Two Years' Past: The Whys

“You didn’t deserve what happened, and I might be able to fix some of the damage. You’re young, with more to do in life ahead of you. You were still alive when they pulled you out of the rubble. You’re strong. Stubborn. Those are both qualities we need in the candidates for this sort of program. You were a dancer, the very best at the academy, which means you have other qualities that we will need for this type of work.

“I talked to the medic that flew in with you. You know what he told me the first thing you said to him was when he found you?”

Kailey shook her head. Her memories of the accident were fragmentary at best.

“You grabbed his sleeve and said ‘I’d rather die than not be able to dance again.’”

Kailey blinked at the sudden hot sting of tears in her eyes.

“So that has been and is my promise to you. You aren’t dead, so we’ll make it so you can dance again.”

The Wizard fished in his pocket, and pulled out a handkerchief, handed it to Kailey.

* * * * *

“You all right?” Jordan asked, as they went back up the corridor. “Your eyes are all puffy. I’ll knock his ass down if he made you cry.”

“No, it’s okay, Jordan.”

They went up the elevator in silence.

“Hey, Jordan,” she said, as they rounded the corner to the cafeteria.

“Yeah?”

“How much did you know? About me? The surgeries? The metal?”

“Not much. Knew you had a tough time, someone dropped a house on you, and they did some Humpty-Dumpty. Guessed they did something first time I picked you up. You’re heavier than you look, girl. Not, like, megatons, or anything, maybe an extra two or three kilos. I’ve lifted enough weights to be able to tell the difference.”

“I’m not fat, I just have titanium laced through all my bones,” Kailey said, batting her eyes up at him.

Jordan laughed.

“Hey, what’s that he gave you?”

“Homework,” Kailey said, indicating the three folders.

“Huh. Thought you only got that after Third Session.”

“He says it’s required reading.”

“Well, what is it?”

Kailey flipped open the top folder, showed Jordan. He frowned.

“It’s all fuzzy,” he said. “Like they do in those porno videos when they don’t want you to see the naughty bits.”

“What do you mean? Look, it says right here: ‘Microfilament nerve architecture is…’” She frowned when Jordan frowned again. “It does,” she insisted.

“I believe you, girlfriend. Never heard you use words like ‘micro-whatever’ so you must be getting it from somewhere. Maybe the computer in your head is deciphering it.”

“Well… He did say it was for my eyes only…. I wonder what else it can do. Maybe I could use it to help me with my other homework, too!”

Jordan shook his head. “I don’t know what’s scarier, girl. The fact that you can just accept that they crammed all that stuff into you, that your first reaction is to want to use it to cheat on your homework.” He laughed again.

“Okay, headin’ on into the chow hall. Think maybe we should keep all the super girl stuff hush-hush?”

Kailey nodded. Chances are, the dirty old men would just ask when she was going to get the skimpy costume, anyway.

* * * * *

Dr. Burke stood in front of the door to Kailey’s room, arms crossed, and the scowl etched even deeper into her features.

She unfolded her arms at Kailey’s approach, extending a hand.

“Those folders, Miss Winter, if you please.”

Kailey’s grip on the folders in her lap tightened.

“The folders,” the older woman repeated, the word coming out close to a hiss at the end. “You are not allowed to have those, they are property of this Institute. Return them immediately.”

“The information relates directly to my ongoing medical treatment. I have a right to know. They are part of my medical records, and I have a right to those, as well. Why didn’t you tell me about any of this before?” Kailey asked.

“It was not necessary for your recovery up until this point. As your physician, I—”

“I think I have a right to know what’s been done to me in an operating room. That’s what doctors do. They say ‘We’ve reinforced your entire skeleton with metal, oh yeah, and let’s not forget about the computers and microfilament wiring’ not ‘We replaced a couple crushed vertebrae and repaired your legs.’”

Dr. Burke’s lips set in a firm, grim line.

“And that buzzing in my head? It’s line noise across the nanofilament webwork that bled over into my audio cortex. Not tinnitus.”

“You—”

“I want another doctor.”

“You can’t—”

“I can. Doctor Diggs was very open about my rights as a patient. He said that if I wanted a new general physician, all I have to do is ask.” She looked up. “Jordan, I do not feel that Dr. Burke has my best interests at heart and has acted unethically by withholding information about my condition and deliberately lying to me.”

Jordan stared at the doctor. “Now that a patient as expressed concerns regarding her treatment, it would be unethical to continue treatment with such a breach of trust.”

Dr. Burke turned, stalking down the hallway, her back very straight.

* * * * *

Kailey was in her room, brushing her hair, still damp from the after-Fourth-Session shower when the knock came at her door.

It wasn’t Jordan’s jaunty two-knock cadence, or the gentle tap of her morning nurse, but slightly more hesitant.

“Come in,” Kailey said, tugging at a snarl in her curls.

Another doctor in a white coat stepped in, tallish, with short blonde hair and wire-rimmed glasses on a chain around her neck, dangling along with the lanyard full of keys and her Institute ID badge, which was turned around so the magnetic stripe showed. She carried a thick file under one arm.

“Good evening, I hope I’m not interrupting,” she said in a clear, high voice. “I’m Dr. Emily Carter, and I’ll be taking over your general medical care from Dr. Burke.” She held out a hand, and Kailey took it, surprised at the warm, firm handshake. Dr. Burke’s was like a dead fish.

“I’ll be sitting down later tonight with Drs. Harris and Diggs, and—”

“He hates being called Dr. Diggs,” Kailey said.

“He— oh, all right.” She looked down, and made a notation on a pad of paper that was at the top of the stack in her arms. She sat in Kailey’s wheelchair, propping the files up on her knees, and flipped back a few pages in the notepad.

“Dr. Burke never sat in my wheelchair,” Kailey said.

“She probably always stood by your bedside, so you had to look up at her,” Dr. Carter said.

“Well… yeah, now that you mention it.”

“I like to think of this as part of seeing things from your perspective,” Dr. Carter said. “Now, having read over your medical notes and case file, I have some questions here…”

Kailey and Dr. Carter talked for several hours, and they both looked up when the night nurse came in with Kailey’s evening medications.

“Just the two yellows and the big pink one. You won’t be taking the little red and blue ones any more. You might have some difficulty getting to sleep the next few nights, but I’d rather it was natural sleep.”

Kailey nodded, sipping water to wash down the pills.

“Rest of the glass. Water is the best thing for you.”

“Yes, doctor,” Kailey muttered, and settled back once she’d finished the glass. Dr. Carter got up, and pulled the covers up, tucking them in around Kailey’s legs.

“Comfortable?”

Kailey nodded.

“I’ll be back first thing in the morning.”

“If it’s not too much trouble,” Kailey said.

“Never,” she said, and turned off the overhead lights on her way out the door.

Two Years' Past: Truths

He let go of her hands, got up, and came back with his briefcase. He set it on the exam table, and opened it up, pulling out a pile of folders several inches thick. He thumbed through them and pulled one out from near the bottom of the stack and handed it to Kailey.

“What’s this?” she asked. The folder didn’t have any kind of filing notation on it, just a number: 5.

“Kailey, I don’t want to scare you. But there are some truths that they didn’t tell you that I think it is very important that you know. Remember, when I said that the goal here is to get you on your feet?”

She nodded.

“Well, that is one of the truths. And in order to get there, we had to do some things to you. I say ‘we’ and lump myself into the group, so if you are going to be angry, then you have to be angry with me, too. And I accept full responsibility for my part in this.”

“Okay, now you’re starting to scare me,” she said, her voice wavering a bit.

“You have questions. Ask them, at any time, and I will answer them, to the best of my ability. The best hope for all of this work to amount to anything is for all of us to be very honest with you. After all, this is your life we’re dealing with here. Some of the doctors, and scientists, I think, forget that there is a person on the end result of their work.”

“When you said you — they — had to do things to me, what did that mean?”

The Wizard sat back. “When the I-beam came down, it hit you in the lower back. Fortunately, you were on your knees at the time, and your falling with the beam after that point is probably what kept the damage from being more extensive than it could have been. Other debris was able to cascade into the gap and keep that beam from completely crushing you. Those fractions of a second were critical to your survival.”

“I… sort of remember when it fell. I was trying to get away, to crawl across the floor towards the door. I cut up my knees, but then I couldn’t feel them. I guess that was when my back broke.”

“It wasn’t a clean break. There was crushing damage, and your spinal cord wasn’t severed completely. But enough bone fragments were lodged in it to cause permanent damage.”

“Now you sound like a doctor,” Kailey said.

“They didn’t fly you to a normal hospital. You came straight to the facility where I was working at the time, and as your helicopter was landing, I got the call, that they had another candidate for the research project I’d been working on.”

“‘Another?’ Like, I’m not the first?” She glanced down at the folder. “I’m number five?”

The Wizard nodded.

“What happened to one through four?”

“They died.”

Something of the light in the Wizard’s eyes dimmed, then, and his jaw clenched, just the slightest bit.

“Oh,” Kailey said. Then she leaned forward, putting her hand on the man’s knee. “I’m sure it wasn’t your fault.”

“No,” he said, taking a deep breath. “That’s just it. It was. I pushed too hard, lost sight of the end result of the project. I forgot that there were people on the other end of my research. I shelved it. Stopped the work, shut everything down.

“Number four, Donald Brown, 32, My age, at the time, too. Construction worker. He fell, several stories, was paralyzed, like you are, from the waist down. I spent two years with him, in rehabilitation. Watched him take his first few steps. But he wanted to run before he could walk. And it killed him. Heart failure. That was eight years ago, last February.”

“If it’s so dangerous, then… why… Is it going to kill me, too?”

“No!” he said, and Kailey jumped.

“Sorry,” he said, taking a deep breath. “In the eight years, a lot of work has been done with the kinds of systems I was working with. Medical knowledge has progressed. And, I’m sorry, but you are a lot tougher than Don, and Kyle, and Vincent and Xavier.”

Kailey didn’t miss the slight hesitation between the last two names.

“Were you related to Xavier?” she asked.

“You don’t miss much, do you?”

Kailey shrugged. “Well, I have been seeing shrinks for the past six months.”

The Wizard smiled. “Xavier was my younger brother. Bit of a daredevil. Motorcycle accident.”

“I’m sorry,” Kailey said.

“So am I,” the Wizard said.

They sat in silence for several minutes, and then the Wizard cleared his throat.

“So, what the doctors and scientists did to you is very delicate, very intensive work. The fact that you survived that phase — phase zero — is a very, very good sign.”

“Phase zero, as in ‘might be over before it even starts.’”

The Wizard nodded. “Wow, talk about hitting the nail on the head.”

“So it was the operations to fix my back? And legs?”

“Yes, and then some. Your left leg was broken in several places, and they couldn’t pin the pieces together. So they regrew a new femur, around a titanium latticework. We did that for all your major skeletal bones — Oh, they didn’t pull them all out and replace them, that would be messy. It was non invasive procedure, injections that flowed through the bones while under special magnetic fields.”

Kailey stared at her hands. “I’m not going to grow claws, am I?”

The Wizard laughed. “No, and no yellow spandex. No fighting crime, no leaping tall buildings.”

“But… metal doesn’t radiate electro magnetic waves.”

“No. The superconducting wiring laced through your muscles is doing that.”

“Wires?”

“Well, thinner than wires. Filaments, really. Even thinner than fiber optics. It’s an artificial nervous system. Works just like it, bouncing impulses back and forth to the computers inside you. Eventually, those will get you up and walking again.”

“It’s a really good thing I’m already sitting down,” Kailey said.

“Bit much to take in, I know.”

“I know they make computers really small, but…”

“Three in your head, three in your spine.”

“They opened up my head?”

“Dr. Harris did, yes. He laid down the neural latticework and placed the primary processors in the back of your skull, and wired the filament system into it.”

“You make it sound like it’s something he does every day.”

“Well, he is a brain surgeon. The very best in his field. Every single doctor involved in this — in you — is the very best in their field. We are all working for you, Kailey. For you, not on you, like you’re some kind of car that just needs a tune up.”

“But… why?”

“You don’t ask very simple questions,” the Wizard said, with a sigh.