Final Disposition (3 page)

      “But —”

      “You were dreaming, some kind of nightmare.”

       “Didn’t feel like a dream.  Felt real,” he grumbled through the membrane as he heard a second door — this one far less solid — burst open, and then someone approaching in what sounded like rubber-soled shoes.

      “What happened?” a distinctly different and authoritative female voice demanded.

      “He regained consciousness all of a sudden, and then started yelling that his ankle was broken,” the wonderfully soothing female voice explained.

      “Get him out of the wrap, right now.”

      Moments later, he felt and then saw the membrane — some kind of thin, flexible, and opaque netting that he’d never seen before — being disconnected and pulled away by three pairs of plastic-gloved hands.  Suddenly, his hands and arms and legs were free.  But his head remained securely clamped and immobile within some kind of clam-shell apparatus … and his neck, chest and lower torso were still tightly strapped to some kind of thick plastic platform.

      At the same moment, his senses were assaulted by a huge and nearly overwhelming flow of aromatic data: soap, alcohol, and powerful disinfectants.

       Some kind of hospital room, the frontal lobes decided.

      He wanted to think about that — how a tough membrane could hold a human body in, and simple volatile chemical structures out, yet allow the two-way passage of oxygen and presumably carbon dioxide — but he was too busy using his left arm to shield his eyes from the sudden blinding brightness of the room lights.

      As he did so, his blurred eyes locked on a plastic bracelet affixed to his wrist. He had to blink a couple of times to get his blurred eyes to focus on the small block letters.

CELLARS, COLIN   22572

      
Colin Cellars?  Is that who I am?
  He asked himself, but got no answer … just a deep, dark silence.

      If his frontal lobes knew the answer, they weren’t telling.

      Confused, he dropped his arm down and found himself staring up at a pair of dark eyes surrounded by long tight ringlets of smooth black hair, and a dimpled smile.

      The room smells had become more subtle now: cologne and other strong deodorants in the distance, being partially blocked by a far more intriguing and feminine scent that seemed to be emanating from that dimpled face.

      Senses heightened.  Smell, colors, sounds. 
Must be on drugs
, he thought in a brief flash of analytical awareness.

      Then he remembered.

      
Brain damage … head injuries … hospital.  Okay, makes sense.  Wonder how badly I’m hurt?

      But then, as he continued to stare at her enticing face, he felt a warm and gentle glow permeate his entire body, and he realized that he didn’t particularly care.

      
Good old nucleus accumbens
, he thought, smiling internally.  He would have been content to just lay there and listen to the rhythmic flow of her voice; but several portions of his brain were still demanding information.

      “Where am I?” he rasped with a voice that didn’t feel like it had been used for a long time.

      
God, she’s beautiful
, a voice in the dark silent recesses of Cellar’s mind finally spoke up … and, in doing so, immediately set off a series of faint alarm bells — more like distant bongs or chimes, he thought curiously.

      “You’re in the prep room of our fMRI lab,” the dominant feminine voice answered.

      He tried to turn his head in the direction of the voice, but he couldn’t move his head at all.  So he continued to stare into the eyes of the young woman who, his frontal lobes had already decided, must be some kind of nurse.

      “MRI?”

      “No, f-MRI.  Functional magnetic resonance imaging.”

      “A modification of an MRI that tells you where blood is flowing in the brain — to feed synapses — because the iron in hemoglobin makes it slightly magnetic,” he said before he could catch himself.

      “You know that?”

      “I guess so.  Who are you?”

      “Actually, that’s one of the questions we want to ask you.”

      “Okay, fine,” he grumbled, annoyed by the fact that the pleasure stimulus he’d been getting from the sound of the nurse’s voice was now significantly diluted by the gruff tones of this intruder.  “You first, then I’ll talk.”

      “I’m Doctor Susan Grayforth, the director of this clinic.”

      “As in medical doctor?”

      “Yes and no.  I am a medical doctor, but I’m also a research scientist.  My specialty is neurophysiology.”

      “So you treat brain damage?”

      “We evaluate people with head and brain injuries, but not everyone we work with actually has brain damage.”  Dr. Grayforth said the words smoothly, but there was a distinct evasive tone to her voice.

      “Do I?”

      “Do you what?”

      “Have brain damage?”

      “You have some extensive head injuries that may have resulted in a significant lesion within your left temporal lobe.”

      “A lesion?  You mean like a scar?”

      “No, a lesion — in terms of neurophysiology, is simply an area of the brain that is no longer … functioning, due to scarring or inflammation.”

      “As in dead?”

      “No, as in not processing signals — neurons not firing.”

      “However, in your case,” the authoritative male voice spoke up, “we were observing some very interesting signal processing within the area of your lesion when you woke up.”

      “And that’s a good thing?”

      “Yes, we presume it is,” Dr. Grayforth said calmly, and then paused for a beat.  “So can I ask you a few questions now?”

      “Sure, go ahead.”

      “Do you know where you are at right now?”

      “At whatever clinic you’re the director of, I suppose?”

      “But do you know where our clinic is located?”

      “No.”

      “Any idea?”

      He thought for a long moment.  “No, none.”

      “Do you know your name?”

      “My wrist band says ‘Colin Cellars.’”

      “That’s the name on the paperwork we received when you were brought in, so that’s what we put on your bracelet.  But the paramedics retained all of your outer clothing and other personal articles, and no one from your unit has shown up to confirm your identity, so that name may or may not be correct.”

      “My unit?”

      “Yes, ideally someone you’ve worked with closely who has personal knowledge of your ID and the circumstances of your accident.  Unfortunately, none of the guards assigned to your security team have that knowledge.”

      “Or at least that’s what they claim,” the authoritative male voice added in a disgruntled voice.

      “True,” Dr. Grayforth acknowledged.

      “I … have assigned guards?”

      “Several, actually, on rotating shifts, twenty-four-seven.  We assume that means you’re a fairly important person to someone.”

      “Or maybe a person that someone high up wants to keep track of?” he said, impulsively voicing the suspicious thoughts that were flowing through his mind.

      “I suppose that’s possible,” the clinic director said, “but, in any case, you’re certainly not a prisoner here.”

      “That’s nice to hear,” he said, all too aware of the head, neck and torso restraints that no one had bothered to release yet.

      “In point of fact, the only information your security teams claims to have about you is that you were one of several individuals severely injured by an accidental explosion during a night training exercise, and that the situation at the scene was extremely confused.  Their assignment is to keep you secure while in our care until things can be sorted out.  Does any of that make any sense to you?”

      “No, it doesn’t.

      “Do you remember anything about an explosion?”

      “No.”

      “Do you have any recollection at all of Colin Cellars being your actual name?”

      He hesitated for a second.

      “No.”

      “No recollection at all?”

      “No, nothing.”

      “Do you have any other associated memories about you, your friends, your family, or any of your associates?   Anything that might help us confirm your true identity, including your social security number; and thereby retrieve all of your relevant records from other medical facilities?”

      A third beat, slightly off-set from the first two.  His cerebellum was methodically digging at the underlying aspects of the shifting rhythm, while his frontal lobes quickly processed and then presented the unsettling idea that no one else seemed to know who he was either.

      “No, I don’t have any memory of having family, friends or associates.”

      “Yet you seem to know how an fMRI works?”

      “I seem to understand the basic function of the various types of MRIs, at least in a theoretical sense,” he agreed.  “But I don’t have any memory of ever operating one.”

      “Do you understand the functions of other technical things?”

      “Yes, of course.”  Rapid response, out of phase and tempo.  He could feel himself starting to get irritated.

      “Such as?”

      “I don’t know, lots of things.  Boats, cars, airplanes, tools, guns, radios.  I mean, who the hell doesn’t …?”

      “But nothing personal … nothing about you actually using any of these technical things yourself,” Dr. Grayforth pressed, ignoring the outburst.

      “Look, I told you —” he started to respond heatedly when he felt the beautiful nurse’s warm hand on his arm, and heard her say, “relax, Colin, everything’s going to be okay.”

      An instant later, he felt the warmth of the chemicals as they came up through his arterial system and began to diffuse his brain.

      He was starting to object when his awareness suddenly dissolved into a cobwebby gray nothingness.

CHAPTER 3

      He arose out of the foggy grayness smoothly and without incident, giving him the sensation of having been unconscious for only a few seconds.

      But when he opened his eyes, and looked around, he realized that he was lying on a very different bed and in a very different room.  The bed was considerably bigger and softer than the padded cart he remembered, and the room was much smaller and non-echoing ... the significant differences including the soft pillow that his head was settled into, the floor-to-ceiling white curtains, the brightly-patterned wallpaper, the oak-paneled closet, the adjacent oak door to a private bathroom, and the piles of folded sheets and towels on a cart at the foot of the bed.

      Even more significant, he realized that his head, neck and torso were no longer secured by straps.  The only thing that restrained him was a sheet and thin blanket that were tucked under his arms exposing his bare chest and arms.

      Then he saw her.

      “Hi, there, Cowboy,” the young woman in the white nurse’s uniform with the soft voice and long black hair said, walking up to the bed as he stared up at her beautiful dimpled face.  “How are you feeling?”

      He could feel the instantaneously soothing and pleasant effect of her deep, husky voice on his subconscious.

      “Wow,” he whispered.

      “Wow?”  Her right eyebrow arched up curiously.

He blinked his eyes and shook his head, trying to clear the remaining cobwebs out of his mind that now echoed with the muted sounds of alarm bongs and chimes.

      “To answer your question, my body feels pretty stiff and achy, like I’ve been lying in bed too long, and my head hurts; but your voice … that really feels good.”

      “
Feels
good … as in you think you can actually feel my voice through all of your other aches and pains?”  The nurse cocked her head in amusement.

      “I definitely feel something very nice going on in my head every time you say something,” he said, nodding his head slowly.  “Kind of like I’m on drugs … I suppose.”

      “Actually, you
are
on drugs,” the nurse said.  “Or, at least, you have been for the last half hour or so.  You should be coming out of it by now.”

      “You knocked me out in the MRI prep room a half hour ago?”

      “You were starting to get anxious and irritated — not a good thing when you’re restrained like that.  The doctors just wanted to get you into a more relaxed setting before you came fully conscious.”

      “Whatever,” he said agreeably.  “Just keep on talking.”

      “What do you want me to do, pull up a chair and read you a bedtime story?”

      “That would be nice.  Bedtime story, newspaper, phone book … doesn’t matter … just talk.”

      “Hate to break it to you like this, buddy boy, but our relationship is going to be a little more conventional than that.  I’m going to be the attending nurse who goes about her appointed tasks, and you’re going to be the cooperative patient who lies still and behaves.”

      “Or —?”

      “Or you get to re-experience the Farmington-U Cocktail — a very effective combination of sedatives and other drugs that keep you cheerfully mellow and cooperative — on a regular basis … which is to say, during my entire shift.”  She tapped her fingers meaningfully against what looked to Cellars like a small combination-locked aluminum briefcase lying on a mobile cart positioned near the head of his bed.  “The doctors around here are pretty open-minded about that sort of thing,” she added pleasantly.

      “Ah.”

      “And while we’re on the topic of being open-minded, how do you feel about answering to the name Colin Cellars for a while … at least until we get some better info.  ‘Cowboy’ seems a little informal now that you’re conscious.  Wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea about our relationship.”

      “I’m okay with that.  From now on, I’m Colin Cellars … Colin to my friends, assuming that I’ve got any.”