’t look cool with a ponytail. I suppose he had a motorcycle parked outside that he bought during his latest midlife crisis.

Ponytail guy spoke right up, “Well, we’re all here, good. Let us begin.” And looking straight at me, he asked, “And how are we this morning?”

I looked right back at him. “We? I have no idea how you feel, but I feel like shit!” Both Jane and the black guy lowered their heads and smiled.

“Yes, quite. I see.” Without missing a beat, ponytail guy continued, “Let me introduce myself and everyone else present. My name is Dr. Philippe, Marcel Philippe. I am chief of medicine and director of medical research here at White Willow Medical Center. I am your lead physician. Beside me here is Dr. Jeffrey Davis; he is head of med surge at this center, and he is your chief surgeon.” The black guy looked up and smiled. “Sitting beside you on the bed is Dr. Jane Dietrich, head of psychiatry.”

I thought to myself, Oh, great! She’s a fucking shrink.

“At the computer table is Mike Berry. He is our bio IT technician and is an expert in alternate technology linkages. You will get to understand what that means as we work more with you over the next little while.” I couldn’t believe how arrogant this character was. “I understand you have already met Chris and Zoe. They are both medical practitioners and will attend you as well. In short, we are your medical team.”

Besides having a ponytail, he had a large hook nose. “To begin, Chris told me you asked about the elapsed time of your treatment. The ship you were traveling on was attacked, and all hands were lost, but then a medical ship found you along with your damaged DNA sequencer. Unfortunately, they could not revive you. Your sequencer, or SCARAB, was damaged beyond field use, and you could not survive over three or four minutes at a time. As a result, reviving you was pointless. As a consequence, they pronounced you dead.

“As luck would have it though, the chief physician on that medical ship was relentless. He would not stop trying to save you, and what’s more, he knew of my work here and contacted me. I immediately saw a marvelous opportunity to add to our research and to test a process that could save your life. The fact that we’re all here now proves that we succeeded.” There it was! He didn’t care about me; he only cared about the applause he’d get later.

Then looking at the doctor beside him, ponytail guy started, “Let’s begin by explaining how we treated our patient. Dr. Davis, if you would be so kind?”

“Okay, miss…” Dr. Davis seemed shy when he spoke, “It was not possible to restore some organs, and that was the main reason that the previous resuscitation attempts failed. Revive terminals could not restore your heart, liver, or your pancreas. So we have provided you with replacement biotechnical organs. These are digitally engineered biomechanical nanobots programmed to perform like the organ they replace.”

He must have seen the look on my face. The one that said, “What the fuck did you just say?”

He spit out, “These artificial parts act like the real organs.”

What he said shocked me. “My heart! Wow! Will I be restricted? Will I have to be careful?”

Dr. Davis answered, “No, quite the opposite. You will soon be in better shape than I am, and believe me, I am perfectly fit. He finished with, “Mr. Berry can explain the patient’s prosthetics.”

“All right.” Mike began, “Your left arm and your left leg are bioengineered prostheses. They respond to your brain like your real arm and leg. The difference is that the artificial parts use a battery that is also located in your new leg. Now this battery is remarkable. It is subatomic driven, which is not dangerous and may not need a recharge for twenty years. Also, your arm and leg are computer driven, and you will have sensory response, touch, and feel, like your real hand. What’s more, you will be as gentle or as firm or strong as you may desire.”

Mike looked at Dr. Philippe who was pretending not to be paying attention by fiddling with a monitoring machine up behind me on the wall. Probably the one that would chime whenever I woke up. Dr. Philippe seemed like a phony. Mike asked, “Dr. Philippe, should I continue?”

“Yes, but let me inject a comment first.” Dr. Ponytail was standing over me, looking straight down at my head. Or was he trying to look down my shirt? Pervert. “Please understand, miss, you also had extensive head injuries. We had to rebuild the right side of your skull and forehead, and these included the nerve ganglia for your eye.”

Mike continued, “Well, yes, you have sensors to process visual and nonvisual information. This is not like anything science has done before. In effect, this improves your optics. You have sensors that will give you information about whether a person is beyond your vision and if they have weapons. It will even tell you if a hostile creature is behind you.

“A bonus is you have a sat nav system to locate yourself or find destinations on a map much like a GPS. Finally, you also have a complete communication system, both transmission and reception. You can receive transmissions or communicate on many frequencies. You can send messages or texts while keeping your hands free to do other activities. I’ll stop here for now. This is a lot of information, and I’ll work with you for as long as it takes to explain it all.”

At that point, Dr. Phillippe cut back in, “Thank you, Mike. I’ll explain the last part.” He stayed standing beside the bed. “Our last improvement repairs the serious brain damage that you suffered. Similar to the mechanized organ replacements that Dr. Davis referred to, we placed a NeoPsion Mind Force Implant in your head. It almost is a replacement for your skull and comprises three synaptic sensor strips each about an inch wide that join at your frontal lobe and reconnect at the base of your skull.

“This implant is quite a remarkable invention because it makes you telepathic. With proper training, that we will help you with, you should be able to move objects by only thinking about it. We don’t know the full extent of the implant’s capabilities, but you should be able to communicate with others with only your mind. No speech will be necessary.”

To wrap up, Dr. Philippe added, “In conclusion, miss, please understand that the laws of space are quite explicit regarding the donation of body parts for science research. As you were pronounced dead, we went ahead with our plans for you. Most people tend to only own one SCARAB, but even if you had a copy back on your home planet, no one would ever be able to retrieve it in time to save you. So, regardless of your identity, we went ahead with our work.”

Now he was giving me legal jargon and brushing off things he didn’t want to talk about. I stopped him. “Wait a minute. What do you mean, ‘regardless of my identity’?”

Dr. Ponytail was unstoppable. “While some damage to your SCARAB prevented the doctors from reviving all your body parts, some damage also erased parts of the identity sector. We replaced body parts that were no longer serviceable, but we can’t fill in the gaps in your memory. You will have to do that yourself.”

I looked at Jane. “But did you try to look for me, for my identity? Did you try to figure out if I signed an organ use permission somewhere, or if I had a ‘do not revive’ request somewhere? Did you look for copies of the ship’s records, for a girl passenger?” She looked away. I pulled my hand away from hers.

The motor mouth wouldn’t stop. “Please understand the question is moot. Once revived, as you are now, you can fill in the blanks yourself, fill in your own unknowns, as it were. We can do that right now in one simple question: Who are you?”

It suddenly hit me that there was a lot of very high-priced technical brainpower around me in this room. I couldn’t imagine that your average grunt who got fished off a life raft would get this kind of treatment. Something was up! I was what’s up! I was the center of attention.

Stand your ground, girl! Think! Think it through! Where did that come from? It popped into my head out of nowhere. Did my father used to say that?

I looked around at all the faces in the room. Everyone was looking back, waiting. I answered slowly, “My name…” That’s my problem! I don’t know who I am. I know nothing about me. I only know waking up in this bed.

Then it hit me. “What do you care what my name is? The truth is none of you here cares who I am. You only care about making Frankenstein live. None of you care who Frankenstein was before!” The look on my face glared “fuck you all.” I looked at Jane. I could tell that she recognized my expression.

But Dr. Ponytail wouldn’t stop shooting his mouth off. “Well, the issue is of no real consequence. We have done our work. I have revived you. We only need to monitor your healing progress now and assist with your recovery. With luck, everything will work out as I expect, and you will come to see the wisdom in our plan. So, ladies and gentlemen, may we continue—”

I cut him off, “I have a question, Doctor. Your nurse here…” I pointed to Chris. “I’m sorry, I forgot your name.” I did forget it but continued looking at Dr. Philippe. “Last night, he told me there were no other survivors from the ship I was on. Is that true?”

“Yes, that’s true, miss.” Dr. Philippe continued, “You are the only one. That’s why we worked so hard to revive you.”

“Then I don’t follow something, Doctor. If that physician on board the rescue ship was so relentless, why didn’t he save anyone else? Or at least send others to you as well as me? Why was I the only one that survived?”

The good doctor’s answer was almost flawless. “My dear girl, I mean woman, to get to the point we are at today, you have had twenty-four-hour supervision by trained medical personnel for four months. That doesn’t speak to the expense of top surgical, biotechnical, and psychiatric experts this entire time. It would not be possible to spend that amount of resources on the entire crew of every attacked vessel coming into this galaxy. Your survival was an experiment. We simply could not conduct a countless number of experiments simultaneously.”

“But why me?” I asked as the room went silent.

“Miss, I suggest that you take that question up with whoever or whatever you hold to be your almighty creator.”

The room fell silent, and everyone was looking at me. I was getting livid and did not want to disappoint them. I was staring down at my bandaged arm, but my voice was firm. “Is that all you got? Do you expect me to believe that you are just a bunch of wonderful guys saving lives with cool toys? You won’t tell me the truth, will you? You won’t tell me what your real purpose is!”

Jane’s head jerked toward me. She understood me and looked straight at me. She gave me a subtle nod, and she reached and touched my hand. There was that connection again between us, and a voice in my head was saying to me, You go, girl.

I continued, “You turned me into an alien…with air-conditioning. I got so much gear in me I’m half robot and half alien. No, I’m a fucking telepathic robot.”

That even shut up the great doctor. All he could get out was “Dr. Dietrich?”

Jane stood and faced him. “Dr. Philippe, I had suggested many times that today’s conversation should best be handled in a private one-on-one session between our patient and myself. There is no need for a performance in this manner with all staff attending and others observing.” I could tell Jane struck a nerve.

Dr. Philippe began to fume and was ready to reply, but I cut them both off. “Excuse me!” I was getting even angrier. “I dislike being talked about like I’m not even in the room!” I was thinking about Jane’s comment about others observing, but I directed at the good doctor, “This is all very silly and misses a few points that I think are important.” Everyone in the room was now looking at me. “One, why did you do this to me? And please don’t say to save my life. I’m your fucking guinea pig. What’s the real reason for this experiment? And why me?”

My head was starting to hurt. “What do I owe you for all these built-in toys? These are close to being medical miracles. What do you want from me? What, will I have to do as payback?” I didn’t want to say it, but that thought frightened me a lot.

I couldn’t stop now. “And third, where the fuck did you get this gear? Please don’t tell me you invented it. Bullshit! These are military parts, right?” Then I looked straight at Dr. Philippe. “Do you think I’m supposed to bow and say thank you and kiss your feet? Guess again, asshole. You never even stopped to ask my permission. You transformed me into…into…I don’t know what. To you, I am your fucking guinea pig! And you won’t be honest about why you picked me!”

Dr. Philippe turned so many shades of purple I thought he would have a coronary. He looked at Chris. “Sedate her please; she’s getting delirious. She is not healed yet, and in her state of mind, she may damage herself. You must quiet her.”

I yelled back at him, “Go ahead sedate me, but you won’t quiet me forever! This ain’t over, asshole!”

When I looked at Chris, tears were forming from my real eye. He adjusted the IV. Inwardly, I wondered where my fight and anger came from. Who am I? That’s when I blacked out.