Captain McCoy was lying on a gurney in The Compound’s intensive care unit, waiting anxiously to undergo the procedure that he saw as a catalyst for the fulfillment of his desire to render strategically relevant services to his country.
A machine that was developed by Dr. Volkov’s team to perform the procedure was placed on a table that stood next to the gurney, a few inches away from Captain McCoy’s head. The scientific and medical staff referred to the machine as Gawrro.
Gawrro is a fifteen-inch tall, ten-inch wide rectangular metal box. On the side that is turned toward the patient there are four articulated mechanical rods that are placed as if they were the machine’s arms. A small camera that is sustained by an articulated rod is installed on top of the machine, resembling a head and a neck respectively.
Sitting behind Gawrro, Dr. Minett has access to two touch screen monitors that are placed along the machine: the monitor to the right shows the real time video footage that is generated by the camera; the monitor to the left displays information related to the health of the patient, such as the electrical activity of the subject’s brain as recorded by electroencephalography, and the control interface.
Dr. Minett activated a command for Gawrro’s upper right arm to cut a microscopic circle in the preset area of Captain McCoy’s scalp and pull the selected piece of his skull, exposing a micrometric portion of the patient’s brain.
Subsequently, Gawrro’s upper left arm inserted a kind of needle into Captain McCoy’s brain at the depth that was precisely preset by the coordinates that were registered in its data base and affixed the device in a microtubule, as if it were merely administrating a vaccine.
Then, Gawrro’s upper right arm returned the piece of scalp and skull that it had removed from Captain McCoy’s head to its original place, following which Gawrro’s lower left arm wiped off the tiny drops of blood that had emerged from the round incision. Gawrro’s lower right arm cauterized the spot of the implant, which marked the end of the procedure.
Dr. Minett stood up, caught her purse and asked Captain McCoy:
“How are you feeling, Captain?”
“I’m okay, I guess.”
“Good. You’ll sleep here for the night. Please don’t remove the electrodes in your head.”
“Don't worry.”
“I’ll be back to check on you in the morning. Good night, Captain.”
“Good night, Dr. Minett.”
Dr. Minett was desperate for a bath and did not mind trying to hide from her patient that she was anxious to leave the intensive care unit as soon as she could. In fact, she did not even notice the way that Captain McCoy kept staring at her with a smile on his face as they exchanged their last words and she started walking in a fast pace toward the door.
Dr. Minett’s private apartment is one of the lodging units that are contained within the second floor’s restricted zone. In spite of its compact size, her apartment features a bedroom, a bathroom and a kitchen.
As she entered the apartment, Susan withdrew the laptop that was in her purse, placed both items on the desk that stood between the bed and the closet, just below the window, and turned the computer on. She then initiated the remote monitoring software and left her cell phone between the laptop and the purse.
Feeling that her work had been done and she could finally call it a day, Dr. Minett took her clothes off slowly, went to the bathroom and opened the bath taps with an intuitive accuracy that always made the temperature of the water perfectly warm for her.
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While the bath tub was filled up, Minett went to the kitchen and took her time to choose a Cabernet Sauvignon from the bottles that were stored in her wine cooler. She opened the chosen bottle, poured some wine in a glass and then returned to the bathroom.
Susan shut the bath taps, took a sip of the wine and immersed her body in the water. She was so tired from spending almost the whole day writing reports to Dr. Volkov that she could not help falling asleep in the tub shortly thereafter.
***
As he looked at the wall and contemplated the Doctor of Philosophy diploma that the Massachusetts Institute of Technology issued in his name as a result of his original research in Bioengineering, sitting on a comfortable chair in his office, Dr. Volkov rejoiced at his professional trajectory while drinking a glass of eighteen year old whiskey.
His childhood and adolescence in Brighton Beach, in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, were extremely troubled, with frequent episodes of physical and psychological abuse from his schoolmates and from his father as well.
Dr. Volkov was still haunted by the memories of his father coming home filled with anger after a whole day of work with customer attention and letting go of all the stress by being aggressive and violent to him and his mother.
On a good day, his father would just yell at everyone in the house for whatever reason or for no reason at all; on a bad day, he and his mother would feel his father’s rage in their own flesh.
Moving to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to go to college meant more than pursuing a career that appealed to him ever since he started reading science fiction novels at the age of eleven; it meant ceasing to be his father’s punching bag.
It was the professional and academic success that Dr. Volkov has achieved since he graduated from Bioengineering at the MIT that made his life worth living, almost to the point of compensating everything that he had to go through in the past.
Amid his recollections, Dr. Volkov decided to check whether everything was in good order with his new research subject, even though he was certain that Dr. Minett had everything under control and would let him know if anything did not go as expected. He finished his drink, took one more look at his diploma on the wall, and went to the intensive care unit.
***
Dr. Minett woke up to the shrill sound of an alarm that had been beeping from her cell phone, which could only mean that something was definitely not going well with Captain McCoy.
“Holy crap! How long has it been beeping?” – she said aloud.
Judging by the high pitch of the beeps and the short intervals between them, Minett knew that she had taken more time to wake up to the alarm than she was supposed to. She jumped out of the tub, dried her body as fast as she could and hurried to her laptop.
The information that was displayed in the screen of Dr. Minett’s laptop confirmed that the situation required her immediate attention. She turned off the alarm, wore a fresh change of clothes and left her bedroom.
Upon arriving to the intensive care unit, Dr. Minett was surprised to find that Dr. Volkov was standing to the left of the gurney, glancing between Captain McCoy’s body and the electroencephalography screen.
“Dr. Volkov! Why are you here?” – Minett asked while walking toward Volkov’s direction.
“Why were you not here, Dr. Minett?” – Volkov’s voice conveyed unmistakable peeve. “What’s going on with him?”
“I can't give you an accurate answer at this moment.”
“His EEG is flat. Is he brain dead, Dr. Minett?”
“I need to run a few tests before I can tell you anything. Get some rest, Dr. Volkov. I’ll brief you his situation in the morning.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
Dr. Minett waited for Dr. Volkov to leave the room before turning her attention to Captain McCoy. She decided to assess the patient’s level of consciousness by using the Glasgow Coma Scale.
“Captain McCoy, do you hear me?”
She watched him attentively, but the patient did not show any reaction. She raised her voice:
“Captain McCoy, open your eyes.”
As the attempts to obtain a response to her verbal commands did not show any result, Dr. Minett moved on to test Captain McCoy’s reaction to pain stimulus by squeezing the lunula of a fingernail.
Susan could not help feeling attracted to Ben, who reminded her of the high school boyfriend that took her to their promenade. The sight of Captain McCoy brought her a rush of cherished memories of the high school years that she missed sometimes.
While contemplating Ben’s handsome face, Susan moved her right hand toward the index finger of the patient’s right hand. She felt a shock upon touching his finger, which caused her to pull her own arm back in a reflex action.
Dr. Minett looked at the screen near the gurney and noticed that Captain McCoy’s electroencephalography patterns became those of a person who is dreaming. Not having a clue of what had just happened, she decided to take a chair and watch her patient until he wakes up.
Minett sat beside the gurney, took a deep breath and whispered:
“Where the hell have you been?”