Word Count: 10,172

I declare the “intro” to this story finished. Now we can get to Hemmings’s little (or big) adventure. Won’t that be fun?

It’ll be more fun once NaNoWriMo.com is working so that I can submit my updated word count. I do hope it does come back today, or else it’ll look like there’s a gap in my writing rate. Anyways, enjoy the stuff to follow:

 

I’d finished our rickety stitching job hours before Shane reawakened. In that time I had run a series of tests on him, mostly related to his now steadily beating heart. There was no evidence that his heart had ever stopped beating, but I knew well that he had no pulse before. He was stone cold when I had checked upon him before his death. And even if he hadn’t been dead, being in that state for that long would have killed any man. I pondered over this while leaning over his left arm. There it was again – his pulse. It was so steady, so unchanging, and so perfect. It was impossible. This man was in perfect health.

No wonder he could play tennis. This man was in great shape. I couldn’t have said that yesterday – but he was frozen! I do recall them once bringing dogs back to life by freezing them and flash-heating them, but humans? Impossible. On top of that, the dogs had only been dead for about seven minutes. In a human, that’s enough time to cause serious irreversible brain damage. After seven minutes, humans move into an irreparable, untreatable vegetative state. All I could do after examining him was wait for him to wake up again. Then I’d ask him questions. They would be the most difficult questions he would ever answer in his life. I prayed he would have no problems answering them, but I wasn’t even quite sure what they would be. By the time I was done pondering, he had begun to move again. My subconscious mind was thankful that he was completely stitched up. Just in case, however, we had given him a heavy dose of antibiotics. There was no telling what got into his body after we opened it up, but it was almost guaranteed that it was purged with our antibiotics. They spread across his body like a refreshing wildfire across a forest. It renewed him. I was so sure of that, until he actually woke up.

He turned his head – despite his appearance, he was weak. “Doctor,” he said shyly, “how long do I have?”

What a pity. He thought he was going to die. I didn’t say anything for a minute or so – I pretended to be sorting cotton swabs and whatnot in another corner of the room.

“Doctor,” he repeated, “please.” I turned my head and saw his eyes. The fire had returned, and was burning brighter than ever. His life force was entirely revitalized, even if he was still physically weak. I decided that I had to let him know exactly what had happened, if not simply for legal reasons but for his own good.

“Shane Evans, you died one week and four days ago.”

He was silent, his mouth agape, but eventually he closed him mouth and grinned, shut his eyes and said, “So, that’s what you meant by ‘autopsy.’ So where am I now? Heaven? Or did I not make it so high up?”

“You’re on Earth, Mr. Evans. You’re alive now – no thanks to our autopsy. But I need to ask you questions. They might be painful, but you must answer them.”

“I don’t think anything will be painful. I don’t remember a thing; everything you’re saying is news to me.” He turned his head and looked up at the ceiling. Shut his eyes again, and repeated, “Sure is news to me.”

“You’re wife, Noah… she’s been terribly worried. I have not yet notified her of the results of your autopsy, but I’m sure she’ll be excited to know that you’re alive and well. On the bright side, know that I cannot find anything physically wrong with you, so you’re on track to be healthy for however long you decide to live.”

He chuckled, “Decide to live? I’ll buy myself twenty more years when I find the store of life.” It was refreshing to see him happy, even more so to see his smile. Noah wasn’t lying when she told me what a cheery, kind soul he was – quite the contrast to me. I began to question him.

“Shane,” I began informally, “You don’t seem to remember anything about the start of this incident. Is that correct?”

“I didn’t know there was an incident. I was jogging along the side of a road, and when I woke up you were ripping me apart. If I was dead, I don’t remember it. I might have been knocked unconscious by a car, but I don’t remember any cars hitting me.” He had begun to use his hands to talk, and was even trying to sit up, but I gently pushed on his chest to stop him – he was quick. I did not want to touch him, for fear that the stitches weren’t stable, but if he had risen so quickly there was no telling what could have happened.

I jotted his answers down on a digital notepad. I found the digital pen frustrating to write with, if only because he spoke faster than I wrote, but I wasn’t one to excel at writing in any case. I continued asking, “Do you feel as though you’ve woken up from some sort of sleep?”

“No,” he gently responded.

“You’ve had no dreams?”

“No. I only remember waking up feeling extreme pain. In fact, that’s why I woke up – the pain was unbearable.”

I wrote down every word, eventually writing as I spoke. “Did you feel strange before going out to run that morning a week and a half ago? Had you been feeling sick at any time beforehand, by days, weeks, or even months?” There was that face again. I wasn’t in front of a mirror, but I knew that one of my eyebrows was raised that my face must be contorted the same way it was whenever I spoke to Edward, the same way it was when I had driven home over the last few days. Shane didn’t show it, but I knew from Noah’s descriptions of him that he was perceptive enough to see that his case completely baffled me.

“To your first question, no – but to your second, I’ve been feeling a little more weary than usual for the last few weeks. I was away on a business trip, you see—“

“What was that for, by the way?” I rudely interrupted.

“Nothing special. I think I’ll keep my personal life to myself. I’ll tell you this much: it wasn’t so much business as it was leisure. My company likes to treat their employees, but while I was away enjoying myself I had to do some research for the company about the area.”

“About how long ago did you return?”

“One week ago. Well, two and a half – you said I was out for a week and a half, yes? – two and a half weeks ago if you count that.” Shane was still smiling. It seemed like his face hadn’t moved since he smiled last, even though it had. There was a strange, perpetuating quality to his face. It’s difficult to describe what I saw in that moment, so I won’t bother with the details. They’re not important, but what he said next made quite the difference:

“Near the end of the trip I started to feel queasy. I lost my balance during a tennis match against a business partner, and had to go back to my hotel room to rest. I grew more tired each day. I might have slept the during the flight home, but don’t quite remember.”

So, it could have been a foreign disease. The antibiotics should have killed it, if that was the case. I couldn’t say that it was unusual for an old man to sleep on a plane ride home – especially if the ride was several hours long – but judging from his vitality, especially his will to avoid death, I assumed that such an act was nowhere near normal practice for him. I continued asking questions in this manner until I had enough information to announce that I wanted to take some tissue samples. It sounded like he had a simple infection, or a virus of some sort. The next step was to take samples, and determine what had caused this man’s strange awakening from death.

Thinking back, it sounds so strange that somebody could die. It’s such a foreign concept to us now. Death, the true pain of it, is lost to me. It is lost to the world, because of this man.

I took a cotton swap and used it to gather some facial skin cells. These were cultured for a day. During that day, Shane rested, and I called Noah. She was not home. I waited for her to arrive home, but she never picked up the phone that day. I was never sure if she was simply afraid to find out the results of his autopsy, or was actually out of the house. She might have been scared to find out the truth – or to find out no truth at all - but she had to pick up the phone sometime. I told Shane that she was not responding to her messages, but did not say that I had no proof she had ever heard them. When time permitted I asked Shane for his home address and visited. It was not far from the hospital. They lived in what I called the sub-suburbs, and transitional area between the city and the suburbs where I reside. Their house was built like a ranch, but was smaller on the inside than it was on the outside. I rang the doorbell, not expecting Noah to actually get up and answer the door.

She was much aged since I saw her last. I think my smile cheered her up a bit, but not as much as the news about her husband. “Noah,” I said, slowly leading into the story, “your husband’s autopsy results were inconclusive. We were unable to find anything.”

She gasped, and was about to cry, but I saved her from her tears. “We were unable to find anything,” I said, “because Shane awoke during the procedure.”

She froze. Awoke? It must have been a foreign word to her. What could it have possibly meant? Shane couldn’t be alive. Nobody comes back from death, that inevitable black void we must all face once God has decided our time on Earth has ended. It was understandable, for me, that “awoke from death” was not a phrase in the repositories of Noah’s mind, for how could it? Such a phrase, we both imagined, would never been commonplace. Never in the history of man. But she, at that moment, had to accept it, and comprehend it. I can only imagine that her ability to comprehend her husband’s living state was far lacking than my own, because she had not been there when he bled. She had not been there when his hand crept up from the cadaver table, and felt his forehead. To me, Shane was alive. He had never been dead, for all intents and purposes. But to Noah, who had come to terms with his death and only wanted to know its cause, it was a veritable nightmare. Hearing that Shane was alive must have been as painful as hearing that he was dead.

I saw a single tear run down her check, and she hugged me. She did not let go, so I returned the favor. “Is it true?” she wept. “Really true, honest to goodness Shane is alive?” She laughed, “You’d better not be joking!” and then began to cry again in mid-phrase. We remained intertwined, and I told her no, this was not a joke, or a prank, or even a white lie. Shane awoke from death, and we could not yet explain why.

“But we’re thoroughly researching the issue. While we’re all happy to see Shane back, nobody can explain how it happened. Your husband is the first recorded case of this disease in medical history. Take that as you will; for now he’s in fine shape. We’ve stitched him up and hopefully repaired any biological damage that may have taken root during the autopsy. He’s recovering in the same room he was in before. You’re free to visit.”

“Should I?” she asked, tears now rolling down her cheeks. She loosened her grip on me, and began to step backward so as to make the conversation more formal. When she had released me completely, I put my right hand on her left shoulder.

“Noah, I’d encourage it. Please visit him. I believe he thinks you’ve been ignoring my messages for a reason. He’s clueless, and if anybody can teach about this whole ordeal, it’s you. I’m just his doctor – I can’t make an emotional connection to him yet. You’ve got years of history behind you.” I felt one of my eyebrows raise. What question could I possibly have been formulating at that moment? I pretended to wipe my forehead, as though I were sweaty and wanted to rid myself of the disgusting liquids that plagued my upper cranium, but I was really trying to hide that eyebrow. I didn’t want Noah to see how much thought I was really giving to Shane, who I’d suspected was strange from the very beginning. I couldn’t put that burden on her.

She nodded and said she would visit him. “Room 108,” she whispered to herself. “I’ll be there tomorrow at six. Please let him know I’m coming. It means a lot to me; you know that already.” She wiped the tears from her eyes. She couldn’t believe it. Neither could I. We were both waist deep in the biggest medical mystery of the century, and I was almost afraid some crackpot would interfere with true research and say that Shane’s body was possessed by an alien force so that it could live another day. I would accept no crackpot theories for this. Shane may have respawned as a new man, but he was still the same mind. His body was untouched.

As I left the house, I said to myself, “It’s quite possible, then, that Shane never died in the first place.” I unlocked my car – click. Opened the door – click, click. Closed the door – slam. Turned on the engine – click, rev. I couldn’t hide my face anymore. The worst part was that I was directly in front of a mirror – several, all around my car. I wasn’t supposed to be able to see my face in these mirrors, but I did. Had I looked that way for the entire conversation? No wonder Noah had cried. I rubbed my forehead again, this time to get rid of my newborn headache. The car began to roll by my will, back to the hospital at my command.

Shane was still wide awake, and he told me that another doctor had barged in saying that the second cultures were prepared. The first batch I took from his face ended up being useless – nothing spectacular was there beyond the usual infestation that surrounds us all daily. This time I took some real tissue samples. I made a culture out of some, and put the rest on a slide to be viewed in a scanning electron microscope. Although other doctors were using the hospital’s SEM for unrelated research, I fought for Shane’s cause and was able to use it for an hour the next day.

I had trouble finding the cells on the slide inside the vacuum of the microscope. SEM’s are nothing ordinary – they are large machines, with large chambers that contain no air. This vacuum kills any living organism inside. So, when I found that the cells on the slide were moving, I nearly jumped out of my seat. At this level of magnification nothing has any color, so it’s difficult to make a distinction between animal cells and bacterial cells, but these were clearly different. I saw three types of cells under that microscope, and two of them were moving actively, as though they were alive. The first were animal cells – Shane’s dead facial skin cells. The second and third were strange bacteria I had never seen before, crawling on and about the dead animal cells. I could not see how they were moving – they moved too fast to catch, but must have been using the surface of the slide to propel themselves. Intrigued by this discovery I left the room. I told Shane that he had a very, very strange infection. I also told him that I would find out exactly what the infection was doing to his system.

I was lying, of course.

But it didn’t seem like Shane was interested. He was up and about now, as though the stitches didn’t affect him, as though dying had not meant the slightest. Physically, he was fully recovered. But now he was mentally recovered, and acting like what I assumed was his old self. “It’s great that you’re walking around, but we don’t even know what’s going on. You could have a relapse. Furthermore, the infection could be contagious—“

“Ah, hush,” he said. “If it were contagious, you’d probably be sick by now.” As if he was the doctor.

“I don’t mean any disrespect, but you’re in no position to say that. Please get back into your bed and rest. I can’t have you taking any risks – Noah can’t have you taking any risks. I don’t care if you play tennis, if you went on business trip, or if you’re daring enough to break your arms and legs again. I care that you’re save and well, and by walking around you jeopardize that safety and wellness.”

He nodded and smirked, like a child, and walked humbly over to his bed. Once he was in, I left him alone with the door shut to continue my research, but when I went back to the SEM I saw that somebody had cleaned the chamber out. My beautiful bacteria were gone! How could I examine them? I had to make an incredibly difficult decision in that moment: I had to seal Shane away from Noah until the issue was resolved. I walked the halls, and saw through the closed door that Shane had fallen asleep. Glancing at the clock, I saw that it was very late, and felt a pang of guilt. In a few hours there would be pain and turmoil in the Evans family, but I had to seal him off. His room became the hospital’s special quarantine chamber that night, for the good of everybody around that man. I knew that his condition might be the forefront of a striking new discovery, but I did not know just how striking it would be. I did not know that I was to be the sole inheritor of this disease. I did not know that I, Ethan Hemmings, I humble and average doctor from an equally humble suburb, could ever be caught up in such a mess.

Ethan Hemmings obviously wasn’t thinking straight that night, because if he had been he might have seen what was coming next. If he had – if I had – he might have avoided the long journey ahead of him.